Video Game / Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories

The Netherworld...
A lawless world filled with vicious monsters.
The number of Netherworlds has expanded with the rise of demons powerful enough to rule such worlds... the Overlords.
Now, another world is about to fall prey to such darkness.

— Opening Monologue

Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories is the second game in the Turn-Based Strategy series Disgaea, and was released in 2006 for the PlayStation 2. It was later ported to the PlayStation Portable as Disgaea 2: Dark Hero Days. It came to the PC via Steam in January 2017.

The game stars Adell, the only person unaffected by a devious curse that has transformed all of the human inhabitants of his home village into heartless demons. The source of the curse is Overlord Zenon, an enigmatic figure who became known as the God of All Overlords after he slew one hundred Overlords in a single battle. Adell's solution to the problem is simple: get his mother to magically summon Overlord Zenon to the village and then pound him into submission.

Unfortunately the summoning ritual ends up conjuring Rozalin, Zenon's haughty and entitled daughter. Having accidentally kidnapped the only daughter of the most powerful Overlord in existence, it's a race for Adell to return Rozalin to Zenon before he tears the world apart looking for her. It's a shame that Rozalin is so sheltered that she has no idea where her father actually lives. Meanwhile, Etna has decided to strike out on her own and is gunning for the title of God of All Overlords that Zenon possesses.

Joining Adell are his two younger siblings, Taro and Hanako; Tink, Rozalin's childhood friend who has been transformed into a frog; and Yukimaru, a Ninja girl who seeks revenge against Overlord Zenon for wiping out her clan, zam.

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This game provides examples of:

• A-Cup Angst:
  • Hanako wants to try hard to undo her un-bustiness despite being, you know, 9.
  • Etna's still got hers as part of her Berserk Button, to the point where Rozalin hitting said button once leads to her venting her anger by uppercutting a Prinny into low orbit and hitting it twice leads to her trying to kill the princess.
• Action Girl: Yukimaru and Etna.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Rozalin's father in the manga adaptation. He's still a fairly evil individual, but he's also been rounded off a little, and while his game counterpart never cared about his foster daughter at all, Fake Zenon ultimately grew to love Rozalin in his own way.
• Adaptational Wimp: Rozalin in the manga. In the game she's an accomplished gunfighter and grows into a determined and dangerous woman without even taking her Superpowered Evil Side into account. In the adaptation, she was never trained to fight at all (she had a guy for that) and can get emotional a little more easily than in the game, and the real Zenon is never let loose.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Taro. The Skulls have elements of this, but lack a clear-cut personality.
• Alas, Poor Villain: When Fake Zenon dies in the manga, he shows that he really did come to care about Rozalin.
• Ambiguously Gay: The Director, who calls Axel "Axel darling" and refers to him as "the man I fell in love with". His hysteric producer voice also hits several of the same notes as the stereotypical Camp Gay voice.
• Another Side, Another Story: Much like Etna Mode in the handheld ports of the first Disgaea and the downloadable Raspberyl chapters in Disgaea 3, Axel gets his own story. However, while Etna Mode was a What If? story, Axel's Dark Hero Days is a Prequel that shows Axel's misadventures before he became the Travel Show host Adell and Rozalin encounters.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Disgaea 2 was the first Nippon Ichi game to introduce the option to turn off skill animations. All prior games lacked this option. Naturally, this was great for grinding or when going through the skill animations got tiring.
  • In the PS2 version, while characters could obtain a maximum felony count of 300, only 99 of them were shown. This meant that players had to memorize or take notes on all felonies obtained after the initial 99. In Dark Hero Days, character menus now include a maximum felony counter, removing that hassle.
  • While Cave of Ordeals 4 was the best Peninsula of Power Leveling in the game, it was hampered by the weird enemy placement that no skill in the game was capable of covering. Even the best Area of Effect skills would leave at least two enemies standing. That is until players discovered in Dark Hero Days that the now playable Zetta's Zetta Beam could actually hit every enemy. The best part was that thanks to Magichange 2^note a new type of magichange added to Dark Hero Days that fuses a monster with an already magichanged monster. This grants the humanoid character access to the unique skills of the monster being fused, any humanoid character can temporarily use Zetta Beam and the monster Zetta was magichanged to also gains the same amount of EXP and Mana from enemies killed with the attack. Needless to say, this made grinding Cave of Ordeals 4 significantly easier.
  • While Magichange was first introduced in Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, it was limited by the fact that the wielding humanoid character and the transforming monster character had to be in the same club to be able to use it. Because Dark Hero Days has no equivalent to clubs, this limitation was removed, making it less of a hassle to use. Notably, after Dark Hero Days, later Disgaea games would no longer impose that limit, aside from Disgaea 4's Fusion Magichange.
• Ash Face: Near the beginning, when Rozalin is plotting about how to get rid of Adell, a Prinny sneaks up behind her a blows her up with a bomb. Her face is covered in soot in the aftermath.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Subverted with Magichange. It sounds wonderful on-paper: the chance to level up two (or three) units at the same time while getting some cool skills to play with. However, Disgaea 2's battle system was never tailored for 3's Magichange mechanic, so using it 90% of the time simply results in an avoidable stat-penalty for the humanoid^note You can receive Scrolls and Weights that lessen these penalties when given to the monster but the Weights only account for one stat while the Scrolls must be leveled up to be of any real use.Magichange 2 however allows the Human access to the monster's Unique Skills, which can situationally reduce grinding time as described above.
• Back from the Dead: Fake Zenon found a way to resurrect himself by converting a population's humanity into his life force. Those affected became demonic, but he refused to call them demons, instead opting for "Altered Humans."
• Bag of Spilling: Etna, due to a summoning ritual gone bad.
  • In a more meta-example, the level 1900 Zenon reincarnating as a noncombative young girl, who is indeed level 1 and completely clueless about battle when the story starts.
• Badass Normal: Adell. Subverted: he only thinks he's a human, which brings up the question of how much of his power stems from his heritage rather than his training.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: Laharl does this to protect himself from Flonne.
• Batman Gambit: Fake Zenon chose to sponsor a fake competition to erase all competitors for the throne. Rozalin attending the competition in Adell's escort caused it all to backfire to the point where he actually lost to the intended target, Etna.
• Becoming the Mask: Fake Zenon in the manga adaptation. Although taking Rozalin in as his daughter was still part of his revenge on the real Overlord Zenon, it's hinted several times during the final volume that he does actually care for Rozalin, especially during his death when he fondly remembers all the gifts he sent to Rozalin when she was still a child.
• BFG: Rozalin's "Rose Thorn" special ability uses a chaingun to deliver several successive hits to a group of enemies with a shower of bullets.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Spoofed; Etna shows up just in time to save your ass, which pisses her off because she hates this trope so much.
  • Played straight in the manga where Etna deflects an incoming beam from a monster followed up by Laharl and Flonne bursting into the scene with their signature attacks.
  • Also played straight (though Lampshaded) by Axel. In fact, for a self-proclaimed rat bastard, he sure gets quite a few of these.
• The Big Damn Kiss: After 13 chapters of UST, Adell embraces Rozalin in the good ending to calm her "True Overlord Zenon" form. She turns back to normal from Adell's Cooldown Hug, and the following dialogue occurs:
  Rozalin: *sob* Sh- Shut up... you're an enemy! I can't trust anyone...
  Adell: Stop talking and trust this.
  cue the kiss
• Blood Knight:
  • Adell is the more chipper, fight-happy type.
  • Real Zenon was once one, until she tired of the endless bloodshed.
• Bonus Level of Hell: The Land of Carnage, which gives the enemies a 2100+% boost in power. All of the enemy characters have a level boost of 2100% base plus two hundred, plus all their stats are doubled on top of that. Have fun.
• Bowdlerise:
  • The English audio of the worst ending was heavily censored in the US version, resulting in a severely butchered impression. Here's the real thing.
  • Compared to the first game, the translation for Disgaea 2 takes a lot of liberties. They rename Akutare to Axel, turn Etna being referred to as "Beauty Queen" into a running gag (in Japanese she was only ever called a demon lord), and otherwise inserted a bunch of pointless gags into the script.
• Bowled Over: One of the maps of the Tournament Arc has a bunch of Etna's Prinnies challenge the heroes to a game of bowling when Adell refuses to throw the fight against them. In a nod to the previous game's "Prinny Baseball", the Prinnies line themselves up like bowling pins, paving the way for an easy strike if the black "12-Pounder" Prinny is thrown at them.
• Bragging Theme Tune: Etna's Etna Rock and Axel's White Tiger.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Done multiple times by the entire cast, but the PC version lets the player turn enemies around by clicking and dragging. This function can increase the amount of damage done greatly if used right and isn't mentioned anywhere.
• Brick Joke: In Axel Mode, one of his baby brothers, Axeleration, is a Genre Savvy little know-it-all who loves sharing his insights on the entertainment business. Axel is horrified that he doesn't "act like a proper child". In the last act, his other baby brother Axident, who's been cooing and crying all this time, abruptly complains that it's hard to act like a baby, and Axel praises him for staying in character for so long.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Adell is entirely capable of being intelligent, as he demonstrates with the Inevitable Tournament's ungodly complicated geopuzzle and his status as the group's Only Sane Man, but usually turns his brain off because solving everything by punching the crap out of it is generally easier — and more fun.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Tink, the lecherous frog. He even gets a subpoena from the Dark Court just for existing. Also note his ultimate attack-
  "Goodbye Tink: Tink sacrifices himself, but nobody cares."
  • Axel gets it even worse, as shortly after he's introduced he loses his already a downgrade travel show, is proclaimed dead with not even his mother believing he's still kicking, and continues to get his ass kicked by Adell and company over and over again.
• Catchphrase:
  • Adell does things, or refuses to do things, based on whether they are or aren't "his style". Also, in case you didn't know yet, Rozalin is "Overlord Zenon's one and only daughter".
  • For the very short time we knew him/her, the real Overlord Zenon is a "being of solitude".
• Celibate Hero: Adell is one, sort of.
• Chekhov's Gag: Whenever a summoning goes wrong, It always resets the demon's level to 1...
• Chekhov's Gun: The Four-Leaf Clover seal on Rozalin.
• The Chew Toy:
  • Axel. The universe does eventually decide to throw him a bone for all the crap it's put him through (though he had to work for it. Hard.)
  • Etna when she loses her levels; also, a nice Laser-Guided Karma in favor of the Prinnies.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Taro.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: When you magichange in the remake, you only have 2 turns to wield the monster-weapon (3 if you pass the once-per-resurrection bill for the monster). If the computer magichanges enemy monsters, they keep them forever.
• Continuity Nod:
  • When the Prism Rangers appear in the 2nd game, they note that they can't let their guard down because of what happened last time (Etna shot 2/3 of them during their transformation sequence).
  • Etna also mentions at one point she knew of a demon lord that married a human (referring to Laharl's parents).
  • Flonne's final technique, Flonnezilla, is a reference to a gag in the first game.
• Cooldown Hug: Adell hugs Rozalin to snap her back to her senses when her memories and persona of her previous life as Overlord Zenon are restored to prevent the possible slaughter that would have ensued because of it.
• Crossdresser:
  • "Main Hero B", the Angel that joins Axel, is a guy. Proof? Any Dark Sun (or Rozalin) effect that affects males affects him. They do not affect Player Mook angels with the same sprite.
  • Also, Bridget, the flower monster in Adell's hometown.
• Critical Hit: Brought up in conversation as soon as a Prinny inflicts one on a gloating Rozalin:

  Adell: Ouch. Critical hit.

• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Rozalin, though this is powered by a Superpowered Evil Side.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The gruesome death of Taro and Hanako in the worst ending.
• Cursed with Awesome: Zenon's curse. While the negative effects (global amnesia, lack of conscience, Zenon can cast Life Drain on you) are pretty bad, Hanako points out that the deal of getting to be a demon is pretty sweet for anyone born and raised under it. How sweet? Enough that she's a-ok with forgoing the chance to become human again for the opportunity to become the next Etna.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In no less than three bad endings, Laharl blows up the planet in response to either losing a fight or winning a fight so easily that it was boring enough to enrage him.
• The Dandy: Tink.
• Dark World: ...the...um...Dark World; as well as the Land of Carnage.
• Darker and Edgier: It still has much of the humour and wackiness that the first Disgaea enjoyed, but the story and characters take things a bit more seriously this time around. Take the opening sequence, for example — Disgaea involved Etna shooting Laharl to wake him up and casually telling him his dad died during his two-year nap, this game begins with a summoning ritual so The Hero can kill the Big Bad and stop a curse that's transforming the village into demons.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In several ways. Most of the story characters have to beaten, or at least, foiled first. Downloadble characters (save one) have to be roughed up, and other extra characters that you can get in the Updated Re-release are initially Optional Bosses. Furthermore, you can capture monsters by tossing them into the Base Panel and whupping the tar out of them.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Rozalin.
• Determinator/Idiot Hero: Adell. He always fights face-to-face, and only uses Good Old Fisticuffs. Then again, this is Disgaea, where Good Old Fisticuffs involves punching people so hard they turn into a black hole, which then explodes.
  • The game takes time to point out that Adell really isn't an Idiot Hero when he easily unravels the geo puzzle in the Colosseum. The explanation given is that just because he prefers to rush in with his fists doesn't mean he's incapable of thinking it out when he needs to.
• Developer's Foresight: Depending on when you acquire the DLC characters in the remakes, there will be bonus dialogue between them and other characters.
  • The Dark Court Prinny has unique lines not just for the state of the defendant's felony stamp (in increments of ten), but also for if there are multiple defendants (achieved by throwing a tower onto the Dark Court panel), the wrong defendant, or multiple defendants and the person at the bottom of the tower is the wrong one - and those lines are also unique to each tenth level of the felony stamp.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Aside from the traditional punching of ridiculously overpowered demons, Adell defeats the apeshit Dimension Lord/borderline Eldritch Abomination by frenching her. Granted, he nearly got a face full of lead for his effort, but it did work.
• Dirty Coward/Fake Ultimate Hero: Axel runs away numerous times whenever he's getting his butt kicked. He also claims to be a famous "Dark Hero", but nobody really thinks of him as famous, except for the Director who's always following him around and probably has a crush on him.
  • It eventually gets revealed that the whole point of a Dark Hero is to be underhanded, sneaky, and repulsive: in other words, all the qualities that evil just loves. Though, judging from some of the other games, not too repulsive.
• Disc-One Nuke: Pleinair. Being Level 100 and using her at the early game will solve many of your problems until everyone catches up.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The cause of the entire plot. Fake Zenon loses a fight to Real Zenon (and somehow doesn't die). As revenge, Fake Zenon initiates an incredibly complicated plan that involves tracking down and kidnapping the innocent reincarnation of Real Zenon, then raising her as an air-headed, pompous fool. It's so crazy that it actually works, at least until Adell starts pulling the thread.
  • Also, if you win either the story battle or the optional Dark Assembly fight against Laharl, he destroys the entire world.
• The Dog Bites Back: For treating them like crap, killing them whenever she's bored or angry, and for being a bitch in general, the prinnies waste no time in betraying Etna once a botched summoning reduced her to level 1. Everyone else is surprised at how hard the prinnies are working just so they don't have to work for Etna again.
• Downloadable Content: Dark Hero Days added in a number of downloadable characters and the PC Port included them as part of the purchase, including the formerly Japan-only Gig, Dark Eclair, and Miabelle.
  • Gig
  • Almaz and Princess Sapphire
  • Marona and Ash
  • Pleinair
  • Dark Eclair
  • Pram
  • Miabelle from Nippon Ichi's then-upcoming game Hymn Princess of Antiphona
  • Demon Lord Hanako
• Double Entendre: Etna:
  You old men are all the same. No stamina. And now us girls have to find our own way to amuse ourselves.
• Duel Boss: Rozalin's super powered evil side vs Laharl, also serves as The Worf Effect as he is a base level of 1200.
• Dumb Muscle: Subverted with Adell. Well, sometimes, anyway.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The character-specific abilities were known by the rather generic term "Innate Abilities". It wasn't until Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice that the name was changed to "Evilities" and the name has stuck ever since.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: The worst ending, which is... infamous, to say the least. You have to get Adell served by the Demon Court one hundred time, which is no small feat.
• Eldritch Abomination: The true Overlord Zenon was about to become this due to reaching the upper levels of demonic power. Then things got complicated...
• Empty Promise: Adell's parents promised to come back from fighting the Big Bad. The result? Their dejected son will never break a promise because of it. Ever.
• Entertainingly Wrong: When Rozalin explains that she is not brainwashed or being held hostage by Adell, Axel jumps to the conclusion that she is trying to overthrow her own father. Rozalin is shocked that he assumed this, but Tink points out that this is a logical assumption to make, seeing as she's willingly spending time with the man who's openly dedicated to defeating Overlord Zenon.
• Evil Debt Collector: The Big Bad of Axel's story is a repo man form of this trope.
• Expy: Adell's dad looks like Kimura-sensei. Scary Shiny Glasses included.
  • Design-wise, Rozalin bears a lot of resemblance to Etoile Rosenqueen, both of them being the Lonely Rich Kid who hides More Dakka under a Pimped-Out Dress. Motivation and personality-wise though, they're very different.
• Fallen Princess: Rozalin. She goes from living in a huge mansion being attended to by hundreds of servants to essentially being stuck in the Netherworld version of a small Kansas town running around in the muck.
• Fanservice: The Nekomatas and Succubus are back and the Magic Knight got a breast size boost. Then we have the new human classes Kunoichi and Beast Tamer. If you want to go there, Flora Beasts as well.
• Fantastic Racism: Most "true" demons refer to Veldime inhabitants as "Altered Humans."
• Fetish: When summoning Sapphire as DLC in the PSP release, it's noted that since Adell summoned two princesses, he must have a thing for them.
• Forced Transformation:
  • An area-wide version of this forms the premise for the story. In the game, the Dark Sun in the Dark World sometimes has the ability to turn a character into a monster.
  • Tink is a victim of this, being turned into a demonic frog. In the good ending, he is eventually returned to normal as a bishonen butler.
• Foreshadowing:
  • At the very start of the game, Adelle's parents perform the ritual to summon Overlord Zenon to them, but instead they get his daughter Rozalin, so they brush it off that they performed the ritual incorrectly. Nope — they performed it perfectly.
  • When you first meet the Prism Rangers, Prism Red says that his demon detector says that Adell is a demon. Everyone says that it must be broken. It isn't.
  • At one point Rozalin speculates if the impostor Zenon somehow tricked the real Zenon and imprisoned him somewhere. In a certain sense of the idea, that's exactly what happened.
  • At one point, Hanako asks Rozalin if she could one day become as strong as Etna. Rozalin tells her she could become even stronger. Cue Dark Hero Days, which features Demon Lord Hanako, widely considered to be the best unit in the game.
• Freak Magnet: Adell, who lampshades it. Several times.
• Funny Background Event: While Rozalin discusses whether or not to let Adell die in Chapter 3, Adell is busy having a fight on-screen.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Overlord Zenon made good use of the "reincarnate to atone for sins" command.
  • Also, your crimes and penalties actually ties into the ending you get into the game. It makes sense, given that the worse ending implies that the player played Adell as committing crimes and killing allies left and right. Whereas the Good End actually reflects on how the player cared about your allies.
  • Rozalin and Adell start out hating each other, and this is reflected by the fact that as the game begins, they only have a 1% chance of engaging in a Team Attack together. As the story progresses and they grow closer, this slowly climbs to 99%. If you get DLC Almaz and Sapphire for Dark Hero Days, they too have a 99% chance of team attacking, due to them being married by the end of Disgaea 3.
  • If you magichange Gig and wield him as a weapon, after his 2-3 rounds are up, he will be standing there and the character wielding him will be disabled. Just like in his game.
• Garrulous Growth: Adell's adoptive father has a VERY large pimple with a face on it on his chest. Two thirds into the game, it starts talking about how much it loves boobies. Then the consciousness of both him and the pimple switch places, with the perverted pimple being in control of the man's body.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Adell does this to Rozalin after she totally wigs out in a battle against Laharl and starts to attack her teammates. This is better when you realize that she reverted back to Overlord Zenon, meaning that Adell just Bright Slapped the God of all Overlords. And it worked.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: Axel is a one-man Goldfish Poop Gang.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Adell has an x-shape scar on his cheek. Explained later as a Deal with the Devil gone sour. And the cause of his He-Man Woman Hater tendencies.
• Got Me Doing It: "Why is everyone speaking like her now, zam?"
  • "Beauty Qu- er...Demon Lord Etna?! From Zenon, of all people.
• Gratuitous English: In the Prism Rangers bonus battle, Prism Orange parodies this concept by speaking entirely in Engrish. In the original Japanese version, he spoke like a stereotypical foreign Japanophile.
  • As well as in White Tiger, Axel's theme.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Adell is proficient in hand-to-hand combat, while Rozalin is skilled with guns.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Adell really doesn't like girls, though he eventually makes an exception for Rozalin.
• Heel–Face Turn: Etna, though she didn't have much of a choice.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Rozalin. She even boosts the stats of adjacent male characters in an integration of gameplay and story.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Mostly averted by Adell, who fights with his fists because to do otherwise is "just not his style". You can hand him a sword anyways. Barring slower weapon rank growth, he does fine with them.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Adell's parents' real names are, in fact, Mom and Dad.
• Honor Before Reason: Adell will protect anyone and everyone he makes a promise to, no matter what it takes. His shameless sense of honour also works as an in-game combat bonus: his attacks get stronger against enemies at a higher level than him.
  • Yukimaru frequently attempts seppuku whenever she thinks she failed her mission. She gets over it.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Etna and Laharl during the main storyline. At least, only in the first phase for the latter... then it becomes hopeless for Laharl.
  • Partially subverted by the New Game Plus system and ability to Level Grind — you can win these fights, if you spend weeks preparing for them, and doing so in Disgaea 2 gets you a Nonstandard Game Over.
• Hostile Show Takeover: After playing through the game a bit, various secondary characters will send proposals to the Dark Assembly to become the Main Character. If the proposal is passed — and there's usually a very good chance of it happening — a Nonstandard Game Over is triggered (you get a cool item if you defeat it).
• Hot-Blooded: Quite a few characters, but Adell especially. He can even set enemies on fire through sheer hot-bloodedness.
  • Axel deserves specific mention, as well. Manages to roast his director with an explosion caused by his hot-bloodedness, plus he's voiced by one of the most hot-blooded JP VAs around.
• An Ice Person: The snow clan.
• Idiot Hair: Adell's character design notes◊ go as far as explicitly labeling it as Idiot Hair.
• Idol Singer: Axel has his own rock band — and film crew!
• I'm a Humanitarian: Adell in the worst ending.
• Immortality Begins at Twenty: Unlike the rest of the worlds in the series, demons native to Veldime mature like humans.
• The Immune: Adell is the only human in the world who isn't affected by Zenon's curse because his parents are demons, and so is he; you obviously can't turn somebody into a demon when they already are one.
• Imperfect Ritual: To summon "the strongest demon", Adell needs the fingernail of an Overlord. He asks Etna (who previously slaughtered him and his party in a Hopeless Boss Fight) for one of hers. She gives him a fake nail, because she's a demon and therefore a Jerkass. As a result, the ritual summons Etna herself, reduced to level 1.
• Inevitable Tournament: Spread across two chapters.
• Insult Backfire: Any derogatory statement about Mom's lack of conscience will invariably be met with, "Damn straight, I don't — Zenon took it. Now either go kick his ass or shut your trap."
• Interface Screw: The map during the battle against fake!Zenon is oriented at a forty-five degree angle, compared to the rest of the game's maps (likely for the visual aesthetic), and your directional controls are altered to match.
• Interspecies Adoption: Adell is a demon raised by humans.
• It Was with You All Along: The summoning ritual wasn't as unsuccessful in summoning Overlord Zenon (aka Rozalin) as it initially seemed.
• Kangaroo Court: The Dark Court, natch.
• Kill the Lights: The ultimate skill of the Succubus class is called 'Nightmare', and it involves surrounding the enemy with darkness and launching an unseen beatdown.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Don't mess with Adell's little brother Taro or little sister Hanako, or he will kick your ass.
  • Same for Axel and his little bro. He will willingly give up fame and fortune to tear your ass apart if you threaten him.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After getting insulted many times by Etna and she finally helps the party by giving them a fingernail of an Overlord that turns out to be a fake one... the ritual goes horribly wrong and summons her while degrading her high level numbers to level 1. She is not pleased any.
• Large Ham: Overlord Zenon in the dub. Both real and fake.
  • In the Japanese version as well, being voiced by Norio Wakamoto and all... The fake one, anyway.
• Lightning/Fire Juxtaposition: Adell, the Fiery Redhead, and his Unknown Rival, the self-proclaimed Dark Hero Axel. Adell's attacks are fire elemental and some of Axel's attacks include lightning (and he has blond hair and purple Big Ol' Eyebrows shaped like lightning bolts).
• Lost in Translation: The bill to fight Zetta is "Meet The Strongest Overlord." Zetta's self-declared title in Japanese pretty much means that, so it ended up summoning him.
• Mana Burn: Fubuki.
• Medium Awareness: At one point in Disgaea 2, Etna checks her status screen to see what her title is.
  • When asked about why her title is "Beauty Queen" and not "Demon Lord", she claims to have hacked it ages ago.
    • Awesomely enough, they actually store your title as a string instead of a reference to a list somewhere. You want a custom title, go for it.
  • When Adell insists that he is going to beat Zenon, Rozalin asks why he's so overconfident; does he have an extremely high level or something?
• Multiple Endings: It would hardly be a Disgaea game without them.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: "You aren't alone. You have friends that care about you...and Etna."
• Mythology Gag: The entire "Makai Wars" chapter of Axel's story; about a movie that has never been finished for the past 100 years, referencing Asagi's long-delayed game.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: When the game generates a random name for a character, one possible outcome is Deathsatan.
  • Might be a Cyberbots reference.
• No Fourth Wall: Rozalin asks Adell where his confidence comes from; is he descended from heroes? Is he level 100,000,000? ^note Hilariously, Even when Disgaea 6 increased the level cap, it stopped at 99,999,999.
• Noble Demon: Axel might arguably be considered one, as a major motivation behind his actions is his sick mother and siblings.
  • Rozalin is just a snob at times; she honestly cares about Adell's family. As for Adell, well, as Etna puts it; they have one of those kinds of relationships.
  • For all her display, Etna does let Adell go when she beats him and it's a Non-Standard Game Over if he beats her only because it drives the plot Off the Rails. If you're paying attention, you'll also notice that she takes the hit from Zenon's super blast in the ending in order to protect Hanako.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Mom does this a few times in the beginning, for example when she tells Hanako to shut up and be a good little sacrifice. It's most likely because Overlord Zenon's curse stole her conscience, or so she claims.
• Not Just a Tournament: The tournament in Veldime Colosseum is revealed by Zenon himself to be a trap to lure out Etna and anyone else aiming to beat him. While the "Lure out" part worked, Etna proved to be far more powerful than Zenon hoped to handle.
• Now, Buy the Merchandise: In Dark Hero Days, Aramis, Badman, and Mao all shill the Dark Council for Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?, What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord? (and its sequel), and Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice, respectively. Amusingly, their petitions that you watch their commercials always have 100% approval and will pass even if you cheat to make the Council vote no. It's a great way to get items, though.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The story-relevant fight of Level 1000 Etna vs. Overlord Zenon happens completely offscreen.
• Ojou: Played straight with the Tsundere Rozalin.
• One-Winged Angel: Played straight with Zenon, both the real AND fake; he is a bit of an Anti-Climax Boss, though. Note we said "he" earlier. The real Overlord Zenon is both a girl and ludicrously tough compared to everything else in the main story.
• Only Sane Man: Adell.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Map 4-3, where nearly half of the map has enemies level up every turn.
• Pillars of Moral Character: Adell's requirement to live up to all his promises binds him like a ball and chain.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Rozalin.
• Playing with Fire: Adell.
• Power Fist: Lots of classes use unarmed strikes with weaponry — and Adell, of course.
• Power Nullifier: Yukimaru.
• The Power of Love: Adell fixes the (un)Heroic BSODing Rozalin with a quick smooch.
• Precocious Crush: Taro on Rozalin. Both voiced by the same person.
• Princess Classic: Rozalin partly fits this, at least at first.
• Rage Quit: If you manage to beat Laharl in either the 'pick a fight with an Overlord' side mission or in the first phase of his Hopeless Boss Fight in the later chapters, he'll respond this way by blowing up the planet. This unlocks one of the bad endings of the game.
• Rainbow Motif: The Prism Rangers.
• Random Number God: Per Disgaea norm. Determines how many enemies/item/Geo Symbols appear in the Item World.
  • In Dark Hero Days, the RNG is fond of placing a Level Sphere and a Mystery Gate on the same floor, forcing you to choose between them. It's often best to take the Sphere, unless you're there to grind Specialists or Pirates.
• Real Princesses Eat Meat: In contrast to Etna's Sweet Tooth, Rozalin is a meat and potatoes girl.
  • Referenced a couple of times in the manga adaptation. In the second volume, upon hearing that Hanako is unable to cook any meat due to her family's income, Rozalin forces Tink to lend her money. In the fourth volume, Rozalin confesses to fake Zenon that the birthday cake he sent her for her birthday when she was six was too sweet and hasn't been fond of sweets ever since, which may have led to her preferring meat instead.
• Redemption Demotion: When Etna first shows up, she is an extremely powerful boss-type character that's impossible to defeat on most first playthroughs. She reappears later on in the game, but is reduced to level 1 and given crappy equipment, and she forces herself into Adell's party to gain her levels back. Their initial exchange upon her return is rife with Lampshade Hanging. This can also be subverted using the New Game Plus feature, which allows for your previous party members to rejoin at the level they were during your last playthrough; how does this affect your series? Well, if your Etna was at level 9999 and had all the best weapons and armor, then she'll rejoin your group in that chapter at this level.
• Refuge in Audacity: In-Universe, the judge of the Dark Court may praise you for your moxie if you send someone else or a tower of multiple people to stand trial.
• Remembered I Could Fly: Double Subversion. Rozalin can fly, but not for long enough to help when she falls off a cliff.
• Rule of Symbolism: Rozalin's childhood is extremely similar to that of the Buddha.
• Samus Is a Girl: The real Zenon; either that or a Gender Bender through reincarnation.
• Save the Princess: Subverted. Axel makes the assumption that Princess = Must Be Saved, even if said princess is with her "captor" willingly (Rozalin). The situation ended in comical pain.
• Seppuku: Yukimaru is a little too eager to commit suicide after 1) your group defeats her and 2) the odds of surviving an encounter with the fake Overlord Zenon don't look good. Adell has to talk her out of it both times.
• Serial Escalation: The original Disgaea 2 has a way of constantly making each challenge worse than the last. Starting from the first fight with Axel culminating in the Superboss Baal, but every time each battle not only gets consistently harder, geo effects are played with, enemy equipment is pushed to its limits, and eventually stats are just ridiculously allocated on the enemies. Then Pringer X is introduced on the port "Disgaea 2 Dark Hero Days" as a boss who is just overall ridiculously difficult, but even after winning, the player is forced to refight 8 of him with maxed-out stats in every category, or the battle doesn't count in the dark record.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend: Oh yeah?! Well, you're not my boyfriend either, Adell!
• She's a Man in Japan: Main Hero B in Axel Mode.
• Ship Tease: A lot between Adell and Rozalin. The opening alone has a field day with it. Later game appearances adore this.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Sound-Only Death: The Worst Ending has a post-credits sound-only epilogue where you can hear Hanako trying to reason with the now possessed Adell. It gets worse from there when in the Japanese audio, you can hear Adell kill both Hanako and Taro, then eat them, complete with the gory sound of their flesh being torn apart.
• Status Infliction Attack: The Thief and Kunoichi are able to inflict ailments with their unique specials. The Kunoichi can do it at range and inflict multiple characters at once, though the Thief's single-target variations have a much higher success rate.
• Stay with the Aliens: It's stated in the Good End that Hanako remained a demon so she could apprentice under Etna. In Dark Hero Days, you can even summon them at that point.
• Stealth Insult: Axel Mode's Evil Pink specializes in this.
• Step into the Blinding Fight: The ultimate skill of the Succubus class is called 'Nightmare', and it involves surrounding the enemy with darkness and launching an unseen beatdown. Can be seen here.
• This Cannot Be!: Rozalin's response upon finding out that the "most powerful Overlord" in The Multiverse is a talking book.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Axel. After he gets trounced at the colosseum, the heroes allow him and his crew to follow their confrontation with Zenon. Getting video footage of Zenon's existence allows Axel to prove he still lives and regain his celebrity status.
• Token Evil Teammate: Etna, since you're playing as heroes this time.
• Tomato Surprise: The end-goal is to find Overlord Zenon, the "God of Overlords" who cursed the humans of Veldime into slowly becoming monsters. An attempt to summon him resulted in Rozalin, Zenon's daughter, being stuck with Adell. The end of the game reveals that the one who cursed Veldime isn't Zenon, but a rival who took Zenon's name. The true identity of Zenon is none other than Rozalin; Zenon grew tired of their violent life and reincarnated, being reborn as a member of the Snow Clan, Yukimaru and Fubuki's family. The Fake Zenon took Rozalin and adopted her as part of a Gilded Cage revenge plot.
• Too Kinky to Torture: The angel who joins Axel in Axel Mode, whose only purpose for showing up in the first place is to get hurt.
  Because I loooove being hurt. <3
  • It seems he named himself "Main Hero B" just so that the demons would have an excuse to hurt him.
• True Companions: The reason that Rozalin tries to stop Laharl from taking Etna away is because she considers her one.
• Tsundere: Adell's mom. One minute, she speaks cheerfully to her little children, and the next minute she's chewing out her husband for things said by the giant monstrous mole on his chest.
  • Rozalin, although she skirts the line between major Tsundere and mild Yandere and just plain Spoiled Brat. The later games seem to make her the poster child for Tsundere in the Disgaea series (or in Nippon Ichi games in general), with Hanako and Raspberyl both calling her out on it, and even a database entry on the term in Disgaea Infinite that uses her as an example.
  • Axel Mode adds in Actress, who's even worse about hiding her feelings with all the Suspiciously Specific Denials.
• Twice Shy: Adell and Rozalin.
• Underrated and Overleveled: Adell's younger siblings Taro and Hanako. Especially since they were visibly level 1 NPCs beforehand and their levels suddenly shot up when they join.
• Unknown Rival: Axel.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Tink attempts to hit on the Cute Monster Girl in Adell's hometown, only to find out it's actually a Cute Monster Guy. For more fun, he's also named Bridget.
  • It should also be noted that the Angel who joins up in Axel Mode is affected by abilities and effects that only affect male characters.
• Verbal Tic: Yukimaru, zam. Even gets other characters doing it, zam.
  • It makes more sense in Japanese. What she does is add "de gozaru" at the end of every sentence, which is an archaic way of speaking and often crops up with Jidaigeki involving ninjas.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Real Overlord Zenon. Also Adell in the infamous worst ending.
• Villain Decay: Overlord Zenon is hyped throughout as an incredibly vicious and powerful Overlord, and everyone wants a piece of him. While she lives up to her expectations, the faker certainly doesn't. By the time Adell reaches him, he's already been defeated twice and encountered far more impressive and powerful foes. The pettiness of his motives and the real Zenon instantly nuking her faker only serves to make him more pathetic.
• Violence Really Is the Answer: Adell's justification for why he solves most of his problems by punching their source to dust even though he's actually pretty smart: beating the crap out of things is the most efficient solution. A short look at the entire series makes it hard to disagree.
  • Given that the game takes place primarily in the demon world, and demons are expected to solve all their problems with violence, it seems like adjusting to the environment.
  • Axel paraphrases the trope when Taro and Hanako are arguing over a candy bar.
• Vocal Dissonance: With the Japanese voices, Axel Mode's Actress falls into this. Averted by her English voice.
• Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Rozalin.
• Wham Line: One from the fake Overlord Zenon at the end of the game.
  Zenon: [to Rozalin] You've finally awakened... Overlord Zenon!
• Who Dares?: Should you decide to fight Zetta, his first words upon appearing are "Who dares summon me?"
• Worth It: Axel says this in not so many words after attracting the vengeance of almost every overlord ever for the "Fake Zenon" stunt he pulled in the last chapter. One of the last images the game gives us is Axel riding off with dozens of fangirls and an expression that just screams, "So fricking worth it!"
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Adell assumes that he'll be able to beat Zenon despite his low level because he's the only human in Veldime who hasn't been affected by Zenon's curse, and thus he must be the main hero character who triumphs against all odds. He's wrong in regards to why he's immune to the curse, but the confidence he gains from his Determinator attitude certainly contributes a lot to his eventual victory.

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