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Video Game / SINoALICE

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Ever after ends now

A Tale of Terror
Welcome to the Worst Tale
— The game's Tagline, in English and Japanese respectively.

SINoALICE was a free-to-play mobile game developed by Pokelabo and published by Square Enix, released on June 6, 2017 for Android and iOS platforms.

In a world called Library filled with countless stories, the Characters within each story wish to revive their author for their desired future. To do so, they work together to gather Lifeforce and fight the Nightmares that devour stories, knowing they will inevitably have to kill each other to get their wish.

The gameplay uses a real-time RPG battle system.

Notably Yoko Taro, known for his work on the Drakengard franchise and its spinoff series NieR, is the writer and creative director of this game, though there is no apparent connection between this game and his other works besides the crossover collaboration events held for this game.

A server for Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau was announced on October 2, 2018 and was released on November 29 the same year by Komoe Games. Sadly their version of the Library met its end on November 10, 2022 but not before getting a special ending written by Taro having its first 9 chapters released on October 27, 2022, followed by the Grand Finale on November 3, 2022.

About the same time as the Taiwanese announcement, a global release was announced by Gree. Initially supposed to be published by Nexon for a July 18, 2019 release, after 6 months of delays Pokelabo announced on March 23rd, 2020 that global publishing will be handled by themselves, launching on July 1, 2020 in 139 countries and ran until 15 November 2023, ending with a similar finale as the aforementioned Taiwanese version.

On June 10, 2020, preregistration for the Simplified Chinese version of SINoALICE for mainland China began, with publishing being handled by Bilibili Games. Not much information has been revealed yet on its opening, however, and it's assumed to be cancelled.

The August 2020 Live SINoALICE livestream had Shogo Maeda announce a cross-server World GranColosseum event in which the best players from the Japanese and Global servers would be pitted against each other. It has been held twice; once on November 2021 and another on October 2022. Both editions were won by LiLLion! from the Japanese server.

The Japanese server has since ended service on January 15, 2024, 6 years and 7 months since its inception. The Grand Finale, the Act of Desire was released on December 20, 2023 with the 1st 6 chapters followed by its conclusion on December 26 the same year. Players who finished the game will then have their account data saved in the post-game app The Story That Was Once SINoALICE.

The game also has the following side materials:

    SINoALICE 
  • A manga of the same name, written by Aoki Tact and illustrated by himiko, started serialization on Square Enix's MangaUP application on 6 June 2019 during the 2nd Anniversary of the game and concluded its run on 11 October 2023. Taking place in an alternate universe of the Act of Reality, Alice finds herself dragged into a conflict supervised by Parrah and Noya when she experiences a dream of herself in an alternative universe and later teams up with Snow White and Pinocchio after her powers activate upon seeing her family killed by Red Riding Hood. The manga was then compiled into 6 tankobōn volumes, with the first 2 volumes released simultaneously with the Light Novel. The manga was later announced on 26 July 2021 to be translated into English and so far has 5 volumes.
  • SINoALICE - Black Fables note - a Light Novel written by Jun Eishima (YoRHa Boys novelization) which began serialization on MangaUP on December 19 2019. In contrast to the manga, the stories in the Light Novel take place in Library, expanding on the Library versions of the characters (except for the then-unreleased Little Match Girl) and explores more on their personality and motives for reviving their authors. The Light Novel was later compiled and released on August 7 2020 with the first 2 volumes of the manga.
  • SINoALICE - Records of Suspicion note (TBA) - a project first announced on May 21 2021 and later confirmed during the June 3 2021 Live SINoALICE livestream to be a manga serialization. The only information known so far is that the story will be written by Yoko Taro himself with illustrations by Shirow Miwa.
  • SINoALICE: The Absolute Last Story note: A fan movie made by Aoki Tact at Studio ILCA which premiered in Japan on February 23 2024, featuring Reality!Alice as the protagonist whose love for SINoALICE as a mobile game also caused her harm. When she ends up in the Library and Parrah and Noya drive her to despair, the Library Characters band together to rescue her from their clutches. On 5 April 2024, Studio ILCA announced that the movie will be released on Blu-ray on 6 June 2024, on what would have been the game's 7th Anniversary.

Beware of spoilers from all versions.

Tropes that appear in this game:

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     Tropes A - H 
  • Actor Allusion:
    • Gretel's Gunner class design has her wear a butterfly-shaped Eyepatch of Power, and in the same eye as Zero, whom she shares her Japanese voice actor with.
    • In-Universe in the JP version of the My Fair Beau event, Gretel's Fan Nickname is 'Gre-taso', a reference to Maaya Uchida's own nickname of Maayataso.
    • Alice in the Lullaby of Reincarnation event was reincarnated as a ogre/kijin, quite possibly due to her sharing the same voice actress as Shion.
    • On one hand, the Three Little Pigs aren't the first characters with large appetites that Aoi Yūki had voiced, but on the other hand the trio are child actresses in the Act of Reality, which is how their voice actress started her career in the entertainment industry. They're also not the first Aoi Yūki-voiced characters from Yoko Taro games who suffered a lot.
    • The SINoZombie ~Feast of the Deceased~ event isn't the first time Sleeping Beauty dealt with zombies, though this time the event's more horror-based instead of being a idol comedy.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Most of the sentient Nightmares qualify; most of them just want to be left alone or achieve their dreams, only to be slaughtered by the characters.
  • All There in the Manual: The booklet given out during the Act of Reality-themed collab with the Square Enix Cafe contains newspaper article snippets of each of the Reailty Characters' deaths, including things not mentioned in-game such as the names of Reality Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio and Dorothy (who otherwise do not go by any given names), the name of Reality!Snow White's killer and the fact that Reality!Sleeping Beauty's birthday is October 29th.
  • All Just a Dream: In the Taiwanese and Global version ending, the events of the game are revealed to be a dream of Reality!Alice, who fell asleep using her phone in school. After her friend calls out to her, Alice gives a smile and heads out of the classroom.
  • Ambiguously Human: Pinocchio is a doll turned human who struggles to make a decision on his own, relying instead on others to give him orders. In Book One Chapter 4, Pinocchio realizes that he doesn't remember becoming a real little boy while his staff exhibits all traits associated with his doll self (foul-mouthed, mean, nose growing when lying). Pinocchio's concept art hint at the fact that the staff might be the real Pinocchio.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: Should a Character let their Concepts turn into desires and overwhelm them, they become the very thing they're killing in masses.
  • Another Side, Another Story:
    • Bringing anyone aside from the Characters with Area Bonus during events (except for Armor Events) will feature Dissonant Poems, where another group of Characters watches over the main crew while acting as the Greek Chorus with some of their own opinions mixed in. Meanwhile in the Main Story, each Act's Hard Mode is from the perspective of Parrah and Noya for the first 4 acts in Parts 1 and 10 of each chapter (with the both of them also narrating the Acts of Elimination's Dissonant Poems), the Nightmares before being offed by the Characters in the Act of Hatred, each Chapter's losers in the Act of Elimination (Part 1) and the supporting cast from the surviving Characters' tales in the Act of Elimination (Part 2). It's highly encouraged to read both the main story and its Dissonant Poems to get the full picture.
    • However, Fairytale Gamblers bucked the trend by having its Dissonant Poems (narrated by Sayaka) be featured in its Hard Mode, since majority of Normal Mode locks the player into playing Little Match Girl with special weapons made for the story and locked support characters, so there's no option in playing a non-Kakegurui character there to unlock them anyway.
  • Apocalypse How: The Act of Fusion and Elimination 2-parter is a Class 0, with at least Japan devastated by the Fusion between Library and Reality while the Act of SINoALICE is a Class 3a in the making after one man's ambition to create the perfect mobile game went absolutely and utterly horribly wrong. Chapter 5, which has a Time Skip, reveals that the Nightmares have displaced humans as the Earth's apex predator, implying that the game managed to spread overseas and caused similar events to the previous 4 chapters albeit offscreen, and at the end of the chapter all the Nightmares have been eradicated by Alice when the remaining numbers fuse to become one massive Nightmare.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Some of the weapon stories and event stories describe the last moments of their previous owners/narrators.
  • April Fools' Day: Most of them involve Irasutoya, a Japanese stock image website with free-to-use illustrations. The first 2 years sent the player on a scavenger hunt for said pictures, but the 2021 event escalates it to a full-on collab... except that there's no bonuses.
    • 2020 on the other hand had LOLiALICE, which turned out to be the precursor to Sanctuary of Children's Songs.
    • 2022 and 2023 gives us NEKoALICE, a straight-out parody of Neko Atsume where the players have to complete in-game missions to attract cats based on the Characters to their 'garden'. Completing all of the required missions will flood the homescreen with all 16 cats, although the player can choose to turn it off if they choose.
    • Exclusive to the Global server in 2023 was a (albeit fake) announcement that Project Manager Hirotaka Omiya would be holding a rap concert. Once the ruse was revealed everyone received a chat stamp featuring Aladdin.
  • Are You Sure You Want to Do That?:
    • Upon reaching Chapter 10 of the Taiwanese and Global server's finale, the disembodied heads of Parrah and Noya will tell the player that in their hand lies the meaning of the world: a key representing hope. This hope is essential for saving Alice (and by extension, the souls of everyone else), but should the player proceed, the world of Library will be destroyed and the player cannot log back into the game. Choosing to move on despite this will give the player the option to send a final message to their guild, along with a long list of terms and conditions warning the player that they will absolutely lose everything in the game if they proceed.
    • Before starting the Act of Desire on the Japanese server, the game will warn the player that proceeding to play said chapter will result in the loss of certain game functions. Chapter 1 will cut off the chat and forum (then restored after clearing chapter 6), while Chapter 2 removes the Character display on the home screen and the museum. Upon beating the game, the player is prompted to create a final profile for other players who also cleared the game to view, but if they go ahead with finalizing it (and the game will prompt them twice), almost every function will be gone (though the Character Display and Museum return) and the game ends with a tombstone with the player's name on it.
  • Ax-Crazy:
    • The whole cast really. Special mention goes to Little Red Riding Hood who is associated with 'Brutality' itself.
    • August 2020 introduces Little Match Girl, who may be worse then Red Riding Hood due to her concept of 'Hellfire'.
  • Baby Morph Episode: The Sanctuary of Children's Song event deages Alice, Little Mermaid, Dorothy and Aladdin to babies with Parrah and Noya tasking Cinderella into taking care of the four of them until they turn back into their normal selves. Cinderella ends up getting attached to the 'children' after 5 years of being a Struggling Single Mother and as a result, Parrah and Noya declare the world they gave her to raise the kids in a 'failure'.
  • Bad Moon Rising: Chapter 3 of the Act of Elimination takes place under a (literal) blood red moon. At the end of Chapter 4, just as Alice prays for Lewis Carroll's revival, it's described as breaking down and distorting with the rest of the world.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • A common theme among the weapon stories as well as the main story. Most of those who make a wish wind up Blessed with Suck or in a Ironic Hell. Said wish can also lead to being turned into a Nightmare as revealed in Act of Hatred and is the cause behind the events Avatar of EnvyEN and Avatar of SolitudeEN.
    • This is also the central theme in the Act of Authors as the Characters succeed in reviving their authors, but soon discover that their revival is not what they expected it to be.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • The Taiwanese and Global servers ends with Reality!Alice waking up from her dream and moving on with her life, but because the player chose to save Library!Alice and everyone else with the power of hope, the Library is no more. To emphasize this, once the player clears the final verse of the finale they'll be removed from the game and can no longer log in.
    • The Japanese server ends with the player saving the Characters from the neverending cycle of despair and murder by defeating Desire-Noya, but eventually Parrah joins him in his final moments simply because she can't stand being apart from her twin. And with the Final Boss's defeat spelling out the end of the SINoALICE System and its Grimoire/Gacha system, as products of the Desire made by it the Characters are fated to disappear as well. The game then ends with a shot of the player's grave after the credits and one last profile creation.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: Alice and Snow White's Act of SINoALICE story ends with Snow facing off against a massive swarm of Nightmare-fied humans, with Alice telling Snow not to die while the latter buys time for Alice to escape. Chapter 5 later reveals that Snow died off-screen, with Alice having picked up her broadsword during the events of the chapter.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • The humour of the game, if not Black Comedy, is rife with this. Parrah and Noya in particular indulge in it as they're navigator characters, but the Characters do this as well during certain events, especially collaboration events that are more light-hearted such as those for Tsuri Star, Space Invaders and Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
    • Played for Drama in the Act of Desire as the Fourth Wall is torn up, thrown in the air and snogged to death as Parrah and Noya directly address the player and attempts to Break Them by Talking as they and Nutcracker attempt to rescue the Characters from the Library. Certain parts of the story are even in second person as the player fends off the Nightmares they previously defeated with the Characters in the past and the Characters' Nightmare and Half-Nightmare selves. Later when the rescue mission becomes a success albeit with Nutcracker pulling a Heroic Sacrifice, the Character the player picks at the end of Chapter 5 directly talks to them, wanting to get to know them more and desire to visit their world once the Library-Noya fusion and the SINoALICE System is defeated.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Certain Classes, weapons and Nightmares are only available through Twilight Crystal packs which require players to spend real money on. Some of the paid Nightmares in particular are a staple of many a guild's strategy to win, such as "Dryas, Mistletoe Linchpin" and her counterparts.
  • Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": During A Fluffy Encounter, Alice and co. refer to the Sanrio Characters as "Fluffies" due to how they feel at the touch.
  • Call-Back:
    • In Révellion Feast for the Lost, Alice tells Snow White that she'd make a better Santa than her due to the events of X-mas Feast. Though the Snow in the two Christmas events are different versions of each other.
    • During the Black Butler collaboration event, while making sweets for Elizabeth, Snow White recalls the time she made sweets with Rapunzel, referring back to the An Elegy for Love So Sweet Valentines event. In the Global server, the Black Butler collab was run first, flipping it into a Call-Forward instead.
    • Hamelin takes notice of Gretel's legs, deems it fitting of his aesthetic and asks her to step on him, much to her disgust in The Butlers' Feast. She's horrified in Ode to Sakura when the two meet again and he's still at it.
    • During Sharks' Feast of Fear, Little Mermaid mentions having filmed a mystery movie before in Mystery in the Limelight when Parrah and Noya tasks Hamelin to film a shark movie. Also, like in Reverberations of Summer, The Broken Puppeteer, the shenanigans of the event was caused by Dorothy's commissioned inventions.
    • Alice's Sword of Bondage weapon story began with a rabbit wearing a waistcoat, carrying a pocket watch and running late. The Taiwanese and Global servers' finales begins the same way.
  • The Cameo:
    • If one zooms in on Pinocchio's brooch in his Fake Joker artwork, it's in the shape of Emil's head.
    • The Dream Festival of Nightmares event has representatives of LiLLion!, the winners of the 1st World GranColosseum, appear in the story which starts with them contributing ideas for the event while mowing down Nightmares. After Red Riding Hood, Little Match Girl, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Little Mermaid decide to bail on account of the event getting too weird even for them, the guild fights a Colosseum match amongst themselves when their ideas start to clash which ends after someone summoned a Demon resulting in a Total Party Kill. After they get revived, LiLLion! tells Parrah and Noya to can it when the puppets try to bring it up again.
  • The Caligula: What Cinderella wishes to become by reviving her Author to make him rewrite her story.
  • Classic Cheat Code: New Year's Day 2024 reveals a secret shortcut: On the home screen, tap the screen as if to change the display Class or read its story, then either shake your phone 100 times for 30 seconds or leave it in this way for 100 minutes. This unlocks a backdoor that will allow the player to skip the rest of the story from their current Act all the way to the Act of Desire. Handy for players who have no time to play the story even with the speedrunning tips, and for guildmasters to persuade members behind on progress to hurry up so that the guild can play Chapter 7 of the Act of Desire and beat the game.
  • Cliffhanger:
    • The end of the Act of Authors comes with a preview of Book 8, the Act of SINoALICE, where Parrah and Noya are last seen jumping off a tall building in the Real World, cryptically hinting at Project SINoALICE's true purpose and goal.
    • Chapter 6 of the Act of Desire ends with the Characters facing off against SINoALICE itself on board Dorothy's time machine, with the last chapter of the game as a whole released on 26 December 2023.
  • The Corruption: The Nightmares, the main antagonist force through the game, who roam the Library, consuming the stories contained within. They come in various shapes and sizes, based upon monsters found in fairy tales and myths, including the characters. While they usually act as mindless mooks, some of them have shown the ability to speak. The Act of Hatred and some events explained the reason why: Nightmares are formed from human beings.
  • Connected All Along: One section in NieR Re[in]carnation reveals that the Library is connected to the Cage. Disembodied giant versions of Parrah and Noya can be seen as 063y and Yurie climb a staircase and they can find a record of the puppets attempting to "restart service" after something entered the Library.
  • Creator Cameo:
    • The weapons obtained from the Guild Box o' Grimoire during Blood Colosseums mentions Shogo Maeda, SINoALICE's producer from Pokelabo. He also shows up during secondary Anniversary events where a gold statue of him serves as the event's Final Boss. Defeating him gives the player a special title for their profile.
    • On certain Colosseum SPs, the opponent is an AI guild representing the developers, with each member being referred to by their title except for Lead Planner Sankaku. Aside from summoning Evil Knockoff versions of Rikone, Juno and Dryas, after using Tearful Acts of Bullfighting Roisa, the guild will change their skins depending on the player guild's timeslot.
    • Yoko Taro himself shows up in the Act of SINoALICE where he spends his time after producing the game slacking off and picking up ladies who are fans of the game. He then exits the story in an undignified fashion by dying of a heart attack. And to pour salt into the wound, when the Three Little Pigs emerge from his phone along with Dorothy, the first thing they do is to raid his fridge.
  • Creepy Doll: Gishin/Parrah and Anki/Noya, the two Obviously Evil puppets who act as the characters' guide in the Library. Both look like young children but are foul-mouthed. They enjoy the misery of others, often taunting characters over their doubts as well as encouraging them to mercilessly kill any Nightmares they came across. They are also the ones in charge of the Grimoire.
  • Crossover:
  • Cute and Psycho: Most of the cast can be qualified as such, in particular characters like Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty or Gretel.
  • Cuteness Proximity: Nobody is safe from the cuteness that is Sanrio during A Fluffy Encounter. The SINoALICE characters reason that they're not Nightmares and therefore should not be killed because Nightmares aren't this adorable. The Library itself becomes Lighter and Softer due to the cuteness purifying it, with the Nightmares being unable to harm the party because of said cuteness and self-destruct, and instead of exploding into a mass of blood and Maso like they usually do, it's a puff of pastel-colored smoke and stars. And at the end of the event when the Sanrio characters return to their own world, the Characters end up suffering from serious withdrawal symptoms due to the Library returning to its dark nature and the lack of the cute and fluffy prescence of Sanrio.
  • Darker and Edgier: The characters are a far cry to the stories they originated from. A jarring one is Gretel carrying around the severed head of Hansel in a birdcage blaming the witch as his killer. Her cross episode with Cinderella and her job story implies she was the one responsible for Hansel's death. Then Chapter 3 of Gretel's Act of Hatred reveals that Gretel was actually Hansel all along.... it’s a Yoko Taro game what did you expect?
    • Lighter and Softer: The only event of this nature is A Fluffy Encounter, by virtue of it being a Sanrio collab event. No one dies (violently), The Power of Friendship, cuteness and fanciness ultimately defeats the enemy and everyone gets a happy ending... though as a twist the SINoALICE side do suffer a little bit... probably.
  • Dead All Along: The End of Summer Shadow and Réveillon Feast for the Lost events both feature The Reveal that the Characters we've been following have been dead the whole time and are being allowed to enjoy one last holiday before suffering Cessation of Existence.
  • Deletion as Punishment: The fate of the game in the international servers after completing the final chapter; like NieR and NieR: Automata before them, completion of the final chapter will result in the player having the game be force restarted and be inaccessible ever again. Averted in the Japanese server where for once the player gets to keep their account, but all that's left of the game is a gravestone with their username on it.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Pinocchio has a "vulgar staff" he has no control over and it does the thinking for him. Yeah...
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: In the Gran Colosseum, your final rank is determined by how much Life Force you were able to collect during matches. Downing the opposing guild and destroying their Guildship steals a portion of their Life Force, but this naturally has diminishing returns the more times in a row you do it, as there's less and less Life Force to steal each time. The optimal strategy, therefore, is to deal enough damage to rack up huge amounts of Life Force, but not enough damage that you actually kill the opposing guild outright.
  • Draconic Humanoid: Mikhail takes a human form when he enters the Library. He still has features from his dragon form, like his horns.
  • Driven to Suicide: Implied all over the place, from weapon descriptions to character backstories, The Little Mermaid being an example, to certain characters' Acts of Reality.
  • Dub Name Change:
    • In the Taiwanese server as well as Globalnote, Briar Rose had her name changed to Sleeping Beauty to reflect the more common name of her fairytale known worldwidenote.
    • For the Global server, to preserve the pun from Gishin's and Anki's names, the two of them were renamed 'Parrah' and 'Noya'note respectively.
    • From the Late Summer's RecollectionsEN event, the clam Nightmare that Sleeping Beauty and Little Mermaid befriend and protect is named 'Sary' in Japanese after the Japanese word for the littleneck clamJP. To preserve the naming convention in English, Sary became Lammy.
    • A paid Nightmare known as "Apostle of the Black Arm, Mitra" was known as "Cecilia the Crimson Banisher" as part of a social media campaign for the Global server.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The ending to the Act of SINoALICE reveals what may be the true form of the Library; a giant brain with nerves as tentacles and 5 eyes on it surrounding a giant orb in the middle.
  • Elemental Powers: The weapons and Nightmares come in three different elements - Fire, Water and Wind. The 27 April 2021 update in the Japanese server would later add Light and Dark, along with dual-element weapons.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire beats Wind, Water beats Fire and Wind beats Water, with Light and Dark being mutually exclusive to each other.
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: Invoked by Parrah and Noya on occasion. For example, at the end of the Réveillon Feast for the Lost event, Alice and the other dead Characters Face Death with Dignity and allow themselves to be annihilated... only for Alice to be revived by Parrah and Noya, and setting off to start fighting in the Library all over again. Parrah and Noya insist to the player that this is a happy ending, on the basis that Alice got to live, even though being forced to endure another lifetime of endless slaughter against her will is arguably a Fate Worse than Death.
  • "Everyone Dies" Ending: The Act of Desire's ending. The Nutcracker sacrifices himself to buy time for the others, the Library's true form assimilates Noya and is destroyed along with him, as well as the toxic Desires powering the Nightmares and Characters' existence, meaning that they will cease to exist as well. Parrah, unable live without her brother, chooses to die as well. To symbolize this, the post-shutdown app shows a graveyard.
  • Fairytale Motifs: Each character comes from a fairy tale and makes references to the stories they originated from.
  • Fire, Water, Wind: The elemental cycle in the game is this, until the 27 April 2021 update in the Japanese server added Light and Dark to the mix.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing:
    • When pulling the Grimoire, pay attention to Parrah and Noya's dialogue. If either one of them mentions missing a rare, followed by Parrah hurling abuse on Noya, one of the brown books (A weapons) will be replaced with a shiny book (S or SS(R) weapons). If the rope breaks during the pull and Noya loses his head, congratulations - at least 1 of the shiny books contains a SS(R) weapon/Nightmare.
    • During Recycle Grimoires (exchanging an unused SS(R) weapon for a pull which guarantees at least 1 new SS(R) weapon), players launch a book into a machine instead. If the book hits Noya and he loses his head again, one of the new weapons has a cost of 19 and above. However, should the player miss the first time, but subsequently cracks the ceiling, congratulations - there's more than 1 SS(R) weapon in the pull.
  • Foreshadowing:
  • Forever War: The Characters are constantly fighting and killing Nightmares and each other with no end in sight. In fact, anyone dragged into Library will be compelled to continue it. The Act of Fusion reveals that Nutcracker is trying to find a way to stop the war, but has to lie low so that he won't be discovered by Parrah and Noya, and putting a permanent end to it is the goal of the player in the Act of Desire.
  • Foregone Victory: Even when taking on the Final Boss solo, there is no way to be defeated by it. Desire-Noya will always leave half the player's HP when attacking a la Super Fang even when the player looks like they have 1 HP left. Since this is the final battle, however, the fight is all but guaranteed to end in the player's victory.
  • Four Is Death: The theme of the Japanese server's 4th Anniversary where the management decides to hold a funeral for the game... with Death Metal. No, really. It's true.
  • Fractured Fairytale: The side story to It All Starts With the Stars features the other Reality Characters reading Night on the Galactic Railroad, with some like Reality!Hamelin noticing that, as the main event story goes on, something's off about the story in the book.
  • Freemium Timer: You have to spend SP in order to play levels, and the SP gauge refills very slowly, but the game lets you refill it yourself via the "Purification" minigame, and is remarkably generous in handing out the Purification Tickets that allow you to do so.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the Act of Elimination, the Three Little Pigs run away from their battle with Nutcracker to dress up in cute clothes and eat at trendy cafes, leaving Parrah and Noya without any extendification records since no one died during said chapter. However, completing their chapter has the Pigs' portrait slashed out as though they were killed by Nutcracker anyway.
  • Gender Bender: As part of yet another scheme by Parrah and Noya to get rich quick, Snow White, Cinderella, Gretel and Dorothy temporarily turn male and form an idol unit, 'Phantom Tale', during the White Day 2021/2023 event, My Fair Beau.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: With the advent of smartphones and mobile gaming, Pokelabo in the game's narrative wanted to create "the perfect social mobile game". In the Act of SINoALICE, because the game ran on desires and greed, the players ended up turning into Nightmares and the developers went insane.
  • Gotta Kill Them All: The only way the characters can have their wish granted and have their Authors brought back to life is by collecting Lifeforce. Said Lifeforce can only be collected by killing beings that have been granted life through stories, which includes Nightmares and the Characters.
  • Grand Finale:
    • An epilogue chapter taking place after the Act of Elimination (Part 1) served as this for the Taiwanese server (and later Global). This had the Library beyond repair and at the end, Parrah and Noya personally request the player to save Alice from her plight (and by extension redeem the souls of everyone else who died). The chapter ends with Reality!Alice waking up from her dream that was the events of the game, and having regained a sense of hope, joins her friends in exiting the classroom.
    • The Act of Desire served as this to the Japanese server on December 20, 2023. The first 6 chapters had the Characters in distress and it's up to the player, with help from Nutcracker, to rescue them. The story ends with the entire guild taking on Desire-Noya together, and upon his defeat, Parrah joins him in death simply because she can't leave her twin alone. Meanwhile the Characters end up fading away after 1 last conversation with the player, and the game ends with the player's name on a gravestone.
  • Great Big Library of Everything: The world of Library is this. A place where countless stories can be found, from famous literature works to fairytales, including tales from unknown worlds. The appearance of the Library changes depending on the viewer, in the case of the players, it manifests as a giant library filled with books. Said books are used like Portal Book to travel to a world or are used to summon a weapon from one in the Grimoire.
  • Grimmification: And boy are they proud of it. The game's tagline repeatedly warns players that the stories within will have bad endings, and promotions will remind them that the Characters are a far cry from how they're remembered in childhood. The occasional happy ending is there, but both Character and player have to get there on their own.
  • Halloween Episode:
    • The 2018 Halloween eventnote, Festival of Deceit and Madness, has Cinderella and Little Mermaid visit a village for a holiday, only for them to get caught up in a real version of Werewolf (1997).
    • 2019 had Banquet of the Butlers where the male characters are hired to take care of a young girl soon to be offered as a sacrifice to the forest guardian by another village. Notable for being the first (and only) Roulette Event where players earned prizes from a board.
    • Averted in 2020 where Festival of Deceit and Madness and Banquet of the Butlersnote reran instead of having an original Halloween event, followed by the Rozen Maiden Crossover Event Mirrored Rozen Maidens.
    • 2021's Halloween event, Conspiracy at the Strange Performance, gave Gretel, Rapunzel, Little Mermaid and Nutcracker the 'Mystery' class and featured them making a mystery movie when a murder happens and they have to solve it.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: Hansel's fight against the resurrected Pinocchio and the Three Little Pigs (now known as the Queen Nightmare) is this; he does manage to defeat Pinocchio, but the Queen Nightmare ends up killing him too, leaving her host(s) as the winners of the 2nd Act of Elimination chapter.
  • How We Got Here: Most of the characters' Acts of Reality begin with them dying or about to die, then flash back to explain their backstories and the events that led to that point.

     Tropes I - R 
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
    • Subverted with Snow White. While her wish is to remain pure and just, Snow White acts like a Knight Templar who use her Justice as a way to justify her crimes. The bloodstain found on her white dress, that is present on all her job classes, symbolizes her sin. Her Breaker job story implies the blood is either the prince's who took a fatal blow for her or her mother's whom she killed in retribution.
    • Rapunzel as well. Even though her concept is 'Chastity', her purity is depicted as hopelessly naïve, to the point where she's unaware that some of her dialogue has indecent context.
  • Interface Spoiler: Finishing one character's Act of Elimination Chapter 3 triggers a Next Time On cutscene that spoils who else makes it through Chapter 3.
  • Job System: Each character can switch between classes, which like weapons when levelled will tell a story relevant to the character. So far the following class series have been introduced:
    • All Characters will have a default set of Classes, whose stories provide more background into their Character alongside tidbits of their original stories if applicable. These classes are then added to the permanent Grimoire pool after their release.
    • The Story-related classes being Alternative (Reality), Ext., Pre./Alt. Half (Elimination) and Act of Authors (Exactly What It Says on the Tin) serve as extra lore for the main series chapters they're related to. For example, the Alternative class stories are tabloid newspaper articles about their deaths at the end of the chapter.
    • The Half-Nightmare class series, only obtainable with Gran Medals from the monthly Gran Colosseum, has the Character in question slowly turn really insane and give in to their Concepts/desires, with the name indicating a halfway point to becoming the very beings they kill, while their weapons hint towards their Reality selves' backstories. Gameplay-wise they provide a boost to their weapon specialty while weakening two others.
    • Spirit Classes, themed around the Seven Deadly Sins, focus on the game's Element system in which they boost a certain element while weakening the element it's strong against. Their respective weapons also have a story skill which boosts their effectiveness the more of its element is featured in the grid, but this has less focus as Light and Dark weapons outside of specialized banners become the norm. Their stories provide backstory to each of the respective Spirits which come into context during Anniversary events (Proud Lion) and Giant Raids (the rest). There's also the event-exclusive Sin Half-Nightmare, which combines both aspects of Spirit and Half-Nightmare classes.
    • Divine Spirit Classes, which have a Seven Heavenly Virtues theme instead, focus on providing additional buffs from the Support Class section of the player's grids. Story-wise, it's from the Divine Spirits commenting about the tales their host Character comes from. The 6th Anniversary in JP later introduces the Divine Half-Nightmare, which combines regular Divine Spirit Classes with the Awakening skills of the Demon and Dorothy's Workshop 2 classes... which is higher than the normal Divine Spirit classes.
    • Dorothy's Workshop classes function as A Day in the Limelight for Dorothy, who creates various trinkets for the other Characters even if they don't want the help. In-game, they provide a secondary boost to another weapon type alongside their specialty Except.... Story-wise, the class story is taken from Dorothy's diary while the weapon story goes into what's going on in her subject's head as they receive her inventions. The second series which expands what happened after the first invention went wrong also introduced Class Awakening skills which adds a certain percentage of stats to the player's grids.
    • Demon Classes, which combines the Half-Nightmare classes' functions with the secondary gimmick of the 2nd Dorothy's Workshop series. The lore focuses on the Characters undergoing Demonic Possession by the demons that are summoned in the Colosseum, then being worshipped by fearful humans as gods.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: Common with the collabs.
    • The Code Geass collab spoils one of the anime's biggest Wham Episodes - namely, Euphemia accidentally getting Geassed into committing genocide - in its opening cinematic, and its plot then revolves entirely around said Wham Episode.
    • The Kakegurui collab spoils the biggest twist of Little Match Girl's Act of Hatred very early on. This was a particular problem on the Global server, where said act was only released a few weeks before the collab.
    • The Fullmetal Alchemist collab begins with Ed and Al looking for an alternative way to restore their bodies, having discovered that Philosopher's Stones are made by transmuting living humans, a major reveal that only comes about halfway through the series. It also spoils the identities of Wrath and Pride, which are also major reveals (especially the latter), by including them as an unlockable class and Nightmare respectively.
  • Little Dead Riding Hood: Inverted with Little Red Riding Hood. Instead, anyone who comes across her is the one whose life is at risk.
  • Little Red Fighting Hood: Little Red Riding Hood is a Little Miss Badass with Ax-Crazy tendencies.
  • Living Weapon: A few of those are mentioned in various weapon stories, the most prominent one being Pinocchio's staff, who has an actual face and his own will, often dragging Pinocchio around in order to kills any nightmares meeting their paths. Oddly enough, the staff turns silent when Pinocchio is not alone. The staff is implied to be the real Pinocchio and the culprit behind the disappearance of Geppetto and other people related to the puppet.
  • Loophole Abuse:
    • In the Kakegurui collab, the climactic game involves Little Match Girl and Kirari competing to be the first to reach the bottom of a burning tower. The interior of the tower has twelve doors, all but one of which are locked at any given time, and each time you move through a door, it locks behind you and another door unlocks at random. There's no rule saying you have to go through the doors. Little Match Girl escapes and wins the game by simply smashing through each floor until she reaches ground level.
    • Meta example: The Final Boss fight in the Act of Desire requires players to be in a guild and have every guild member reach the chapter prior in order to unlock the boss fight and the ending. There is no mention about the minimum number of active members in a guild in order to progress so there have been instances of players leaving their (inactive or slow-progressing) guilds to form a "solo guild" to take on the boss. And yes, it is possible to fight it all by yourself.
  • Mad Scientist: Dorothy from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her introduction PV has her voice excitement over the thought of collecting new samples in Library. Her wish is to put her Author's brain in formaldehyde. Her weapon story has her test a drug of her own creation on living beings with the expected effect. Her Gunner job story implies she used the cast of Wizard of Oz as her first test subjects.
  • Multiple Endings: Depending on which server you played in, SINoALICE ends differently:
    • On the international (Taiwan and Global) servers, the story ends at the Act of Elimination in which Alice is seen fighting Nightmares endlessly. Suddenly a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat and carrying a pocket watch rushes by her, and just like how her own story began she follows it into a labyrinth. She passes by various doors with notes written by the other Characters but refuses to open them, and is eventually weakened to the point where she could only cry for help. The disembodied heads of Parrah and Noya realizes that the purpose of the player being in the Library is to deliver hope to the Characters in a place where none exist, and thus gives them a choice: do nothing or save Alice but destroy the Library in the process. If the player chooses to proceed and wins the final battle, the story ends with Reality!Alice waking up in a classroom, and after being greeted by a friend she smiles, grabs her bag and walks off, but the entire game gets bricked and the player themself is unable to log in ever again.
    • In the Japanese server, the Act of Desire begins with all the Characters are held hostage by Parrah and Noya's Eldritch Abomination made of Desire and the player is forced to team up with the Nutcracker (who for once is being helpful) to initiate a rescue mission. With Noya going off the deep end and the Nutcracker performing a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure the player's survival, things are looking grim until Dorothy shows up to help, and the player successfully saves the Characters with them and the player's guild joining forces to take down Desire-Noya, a fusion of Noya and the SINoALICE System. Defeating Desire-Noya ends with Noya's death, Parrah jumping off the time machine to be Together in Death with him, and the Characters Fading Away into a bright white light after saying their last farewells. The game then ends with a shot of the player's grave.
    • In the manga, the Death Game ends with Alice's victory after Snow manipulates the game to end in the former's favour, therefore allowing Alice to bring her dead family back to life. The epilogue reveals that a Round 2 with the Reality versions of The Three Little Pigs, Aladdin, Rapunzel, Hamelin and Little Match Girl is about to begin, with Dorothy deciding to take part for real even when Alice resumes her normal life.
  • Next Time On: Beating each chapter of the Act of Elimination triggers a brief cutscene in which Parrah and Noya tease the fight that's set to occur in the next chapter. Usually this plays once the matchup is determined, but in Global the one for Chapter 4 plays after you beat only one Chapter 3, and thus spoils the winners of the other two.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Cinderella frequently likes to pull this trope on Snow White to try and get under her skin, talking about how they are just two sides to the same coin. This ends up carrying some weight in that despite being after each other's throats, they are capable of impeccable teamwork.
  • Obliviously Evil: Though every playable character from the normal story has shades of this, being defined by a singular "Sin" that either keeps them from recognizing that their actions might be wrong or compels them to continue forward despite this realization, Red Riding Hood takes the cake. She doesn't understand that killing, dismemberment, and mutilation being fun for her doesn't necessarily mean it's fun for her victims, or even that there's a meaningful difference between death and sleep.
  • Player Versus Player: Of the Synchronous kind - guilds play the Colosseum depending on their timeslots in the day for a guild vs guild battle, with the winner being the guild that scores the most points. Variants of the Colosseum aside from regular battles include:
    • Blood Colosseum, which rewards both victory and participation via giving out Character Blood to use in the guild-only Blood Grimoire taking place at the beginning of the month.
    • GranColosseum, a monthly tournament where guilds have to register beforehand to participate. Gran Colosseum takes place for 5-6 days followed by 1 day's rest before qualified guilds fight in the Finals. This is also the only way to obtain the Half-Nightmare classes for the Characters as well as the Infinite Weapons; weapons with the motif of the Characters' respective Nightmare forms which can be evolved many times for better skills and more power.
    • Colosseum EX, a bi-monthly event which puts the spotlight on two different Characters - this was discontinued for the Japanese server in March 2020.
    • Colosseum SP, a monthly event taking place at the end of each month where all players' stats are equalized and certain rules are changed:
      • Nightmare Festival - Nightmares have a 5 second preparation time and can be resummoned when the match reaches its 2nd half.
      • Combo Fiesta - When using 'combo weapons', an additional 3 counts are added along with the number of counts the weapon provides. Additionally, the SP meter is increased to 600, SP recovery is doubled, and the bonuses are increased to up to 9999 counts instead of 1000.
      • Demon Blitz: 4 demons instead of 2 appear in the match and take 4 weapon types to summon (3 in the Global server).
      • Character Spotlight: The successor to Colosseum EX, a certain character (or a group of characters) will be boosted during the colosseum.
      • Developer Elimination: All guilds will go up against the developer guild (who claim to have succumbed to the darkness); the rewards distributed to the playerbase depends on the total amount of lifeforce gained by beating them up. Additionally, after using a Evil Knockoff of Loiza, Bull of the Wailing Cape, the developer guild will change skins to a theme depending on the player guild's timeslot.
      • Chaotic Christmas, a Holiday Mode which combines all of the above except for Developer Elimination.
    • Colosseum Sin, a bimonthly event taking place concurrently with Blood Colosseum in which only the best of the best take part depending on how they fared during the previous 2 GranColosseum matches.
    • World GranColosseum, an annual Colosseum tournament in which the top guilds from the Japanese and Global servers duke it out to be the game's strongest guild. To accommodate for the 3-year gap between the 2 servers, all participating players will be limited to certain classes, armour, Nightmares and weapons.
    • Chapter 5 of the Act of Fusion eventually reveals that the Colosseum is plot-relevant - changing scenery to reflect the story and the final location of the Characters' battles with each other.
  • Rank Inflation: At launch, equipment and materials were rated C-B-A-S-SR-L, though not all types of equipment and materials used all the ranks (weapons, for example, started at A, whereas armor started at C but only went up to SR). Later updates included a seventh LL rank that certain weapons can be upgraded to, as well as armor that can be upgraded to L.
  • Regional Bonus: The Global version of the game had mechanics that are exclusive to Global, and only Global:
    • Skip Tickets - These allow players to skip playing the stage and simply getting the rewards that come with it. Handy for playing events and grinding for medals, shooting gallery tickets and the like, but they cannot be used with drop potions (with the exception of Royal Skip Medals for those who purchased the Royal User Service and certain Twilight Crystal packs).
    • Country flags - Due to the number of countries available for the Global server, each guild gets to display their home country's flag (or a simple SINoALICE flag) on top of their guild achievements.
    • Colosseum Ticket Grimoire: When playing the Colosseum, players get to earn 1 Gladiator's Medal for every 3 weapons used. These Gladiator's Medals can then be exchanged for Colosseum Tickets which is then used in the Grimoire (150 tickets per pull). On top of that, this Grimoire contains 8 weapons that are Version-Exclusive Content.
  • The Reveal: The Harmonic Interference event reveals that The Library is a byproduct of the Cataclysm mentioned in Drakengard 3.
  • Rule 63: Snow White, Cinderella, Gretel and Dorothy go through this in My Fair Beau. And yes that is exactly what the classes are named in the Global version.

     Tropes S - Z 
  • Self-Deprecation: Part of the game's humour involves Parrah and Noya taking potshots at PokeLabo, the developing company, during events. The game's producer, Shogo Maeda, is a frequent target.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: The premise for the Spirit series of Classes, which boosts weapons of the Class's specialty Element while weakening those of the element it's strong against.
  • Seven Heavenly Virtues: On the other hand, there's the Divine Class series, named after the Seven Virtues, which provide additional stats if they're in the Support Class grid.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: After completing any book for the first time in the Acts of Reality and Fusion, a cutscene with Parrah and Noya that plays Chopin's Nocturne in E Major will play. The music only serves to unsettle the player as Parrah and Noya's dialogue hints at worse events ahead and how the characters would have to kill in order to get what they desire.
  • Stat Overflow: The game had a "Purification" system whereby, instead of waiting for your SP to fill up over time, you could manually refill it by playing a minigame. Purification easily gave you more than enough SP to go over the cap, and you could do it even if you were already at or above the cap. There was, however, a hard cap (about 3x the visible soft cap) beyond which you couldn't earn any more SP, no matter what.
  • Stat Stick: The subgrid functions as this, giving a boost to the main grid's Combat Power. Some Divine classes also provide additional stats when in the Class Support Grid.
  • Story Arc: There are nine Arcs/Books in Japan and 5 in Taiwan and Global each:
    • Act of Impulse, which introduces Alice, Snow White, Cinderella, Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Red Riding Hood, Princess Kaguya, and Pinocchio.
    • Act of Hatred, which provides more development for the aforementioned characters as well as introducing Little Mermaid, Dorothy, Three Little Pigs, Aladdin, Rapunzel, Hamelin, and Little Match Girl.
    • Act of Reality (December 2017 [JP], October 2020 [GL]), taking place in modern-day Shinjuku featuring versions of the Characters as ordinary people while also introducing Nutcracker.
    • Act of Fusion (2019 [JP], 2022 [GL]) marks the beginning of Library's fusion with the real world, with the Reality versions of the Characters Back from the Dead and caught in the fusion's events.
    • Act of Elimination Part 1 (September 2020 [JP], April 2023 [GL]), focuses on Parrah and Noya observing the interactions between both the Reality and Library Characters as they fight each other to the death. Notably, this marks the end of the story in the Taiwanese and Global servers.
    • Act of Elimination Part 2 (June 2021 [JP]) has Alice go on a rampage after Parrah and Noya informed her that she didn't kill enough living beings, resulting in the skeletal being that was supposed to be her author. Forming a number of contracts, other Characters are revived and under the leadership of Snow White, have to defeat Alice and bring her back to normal before she kills them. This chapter also introduces a Masked Man eventually revealed to be a sane Gretel who seems to know more about the situation than Snow White.
    • Act of Authors, (June 2022 [JP]), answers the long-awaited What If?: what happened if the Characters succeeded in reviving their authors? However, Be Careful What You Wish For is in full overdrive here, as the Characters realize that maybe reviving their authors isn't such a good thing after all...
    • Act of SINoALICE (January 2023 [JP]) puts the Characters in an unlikely setting - our world, on June 6 2017. Not only do they have to deal with the Nightmares that came from ordinary humans who downloaded the game, they also have to confront their biggest enemy - the game developers. What is the SINoALICE Project as hinted by Parrah and Noya, and what does SINoALICE mean?
    • Act of Desire (December 2023 [JP]), which serves as the true Grand Finale to the game's story. Picking up directly from the Act of SINoALICE, the Characters have been captured by Parrah and Noya and are about to be absorbed into the Desire creature and their only hope lies with the player... ...
  • Story Breadcrumbs: The narrative is mostly delivered through vague and small nuggets of info spread apart, only offering hints at what's going on most of the time.
  • Stylistic Suck: Done in grandiose audacity during the Campfire Cuisine event where the images in The story are slowly replaced with clipart, becoming more rushed as the story progresses.
  • Symbolic Cast Fadeout: The story chapters in each Act are displayed in a grid, with each chapter's participant(s) shown at the very top. During the Act of Elimination, after you finish each chapter, the face(s) of those killed during the chapter are scratched out of the grid to reflect their demise.
  • Take That!:
    • There are at least 2 events that poke fun of capitalism.
    • An Elegy for Love So Sweet criticizes the idol fanbase; in particular, how certain fans behave towards their idols, especially during Valentine's Day.
    • 2022's Halloween Episode event, Sacred Treasures of Dusk takes several jabs at the Metaverse and everything associated with it such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Parrah and Noya even congratulate Alice, Snow White, Dorothy, Aladdin and Hamelin once they escape the Halloween Metaverse and its VR-addicted Zombie Apocalypse and repeatedly assure the player in the epilogue that a SINoALICE metaverse will never come to pass.
  • Thanking the Viewer: Alice does this at the finale of the Taiwanese and Global servers by thanking the player for being always with her. In the Japanese server, as they all fade away into the light, all 15 Characters do this as they bid farewell to the player.
  • Theseus' Ship Paradox: During the Mirrored Rozen Maidens event, Noya gets his body back via Laplace's Demon using his ability to guide souls, allowing the Rozen Maiden world to separate from Library. In Chapter 11 of the event's Normal Mode, Parrah questions that since Noya's body was made by Laplace's Demon, is he truly Noya or someone else?
  • Title Drop: Twice, in different formats:
    • In the manga, as Alice ponders on her dream in the first half of Chapter 1, the name of the event is censored with a black bar with SINoALICE written on top
    • The Act of Authors in the game itself reveals the existence of the SINoALICE System, which is how the Characters engage in their Gotta Kill 'Em All mission to revive their authors. Later on, book 8 is named after the game itself.
  • Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: To be precise, the Acts of Reality, Fusion and some parts of Elimination take place in Shinjuku.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: What Gretel's character arc turned into. Gretel comes to a realization that Gretel is actually Hansel and the head in the cage is Gretel.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: In the Act of SINoALICE, Kaguya and Little Mermaid stay with a cabaret girl when they're transported from the game into the real world, and it's she who asked them to work in the cabaret club with her. Had they rejected her offer, they would not have been corrupted by human desire and turned into their Half-Nightmare forms.
  • Version-Exclusive Content:
    • Certain weapons in the Global server are exclusives there, with no Japanese counterpart. They start off as only obtainable in Colosseum Ticket Grimoires, but Specialized Grimoire weapons have started to include exclusive weapons themselves.
    • Each server's ending depends on where the story was when the service termination announcement was made, which meant that the Taiwanese and Global servers got the same ending after they ended on the Act of Elimination while the Japanese server ended with the Act of Desire.
  • Was Once a Man: Several events such as both Incarnation events and a number of armour events reveal that the Nightmares the Characters fight are this.
    • In the Act of SINoALICE, the humans in our world become Nightmares after downloading the game and it detects their Desires. This also happens to other non-player humans who crossed the Despair Event Horizon after getting caught in the arc's events.
    • Chapter 5 of that Act, which takes place several years after the events of the first 4, reveals that every human in the world became Nightmares, making Nightmares the new apex predator of Earth.
  • Wham Episode:
    • Chapter 4 of each Character's Act of Reality ends with them dying in one way or another, often through horrific/depressing means. And then in Chapter 5, the Reality Characters awaken in Library, receive the powers they'd later use in the Acts of Fusion and Elimination, all while Parrah and Noya prepare to fuse Library with Reality, kicking off the Act of Fusion.
    • Chapter 4 of the Act of Elimination leaves Alice as the Sole Survivor after majority of the other Characters end up dead (some at her own hand) and ends with the red moon crumbling to pieces and the world turning worse for wear as she prays for her author's revival.
    • Chapter 5 from the same act begins with Parrah and Noya telling Alice that she's now in a world where she and her author can be together, but he's revived as a skeletal being who attacks her as he calls out to her. Alice, angry at this, asks if Parrah and Noya had tricked her, and when she ends up killing him, she declares that she'll kill everything. The ending video not only reveals that this is only part 1 of the Act of Elimination, Snow White can also be heard calling out to Alice.
    • The preview of the Act of SINoALICE has Parrah and Noya reveal that the reality the story takes place in is not the reality from Acts 3-6, but is instead our own reality, and they have sinister plans for it.
  • Wham Line: At the end of the Due to the Dead montage in Chapter 5 of the Act of Elimination, we get no less than two:
    Act of Elimination -Part 1- End.
    Snow White: Alice? Is that you?
  • Wham Shot: As if the situation in the Act of Fusion wasn't confusing enough, Chapter 4 of each Character's story ends with the portrait of their Reality versions fading out and replaced with that of their Library selves as both selves meet each other amidst the ongoing chaos on Tokyo.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Throughout story mode and class stories, the Characters will perform some questionable deeds that Parrah and Noya gleefully taunt them over with. During cross episodes, Characters call their partners out on their mindsets and actions throughout their inner monologue at the start of each stage. Starting from the Act of Hatred, Nightmares will do the same towards their would-be executioners.
  • Whole-Plot Reference:
    • The ending for the Taiwanese and Global server has the game's plot be similar to that of OMORI: with Library being revealed to be a fantasy world dreamed up by Reality!Alice to cope with her real life, much like how Headspace is dreamed up by Sunny as escapism from his real life, the central figure of the dream being a glum and violent alter ego of the dreamer (Library!Alice and Omori, respectively), and the climax involving said dreamer confronting their suicidal ideation and ultimately destroying the dream world to face reality.
    • "It All Starts With the Stars" is one massive reference to Night on the Galactic Railroad, with the Reality versions of Alice, Aladdin and Little Match Girl on board a train run by their Library counterparts and Nutcracker. It's even All Just a Dream as the whole event was a dream of Reality!Alice's unborn child.
  • Zombie Apocalypse:
    • After Dorothy asks the visitors to the Halloween Metaverse in Sacred Treasures of Dusk what happens to their bodies in reality when they're in the virtual world, the mere mention of the word 'reality' enrages them and soon enough, Alice and friends have to fend off a horde of VR-addled zombies which includes the friendly NPC characters they met along the way.
    • A more typical example happens in SINoZOMBIE -Banquet of the Dead in which Parrah and Noya's plan to make a zombie horror movie goes wrong when Noya becomes an actual zombie, causing Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel and Hamelin to go through the usual tropes associated with zombie-related horror media.
"If I could have just one wish,
please let us stay in your heart forever.
We'll remember you forever and always."

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