With Fire Emblem Heroes being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between all of the main games in the Fire Emblem series, it's inevitable that many of the characters who make the cut are not characters one would typically expect.
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New Heroes
- The introductions of alternate versions of existing characters usually prompt the biggest surprise from the base. It started with a cavalry version of Eirika in Sacred Memories and continues even past the Thracia 776 banner with Reinhardt and Olwen. The reasons for the surprise tend to vary. Speaking of which, banners that have alternates of characters introduced before their original incarnation proper tend to take people by surprise, such as Bridal Blessings Charlotte and Performing Arts Shigure.
- One particularly notable entry in this vein is the first alt for Nino, introduced on a Black Fang-themed banner. Never mind her getting a non-seasonal alt before any of the three lords of her game, her unit type surprised people...because she's a Green Flier (a tome-using flying unit). This was a unit type, and even concept, that wouldn't even exist in Fire Emblem until almost a decade after her game was released. Some people suspected she might get an alt given her popularity, since she placed in the top ten of CYL 2's women's side, but she was the first instance of a character getting a unit type that didn't even exist in their home game.
- Whole banners have often prompted this reaction for one reason or another, like Farfetched Heroes for being Ascended Meme incarnate as well as a consolation prize of CYL, or Fallen Heroes for being the first wholly sinister banner that no one truly saw coming.
- Especially shocking from the Fallen Heroes banner was Fallen Robin, a.k.a. Grima. No one was expecting to get a Final Boss as a playable character, never mind an Eldritch Abomination Final Boss. And fittingly enough, he ended up being one of the strongest units in the game. People thought that would be the end of it until the female variation was introduced a month later.
- Following in this trend, the Darkness Within banner had two unexpected characters; Mareeta, and Berkut. Like Hardin, Mareeta was not yet in the game, so people were shocked to see her since her home game (Thracia 776) doesn't have a large following. Berkut caught just as many off for similar reasons as Hardin; Berkut isn't a playable character in his home game, so him being playable here as his fallen self was a step in a different direction.
- The third in this type of banner, Dark Burdens managed to one-up the last somehow. While Demon King Lyon was expected in some way and another feral Corrin was not surprising at all, nobody expected of all characters Ike to appear, as not only is it not based on anything that happens in game, its based solely on the Fire Emblem Cipher card "The Nightmarish Rampaging Hero, Ike"
, a What If? idea if Ike had touched Lehran's Medallion like his father. Compared to the other surprise hero Julia, who at least makes sense since she is mind controlled at one point, Ike is straight out of no where! - The 2021 Fallen banner had two characters everyone expected, in Fallen versions of Edelgard and Dimitri from Three Houses, still the newest game in the series at time of writing. A lot of speculation on who else would fill the spot centered on Chrom, as he also has a Cipher card similar to Ike's depicting him as a Risen, one of the zombie mooks from his home game. Instead, there were fallen versions of male and female Morgan, the player character's child from the same game, based on their portrayal as Grima's servants in the Awakening DLC.
- 2022's Fallen banner, "Beyond Control", continued the trend of surprising Fallen Heroes with the debut of Fallen Gustav, which is a zombified version of Gustav after being slain by Hel in Book III. Most players wrote him off to never have a playable variant of his enemy version at all due to his release being around 3 years after the end of Book III, his enemy variant's voice lines being recycled for his Valentine variantnote , and many previous Heroes male characters such as Freyr and Fáfnir only having seasonal variants after their roles ended in their connected Books. Additionally, none of the Fallen banners that came before "Beyond Control" had Heroes original characters, making Gustav's addition that much more surprising.
- Units that make the cut in debut bannersnote who aren't particularly popular or the first they'd think of when headlining the first go-around. This list includes Tailtiu, Arden, Oliver, Rhajat, Lene, Thea and counting.
- Reinhardt, upon his debut, was one of the most obscure characters introduced in the game, placing 584 on the first CYL poll (which is, in fairness, a lot higher than many of the other Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 characters). What's even more bizarre is that Reinhardt was an unrecruitable enemy in Thracia 776, and he did not even appear as an Einherjar or SpotPass character in Awakening. This means it had been 17 years since his last and only appearance in the franchise!
- When the subject of the first Bow Flier came up, the general expectation was that Reina from Fates would be the one. Intelligent Systems proved everyone wrong by making a variant of Hinoka the first Bow Flier.
- Loki, of all people, was added as part of the Brave Redux banner. Considering that Loki's role in the plot didn't seem to be over when she was relased, no one was expecting her to be Promoted to Playable until the end of Book III, at the earliest.
- When it was revealed that there would be a banner focusing on Laguz thanks to Tibarn (And technically Nailah), many fans were guessing other popular characters like Ranulf and Lethe would show up. Instead, we got two Herons, who in the original games could only attack with one-use only cards and otherwise had no combat advantages whatsoever, while the more well known Antagonist Naesala was reserved for the Grand Hero Battle. However, the real surprise was who one of the Herons was. Okay, Reyson is a pretty big player to the Tellius Saga's storyline all things considered, but nobody expected Naesala's Non-Ancient Language Challenged Love Interest Leanne to show up.
- The Kitsune and Wolfskin banner added Keaton, Velouria, Kaden, Selkie...as well as Panne as a Grand Hero Battle reward, who isn't even from the same game as the units on the banner. Most people assumed that Panne would eventually be added considering how heavily advertised beasts are in Book III as well as being one of the most consistently voted characters in the Choose Your Legends polls, but this is the first instance of a character being added in a Grand Hero Battle alongside a banner for a game they're not even from.
- To commemorate the release of Three Houses, Heroes brought in characters from that game. The main Banner had the usual suspects, being the three house leaders Edelgard, Dimitri, and Claude, alongside the female Byleth (Since the male Byleth was already part of a special deal). The Grand Hero Battle unit, however, was a little unexpected. Instead of a major ally like Jeralt or Sothis or a major villain like the Flame Emperor or the Death Knight (who was added a month later), it was Kronya, the female member of "those who slither in the dark". And furthermore, Kronya has very little screentime (with most of it being spent in disguise) who is more likely designed to be disliked since she lacked a lot of depths for a minion and reveled in taunting the players because she's evil rather than being a 'cool/pitiable villain' like most villainous characters in Heroes (Thales and Solon of the same group had bigger presence and seemed more likely to represent "those who slither in the dark"), though many hoped Heroes would be able to fix that, much like Grima (though she never received them), while Valter already set a precedence of a playable Hate Sink (though he originally had more screentime). With how little screentime Kronya has, she comes across as an Advertised Extra. Some savvy players might note that given how simple and how minor of a role Kronya has, the devs could avoid spoiling the then-recently released Three Houses more easily compared to characters with more active villainous roles like Thales or Solon.
- After the Choose Your Legends 3 heroes banner were announced in August 2019, the schedule included a corresponding Tempest Trials to go alongside the banner. However, not many people expected the free reward unit to be the regular variant of Sigrun, the commander of Begnion's Holy Guard and Sanaki's bodyguard. She's notably the first unit since Shigure (who precedes her by well over a year) to debut as a seasonal first, then finally get her regular version in the game.
- The 9/19/2019 banner brings in several characters from New Mystery of the Emblem, including Bantu of all people. Bantu was a random manakete whose only notable qualities were being the first male manakete in the series and recruiting the much better and more important Tiki, and he landed somewhere in the 400s range during Choose Your Legends 2017 and 2018, making him a very out of left field choice. Notably, he's also the second post-launch unit to go straight to the 3/4* pool.
- For the debut of Book IV and the inclusion of new Thracia 776 characters, the 38th Grand Hero Battle unit... is Kempf. That's right, the jerk who antagonizes both Reinhardt and Olwen in their home game (and for this site, coining the 'egotistical evil subordinate' antagonist archetype), yet is more infamously know among the fandom for Thracia 776's poorly-age Fan Translation's portrayal of him. IN AMERICA!
- It was a surprise that characters from Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, got a banner dedicated to them, because they were from a Spin-Off rather than a main series title, even if the banner was timed to be a Cross Promotion with the game's Updated Re-release on Switch (moreso than the last time they cross-promoted their previous spin-off, the original characters there were not included in a banner). Even more surprising was that the human characters were finally dubbed in English with the spirit characters retaining their mainline selves' voice actors.
- In the Book IV Midpoint banner, while Say'ri from Awakening is not an oddball, and Mirabilis from Heroes as a Mythic Hero was a bit unexpected but she was due to be Promoted to Playable at some point, the selection grows stranger with Awakening's NPC Merchant Anna - or rather Apotheosis Anna - rather than the playable version, but that was nothing compared to Mustafa, who in Awakening was a one-shot Punch-Clock Villain, as a summonable unit and not a Grand Hero Battle unit.
- After being largely ignored in favor of their more successful successors, (some) fans were delightfully surprised by the Heroes of Light and Shadow Banner featuring the male and female versions of Kris. This means all physical Avatars are finally in Heroes.
- With all the Choose Your Legends 4 heroes being from Three Houses, one would expect the accompanying Grand Hero to hail from the same game. However, the Grand Hero turned out to be Jorge, one of the merchant twins, from the Tellius games as a Blue Bow Infantry. While he did place 12th for the male division and 27th overall for CYL4 with 6728 votes, people suspected and later confirmed from a certain player that he was botted to have that many votes in the first place. Reactions were mixed, to say the least.
- For the "Princess of Bern" banner that features Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, while Melady, Dieck, and Guinivere were expected to be released, not many were expecting Merlinus to be released as well, with him being a Colorless Dagger Cavalier, where in his home game he is a defenseless moving caravan, and as the 4* focus unit on the banner to boot, although he has more votes in Choose Your Legends 4 than the other threenote .
- The Grand Hero Battle choice for the Shared Purpose banner, which featured characters from Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, is Veld. While he is his game's Final Boss (although an Anti-Climax Boss to a Nintendo Hard game), many were surprised because in the whole picture of Jugdral chaos, Veld was more of an underling to Manfroy, and he only got 13 votes in the previous Choose Your Legends event. It wasn't the lowest, but he was so close to entering that place, with only 2 votes above the three-way tie of losers (Halcyon, Hayden, and Dalvin), all of it making his choice for the Grand Hero Battle more unexpected, and Veld became the lowest rated character to ever be added to the game.
- The Enduring Legacy banner featured the surprise, unexpected appearance of Annand of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, best known as Erinys' Cool Big Sis that ended up biting the dust in her main chapter. The more unexpected choice, however, is the Grand Hero Battle unit: Díthorba. Despite her addition to the votable roster of CYL 5, Díthorba originally just came off as a rather random enemy Falcon Knight general whose only significance was that she, Annand, and Erinys used to be in the same training squad (she gets an expanded background post-mortem in Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 where it turned out she's the mother of a recruitable Pegasus Knight, Misha, over there). If someone was expected from that group, people would have thought of Pamela, the one who actually killed Annand; or since Lex was also in the banner, they would've expected Lombard so the players can get access to the Helswath. This made Díthorba's inclusion come off as even more of a surprise.
- Generally, Tempest Trials associated with the seasonal banners tend to have the Duo/Harmonic unit, someone in their banner, or at least someone who is associated with their banner as the boss waiting for you. How about the Tempest Trials tied with Summer's Dream in early July 2021? Expecting to fight Summer Freyja or Summer Caeda/Plumeria? Nope. The Tempest Trials boss is a brand new character, Nifl, who has no connection to any of the new Special Heroes whatsoever. When people datamined her, they were really surprised to see her - with people feeling like Book II's arc, which involves Fjorm living on borrowed time after performing the Rite of Frost, was forgotten.
- That's not the end of it, as the very next banner, which was expected to be a Fates banner, had another new addition in the form of Nifl herself being playable right after the conclusion of her Tempest Trials. While some expected her to be that month's Mythic, she turned out to be a normal Hero instead, and wasn't expected to be released on a standard New Heroes banner, less so as a normal Hero, as the base forms of Heroes characters had exclusively been Mythic Heroes ever since Book III.
- With the release of Ascended Fjorm and Laegjarn, everyone was expecting new Ascendant variants of characters outside of Heroes, such as Ike, Soren, Marth, and a few others to be first in line for an Ascendant. In January 2022, the first non-Heroes Ascended Hero was released, however, you would be hard-pressed to find a single person who expected Joshua of all characters to get an Ascended variant.
- The "Special Summon: Ymir & More" banner was a bundle of surprises. Firstly, Ymir was unexpected because she was introduced more than a day after the end of the "Life & Death 1" Tempest Trials+ and wasn't even its boss unlike Nifl and Múspell before her. Ascended Celica was unexpected because previous Ascended Heroes were important to the plot in their respective games, but were secondary characters instead of lords or love interests, who primarily received Legendary variants instead. But the biggest surprise of them all was the Brigand Boss as the Grand Hero Battle unit, who was a bit of a meme due to him appearing as a votable option in CYL despite not having an actual name.
- The "Special: Rearmed Robin & More" banner in October 2022, has Rearmed Female Robin, who is unexpected since it was sudden since Rearmed Líf was released just around a month before the banner and is another variant of Grima, but that was nothing compared to Phila, the leader of the Ylisse pegasus knights and bodyguard of Emmeryn, and was just an NPC who has little screen time before her undignified death in Chapter 9 of Awakening.
Special Heroes
- When an axe-user was teased for 2019's Valentine's Day banner, few expected it to be Greil, a character who not only lacks a non-seasonal variant in Heroes, but was an NPC in his home game.
- While people expected Bruno to eventually be made playable, it's probably safe to say that nobody expected him to be made playable with a seasonal variant before his regular self.
- The Bridal Belonging banner was unusual in that unlike other seasonal banners, it actually only had one variant, Bride Fjorm. Everyone else on the banner were entirely new characters, with Tanith, Sigrun, Pent, and Louise, with the latter being a Tempest Trial reward. To say people were surprised is an understatement to say the least.
- For the "Glorious Gifts" Banner in 2019 along with its corresponding Tempest Trial... well, let's go from the least to the most surprising. First off we have Nino in the regular banner and Jaffar in the Tempest Trials, the former only having one alt note until then while the latter hadn't had any prior alts at all, though both are popular among the fanbase. Second there's Sothis, making her the first Three Houses character to get an alt even though she's a Mythic Hero, rather than someone more common like Byleth or the three house leaders. Third is our first Duo Unit with Marth, where he teams up with his sister Elice, marking her overall debut in the game. And finally, we have Zephiel, who's been in the game since launch yet never had a single alt until then... however, this version is his younger self from The Blazing Blade rather than his older self from The Binding Blade, making this the former's debut as well.
- The Halloween 2020 banner, "Dragons Harvest", had an unusual lineup of heroes. While Young Tiki & Ninian as a Harmonic Hero and Ena from Radiant Dawn are not the unusual picks, Fallen Female Robin was an unusual pick in that she was the first Fallen Hero be picked as a seasonal unit, Dheginsea was an unusual pick because players assumed he would be a Mythic Hero first and he had plot reasons in his home games from not venturing outside his homeland of Goldoa, and Xane from the Archanea saga games, who in this banner is not only not a dragon in terms of gameplay and is equipped with a very unusual weapon, but is also the 4* focus unit in this banner.
- The Childhood Encounter banner in April 2021 as a whole was this, as it featured the Young variants of Tana, Innes, L'Arachel, Lyon, Eirika, and Ephraim, with the latter two as a Duo Hero, akin to the Start of it All banner exactly one year ago. This is especially jarring since The Sacred Stones was nowhere near a milestone celebration when the banner launched (The Sacred Stones was released in October 7th 2004 in Japan, May 23rd 2005 in the US, and the November 4th 2005 for the whole world), whereas the Start of it All banner was celebrating the 30th anniversary of the very first Fire Emblem game, Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light.
- The Bridal Grace features characters from The Binding Blade, with Shanna, Juno, Zelot, and Thea accompanying Bridal Harmonized Catria from Shadows of Valentia, where the connection between those four are already strong, and Catria going alongside Caeda and Marth from previous Bridal events. The odd one out, however, is Saul, the Casanova Wannabe Priest from The Binding Blade. While he was included because he is a priest (and therefore can be an official celebrant for weddings), his love for others is through his womanizing ways, he doesn't share a support with the other four as well, the other females he can support with in The Binding Blade don't end well for him, and he even doesn't marry anyone in his ending.
- A Content Leak prematurely revealed the lineup for the Halloween 2021 Special Heroes banner, "Shared Bounty", which followed in Dragons Harvest's footsteps by featuring only dragons: male Grima, Kurthnaga, Rhea, and Sothis as a Duo Hero. However, the Tempest Trial unit was not revealed on the lineup. Because the male version of Grima complemented his female variant from the previous year, and Kurthnaga received a Halloween alt to complement Dheginsea's, many people guessed that the freebie would correspond to another character from "Dragon's Harvest", with guesses including from Adult Tiki (to complement young Tiki), Nils (to complement Ninian), or another Goldoa dragon like Nasir or Almedha (to complement Ena). However, everyone's guesses were proven wrong when it was revealed that Sophia was the freebie of the banner instead.
- When the silhouettes for the second Summer 2022 Special Heroes banner, "Taken by the Tide", were unveiled, many people thought that the two silhouettes were of Fjorm and Nifl. However, once the banner trailer dropped, while Nifl did actually show up, the short-haired silhouette was revealed to be Lyon instead of Fjorm, to the surprise of many. The characters who weren't in the silhouettes were more or less expected, making Lyon's appearance on this banner very shocking.
- The 6th Christmas banner in December 2022, Holiday Handoff, introduced alts for several characters that were expected; Dorothea and Annette for Three Houses representation, Cordelia as the Duo Hero, and Bruno as the freebie. The biggest surprise that shocked everyone was the Black Knight getting an alt, as it was a completely left-field choice compared to the rest of the banner.
- The "No Matter Where" banner in 2023 consisted of relatively expected characters: Eliwood and Rebecca were shown in the silhouettes the day prior to the trailer, so people suspected that Hector and Lyn would also be on the banner. While it was true, what shocked everyone the most was the addition of Mark, the Player Character of Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, doubly so as a Young Hero and a Duo Hero. As most people were expecting Ninian and Nils to be the Duo Hero, the playable addition of Mark after being suspected to be not playable in Heroes due to being strictly an NPC as opposed to a playable Avatar threw everyone for a loop.
Legendary and Mythic Heroes
- The March 2018 Legendary Hero banner threw everyone for a loop, to say the least. Male Robin's Fallen version (aka Grima) was already surprising, but few were expecting a female variation of Grima to be the next Legendary Hero, especially one who's classified as a colorless dragon who has Dragonskin and can fly via Power Floats. While a flying Manakete wasn't new (we already had Myrrh), Female Grima was the first colorless flying Manakete in the game, and remained the only one for three years until Spring!Myrrh's debut.
- After the Laguz banner, many players were expecting either Dheginsea, Yune, or Ashera as the next Mythic Hero in January 2019, but instead Duma was the one revealed, which not many players were expecting, to say the least.
- Following her surprise pop-up in Fire Emblem Cipher Pack 16, "O, Courage! O, Soul Aflame!", Altina makes another surprise appearance here as Mythic Hero #7. Fans weren't prepared for this, as most expected the 7th Mythic Hero to be Líf instead due to him not being in the gacha yet at the time, both Eir and Thrasir being Mythic Heroes previously, and, most importantly, Book III having already ended by the time of Mythic Hero 7's release.
- With the reveal of Colorless Tomes included in the 4.3.0 update in early March 2020, there were predictions on who the 9th Mythic Hero is, with Rhea, Ashera, and Athos being the most common picks. When the trailer dropped in Late March 2020, Bramimond, Athos' ally in the Eight Legends in the Elibe Saga, was revealed to be the game's first Colorless tome user. Notably, while the other aforementioned characters can participate in combat in their home games, Bramimond did not participate in combat at all in The Blazing Blade.
- The 17th Mythic Hero in late July 2021 threw a massive curve ball, to say the least. Many predicted that the next Mythic Hero was going to be blue since it was going to be the first rerun of Seiros on a Mythic Hero banner following previous patterns. When Nifl was revealed earlier in the month as the first Dragon Cavalry unit that is also blue and was a popular pick, she was later shoved to the regular hero slot in the "Dawning Reality & Nifl" banner in mid-July 2021, the month's Mythic Hero was anyone's guess. Hovever, almost nobody predicted Ullr, one of the Twelve Crusaders of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, wielder of the holy bow Yewfelle, and the ancestor of Edain and Brigid/Eyvel, as a Blue Bow Infantry and the 17th Mythic Hero. Notably, she was added before either of the Yngvi siblings officially note ; and she's the first representative of the Twelve Crusaders instead of one of the more famous Crusaders like Baldr, Fjalar, Ced, Od or Njörun, who are ancestors of more major characters (Sigurd/Seliph, Arvis, Lewyn, Ayra/Shannan, Quan/Leif respectively), or even Thrud who'd be more known memeticallynote .
- October 2021's Legendary Hero takes a page out of the above example and throws another huge curve ball. As the next Legendary Hero was expected to be blue, candidates ranged from Caeda, Male Corrin, and Ninian, among a few others. However, nobody predicted the next Legendary Hero was Fae, the last Divine Dragon of Elibe of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.
- November 2021's Mythic Hero banner takes a strange turn, as not only is it a Legendary and Mythic Hero banner, but Eitri, who was the most common prediction, was released simultaneously with Thórr, who, while expected to be Promoted to Playable at some point, came much earlier than what players predicted due to Thórr not being relevant in the main story yet at the time of her release, even though she has importance in the "Ice & Flame" Tempest Trials+ series, which was running concurrently with Book V. Thórr's simultaneous release with Eitri was also odd as there is barely any connection with the two, whereas Fáfnir was the more common prediction to be released with Eitri since there is a good connection between those two, following Mythic Hero banner's simultaneous release of Triandra and Freyja in November 2020, and even stranger is that Eitri is the Legendary Hero instead of a Mythic one, whereas Thórr is the Mythic Hero on that banner. However, a leak revealed around a month before the banner's release hinted that Eitri was a Legendary Hero and Fáfnir wasn't going to be released alongside Eitri in that banner, but only through lack of details of Fáfnir in the leaknote .
- January 2022's Mythic Hero banner threw another curveball with the reveal of Elimine from The Binding Blade, whose main claim to fame was her cameo in the Mario Kart: Double Dash!! bonus disc if one links their The Blazing Blade game, making her the first Legendary/Mythic staff unit. Even fewer people expected her to be a Flying unit as well.
- March 2022's Legendary Hero banner, while not as big as others listed here, revealed the Legendary variant of Nanna from the Jugdral saga as a Sword Cavalier. While she was released to compliment the "New Heroes & Ascended Mareeta" banner released more than a week earlier, not many expected her to be the new Legendary Hero of that banner, since Ascended Mareeta was the major representative of Thracia 776 for that timeframe, as well as expecting someone from Thracia 776 at all, since the inconsistent nature of Legendary and Mythic Hero banners matching up with other New Hero banners since the release of Legendary and Mythic Heroes.
- In July of 2022, people were expecting to see a Mythic Hero from Three Houses such as Arval, due to the release of July's Mythic Hero being on the same date as the release of Fire Emblem: Three Houses. This was not the case however, as everyone was surprised by the fact that Askr, the god who created the kingdom of the same name, was released a week after his debut in the story.
- December 2022's Legendary Hero banner threw a large curveball with a Legendary variant of Female Shez. Alhough many expected her to recieve a Legendary variant, the surprise was how early she was given one after her debut in the game, dethroning Ike note for the shortest time gap between a character's Heroes debut and the release of the same character's Legendary variant, with only three months between the release of her regular and Legendary variants. Fewer people expected her to be the game's first Legendary Dagger unit, let alone a blue one.
- January 2023's Mythic Hero banner was unusual. Because Fire Emblem Engage released the same month, many players predicted that the month's Mythic Hero would hail from Engage, similar to how Sothis accompanied the Mythic banner that immediately followed the first Three Houses banner. Instead, the banner featured Gotoh from Mystery of the Emblem as a Mythic Hero of Light, who had been anticipated as a Mythic Hero for a while. The real surprise, however, was that he was introduced alongside another Mythic Hero, which was unheard of outside of end-of-book Mythic Hero banners: Fomortiis from The Sacred Stones, who isn't even connected to Gotoh, as a Mythic Hero of Anima.
- March 2023's Legendary Hero, Yuri, caught many players off guard. Although he's the Ashen Wolves' house leader and the other three house leaders were unsurprising Legendary candidates, what makes Legendary Yuri's existence a shock is the fact that, unlike them, he's only available in Three Houses for players who purchase the Expansion Pass, and in Warriors: Three Hopes, he's an optional recruit on all three routes. As such, most players expected his Time Skip variant to be an Ascended or Rearmed Hero rather than a Legendary, throwing them for a loop when he was revealed.
- May 2023's Legendary Hero banner gave way to the Legendary version of Hinoka as a Red Bow Flier, to the surprise of many fans. Most players expected either Male Corrin or Camilla to receive a Legendary variant before her, with the former being deemed as the most likely following Legendary Male Robin's debut, and the latter being notorious for receiving a lot of attention from both her fans and Intelligent Systems. Meanwhile, Hinoka had already received a similar variant released years earlier that also consists of riding a Kinshi, wielding a bow, and is in the regular summoning pool. As a result, she was considered off the table by a fair few players as a Legendary Hero.
- Arguably the biggest curve ball Legendary of all time was June 2023's Legendary Hero, where not a single person expected Guinivere from Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade to get a Legendary variant. This is due to the fact that Guinivere is not a playable character in the main campaign of the game, and her availability is restricted to Trial maps, on top of requiring the player to beat the game a whopping nine times to unlock her. While she does become the queen of Bern at the end of the game, everyone assumed that she would get an Ascended variant in the next New Heroes banner featuring characters from The Binding Blade (whereas instead, Fir took the Ascended slot in June 2023).
- For January 2024, many expected that Anri and Athos would be the next Mythic heroes revealed that month following the pattern with the January 2023 Mythics because in the former's case, him being next would coincide with Mystery of the Emblem's 30th anniversary, while for the latter, he would coincide with the Nabata's Shield banner, just like how Gotoh coincided with the Sage of Khadein? banner. However, instead of either of these two, this month threw yet another huge curveball with Mythic Lumera and Emblem Marth. While they were both released to coincide with Engage's first anniversary, Mythic Lumera is very surprising since this version looks almost the exact same as her regular self save for different weapon types, but Emblem Marth gave the most whiplash, especially since in Elyos lore, Emblems can't survive traversing through other worlds while still awake. Him introducing a new hero type is just as shocking.
- April 2024's Mythic Hero was perhaps the least-expected Mythic Hero at the time. As Mythic Lumera and Emblem Marth took the January 2024 Mythic slots at the expense of popular requests such as Athos, Nergal, or Anri, many fans had hope that one of them would appear at a later month in 2024. Instead, the new Mythic Hero of April 2024 turned out to be Loki. More specifically, Loki in her truest form as an aesir goddess. While many people suspected that Loki would gain a new form during the inevitable the Ásgarðr story arc, nobody was expected this new form to be released so suddenly, let alone without any build-up.
Resplendent Heroes
- No one was expecting any of the Brave Heroes to get a Resplendent so quickly as Brave Ike did in February 2021, especially after his original self had already gotten a Resplendent almost a whole year ago, on top of Brave Ike being a Game-Breaker.
- There were two Elibe characters that no one expected to get Resplendent versions for:
- Practically nobody predicted that Shanna would get a Resplendent version in early October 2021, due to her being generally seen as fodder for Desperation 3. Additionally, everyone was surprised that Shanna's Resplendent outfit was themed not after Nifl, but Embla instead.
- Early November's Resplendent threw another curve ball. Most people were expecting another new Nifl-themed Resplendent Hero, as well as more Colorless Heroes or a Gen 1 healer to get a Resplendent at some point, but nobody guessed that Serra would be the first staff user to get a Resplendent, much less with the Nifl theme.
- Perhaps the most shocking case for Resplendent Heroes is Aversa, the first of April 2023's Resplendent Heroes, due to her being a Heroic Grail unit rather than a summonable unit like all previous Resplendent Heroes.
- Following up on Resplendent Aversa above, the first of May 2023's Resplendent Hero threw a massive curveball, this time by breaking another trend with Surtr, who is the very first Heroes character to get a Resplendent Hero, as opposed to a character from any of the mainline games.
- The reveal of Ilyana as the first 2024 Resplendent threw a colossal curveball. Unlike all previous Resplendent Heroes, Ilyana's base form (which received this Resplendent) wasn't released until late in Book IV, while all previous Resplendent Heroes dated back to Book II at the earliest with a sizable backlog of non-seasonal units who still had not received one, so the sudden jump to a comparatively much more recent unit was the last thing most players expected, much less a jump to a Book IV unit before any Book III units received a Resplendent.
Other
- Fire Emblem Heroes released a late April Fool's joke video titled "Moove with Askr", which involves Askr and a few other characters doing fitness exercises. However, among the other characters featured in this video, almost nobody was expecting Timerra to appear, even though at the time the video was uploaded, she hasn't even been added to Heroes yet. Her appearing so suddenly despite this shocked a lot of people to say the least. Her finally appearing in the game (albeit on a seasonal banner) six months later was more or less expected though.
