Visual Novel / Umineko: When They Cry

aka: Umineko No Naku Koro Ni

Welcome to Rokkenjima.

"When will you believe in me?
That is all that matters.
If you want to do some detective work, go ahead.
If you believe that there is an answer, go and continue to search.
This is torture that will not end until you can believe in witches."

Umineko: When They Cry (うみねこ の なく 頃 に, Umineko no Naku Koro ni, meaning "When the Black-tailed Gulls Call") is a kinetic sound novel by 07th Expansion that takes place primarily on October 4th and 5th, 1986, on the island of Rokkenjima. The rich Ushiromiya family is gathering in order to discuss what will happen to patriarch Kinzo's inheritance, since he has been ill in recent days. The protagonist, Battler, has returned to his family after 6 years of rebellion and is eager to reunite with his cousins.

While the arguments about the inheritance ensue, a typhoon traps all 18 people on the island. The family then finds a mysterious letter from a person claiming to be Kinzo's alchemy counselor, the Golden Witch, Beatrice. Beatrice claims that she has been summoned by Kinzo to claim the inheritance, as the family has been deemed unworthy of it. Unless someone solves the riddle of the epitaph on her portrait before 24:00 hours on October 5th and becomes the family successor, Beatrice will claim everything that the family owns, including the ten tons of gold that Kinzo claims will be given to the successor. This is only the beginning of the strange and shocking events that will occur on the island during these two days. Panic, reasoning, romance, heated confrontations and TONS of Mind Screw ensues.

Similar to its predecessor, Higurashi: When They Cry, Umineko: When They Cry consists of several arcs with the same scenario repeating for mysterious reasons - although, unlike Higurashi, where each arc was more or less independent, there is a continuity and transition between the arcs here. The first four arcs are the Question Arcs, where the puzzles are presented to the reader. Instead of outright Answer Arcs, the last four arcs are the Core Arcs, which provide the reader several hints on how to solve the mysteries, but without outright giving away the answer. The first sound novel was published in 2007 and the last in 2010.

Part of the When They Cry series, which also includes Higurashi: When They Cry, Hotarubi no Tomoru Koro ni, The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night, and Ciconia no Naku Koro ni.

The series consists of a sound novel, a manga, an anime, and a pachinko game. The sound novel is 8 Episodes in length, along with two fandiscs, Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Tsubasa (Umineko: When They Cry - Wings) and Umineko no Naku Koro ni: Hane (Umineko: When They Cry - Feathers) containing extra short stories called TIPS that don't fit into the main story. The anime adaptation produced by Studio DEEN spans 26 episodes, but it only covers the first four arcs. NIS America announced the localization of the anime in July 2012 and released it five months later. Classified as 18+ due to intense violence which unlike the Japanese version, is completely uncensored.

Each episode was also adapted into a manga, published in magazines owned by Square Enix:

• Episode 1: Legend of the Golden Witch was published in Gangan Joker and drawn by Kei Natsumi.
• Episode 2: Turn of the Golden Witch was published in G-Fantasy and drawn by Jirō Suzuki (who also drew Tatarigoroshi-hen).
• Episode 3: Banquet of the Golden Witch was published in Gangan Joker and drawn by Kei Natsumi (again).
• Episode 4: Alliance of the Golden Witch was published in Gangan Online and drawn by Sōichirō.
• Episode 5: End of the Golden Witch was published in Gangan Joker and drawn by Akitaka.
• Episode 6: Dawn of the Golden Witch was published in G-Fantasy and drawn by Hinase Momoyama (who also drew Minagoroshi-hen).
• Episode 7: Requiem of the Golden Witch was published in Monthly Shōnen Gangan and drawn by Eita Mizuno (better known as the artist of Spiral).
• Episode 8: Twilight of the Golden Witch was published in Gangan Joker and drawn by Kei Natsumi. Unlike the VN version, this last manga version of the episode gives much more explicit answers, as well as additional clarifications.
• Tsubasa was published in Big Gangan and drawn by Fumi Itō.

After a seven-year and 50-volume run (which is quite exceptional for a VN adaptation), the manga finally came to a close in June 2015.

In 2012 a doujin manga by Kurumi Suzuhiro, Umineko no Naku Koro ni Shi: Forgery of the Purple Logic, was published the Monthly Comp Ace. It is an independent mystery not placed in the main story's continuity, using and expanding the mechanics of a mini-game in Episode 8.

The entire novel has also been ported to the PlayStation 3 for a remake, complete with voice acting, remade sprites and CGs. The first four novels were released as Umineko no Naku Koro ni ~ Rondo of Witches and Reasoning, and the last four novels were released as Umineko no Naku Koro ni Chiru ~ Nocturne of Truth and Illusions. Contrary to the PlayStation 2 port of Higurashi though, there are no additional arcs or alternate endings.

In addition, a PC fighting game in the vein of Melty Blood has been released, entitled Ougon Musoukyoku (Umineko: Golden Fantasia), featuring ten of the characters from the novels. An Xbox 360 port, Ougon Musoukyoku X, has also been released, featuring the ten characters, plus three more added to the roster. And an expansion to the PC version, Ougon Musoukyoku CROSS, has also been released, featuring all the characters from the original and the Xbox port, plus three more characters, and three others added as updates. The game was added to Steam in December 2017 under the name Umineko: Golden Fantasia.

Summaries of each arc may be found at the When They Cry page. Please put character-related tropes on the Character Sheet.

Be wary of the terms used on the Umineko pages — "Episode/EP" (with a capital "E") refers to a Story Arc of the novel, while "episode" refers to an episode of the DEEN anime.

A fan translation patch of the games may be found here, acknowledged by Ryukishi07 himself. The patches require an original copy of the game, which may be found on the links page of the translation site.

MangaGamer released the entire series in English. Similarly to their rerelease of Higurashi: When They Cry, the entire series contains the original soundtrack, updated sprites and a new translation made in corporation with the team at Witch Hunt, the group behind the fan translation mentioned above. The main eight chapters are available for sale on MangaGamer's store and on Steam. MangaGamer also translated the PC fighter Golden Fantasia CROSS (as Umineko: Golden Fantasia) into English. It became available on Steam on December 8th, 2017. And in 2019, Umineko no Naku Koro ni Saku, a compilation of all previous content was released, with a brand new episode taking place after the answer arcs titled Last Note of the Golden Witch.

On November 1, 2018, the Umineko Gold Edition Kickstarter was announced, which if ever launched and funded will release with full English voice acting, the option to play the Steam version with the PS3 sprites, new content by Ryukishi, and a dramatized audiobook on iTunes.

A port of Saku titled Umineko no Naku Koro ni Saku ~ Symphony of Catbox and Dreams, with the voice acting and the PlayStation 3 sprites, was released for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch (with a download code for the Umineko: Golden Fantasia) in January 2021.

Warning: Just like the previous installment, the plot is full of twists and turns, so it might be best to proceed only once you have experienced the full story.

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On the fourth twilight, gouge the tropes and kill:

#-E

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The butterflies in the anime are rendered in 3D, while everything else is 2D.
• The '80s: Like Higurashi, the story is mainly set during this decade, specifically in October of 1986. While it's mostly period-accurate, there are some anachronisms, such as the characters referencing Touhou Project or Cardcaptor Sakura.
• Abusive Parents: It would be easier to list the parents who aren't abusive than the ones who are. The biggest contenders would still have to be Kinzo, Rosa, and Eva towards Ange.
• Adaptation Distillation: Just like its predecessor, the manga adaptation is generally more faithful to the original visual novel than the anime and does a better job in some areas of capturing the mood.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Beatrice's dress (in the anime) and of course the eye colors of just about every character (Battler, Jessica, George, Shannon, Lambdadelta, Virgilia, etc...)
• Adaptation Expansion: The manga of Episode 8 replaces the quiz mini-game with a game of hide-and-seek and treats us to new scenes, some of them incredibly heartwarming. More generally, the manga adds additional clues and explanations about the gameboard and the mysteries, as well as a few additional red truths. And most importantly, it confirms unambiguously that Shannon, Kanon, and Beatrice are all the same person, Sayo Yasuda.
• Adaptation-Induced Plot Hole: Several in the anime, due to either misinterpreting certain scenes in the visual novel or by trying to go for Rule of Cool:
  • The first two are in episode 5 alone.
    • In the first one, Battler shoots a bullet at the portrait, even though the gun he picked up was supposed to be unloaded.
    • In the second one, Battler sees gold butterflies (while in the VN Beatrice appears in person). Gold butterflies are supposed to indicate we are watching a fantasy scene, so the detective shouldn't see them. The only exception to this is at the end of Episode 2, where Battler had surrendered.
  • Another one is in episode 10, where Shannon's corpse is found with the stake in her forehead; while in the VN the fact that the stake is beside her corpse is an important clue that she committed suicide.
  • Yet another is how in the anime, Shannon and Kanon would appear together in front of other people, such as the cousins, in scenes that weren't fantasy. In the visual novel, the fact that Shannon and Kanon never appear together in front of the other human characters outside fantasy scenes is meant to be foreshadowing for how they're actually one and the same.
  • And of course, the entire first half of the Episode 4 Tea Party is cut, along with several important bits of information.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • Most notably the witches: We've got Lady Bernkastel, Lady Lambdadelta, and of course, Lady Beatrice.
  • The Ushiromiya family has a lot of this too: In the same family, you have names like Krauss, Maria, George, Ange and Kinzō. And then there's Battler, which isn't a normal name at all. In the Ushiromiya family's case the trope is justified since Kinzo's obsession with Western culture prompted him to give his children and grandchildren these names.
• Age-Gap Romance: George is seven years older than Shannon. Actually, he's only 4 years older than her, but he doesn't know that. And he has been interested in her since back when she was 10.
• All Just a Dream: Maria murdering Rosa in EP 4 is implied to be this.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Both Rosa and her daughter Maria suffer from this. Rosa was unable to bond with her much older siblings and was relentlessly teased by them as she was growing up. She couldn't live up to the expectations her parents set, either, leading to a lonely and hellish home life. Maria is similarly bullied at school, both for being a Kiddie Kid and for her obsession with magic and witches.
• All There in the Manual: There's a good deal of extra material explaining details and important, often hidden, plot points.
  • A number of TIPS were not shown in the game itself but released as side materials; these were generally short stories. Often they were humorous and not meant to be taken seriously ("The Stakes' Valentine's Day"), but some were plot relevant ("The Witches' Tanabata isn't sweet") and others somewhat straddled between the two ("Cornelia the new priest"). Tsubasa collects most of these short stories and presents them in a Visual Novel format.
  • And then we have Our Confession which is extremely important in that it tells you how Sayo Yasuda used bribery, trickery and threats to both commit the murders and get the adults to lead Battler towards the truth (for example Eva's talk with Battler about the culprit in EP 1.)
• Alpha Strike: This is basically what Erika orders in the final battle. "What are you standing around for?! Open the gun ports! Load concept negation explosive rounds! Don't worry about aiming, just fiiire!"
• Altar the Speed: Part of Eva's plan to have George jump ahead in the succession was to rush a marriage to Hideyoshi. In spite of that, they're quite Happily Married.
• Alternate Character Reading: Up the yin-yang in the anime's ending theme, "la divina tragedia". A few examples: "orgy" is read as "banquet", "demon" is read as "my beloved", and "tonight we'll sacrifice this fool" is read as "sacrifice sheep TO GAWD!"
• Alternate Timeline: Several of them. A notable one is shown in EP7, where there are no stories of Beatrice as a witch or a ghost who haunts the mansion, Kinzo never wrote the epitaph, and Battler does not come back to Rokkenjima—not to mention the existence of a new family member, Lion Ushiromiya.
• Always Save the Girl: George in EP4.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: As of Episode 5, Battler is the new Endless Sorcerer.
• The Anime of the Game
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Most of the magical beings can be interpreted this way.
• Anti-Escapism Aesop:
  • The "human culprit" approach treats witches as convenient imaginary enemies who are responsible for anything that goes wrong when humans want to avoid responsibilities with something they can't explain. The "magic culprit" approach shows that even with fantastical powers, you are still at the mercy of rules and superior beings. In either interpretation, whenever someone uses magic to wish their problems away, its only makes them worse.
  • Zig-zagged. Sayo Yasuda's escapism (i.e creating numerous Imaginary Friends and creating at least three different identities with completely different personalities because she hated herself so much) is pretty much the only way they made it through much of their childhood, and a repeated point is how delusions and escapism serve as coping methods for much of the cast - in some cases even helping them develop their greatest strengths. But it comes back to bite Sayo in the rear later when the things they try to escape from become too great to completely ignore, and they even suggest that they regret having used escapism at all in one of their final lines to Lion - "I pray that you live as a human, without awakening as a witch."
• Apple of Discord: Soon after the Mars magic inscription is revealed, the survivors in the room turn their suspicions on each other.
  • The family conference was pelted with a bushel of apples throughout. Access to Kinzo's wealth was one everyone eyed before they arrived. The epitaph might have been one, but no one took it seriously enough to reach for it until they received Beatrice's "carrot or stick" invitation. But if they band together and cooperate on solving the puzzle, they can find the most compelling apple of discord of all.
• Arc Number:
  • 19: Among other things, the witch is the 19th person on the island, the age of Sayo Yasuda is 19, and her personas Shannon and Kanon walk 19 steps in their duel specifically in reference to the importance of the number.
  • 07151129, which is Battler's and "Beatrice"'s birthdate (November 29th, 1984 being the day Sayo solved the epitaph and discovered who she was).
  • Quadrillion
  • The number 12 is also very present: 12 people sit at the table in the dining room, Natsuhi was infertile for 12 years after her marriage, Battler and Ange have 12 years of difference, Ange's part of the story happens 12 years later, Battler was 12 years old when he left the family due to Rudolf's remarriage, it took 12 years for Battler to regain his memories and Beatrice's game ends at midnight.
• Arc Words: Many actually.
  • "Beatrice 'exists'" (always with inverted commas)
  • "Without love, it cannot be seen." This one is notable for being both one of the major themes of the story and a huge clue on how to solve the mystery. Without "love" (aka a deep understanding of the characters, their history, their motives, and a huge helping of sympathy), it is impossible to solve the mystery, as only by understanding the relationships between the characters can you correctly deduce that Shannon and Kanon are likely the same person.
  • "Come, try and remember," often followed by "What form did you have?"
  • "On that day, what happened?"
  • Also, "Because I'm furniture." It turns out it doesn't quite mean what it seems to mean at first.
  • "Rest peacefully, my beloved witch, Beatrice."
  • "It takes two to make a universe." ^note Possibly coincidentally, the fighting game only has two-character tag team modes.
  • "Who... am I?"
• Arranged Marriage: Kasumi was forced into this after Kyrie ran off with Rudolf, which is the reason she hates both Kyrie and Ange so much. Eva also tries to set up George with someone to get Shannon away from him. Also happened to Kinzo when he was chosen as the family head. Similarly, Krauss and Natsuhi were also part of an arranged marriage.
• Artifact Alias: Shannon and Kanon's names are revealed to be Sayo and Yoshiya respectively, but the cast continues to refer to them by their '-on' names.
• Artifact Title: The Tea Parties in the visual novels. In Episode 1, they're set up to be reminiscent of the Higurashi wrap parties which were non-canon but provided hints on the overarching plot. This expectation gets subverted right away when Battler denies the existence of witches, causing Beatrice to show up and set the stage for the rest of the series. From then on, they serve as a direct continuation of the main scenario, and by later episodes, don't even have the "meta" aspect to distinguish themselves since the meta-world has already bled into the main narrative.
• Art-Style Dissonance: Like in Higurashi, the Puni Plush style of the original sound novel sure produces a strange effect when brutal scenes occur…
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Hebrew is used in several places:
  • The letters on the blood runes in the original visual novel are Hebrew, but really sloppy Hebrew. The manga writes out the actual letters, evidently. It's lampshaded in End of the Golden Witch.
  Bernkastel: That Hebrew sure is crappy.
  • The blood pentacles (runes have nothing to do with this) actually are scanned straight from a copy of the ''Key of Solomon'', and using the correct meanings to boot, so the inaccurate Hebrew is accurate occultism.
• As the Good Book Says...: Each of the blood runes has scrawled on it a Bible quote in Hebrew.
• Ascended Meme: One of the anime's episode preview gags uses Eva-Beatrice's Fan Nickname, "Evatrice".
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: From a fantasy perspective, it seems this is how you become a witch in Umineko and Higurashi, judging from Bernkastel's case. Someone who becomes a witch gains another self which ends up separating from the human self. Which are illusions or Imaginary Friends and which are actual witches (if there are any such things) is left for the readers to decide.
• Audience Monologue: Kumasawa does a few of these in the first arc to explain various issues among the residents of the Ushiromiya mansion.
• Author Appeal: Take a look at Eiserne Jungfrau, the Stakes of Purgatory, and the Chiester Sisters; Ryukishi07 seems to have a thing for Leotards of Power paired with Show Girl Skirts.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Hugely subverted in the third arc. The epitaph is solved, the title of Golden Witch is passed on in a grandiose ceremony, and the murders can stop now, right? Like the letter said, right? Wait, why's Eva-Beatrice pointing her staff at Rosa like that...? And then there was cake.
• Awful Truth
  • Sayo does not react well to learning that she's the result of Kinzo raping his own daughter, nor that her sexual organs are too badly damaged to ever start a family.
  • In Episode 7, Ange is Forced to Watch a scenario where her parents kill most of the family to hog the gold, and Kyrie admits that Ange was nothing more to her than a tool to keep Rudolf in check. Bernkastel then confirms in red that this isn’t just a game, but what actually happened. In Episode 8, Bernkastel ropes Ange into a Face–Heel Turn so she can learn the truth about Rokkenjima that her brother keeps trying to hide from her... only to learn that it's exactly what she saw in Episode 7.
• The Baby Trap: Kyrie claims Asumu pulled one to steal Rudolf out from under her. Later on it turns out that Asumu didn't switch the babies; Rudolf did.
• Back for the Finale: Nearly every character comes back in the 8th arc.
• Backwards-Firing Gun: Battler suggests this to explain one crime.
• Badass Adorable: Groups of cute young girls will mess you up: the Stakes, the Chiester Sisters, etc.
• Badass Family: The Ushiromiyas, hands down.
• Badass Normal: Most of the Ushiromiya family gets a Badass Normal moment or two.
  • Special mention must go to Kyrie, who's usually the first to start firing off shotgun shells or beating demons and whatnot with chairs while everybody else is still panicking.
  • EP4, where practically everyone who hasn't been killed in the first twilight gets an awesome moment, which are all thoroughly underscored with the revelation that everything was going according to the witches' plans.
  • It's cranked up even more in EP8.
• Bad Future: The world that stems from the events in EP3 is this, in which Eva was the only survivor of the Rokkenjima incident and was left to look after Ange, her only other surviving relative. Unfortunately, over the years they grew to resent one another. By the end of the series, it's clear that this future is in fact what actually happened in reality, with no way to change the events prior to it so that it can turn out differently.
• Bastard Bastard: Discussed by several characters in the early arcs, who theorize that an illegitimate child of Kinzō and Beatrice has come to the island to take revenge and/or claim back the gold. They were right about the illegitimate child, but not about their motive.
• Bat Deduction: Solving the epitaph requires a reasoning that borders on this trope. The key to the Golden Land refers to a six-character word ; "My beloved hometown" is Taiwan ; "The sweetfish river" is a railway ; "The shore that the two will tell you of" refers to a station named Kirigan (which contains twice the "mouth" radical and the character for "shore") ; in Chinese, Kirigan is Qilian (this is the "key") ; then you must understand that in the tenth twilight, "the capital of gold", written 黄金の卿, can be written 黄金の京 ; the 京 character can be read as "kei", which means "ten quadrillion" ; so the first twilight begins at one tenth of that, "one quadrillion" ; then you must remember that the word "quadrillion" is written on the chapel's pediment, and that's where you must remove the six letters of "Qilian" ("sacrifice the six chosen by the key") ; after that you just have to follow the rest. Additionally, "Qilian" is an anachronistic Hanyu Pinyin romanization of the station's name: in the 80s when the visual novel was set, the station's name would have been romanized in Tongyong Pinyin as "Chili An", as was customary in Taiwan during that era. Indeed, the station was only renamed in English to "Qilian" in 2003. Easy, isn't it?
• Batman Gambit: Episode 3: Beatrice coming out on top from her duel with Virgilia hinged on Virgilia healing Beatrice before realizing she was fatally wounded herself. Of course, they were actually working together the whole time, so not really.
• Beat Still, My Heart:
  • EP3 features Eva-Beatrice trying to destroy Beatrice's heart, but failing miserably, with Beatrice's heart refusing to stop beating, because it would leave Kanon and Jessica at Eva-Beatrice's mercy.
  • The end of EP4 features what is probably one of the most touching moments ever created by this trope.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: "The Witches' Tanabata" plays with this: Beatrice pulls the thread on Maria's simple wish, gradually getting her to imagine her ideal world in greater and greater detail. Bernkastel, meanwhile, plays this terribly, horribly straight.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: What Battler is trying to do. All the weapons he has to defend the Muggle possibility are supplied to him by the beings he is trying to deny. This is because Beatrice actually wants him to figure out the truth.
• Betty and Veronica: A very complex example. Sayo Yasuda is the Archie, the gentlemanly Second Love George is the Betty, the rebellious and perverted, longtime missing First Love Battler is the Veronica, and the free-spirited, longtime friend Jessica is the Third-Option Love Interest. The problem is that none of Sayo's love interests know about her issues, let alone the fact that they all love the same person. Sayo wanted to accept George's marriage proposal, but Battler's sudden return, as well as Sayo's fear of how anyone would react to the truth about her origins and her body caused the entire tragedy.
• Big Bad: Beatrice the Golden Witch AKA Sayo Yasuda for the first four arcs. In the fifth arc she is usurped by Bernkastel and Lambdadelta, and then Lambdadelta pulls a Heel–Face Turn in the final episode, leaving Bernkastel as the Final Boss. Because of this, Bernkastel is now a Rogue Protagonist and Fallen Hero, since she was the amalgamation of all the dead Rika Furudes from Higurashi, while Lambdadelta was the one who granted Miyo Takano’s wish to become a god.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Ange's entrance. She saves Battler just as he's about to sign that witches do exist.
  • Also, in EP6, Beatrice crashing the wedding.
  • EP5 has all of Beatrice's Furniture come in to counter Erika's argument that Natsuhi is the culprit. While doing so, they beat the everloving shit out of her. In order: Gaap summons a hole at Erika's feet and has it open on the ceiling. Virgilia summons her "Smothered Mate" lance to skewer her. And the Stakes of Purgatory attack her all at once, so by the end she has a giant lance and 7 small stakes going through her.
  • EP6 also has Kanon breaking out of the closed room Erika created to save Battler from his closed room by switching places with him.
  • Will's entrance in Episode 7 shows him coming to the rescue of an innocent maid who's being interrogated by his own agency. He does it again for Lion at the end of Episode 7.
  • EP8 has multiple, surprisingly many pulled off by the antagonists! (and some morally dubious members of the case) Erika saves little Ange from being eaten by goats and Lambda sets off a multi-colored words battle the likes of which have never been seen in game against Featherine. The main cast gets their share too fighting off hoards of goats.
• Big Fancy House: The Ushiromiya mansion, complete with servants and a secondary guest house, in case the main mansion wasn't big enough.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family:
  • The Ushiromiya family, of course. The parents in particular (with the notable exception of Hideyoshi) all seem to be screwed up in some way or another.
  • The Sumadera family also qualifies from what we hear of them, and the fact that they're a Yakuza family probably doesn't help.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: The big love duel between Shannon and Kanon in EP6 is a fantasy metaphor for Sayo Yasuda's conflicting feelings. Sayo has decided to marry George who loves her as Shannon, but she also feels some attraction towards Jessica who loves her as Kanon. To make it all more complicated, George and Jessica have no idea that they love the same person. When adding Sayo's long-suppressed love for Battler into the mix, it becomes a bisexual love square and the results are catastrophic for everyone involved.
• Bittersweet Ending: The author intentionally gave you two ways to see this: either bittersweet or as a Downer Ending. Which one really depends on whether you take the mystery or fantasy explanations for what happened. Even with the fantasy stuff, though, it's pretty difficult to say it ends any better than bittersweetly. By the end, almost everyone is still dead. Those who survived (Eva and Ange) still lived pretty miserable lives, although the ending gives Ange a chance to move on. You find out that Battler also survived and recovered most of his memories, albeit with a dissociated identity, traumatized, and crippled. It turns out that the series is about him coming to terms with his past, so in that way, as well as looking at the new life Ange made for herself, the story ends happily.
  • The manga goes with the "Magic" timeline ending with the twist that Ange does attempt suicide, but survives and goes on to become a famous author, but as in the VN, her physical condition is weakened considerably due to battling cancer. However, Ange and Battler finally reunite.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: While the English scanlation of the manga has occasional mistakes, the first chapter of Episode 8 manages the feat of getting a good 80% of the dialogues wrong or in the wrong place. In the penultimate page alone, a crucial piece of information (that Shannon and Kanon can only appear simultaneously in front of people who "recognize" them) and a red truth are replaced by completely irrelevant lines. This may be a case of improvised translation. But even by improvising, missing a red truth that covers half the page is quite unexplainable.
• Blood from the Mouth:
  • In episode 14 of the anime, Beatrice doesn't so much cough up blood as she foams red from the mouth.
  • Also used during episode 26, as Battler uses the Blue Truth and Beatrice gets impaled, upon which she starts vomiting blood rather profusely.
  • Quite possibly this image◊ as well. Looks a bit like the bottom row of teeth in someone's mouth bleeding profusely.
• Bloody Horror:
  • There are multiple instances of what appear to be ritualistic "magic circles" being drawn in blood. And in EP3 of the visual novel the numbers 07151129 are written in what looks like blood over the door George is found dead in. This serves as a hint for later episodes in the "chiru arcs".
  • There's multiple cases of murders that involve bashing people's faces to so that they're so bloody, that it's impossible to recognize who it is.
  • The disembowling in Higurashi makes an encore in Umineko, on the first twilight (murder) of the second arc leaving blood and guts all around the crime scene. Played for horror again since they were sitting at a party table when they were found
  • In EP6 of the visual novel it's revealed that Erika decapitated the heads of people who were playing dead, and stuffed them in garbage bags so she could trap Battler (who was the Game Master at the time) in a logic error by making it so nobody could replace the chain lock if he left the room he had "died" in.
• Boarding School of Horrors: St. Lucia Academy. The school itself isn't that horrible; the girls in it, however...
• Bolivian Army Ending: EPs 2 and 7.
• Book Ends:
  • In the sound novel, the OP for EP 1 plays in the credits of the Trick Ending in EP 8.
  • In Episode 8 itself, early in the "game", Beatrice does a sleight of hand in front of little Ange to make a candy appear. Near the end, she does the same sleight of hand, and you have to choose whether this is a trick (leading to the "Trick Ending") or genuine magic (leading to the "Magic Ending"). Of course by this point, the player knows neither answer is right or wrong.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: In the first half of the series Bernkastel occasionally seems to do this, though whether she's addressing the reader or Battler is unclear.
• Break the Cutie: What Beatrice does to Shannon in EP2. However, with how the game later implies heavily that Beatrice and Shannon are actually one and the same, it's likely a metaphor for Sayo Yasuda's self-deprecation.
• Break the Haughty: Bernkastel/Erika's whole scheme in End of the Golden Witch leads to this against Beatrice.
  • Lucifer's vice and vulnerability is pride, so she takes a hit to the ego much harder. She gets no consolation.
• The Butler Did It: Shannon and Kanon are usually suspects for many murders. Doubly Subverted throughout the series as many incidents occur which completely dispel the audience's belief that either are involved, but Shannon and Kanon are later revealed to be the same person and heavily involved in the murders. Genji, the head servant is also one of the key accomplices in the murders being in the know of the killings and helping in them, even doing some of killing himself in Episode 3
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: If you see a gold butterfly, you're boned.
• The Can Kicked Him: In the first arc, Hideyoshi's corpse is found in the shower with the water still running.
• Cassandra Truth: Maria keeps trying to warn everyone about Beatrice, but no one believes her.
• Cast of Snowflakes: Ryūkishi's drawing skills may be limited, but he admittedly gave all the characters unique designs and faces (outside of the Seven Sisters and Generation Xerox characters).
• Cat Girl:
  • In Umineko: Our Confessions, Beatrice imagines the new demon Flauros to be one, thinking that she should be portrayed as a cute girl.
  • Bernkastel is a borderline example, since she only has a cat's tail, but she's still strongly associated with cats and from a mundane perspective, is one.
• Catchphrase:
  • Battler's: Dame da, zenzen dame da ze! "It's useless, it's all useless!" Ange also uses it on occasion (Dame ne, zenzen dame da wa).
  • Both Kyrie's and Battler's: Chesuban wo hikkurikaesu. "Turn the chessboard around."
  • Erika Furudo: X ga sonzaisuru dake de, Furudo Erika ha, kono teido no suiri ga kanō desu. Ikaga deshō ka, minasamagata? "Simply by X, this level of reasoning is possible for Furudo Erika. What do you think, everyone?". And also, "<Good!>"
  • Eva-Beatrice's: Heso kande shinjaeba~? "Why don't you just give up and die?!" (literally "why don't you bite your navel and die?!")
  • Gaap's: Ikemen ni kagiru! "But only if he's hot!"
  • Maria's: Uu~ Beatoriche ha iru. "Uu- Beatrice exists."
  • Ange's: <See you again, have a nice day.>
  • Will's: Rikaishiyō to suruna. Zutsū ni naraa. "Don't think too hard about it. You'll get a headache."
  • Clair's: Ware koso ha ware nishite warera nari. "Oh, I am one yet many." (literally "I am I, and yet I am we")
• Cats Are Mean: Ayep. That's an understatement.
• The Chain of Harm: Kinzo was treated as nothing more than a puppet by the heads of the Ushiromiya family, being forced into an Arranged Marriage with a woman he didn't love. He became rather abusive towards his children, which in turn would lead his children to abuse each other, with his youngest daughter Rosa being bullied worst of all. In the present day, this has led Rosa to become an abusive parent herself towards her own daughter Maria.
• Character Shilling: Played for dark humor in the fifth and sixth chapters. The narration itself is clearly bent by Bernkastel and Lambdadelta so that the story will constantly gush about Erika Furudo, as do the characters to a slightly lesser extent. However, she is clearly a complete bitch.
• Chekhov's Gun: Shannon mentioning an embarrassing line Battler said to her in EP3 is one. Beatrice mentioning the Knox's Decalogue in Episode 2 is another.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Ange and Gaap are mentioned in the first novel (Ange is specifically stated to be bedridden with flu and can't join the...festivities; Maria mentions Gaap's powers as one way for Beatrice to smuggle Kinzo out of his room without breaking the closed circle).
  • The anime's Image Songs also have Maria mention Sakutaro once near the end of her song; when the single was released, the anime was still midway into its third arc, when Sakutaro only appears in the fourth, sixth and eight.
  • Willard H. Wright was first mentioned off-handedly a TIPS from Episode 5, as the head of the SSVD, "Wizard-Hunting Wright".
• Chess Motifs: Used extensively in the series, mainly with the game itself being likened to a chess game.
• Chess with Death: This series extends the metaphor from Higurashi into a motif.
  • For Kinzo, it's a roulette with death, since it relies on surviving the random selection of sacrifices. For everyone else it relies on first accepting the game, and then winning it, but Kinzo doesn't have much faith in or concern for that happening.
  • A literal example is in EP3, where Kinzo loses a chess match with Beatrice before the first twilight. It's implied that it was his final opportunity to evade selection for sacrifice.
• The Chessmaster: The repeated invocation of a chess board by, oh, everyone regarding this plot. The only ones who seem capable of applying for the trope, though, are the witches. Pretty much all of them.
  • As of EP5, Battler becomes the Endless Sorcerer, with approval by Lambdadelta. This means that he is now the game master, like Beatrice in the previous episodes, and with his experience he is quite capable of weaving complex stories and manipulate his opponents.
• Childhood Marriage Promise: EP7 reveals that one took place between Battler and Shannon. It snowballed into a horrible tragedy.
• Children Raise You: Downplayed. In Maria's diary which tells the family events of her and Rosa before the tragedy of Rokkenjima, during Episode 4, Maria described herself practically as the one who takes care of the house, from general cleaning to cooking and even up to the expenses at the supermarket included, due to the constant absences of her mother and motivated by Sakutaro. However, in Rosa's opinion, Maria is actually quite messy and has not yet learned to fold her clothes. It is possible that neither of the two of them is necessarily right but that the truth lies somewhere in between.
• The Clan: The Ushiromiya family
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Beatrice's magic, as evidenced in the first tea party.
• Cliché Storm: invoked Episode 4's legendary fight between Krauss and a goatman has the antagonists invoke Nothing Can Stop Us Now!, Retirony, and the typical Villain Ball move of 'promises are made to be broken' multiple times in quick succession, finishing it off with some Gretzky Has the Ball boxing gibberish. It's Lampshaded the whole way through.
• Closed Circle: Due to a typhoon that prevents anyone from leaving the island until it dies down.
• Clothing Damage: Lucifer in the anime. Nice big ole straight line, right across the chest. Said chest jiggles heavily.
• The Commandments: A variation of Knox's Decalogue — see the trope page for the complete list.
• Compressed Adaptation: The anime is a victim of this, but special mention goes to the fourth arc, which entirely cuts out the action sequence when Kanon and Shannon's group escapes from the underground prison as well as the whole scene where Battler wanders around the empty mansion, examining everyone's corpses (meaning that the anime doesn't even show you that Maria was killed or that Kanon's corpse can't be found). This was the trade-off for what many saw as too much time given to the 1998 and metaworld sequences.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In the fighting game. The AI gets to forgo the directional sequence before a special move, allowing scenarios like AI!Battler invoking the Metaworld and blowing you to hell with three Meta supers in a row, which would be impossible for a human to fit in if you factor in the movements.
• Contrived Coincidence: As stated on the character sheet, Erika is a detective prodigy who just happens to shipwreck on an island with a soon-to-be murder mystery. Subverted in that it is contrived not by the author, but by Bernkastel, who is in charge of the narrative arc at the time.
• Cooldown Hug: Ange toward Battler in the fourth arc. Unfortunately, its double purpose is to keep him from seeing her as she's ripped apart for having said her name as Bernkastel's piece.
• Cosmic Chess Game
• Creepy Cathedral: Kinzo had a special chapel built near the mansion, where the first twilight of the second arc takes place. Happy Halloween for Maria indeed.
• Creepy Child: Maria has these moments from time to time, kihihihihihihi!. It was turned up to eleven in the anime, and even more in the PS3 version. See for yourself.◊ However, her creepy behaviour is mostly due to her having No Social Skills, and in EP7 it's even implied that she may be invoking this to seem more knowledgeable about the occult.
• Creepy Twins: Furfur and Zepar.
• Crossover: The Umineko No Naku Koro Ni X manga is a rather comical and energetic crossover with Higurashi, plopping the Ushiromiya manor within spitting distance of Hinamizawa. So, if you ever want to see Rena mowing their lawn, Rudolf hanging out with the Stakes in Angel Mort, or Battler perplexed by the whole deal, this is it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The first twilight of Episode 2. The bodies of Krauss, Natsuhi, Eva, Hideyoshi, Rudolf, and Kyrie are found locked inside the chapel with bloody candies spewing out of their bellies. Their internal organs are found lying on the ground next to the bodies, apparently having been forced out by the surge of candy.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • In Episode 5, Bernkastel introduces Canon Sue and new furniture to kill Beatrice, further her own plans, and royally screw with the status quo. Eventually, Battler and Beato's furniture decide that they are having none of this. Epic smackdown ensues.
  • An even bigger one in Episode 8: Lambdadelta challenges Featherine to a battle. Featherine doesn't even bother explaining HOW she wins, she just decrees it so, then promises to go back and write an impressive fight-scene later.
• Curtain Camouflage: Jessica in Banquet.
• Cuteness Proximity: The Stakes. Sakutarō. Result: glompage and a lot of Squee.
• Cycle of Hatred: Too many to mention, to the point where there's even a character who exists as an incarnation of it.
• Darkest Hour: Episode 5. Battler is impaled on a sword, Piece!Beatrice is dead, Bernkastel and Erika have taken over the gameboard and intend to thoroughly erase everything related to Beatrice, and Natsuhi is falsely framed as a despicable murderer and a whore who slept with the man she calls Father, without anyone managing to prove her innocence. Made all the more frightening by the fact that by that point you expect a twist to happen in the Tea Party. It doesn't. Then, to nail a bit more, the hidden Tea Party opens with the real Beatrice's death. And then, finally, Battler comes back and takes a level in badass.
• Dark Fantasy: Although it's more like "Anti-Mystery Versus Anti-Dark Fantasy".
• Dark Reprise: goldenslaughterer is already a pretty dark BGM to begin with, since it plays during the more cruel deaths, but it gets a darker and more intense remix as the_executioner in EP7, which plays during the fight between Will and Bernkastel.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: Episode 7 revolves around a new character named Lion discovering their alternate self Beatrice, who dies tragically in every single timeline other than their own.
• Deadly Euphemism: Let's open the door to the Golden Land! i.e. Let's blow up the island and everyone on it!
• Deadly Rotary Fan: The TIP Jessica and the Killer Electric Fan features one.
• Death by Materialism: Kinzo doesn't seem to care about any of his children at least partly because he doesn't like them fighting over his inheritance.
• Death Is Cheap: Because of the "Groundhog Day" Loop, the fact that furniture apparently can be recreated without much difficulty, even if their very existence has been denied, and the powers of any with with the Endless title to kill and resurrect someone infinitely. However, this is ultimately subverted: everyone is revived as pieces at the beginning of each new game, but in the real world, the humans who were on Rokkenjima are really Deader than Dead and nothing can change it.
• Death's Hourglass: The clock that appears in the corner of the screen, of the spur-to-action variety.
• Deconstruction:
  • Blatantly one of the mystery genre. Most of the people involved in the investigation of murders are entirely there for their own selfish motives of an ego boost rather than attempting to help the victim or catch the perpetrator, and the ones that are there to help have to fight with the egotistical people in order to find the truth as they are unwilling to accept any theory that isn't their own. In addition, the way that murder mysteries are treated as puzzles to overcome and figure out rather than tragic acts of violence that destroy lives is commented on as being highly dehumanizing. The deal with the Forgeries and the Rokkenjima incident in general is meant to be a commentary on the endless search for a definitive answer and how horrible it is to drudge up the names of the dead in search of a good story. Tohya/Featherine's press conference explicitly spells this out for the audience and the reader.
  • If you take an anti-fantasy stance, it can also be seen as one of the fantasy genre, since many of the fantastic elements are implied to be a product of a human character's imagination which is in turn fueled by their loneliness.
• Deconstructor Fleet: If there is a trope, you can bet that Umineko will either subvert it or play it straight with the most disturbing consequences possible. It also goes out of its way to subvert many tropes that were played straight in Higurashi.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Rather common in the sound novels.
  • Some of the background track names can also be this. For example, "liberatedliberater" and "soul of soul".
• Depending on the Author: In-universe example. There are several noticable differences between the writings of Sayo Yasuda (Ep 1-2) and Tohya/Battler (Ep 3-6). For example, Sayo was filled with self-loathing and therefore wrote Beatrice as a cruel villain. On the other hand Battler, who loved Beatrice/Sayo, wrote her in a more gentle light. Also Sayo never assumed that Battler remembered his relationship with Shannon as kids and therefore Battler never showed any interest in Shannon in Ep 1-2 (to the point where he is more worried about Kanon's honor than Shannon's death). But, Battler did love Shannon and pointed out early in Ep 3 that she was his first love. In Rokkenjima Prime, Battler was even jealous of George and Shannon being together and inwardly lamented not coming back for Shannon earlier.
• Deus ex Machina: The gold truth. It appears rather conveniently.
• Did You Actually Believe...?: End of the 3rd arc when Battler is about to lose, again. Beato pulls this off and brags about how her "tsundere" technique worked, and that Battler's a sucker for it. On the other hand, later it's found out that she really is that nice, and the mean part was just an act.
• Discussed Trope: When Jessica denies interest in Kanon, Shannon implies she's acting as a term she recently learned: "tsundora".

  Shannon: Sounds like it'll become popular in a few decades, does it?

• Distant Finale: Episode 8's Hidden Tea Party. Decades later, Ange becomes a famous author under the alias "Yukari Kotobuki". Having become famous, she attracts the attention of Tohya Hachijo, who turns out to be two people, one of which was Battler, who lost his memories and regained them. Ange and Tohya meet, but Tohya couldn't associate himself with his identity as "Battler". In the end, Ange invites Ikuko and Tohya to the reopening of the Fukuin House to let Tohya come to terms with his past.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: In EP 6, Erika's forced wedding with Battler has her forcibly putting a ring on his finger, with dialogue between the two sounding more like she's raping him.
• Doing In the Wizard:
  • A plot point. If Battler can Do In The Wizard, he wins his and Beatrice's game. Beatrice would, presumably, disappear. While it's never outright stated, the second half of the series does drop a lot of hints that witches and other magical beings may not actually be real in the first place.
  • This also seems to be the purpose of "Our Confession".
  • The Episode 8 manga as a whole seems to take the approach of brutally ripping apart the fantasy by revealing the answers that the VN had kept implicit. This is diversely appreciated by fans, to say the least.
• Doorstopper:
  • The entire novel (all eight episodes) clocks at around 6 MB as a text file. Compare War and Peace, which is around 3 MB. Even more impressive knowing that Ryūkishi07 wrote in less than 4 years. And that's not even counting Land of the Golden Witch, the original Episode 3 that was scrapped.
  • As for the manga, the first English volume—the first half of the manga adaptation of EP 1—is 512 pages long. The second half is supposed to be 624 pages long. That's because the English edition regroups 2 volumes in 1.
  • The manga as a whole spans 50 volumes, some of them going over 300 pages. And this is a monthly publication, which means that if we add all the Episodes, the manga has gotten the equivalent of a 20-year run.
• Double Entendre:
  • The entire wedding scene in EP6, particularly when Erika tries to forcibly put a too small wedding ring on Battler's finger after lubing the ring and his finger up with saliva and insists that she will shove it into "the deepest part."
  • And in case you didn't get the subtext, the manga has Erika sweating and panting heavily during the whole scene.
  • Or Asmodeus and Satan's...er, choice words when confronting Kanon. "Are you scared? How cute!" "Where do you want it? Where do you want me to pierce you?" "...piercing it feels so good," "Come on, let me have another taste. Pleasure me all you can with that warm chest of yours!"
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Averted with the incident with Beato's initial victory and what then happened to Battler.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted when Erika is about to seal Battler's will. Threatening to magically force someone into eternal servitude, in which the servant shall be "humiliated and defiled" and his body "used" over and over to reminder their master of her victory (and in an earlier scene mentioning putting a mirror in the room so he is forced to watch it) for all of eternity, is treated every bit as dramatically as it should be, no matter the genders.
• Driving Question: The question that drives the first half of the series is who killed everyone on the island. The question that drives the second half of the series is who Beatrice is. More generally, the question of the whole series is not only "what happened on Rokkenjima?" but also "why did it happen?" In the VN, the author makes a point of largely letting the reader reach the answers themselves.
• Drone of Dread: Several tunes use this, but most notably Stupefaction.
• Drunk with Power:
  • Leading to a rampage of perversion in this spoilery sidestory (which takes place after Episode 5), though like many other TIPs it's Played for Laughs.
  • Apparently Sayo's motivation for becoming Beatrice, specifically, the first taste of magic by being possessed by Gaap.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Erika's modus operandi.
• Duel to the Death: In EP1, Between Natsuhi and Beatrice. In EP3, Between Rudolf and Belphegor. In EP6, One between Kanon and Shannon and another one between Beatrice/Battler and Erika
• Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend:
  • In Episode 5, Bern is allowed several liberties, such as the creation of Erika as an incredibly overpowered Piece, several free Red Truths, and even the acceptance of Natsuhi being the culprit even though it's not true, thanks in part to being Lambda's girlfriend.
  • In Episode 6, after mentally trapping Battler in a logic error, Erika forces his near-catatonic body into marriage so she can take away his position as Game Master.
• Dying Declaration of Hate: Eva declares her hatred of her niece Ange a few minutes before she dies. Ange hardly seems surprised and retorts that it's mutual. EP 7 and EP 8 later indicate that Eva was lying.
• Earn Your Fun: Several characters state multiple times that the answers won't be given to those who don't try to search for them. Thus most of the tricks for the murders are left for the readers to solve themselves, whith Will just giving vague and cryptic answers for the first 4 games in Episode 7. But not for the 5th game.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Or Earn Your Bittersweet Ending, as it were. To say that Ange had to work for that little sliver of happiness would be an understatement. Unfortunately, the rest of her family isn't so lucky.
• Easily Forgiven: Genre Savvy Beatrice actively tries to cultivate this and then lampshades it in the third arc. In the fifth arc, it's revealed that even that was an act, and Beatrice was really a Stealth Mentor.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Bernkastel's dress is the most obvious example of this, but nearly all of the characters' outfits have some elements of this style to them; Ryukishi seems to have taken a lot of inspiration for outfits from the Gothic Lolita Bible, a long-running Lolita fashion magazine.
• The Ending Changes Everything:
  • Some Episodes end on notes that practically require re-reading the entire series to adjust to the new revelations.
  • So does the ending of the series. You'll never look at it the same way again.
• Enemy Without: Bernkastel to Rika Furude. To summarize, she's representative of all the Rikas who died in June 1983, released from Rika's subconsciousness after surviving.
• Epiphanic Prison: The meta-world, at least in theory.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Repeatedly subverted. Whenever such a moment occurs, Battler's or Erika's deductions are often partially or completely off. It can be assumed that this is to leave it up to the viewer to solve the mystery instead of spoiling anything.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The third arc has Beatrice trying to impress this on Eva-Beatrice. It fails, horribly.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Happens twice to Ange in Episode 8, the first time when she learns the truth that everyone except Eva died on Rokkenjima and nobody is coming back. The second time is a subversion as it's the villains who announce that to Ange and Battler, after the destruction of the Golden Land.
• "Everyone Comes Back" Fantasy Party Ending: EP8. It could've been a subversion if it weren't Spoiled by the Format.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Almost every single character is a suspect for one murder or another.
• Everyone Is Related: Because it takes place at a family conference.
• Evil Phone:
  • Hardly ever works; the one time it does during the first arc is when it starts ringing while everyone's holed up in Kinzo's room. Natsuhi picks it up and hears...a little girl singing.
  • In EP5, Every single time the phone rings, it's for Natsuhi, and a man claiming to be her son from 19 years ago gives her strange orders and taunts her mercilessly.
• Evolving Credits: The witch portrait changes each arc (default-Beatrice, then Zettai Ryouiki-Beatrice, then Eva-Beatrice); the fourth arc simply shows all three portraits in reverse order. Starting in the third arc they also added 15 new characters to the opening and changed the positioning of four others to reflect their relationship. By the fifth arc, Erika now has a portrait in the opening, and by the seventh, all of the previous portraits plus Battler's and Wright and Lion's are seen.
• Exact Words: Many, many examples. Usually involving the Red Truth. Here's one example from Episode 5: "The direct cause of death is unknown, but her neck was sliced open by a sharp blade. The wound was deep enough that anyone could easily confirm her death with absolute certainty." If Erika actually checked the body, she would have confirmed with "absolute certainty" that they were not dead at all.
• Expy:
  • Battler◊ and Beatrice◊ bear more than a passing resemblance to Adell◊ and Rozalin◊ of Disgaea 2.
  • Bernkastel◊ and Rika◊, though this is intentional, given Bernkastel is all the incarnations of Rika Furude who never made it past June of 1983.
• Extra Digits: Kinzo has six toes which is used to identify his corpse. This is a trait shared by his child, Sayo Yasuda. The scar left behind from an operation to remove her sixth toe is what confirms to Kinzo the truth of her identity and their relationship.

F-K

• Faceless Goons:
  • The goat-headed butlers may have faces, but they're all alike, and may just be wearing goat masks.
  • Played in multiple episodes where it is shown that the goat heads are actually wearing "masks." EP2 shows Bern taking off a goat head; EP4 had Goat-kun which, as mentioned above, reflects on his life; and EP6 has the entire Ushiromiya family taking off goat heads during Beato and Battler's wedding.
• Failed a Spot Check: One or two of the riddles, most notably the Kanon-in-the-closet one from EP6 seriously relies on this (It's not that there's no body in the closet — it's that the body is now inhabited by Shannon or Beatrice rather than Kanon).
• The Fair Folk: While they're called "witches" and have all the traditional trappings, their existence, playing with reality and fiction and following seemingly nonsensical rules, has many similarities.
• Fair-Play Whodunnit: This work is somewhat bipolar towards this trope. The very first trailer started with the words "No Knox. No Dine. No Fair". Then it begins with a fairly normal mystery plot which flies out of the window as witches and other magical beings keep appearing. But upon rereading earlier episodes it becomes obvious that all revelations were hinted at.
  • In Episode 5 a new character is introduced whose name is Ronald A. Knox backwards, who gives the possibility that the Knox rules are true in the game, scolds the reader for getting distracted from the mystery by the fantasy elements and outright states that the author wants the reader to solve it on their own. Beatrice herself actually states that the novels follow the Knox decalogue as early as EP2 when she and Battler are arguing over hidden doors; most people don't notice this the first time around.
  • Episode 7 follows Episode 5's trend and introduces an incarnation of Willard H. Wright (the real name of S.S. Van Dine), who shows up to 'bury' Beatrice and reveal her heart. The ultimate answer is that, while the story is far from a traditional Fair-Play Whodunnit, it still is solvable with use of foreshadowing and reasoning.
  • The anime drops this entirely, in favor of best visual presentation probably. The first arc doesn't even provide enough evidence to solve it as a mystery, and later arcs are reboots in which circumstances change, previous pasts are revealed in ways that couldn't be known to most of the characters, and even characters differ without demonstrating development.
  • This certainly flings feces at Van Dine's 2nd: 2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself. Even the pre-release trailer promised "No Fair", then a revised Knox's Decalogue is presented as the rules of the game, but not until deep into the game.
• Faking the Dead: Several murders are only possible by the use of this trick. It's then horribly subverted in Episode 6 where everyone was faking their deaths to play a prank on Erika… after which she proceeds to decapitate all of them to make sure there are dead, thus preventing anyone saving Battler and trapping him into a logic error.
• Fanservice:
  • The game has the Stakes, the anime has...pretty much every other female.
  • The Alliance Manga has a not-so-surprising amount of it considering half of it is centered on Ange and the Seven Sisters, plus the Chiester Sisters. With Ange, the authors seem to go out of their way to always be just an inch away from the panty shot.
• Fantastic Fragility: Beatrice explains that, while she could very easily use her magic in ways that leave her utterly invulnerable, it is much more effective to leave the Ushiromiya family a chance (however slim) of successfully defeating her. To illustrate the reasons for this, a comparison is drawn between magic and gambling — the greater the "risk", the greater the "reward", so a sure chance of victory leaves nothing to gain. However, it's entirely possible that this isn't meant literally; Bernkastel claims that boredom is the only way to kill a witch, and it's very possible that the "no risk, no reward" paradigm is entirely psychological, as if they leave themselves no chance of losing a game, it is no challenge, and therefore "boring". But given that Beatrice isn't even trying to win in the first place, it's also entirely possible that none of this is relevant, or even true, especially after more mundane explanations for anything magical are revealed in the second half of the series.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The Ushiromiya crest is a one-winged eagle, so it's only to be expected. Ange has a vertical assymmetry, with a fully covering top that has very long sleeves, yet an extremely short skirt.
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Thanks to Endless magic, people can be killed over and over again in new and interesting ways. This pales in comparison to the closed room Battler gets trapped in in EP6.
  • In that same episode, it's shown even Lambdadelta is scared by the hell of being trapped in a logic error. "Hey....are you guys...really.....real?" Asking if the people she's talking to are there, and not just delusions of a mind that went insane from being trapped in a logic error.
• Faustian Rebellion: Battler is trying to prove that witches and magic don't exist, while at the same time arguing with them and watching the period of time played out over and over. It's a miracle he doesn't just disappear in a Puff of Logic. Battler himself notes the irony.
• Fighting a Shadow: Even if Beatrice (and Battler, for that matter) die on the chessboard, since their souls actually exist in the meta-world, they're fine to play another round.
• First-Episode Twist: While most of the plot of the series is driven first by Battler's battle against Beatrice, and later by the meddling of miscellaneous witches, the first part is simply a murder mystery with no clearly fantastic elements until the very end. As a result, it's hard to accurately describe the premise of the series without spoiling the ending of the first part.
• Flanderization: In-universe, the Witch Hunt has sensationalized the Rokkenjima Massacre with the worst characterizations of the Ushiromiya family. Even the forgeries made by legitimate Game Masters can do this; though a piece can't be forced to act against their nature, they can be controlled to exaggerate that nature, or juxtapose it in context.
• Flat-Earth Atheist/Nay-Theist: Battler can be interpreted as being either of these at the beginning of the story, what with all the witches running around. However, as the story progresses, Battler's arguments and reasoning change as well, as he realizes that he doesn't need to disprove witches, just that witches commited the murders and mysteries. By EP6, he finds out the solution of the games and switches sides, becoming the Endless Sorcerer, and allies with Beatrice. Let's just say it's complicated and leave it at that.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: The epitaph in Japanese is almost entirely written in bungo, a form of written Japanese that stopped being used in the middle of the Meiji era, as it had become completely disconnected with how people actually spoke. It serves to give the epitaph a majestic and mystical flavor. Kinzō himself happens to speak in Antiquated Linguistics.
• Forced Transformation: In EP3, Eva-Beatrice turns Rosa into one of the golden butterflies, which promptly gets blown into a spiderweb.
• Forced to Watch: In Episode 6 after deciding to forcibly marry Battler Erika states her plan to put a mirror in their room and hang Beatrice from a cage on the ceiling so that both Battler and Beatrice will be forced to watch Battler being raped by Erika.
• Foregone Conclusion: No matter what the characters may try or what magical Power Ups they get in a given arc, they will end up killed anyway. The point of the series is to understand why everyone is killed.
• Forensic Drama: Subverted; Erika improvises a mobile crime lab out of Kinzo's alchemical equipment and supplies, but the details and results are discarded in a couple of nondescript sentences.
• Foreshadowing: This being a murder mystery, there's bound to be loads of them. And not just relating to the murder mystery.
  • One plot related one, having nothing to do with the mystery aspect, occurs in EP 4 when Battler says that he'll put Beato's name on the Death Sheet in the place of his true love (it was part of a gamble where he either had to kill himself, his love, or his family). In EP 6, they marry.
  • Beatrice actually states the story is supposed to follow the Knox rules in EP2, although it comes off as pretty offhand.
  • The first scene of the novels (the airport scene) has gems such as "George has absolutely none of these love stories" and "How is Ange-chan?"
  • And on the talk of love stories we have Eva talking to Battler. This picture says it the best.
  Eva: I'd imagine a man with your looks would leave girls crying left and right. I can't believe that you have nothing at all to brag about.
  Battler: "Wh, what? Y, y, you're joking, right!? Of course nothing weird like that's ever happened to me! In fact, I'd rather it did!
  • "This sort of thoughtfulness was just like Rosa Oba-san. She wasn't the kind of person who would forget or break a promise."
  • While many of the hints don't mean very much on their own during the first read through, there's a lot of foreshadowing for the fact that Beatrice, Shannon and Kanon are all the same person. In fact as soon as you know this, every conversation between them changes radically.
  • In fact there are so many hints dropped in the first 2 Episodes that as soon as you know the truth you realize that you actually can solve the series with the first Episode alone.
  • The Tea Party of Episode 1 has all of the people who survived the Episode gathered together. Who is all there? Battler, George, Jessica, Maria, Shannon, and Kanon.
  • A rather funny one happens early on in Episode 1, by Krauss: "My father is already dead. What is inside this study is only a shadow of his past self." Quite literally, yeah.
  • This link shows you just how much of a goldmine Episode 1 is in that department.
  • In the real Rokkenjima Massacre event, as Rudolf and Kyrie orchestrate the murders of everyone on the island after they found the gold so they can have it all to themselves, Rudolf is appalled by Kyrie's suggestion to kill Battler. It becomes understandable in EP8, when Rudolf confesses to Kyrie that he lied to her about whose child had been stillborn between her and Asumu, and paid the doctor to swap the children so that Battler would be known as Asumu's child and preserve his reputation as a faithful husband.
  • After the uproar caused by Maria reading out the letter she claims she got from Beatrice, Kyrie explains to Battler that contacting the family using such a roundabout method implies that "Beatrice" is actually one of them playing pretend and fooling Maria. Natsuhi herself thinks that the most likely possibility is that Shannon wore Beatrice's dress and handed the letter to Maria because Kinzo made her do it.
  • Twilight of the Golden Witch: After Ange wakes up in the dining room with the corpses of Kyrie, Rudolf, Rosa, Genji, Eva, and Hideyoshi, she identifies everyone and makes observations as she does so. She describes her own parents as looking pitiful with their bright red bloody makeup. As it turns out, they were faking their death, so it might have actually been literal makeup. Later on towards the end of the mystery story where there are three people left, George and Maria exchange purple declarations claiming that George can't kill any adults and Maria is incapable of murder, alienating Battler.
• For Want Of A Nail: EP7 presents an alternate 1986: Natsuhi accepts the baby that Kinzo asked her to adopt. Because of this, the epitaph does not exist, and there are no mentions of Beatrice as a witch or a ghost in the mansion.
• Four-Girl Ensemble: The aunts.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Again, the aunts; Natsuhi is the Phlegmatic (phlegm), Eva usally is the Choleric (yellow bile), Kyrie is the Melancholic (black bile) and Rosa usually is the Sanguine (blood), however Rosa and Eva often exchange their position in the ensemble.
• Freudian Excuse: Rosa often uses this to rationalize her harsh treatment towards Maria. Her's own parents and siblings showed little mercy towards her when she was growing up, so she believes holding back on Maria would be "spoiling" her.
• The Gad Fly: Ronove and his snarky attitude towards Beato. Shannon can act this way as well, though not nearly as pronounced.
• Gambit Pileup: Most non-magical explanations for the murders in any given arc require multiple murderers, often working at cross-purposes, and different ones for each arc.
• Gambit Roulette:
  • Episode 3, where Beatrice's strategy hinges upon Eva-Beatrice, Battler, and Eva all taking a very specific set of actions.
  • Bernkastel was probably The Man Behind the Man on this very one, adding yet another layer to the entire thing: Beatrice had to take a very specific action at the end for Bern's own plans to work out.
  • If Episode 8 is to be trusted, Battler pulls one off in Episode 6. His humiliating defeat at the hands of Erika, threatening to forever trap his mind in a logic error, was so that Beatrice could be revived and come to his rescue.
• Game Between Heirs: The successor to the Ushiromiya family's headship and fortune (which includes ten tons of solid gold) seemed to be locked and set in stone and then a letter from the resident witch arrived, announcing that the spoils have been made fair game to anyone who can solve the Witch's Epitaph, a long riddle which incidentally, details a ritual requiring human sacrifice. Mind games (and lots and lots of murder) ensue.
• The Game Come to Life: Jessica and the Killer Electric Fan
• Genre-Busting: Fantasy? Mystery? One with elements of the other? Nope! Try "romance with fantastical mystery Jungian-psychological elements".
• Genre Shift: Starts as a classical murder mystery but veers more and more towards fantasy as the story progresses...or so Beatrice would like to make you think.
• Geodesic Cast: With the exception of Maria's branch, most of the cousins' families work kind of like this: one mother, one father, and one child. It gets more confusing later, with the introduction of Ange and Sayo Yasuda.
• Geometric Magic: The blood runes.
• Ghost Reunion Ending: Episode 8's Hidden Tea Party ends with Ange inviting Ikuko and Tohya to the reopening of the Fukuin House, which now contains an exact replica of the hall of the Ushiromiya mansion. There, Tohya/Battler is greeted by the spirits of the Ushiromiya family and the Meta world characters. Tohya then finally comes to terms with his past while Battler joins his family in the afterlife.
• Gilded Cage: Kinzo had a second mansion, Kuwadorian, built in secret somewhere in the forest, where he forced his daughter to spend her whole life.
• Glove Slap: In EP6, Beatrice throws a white glove at Erika, challenging her to a duel. Refusing would forever mark her a coward in the eyes of the entire magical community.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Battler and Beatrice have a dialogue (and applause contest) at Eva's succession ceremony.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: In addition to the red text, which speaks an absolute truth (from the point of view of the speaker at least), the Game Master - the witch who "writes" the scenario of the current game - can use golden text, which indicates that they fully understand the rules of the game, and can be superior to the red. It means something like: "this is the premise of the game, so even if it's false (can be denied in red), you can't deny it without rendering the game meaningless." After reaching the truth of Beatrice's game, Battler uses the golden truth to confirm that Kinzo is definitely Deader than Dead, when his position prevents him from saying it in red without proof.
• Gold Fever:
  • All four siblings to some extent, but particularly strongly with Eva.
  • EP7 shows how the Japanese and Italian forces on the island wiped each other out over the massive load of gold. Of course, it's questionable whether this actually happened since the narrator was Kinzo who is later implied to be the one who suggested to steal the gold and killed everyone in the base in the first place.
  • In the EP7 Tea Party, the Ushiromiya siblings solve the epitaph before Sayo Yasuda can even start the murders. Once they find the gold, all of them start to argue about how to split it and exchange it for money. They all begin to be irrational, the argument becomes really heated and everything goes down hill from there.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: What happens to people who get trapped in a logic error. Specifically, Lambdadelta and especially Bernkastel. Doesn't make up for the horrible things she's done, but you still sympathize with her, considering Bernkastel's logic error wasn't even her own fault — she was only a piece in that game. Her master, the player, created the logic error, then abandoned the game, leaving a piece that knows nothing with the task of solving the error to escape. The fact that, after hundreds of years, she was able to do so is why she became the Witch of Miracles.
• Good All Along: Battler's main purpose for setting up the final game for Ange in Episode 8, is to portray the Ushiromiya family as this. She quickly catches on that he isn't being honest in showing her what happened on Rokkenjima, but he insists that experiencing his ideal heartwarming scenario is ultimately more important than the truth, because even though the truth is actually very ugly, that shouldn't negate the fact that the Ushiromiyas were a family capable of genuinely loving each other and their children. Made even more prescient with the manga reveal that the Episode 7 theory of her parents being the killers was true, and yet they are fiercely protective of her nonetheless, showing that they weren't the complete monsters gossip-mongers made them out to be.
• Good Witch Versus Bad Witch: But good luck figuring out which witch is which.
• Gorgeous Period Dress: Just about all of the witches in the series wear these.
• Gorn: Many of the murders are described as quite horrible. There are missing faces, gouging just about anywhere, people turned into piles of meat, etc.
• Gothic Punk: The plot and style share many, many similarities in common with the Gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries.
• Gratuitous English: There are a bunch of cases. Please don't list them here, or this will get too long.
• Gratuitous French:
  • The fighting game's opening is full of it, it is a translation of the witch's epitaph in French. Also, every sentence under the health bar is also displayed in bad French: for example, you can see under the message counter hit "sens inverse coup" whereas a more fitting translation would be "contre"
  • Mariage Sorcière, the witch group Maria and Beatrice formed.
• Gratuitous Greek: Lambdadelta (ΛΔ) as well as the firing sequence of the Chiesters.
• Gratuitous Italian: The opening song. Averted in the case of Virgilia and BEATORRICHEE'S names, which are often mistaken for horrible Gratuitous English.
• Great Big Library of Everything: The City of Books (for short) looks like this, but it's only the Carefully Selected Books. If there's a place all the Carelessly Selected and Outright Rejected Books would fit, it's probably an Absurdly Spacious Sewer.
• Greek Chorus: If the meta-world didn't turn into its own subplot, it would be a very developed one of these. However, a more straightforward example occurs in the sixth arc, with Featherine and Ange taking up this role. In the seventh arc Clair takes this role, with some help from Zepar and Furfur.
  • Kumasawa makes conveniently timed appearances to monologue into empty rooms about the romances.
• Gretzky Has the Ball: EP6 With all the chess talk up to this point about pieces, moves, and checks, Lambdadelta all of a sudden starts using poker terminology when asking to see Battler's "cards" to fix the logic error. Battler joins in too talk about flushes and straights. It goes back to chess when Erika declares checkmate, though.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Only magical/meta-characters (and "furniture") are aware of this, though, and each arc is actually a different world. By EP8, this turns out to be subverted, since the whole series is actually Recursive Canon. The first six arcs are just different interpretations of the events that took place on Rokkenjima (EP1 and 2 are message bottles that were written by Sayo Yasuda, which washed up on the shores of Japan, while EP3-6 are novels written by Toya Hachijou, formerly Battler Ushiromiya).
• Guide Dang It!: One answer at the end of Episode 7 is actually in the TIPS of Episode 6, and most people probably missed it. If you Execute Erika, you will see her fate in the real world (that she fell from the boat and went missing, with her parents thinking that she washed off on Rokkenjima). The "Rokkenjima accident" is called the "Rokkenjima Explosion Accident", while it was left vague in Episode 4.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: The end of Episode 2 is basically Beatrice giving one big, painful slap in the face to Battler for giving up so easily. Nope, dear readers, not thinking and just accepting everything is the work of the Witch is not an option.
• Gut Punch: During 10 long chapters, we see nothing but cousins joking, siblings talking about the economic context of Japan, two lovebirds making a marriage promise and a little girl reading a slightly unsettling letter. Time jump to the morning after… THEY HAVE NO FACE!!!
• Halloween Episode: While it takes place on October 4 & 5, Maria is obsessed with Halloween for the first part of the second arc, a fact that is played with very nastily during the first twilight. The last arc also features a Halloween party where everyone's happy instead of fighting about the inheritance.
• Happily Married: Oddly enough, the most stable couple (the wife's problems come from elsewhere) is Eva and Hideyoshi. And when Hideyoshi kicks it, Eva completely SNAPS and goes madder than she already is. In EP6, Battler and Beatrice as well.
• Harsh Word Impact: Colored text can be utilized in such a way that declarations of truth, theories and things of the like behave as this trope, done for drama and gone far beyond any scale of Meta-awareness. Justified because the characters who are affected by this trope reside in a place commonly referred to as the Meta-World.
  • In Episode 4, Beatrice is impaled by giant blue spikes when she can't (or won't) deny Battler's theories.
  • In Episode 5, we have Dlanor manifesting the power of Knox's Decalogue in red swords, culminating in Dlanor denying Battler's theories and impaling him a gigantic sword. What happens afterward must be seen to be believed.
• Haunted House: The Ushiromiya mansion, in theory.
• Have a Nice Death: The first Tea Party begins as this… until Beatrice appears and everyone dies horribly.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Some of the witches enjoy going through this, notably Beatrice and Lambdadelta.
• Heir Club for Men: Eva was almost pushed out of the line of succession because when she married Hideyoshi, she should have lost her name. However, she convinced Kinzo to adopt Hideyoshi as an Ushiromiya, allowing herself to retain her position (Rosa retains hers because no one even knows who she married). This is also a reason, along with George's older age, that Eva thinks he should be ahead on the succession.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Hilariously subverted. Ronove says that Battler was so shocked by Beatrice's plan to trick him into believing in her that he refused to talk or eat, but then he shows up fighting with one of the Seven Sisters of Purgatory for a basket of bread rolls. Ronove was just teasing her.
  • Later played straight and exaggerated when Battler finds out that the woman he thought was his birth mother, really wasn't his mother at all. He subsequently stops existing for half an arc.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Several.
  • For example, Jessica throwing herself in front of Kanon to block one of the stakes in EP2, Ange revealing her name to snap some sense into Battler in EP4, and Kanon trading places with Battler in the closed room in EP6.
  • Lambdadelta towards the end of Episode 8.
• Hide Your Lesbians: An odd example. Even after Bernkastel and Lambdadelta have said repeatedly and unambiguously that they love each other, the narration and the characters continue to call them "friends". It's a bit jarring.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Deliberately invoked as a meta example. The characters' theories pretty much state the exact solution to the mystery outright all the way back in Episode one — it was the servants, Kinzo had a mistress and their illegitimate child is responsible, etc. The only thing they didn't nail was the motivation, which they had no way of knowing.
• Hijacked by Ganon: Bernkastel and Lambdadelta successfully usurped the villain's role and are aiming for the role of the hero as well too by means of invoking Decoy Protagonist.
• Hit Me, Dammit!: Battler's reaction when Shannon almost does let her feel him up on the basis that she's not supposed to refuse any request from a guest.
  Battler: Crap, I wasn't planning on this! P-please, hit me right now! At this rate, I'm seriously gonna-''*thwack*' Guaah...oww. Thank you, Jessica.
  Jessica: Why the hell are you thanking me?
• Homage: To Higurashi: When They Cry. Many occurrences. For instance, Maria is shown watching clips from the show, and Kanon uses Rena's cleaver.
• Hope Spot: Pretty much everyone who faces off with the killer gets one.
  • EP3 has Kanon fighting Lucifer. It seems someone wasn't paying attention to Beatrice's Exact Words.
  • EP7's main story ending is a big one for Clair and Lion. Did you really think Bernkastel will give everyone a happy ending?
• Hostile Show Takeover:
  • Played for drama in EP5.
  • And for laughs in the preview for episode 17 of the anime where Eva-Beatrice tries to rename the show to Magical Girl Pretty Evatrice.
• Hot-Blooded: Kinzo's legacy.
• A House Divided: Particularly strong in the first arc.
• How Dare You Die on Me!: Battler to Beatrice during the fifth tea party.
• How We Got Here: The very first scene in EP5 is the last scene on that world's gameboard. This was the first scene for meta-Battler, as well, before the Bern and Lambda rewound the story for him. EP6 does this as well, starting with Battler's horrific defeat and a closed room prison that is revisited multiple times before it finally makes sense.
• Human Chess: Deliberately invoked by pretty much the whole plot.
• Human Sacrifice: According to the epitaph, if the riddle it offers isn't solved, everyone on the island will be killed off to provide sacrifices in order to summon Beatrice. Subverted, since the epitaph is not actually about human sacrifices and it's not why the murders are happening.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Beatrice begging Battler to kill her in EP4.
• If I Wanted You Dead...: How Rosa argues her innocence in EP2: She's been carrying around a loaded rifle since the first Twilight. If she wanted anyone dead, they would be dead. It doesn't change that Rosa is at least an accomplice of the culprit in that Episode.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: A rare Gender Flipped version of this occurs in EP6 when Erika forces Battler into marrying her after she has effectively locked his mind inside his own closed room.
• I Kiss Your Foot: Kanon does this to Beatrice so Shannon might not be chosen as a sacrifice in episode 2.
• Identification by Dental Records: At the end of EP1 Maria's jawbone is identified this way.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • All the anime episode titles are taken from chess terminology.
  • Also, all of the episodes of the visual novel are named "_____ of the Golden Witch".
• I'm a Humanitarian: Characters occasionally get ripped to shreds and eaten by the goat people. Rosa gets force-fed parts from her siblings and her daughter at the end of the second arc; Crosses the Line Twice in the anime when Maria's severed head starts talking and happily tries to shove itself down her throat.
• Imaginary Friend:
  • Sakutaro is given this treatment, although he's actually a stuffed animal.
  • Eva has her teenaged younger self as an imaginary friend in the third Episode. Too bad Eva-Beatrice is even more nuts than Eva has ever been.
  • In EP5, Beato and Kinzo's phantom can be thought of as imaginary friends to Natsuhi.
  • A recurring theme in the story is how the creation of one or more of these is used by various characters as a way of coping with psychological stress. Maria's case especially is discussed in detail by Ange in EP4, and aside from Eva and Natsuhi, this is eventually revealed to be how Sayo Yasuda dealt with her Orphan's Ordeal — she created an idealized version of herself to act as a guiding figure and mentor. She later does the same same with Kanon in at attempt to deal with her gender dysphoria and the discontent she feels with her life as a servant.
  • In EP6 when Battler as the Game Master creates a piece version of Beato that acts like old Beato due to his distress over the chick version of Beato. It gets even sadder when you realize that he's talking to himself through her.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Beatrice during the EP4 tea party. And Battler during EP5, complete with Ironic Echo.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: All of the Ushiromiyas have utterly impeccable fashion sense, as do the witches and demons. Justified in that the former are all fabulously wealthy, while the latter have magic. In this interview the author says some characters clothes are designed to challenge a female coworker and cosplayer. This is the case of Gaap.
• Inadequate Inheritor: Kinzo feels this way about his whole family. The "real" successor, Krauss, seems to show this as well.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Jessica in Umineko no Naku Koro ni X. See also Forced Transformation, above.
• Indecisive Medium:
  • Are the games books? Movies? RPGs? Self-aware books? (Also applies to the Meta-World: Dlanor speaks once about the making of a tea that she's drinking, saying "everybody accepts it as magic, so it appears as such in the narration".)
  • Physical form is just a convenience, apparently. Colored text has been depicted in the visual novel as: colored dialogue (with a nice sound effect to make it all the more cool), slashes, spears, and swords, all of the appropiate color. The TIPS even refers to these swords as "conceptual weapons that could take any form". We later discover this also applies to some characters; see The Treachery of Images.
  • The anime has a different example of this: see Painting the Medium.
• Innocent Inaccurate: As Ange points out, the "happy memories" in Maria's diary are a lot less happy when one reads between the lines.
• Inverted Portrait: Battler in the Umineko Motion Graphic 6 has a couple of seconds where he's shown upside down, flashing through a sea of memories.
• Invisible to Normals: Witches like Beatrice, and magic in general, can supposedly only be seen by those who genuinely believe in them in the human world. That's because they don't actually exist in the human world. Those we see either live in the metaphysical plane, or are actually Imaginary Friends. "Seeing" Beatrice only means that you know her identity and understand her true nature (i.e. that she is a character played by someone) — as is the case with Genji, Kumasawa, Nanjo, and Maria (although Maria does genuinely believe that Beato is a witch).
• Ironic Echo:
  • If you hear echoes in your head of Beato's and Virgilia's exchange when you start reading exchanges between Beato and Eva-Beatrice later on in that arc, you aren't the first.
  • Bernkastel's spin on the Arc Words "Without love, it cannot be seen".
• Irony:
  • In the author commentary of Minagoroshi-hen, Ryukishi07 wrote that it was fun to make theories about the mysteries, but that it was frustrating if you couldn't compare them to the one right answer given by the author at the end. Less than two years later, he started to write a series where, not only is the name of the culprit not given, literally half of the plot is left to the interpretation of the reader.
  • Natsuhi pushed Sayo Yasuda (and the servant carrying them) off of a cliff because of her frustration over her seeming inability to have children. Well, thanks to Natsuhi, Sayo's body is damaged to the point of being unable to have children, among other things.
• It Works Better with Bullets: In the EP8 manga, it's revealed that the real reason why Natsuhi lost her duel with Beatrice in EP1 is because Sayo Yasuda removed the bullets from her gun beforehand. Natsuhi wasn't knowledgeable enough about guns to realize this.
• Jaw Drop: Non-comedic example from Natsuhi in EP5 after Erika accuses her of sleeping with her father-in-law.
• Jesus Taboo:
  • Played straight, to some degree: in the anime, Beatrice makes reference to "a single man" who "appeared thanks to a star's guidance and finally explained the single element (love) that makes up the world." She then asks Shannon if she knows who the man is, but the question is rhetorical. The TIPS section for EP4 mentions a magical grimoire that has "a history of over 2000 years, is currently still in circulation, and continues to acquire new alliance members even now."
  • Averted in EP7 when Maria tells Will about her belief that she was conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, since Rosa kept telling her that she didn't have a father. To back this up, she quotes from the Book of Matthew (1:23) and states that since Jesus was born from the virgin Mary, she may have been born the same way.
• Kangaroo Court: The Rosa torture scene has more than a few elements of this, especially in the visual novel. Also played terribly straight with Natsuhi's trial at the end of EP5.
• Kansas City Shuffle: Right from the first arc, Battler deconstructs exactly why the chessboard thinking he tries to use isn't going to work: because he doesn't know the rules of the game. Because he doesn't know the rules of the game, he has no idea which moves will result in which pieces being taken.
• Karmic Death: In Episode 7's Tea Party, Rudolf and Kyrie don't check if the relatives they have killed are all really dead, and so they don't realize Eva is only unconscious and not heavily wounded. They are later killed by her (but not before they have killed the rest of the family and servants save Battler, sadly).
• Kick the Dog:
  • When Rosa tears up Sakutaro.
  • Bernkastel has a lot of them. In the VN, there are multiple troll sprites for this character.
• Kids Are Cruel:
  • Rosa's justification for her treatment of Maria (or the one she tells people anyway; in Maria's backstory we find out that Rosa hates her a good deal for just being). Basically, "All the children make fun of her! Don't you see?! Beating her will obviously make her stop whining!"
  • Not to mention Ange's classmates, who carry some responsibility for Ange's socially reclusive personality.
• Killed Off for Real:
  • The following is said in gold text:"I guarantee that this corpse is Kinzo Ushiromiya's corpse!"
  • Ultimately, everyone who was on Rokkenjima except Eva and Battler. Eva dies years later and Battler undergoes Death of Personality to become Tohya Hachijo, so technically everyone in the Ushiromiya family dies except Ange.
• Konami Code: The very first scene Rudolf appears in has him pulling Battler's ear while saying "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right" as an obvious Shout-Out to this.

L-P

• Lamarck Was Right: Descendants of Kinzo almost universally inherit the key elements of his 'magic', pure blind determination and an idiot's understanding of chance and probability. This clan of human lemmings would be marked for mass extinction in the real world, and indeed are, in the world of Umineko. This goes even further. Apparently, Kinzo (and thus, Battler) are not only untalented in magic, but have a supernatural resistance to it. And yet…
• Lampshade Hanging: In Episode 3 of the sound novels, Beatrice puts a massive lampshade on her own Tsundere behavior in that arc, even mentioning anime and dating sims.
• Language of Truth:
  • Anything spoken in red text is true. If it isn't true, it can't be spoken in red text and may be subject to Unreliable Narration. (And if you actually try to state an untruth in red text, you will come to physical harm.) For whatever reason, this doesn't stop people from throwing around red statements frivolously (Beatrice cackles on two separate occasions in red, and a few characters deliver death threats in red, as if there were doubt about it or something). The manga elaborates by precising there are 2 kinds of red truths: those who apply specifically on each separate gameboard (for the circumstances of the deaths, alibis and such), and those who apply to every game and to the world outside the catbox (such as the number of people on the island).
  • In EP5, gold text is introduced out of nowhere, which according to Word Of God can only be used by those who "understand the rules".
  • Purple text in Episode 8. Like red text, it's always true, unless the person speaking it has committed murder, in which case it may be false.
• Large Ham:
  • A special one goes out to Jimang, the guy who sang the anime's ending theme. It's so over-the-top that it's nearly impossible to see something involving the anime without "OH DESIRE." See the character sheet for in-show examples.
  • In-story, there's Beatrice, Erika and Kinzo.
• Laser Blade: Kanon's and the Stakes' swords are very elaborate magical versions.
• Last Kiss: Beatrice kissing Battler before jumping from the boat with the 10kg ingot in the magic ending. Riposa, riposa in pace…
• Last Request: In the second arc when Beatrice has broken through Shannon's shield, Shannon turns to George and asks him to tell her one last time how much he loves her. He starts, but is cut off by Beatrice killing him—but in reality, it was Shannon herself who cuts him off by killing him.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: After the climactic battle in EP8, a single choice determines whether you get the "Magic" or "Trick" ending.
• Last Stand: EP8. Ange-Beatrice crashes the afterparty, summons Eva-Beatrice, who in turn summons an infinite horde of goats that begin devouring the game board, forcing the fantasy characters to fight for their lives until the Golden Land opens up.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Partially fed into issues between Natsuhi (unable to conceive for 12 years) and Eva (who gives birth earlier and thinks her son should be the heir).
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • The first tea party has the characters musing about how surprised they were about the "fact" that the story's a fantasy, rather than a mystery.
  Battler: "Hey, everyone, good job finishing 'Umineko no Naku Koro ni'! Man, I still didn't have a clue what was going on when the story ended!"
  Jessica: "So just what happened? Was that basically the 'bad ending,' where time runs out before the culprit can be exposed?"
  Maria: "Uu-. Definitely a bad ending. Uu-."
  George: "That's right. Beatrice's letter, which Maria-chan read on the first day, did tell us in advance to solve the riddle of the epitaph. We were all so busy trying to protect ourselves and look for the culprit that we didn't even take a shot at it."
  Shannon: "... That's right. If we had actually tried to solve the riddle, I'm sure things would have ended differently."
  • Though this ends up being ruthlessly deconstructed when Battler becomes more and more confused and disturbed by how everyone so readily accepts the fact that it's fantasy instead of mystery, and then everyone else rapidly returns to their state of death, Beatrice reveals herself for the first time, and then she whisks Battler off to Purgatorio where they start their battle of logic that frames the rest of the series. This also functions as a Meta Twist to those who expected a lighthearted "wrap party" with Animated Actors at the end of every arc like in Higurashi.
  • Another notable example:
  Ronove [about Battler in Chiru]: It seems the tale of the next head will be worth writing down as well. In fact, it is already being written. It's already a very, very long tale.
• Leave Him to Me!: During the final battle, Erika Furudo tells the goats to let her fight Beatrice alone. Then they bow to each other and begin the duel.
• Left the Background Music On: Two scenes in EP4 in the novel open with an upbeat jazzy soundtrack, but Ange complains and has Amakusa turn it off.
• Legacy Immortality:
  • Battler's hypothesis as to how the figure known as Kinzo Ushiromiya could take so much hands-on action in the fourth game despite dying before the start of any game is that someone took on his name and that the rest of the family acknowledged this.
  • Later on, this turns out to be how Beatrice can claim to be a thousand years old, since many of her stories relating to her past are really stories of her mother and grandmother, who shared the same name.
• Legions of Hell: Beatrice's furniture.
• Leitmotif: Many characters have their own, but Black Liliana can be considered the theme of witches in general.
  • Wings has a primary melody that appears throughout many of Umineko's tracks, even getting a vocal cover to highlight it's importance.
• Lemony Narrator: The narration of the first tea party has an mild, very tongue-in-cheek example.
• Lethal Chef:
  • Beatrice, if the "Beatrice's White Day" side story is any indication.
  • Beatrice Castiglioni acknowledges it in Requiem, saying that "only her alchemy can turn pasta into a black heap".
• Lethal Harmless Powers: Shannon's barrier crushes the witch MARIA during EP 6's love trial.
• Let the Past Burn: It's revealed that a huge stockpile of hidden explosives were used at the end of the second day of the Ushiromiya murder mystery which creates a huge crater on the island and destroys their mansion, the family members, and any evidence with it. Episode 4 and episode 8 of the visual novel suggest that it would be much better to forget about the incident, and let the hype, driven by the media, die so that relatives of people who died can move on.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Beatrice in EP5.
• Light Is Not Good: The main antagonist, Beatrice, is nicknamed "The Golden Witch" and is said to appear as a flock of golden butterflies. So what does she do during the first four arcs? Oh, only sadistically kill off the entire cast. Later it's revealed that this is more of a case of Light Is Not Nice.
• Limited Wardrobe: With Kanon and Shannon exempted, most of the characters in the VN are only ever seen in one outfit, even in flashbacks, when it is also noted that these are their formal clothes that they're wearing for the family conference (although according to one TIP, Krauss and his family wear formal clothing all the time at home, not just for conferences). The anime and the PS3 port largely avert this trope in the flashbacks, but they still keep them in the same outfits through multiple days, even though, logically, everyone should have known that they would be staying more than one day and packed a change of clothes.
• Locked Room Mystery: Invoked many times and taken by some characters as evidence that murders were committed by the Golden Witch rather than by a human. Of course, the point of the game is to not buy any of it.
• Logical Fallacies: When Battler accuses Eva of lying in red her response is to say "The red only tells the truth." and to accuse Battler of insulting Beato's honor. This is intentional given that "Anti-Mystery vs. Anti-Fantasy" points out that the red truth relies on you trusting Beato. Furthermore, actual evidence supporting the validity of the red truth is presented later on.
• Lonely Piano Piece: "Fortitude" is the most common one, although "Wingless" and "Umarete Kite Kurete Arigatou" ("Thank you for being born") also deserve a mention. Really, a good part of the music could be considered for this. Dai is really fond of using pianos.
• Long-Lost Relative: Although the moment was suitably surprising for Battler, the audience is set up to have already known "Gretel"'s true identity.
• Lost in Translation: The epitaph's puzzle would've been extremely difficult to translate to solvable English. Because English doesn't have the structural features of Japanese — ie; multiple character readings, alternate kanji for the same readings — that to translate the embedded word puzzles would require a much longer and less poetic epitaph. Making it meaningful as directions to a treasure would lose the implications of a sacrificial ceremony. When the solution is presented in EP7, the translation explains all the relevant Japanese wordplay and character readings along with it.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Beatrice creates her own perfect world with just her and Maria. Also, the Golden Land in the first arc functions this way.
• Love Dodecahedron: A pretty rare and complicated example. To elaborate, the cousin-servant couples are Jessica/Kanon and George/Shannon. The twist comes in when it is revealed that, unbeknownst to the cousins, Shannon and Kanon are the same person, Sayo Yasuda. To further complicate matters, Sayo is still in love with Battler from when they made a Childhood Marriage Promise and pursues him as Beatrice. Sayo's mess of a love life is one of the main causes of the entire tragedy.
• Love Epiphany: Kanon in EP6.
• Love Hurts: A major theme, and according to EP7 this is almost entirely the cause of the Rokkenjima Incident. Sayo serves as one of the page quotes for this trope.
• Love Imbues Life
• Love Makes You Crazy:
  • Kinzo, who became obsessed with the occult as a way to revive Beatrice and happily watches over the start of a ceremony to sacrifice his children. However, Kinzo really was deeply in love with Beatrice Castiglioni, and she with him. Unfortunately, she died in childbirth, with their daughter surviving, and as she grew older her uncanny resemblance to her mother led to Kinzo doing something he'd regret for the rest of his life.
  • In EP6, Battler also demonstrates this in his desperation to revive Beatrice and his bitter disappointment when the new Beatrice has no memory or personality of the old; he eventually gets over it.
• Love Martyr: Maria's relationship with Rosa is treated in this way until the fourth arc.
• Lyrical Dissonance:
  • Beatrice's character song starts out as an upbeat rock/pop song, but the lyrics are about Beatrice wondering who she lives for and beginning to doubt if she will ever find true happiness; after the first couple verses establish this, the melody gradually becomes more fitting for the song.
  • The case with Maria's character song is not immediately obvious because it has an upbeat tune with upbeat lyrics… until you stop to think about what the lyrics really mean, which is when this trope kicks in full force and turns the song into a tear jerker. The comments made by vidread, XanthsAMV, and littlexscreamer explain perfectly why this is a case of Lyrical Dissonance.
  • The Stakes' image song definitely qualifies. The song contains a cutesy, energetic and upbeat music about how the stakes want to gouge and kill your body.
• Mad Bomber: Sayo Yasuda, who's perfectly willing to blow up an island in an explosion that wipes out most of everything there.
• Mage Species: The fourth arc's TIPS describes three different types described in ascending power: Witches, who can possess immense power in one world that is considered to be its dominion; Voyagers, who can travel freely in between the different fragments; and Creators, who can "create a one in a world of nothingness." From a mundane perspective, "becoming a witch" is a metaphor for using escapism to cope with one's problems. The witches' ages represent how long their suffering felt to them; to Sayo Yasuda, the six-year-long wait for Battler to return to Rokkenjima felt like a thousand years.
• Magic Versus Science: Magic versus logic. Anti-mystery versus anti-fantasy. As time goes on, things get more complicated. The game continues to go on, but considering that they're by then well-developed characters, are the witches so easy to brush off as non-existent? One could argue that the witches being real or not doesn't change whether the murders are magic or mundane—and if they are mundane, would that really cast doubt on the existence of ageless, extradimensional beings like witches?
• Malicious Slander: The Rokkenjima tragedy causes various members of the Ushiromiya family to be subjected to this by sleazy rumor-mongers or inconsiderate "Witch-Hunters", to the point that salacious rumors effectively ruin Eva's life after she returns. Quite tellingly, even when the truth is presented in the Episode 7 Tea Party, it's treated as little more than a malicious attempt by Bernkastel to Mind Rape Ange, and it's authenticity is repeatedly called into question until the manga confirms its accuracy. This provides a pointed Take That, Audience! message that the truth is worth nothing in the hands of those who only want to abuse it for their own amusement.
• Mama Bear:
  • Rosa. Her last act in the second arc is to mow down goat-headed butlers with a rifle and Maria at her side.
    • During the climactic battle in the Golden Land, Rosa displays her Mama Bear tendencies to Erika in full force, to the point where the narration had to point it out.
  • Also Natsuhi. Kumasawa actually says in regard to her, "They always say that the most frightening bears are those that have children." It doesn't work, though.
• Man Behind the Man: The third tea party has Lambdadelta state that she gave Beatrice her powers in order to create a board to beat Bernkastel in. Later reinforced by the alliance of Bernkastel and Lamdadelta against Beatrice in the fourth tea party.
• Marathon Episode: Episode 4. Between Ange's travel in 1998, her learning of Magic while she was Off to Boarding School, Maria's diary and the fourth game, be ready to spend at least a good week reading it. The Ange and diary parts make up a good half of the Episode, and several of the chapters are very long. And that's not even including the Tea Party, which covers Battler investigating the crime scene and the entire final Battle.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The point of the entire series.
• Meaningful Funeral: To Beatrice in Requiem. Of course, Bernkastel finds a way to ruin it...
• Meaningful Name:
  • Beatrice and Virgilia both derive their names from Dante's The Divine Comedy. The "Stakes of Purgatory" have the names of demons corresponding to the Seven Deadly Sins. The "Chiester" bunny girls are named after Winchester shotguns. Finally, Lambdadelta's name is Greek for "34", which may hold some significance for those who saw Higurashi.
  • Also, Maria's name is one that is a common translation of Mary: a reference to the woman from the New Testament who gave birth to Jesus Christ. In the fourth arc, one of the TIPS speculates that Maria is one of the Creator witches, who can create something where there was previously nothing. The significance of Maria's name is further explored in EP7, and Maria even says that if she had been born a boy, she would have been named Emmanuel, one of the names for Jesus, meaning "God is with us" in Hebrew.
  • The names of Kinzo's children are all related to Nazi Germany in one way or the other: Krauss / Klaus (Klaus Barbie), Eva (Eva Braun), Rudolf (Rudolf Hess) and Rosa Mitterer (Hitler's maid). Considering that Kinzo's true love, Beatrice, also had an Axis Powers connection, this is most likely intentional. Of note, the third generation are all given names more consistent with the victorious Allied forces that later occupied Japan, such as George, Jessica and Maria.
• Mental Story: Combined with a Show Within a Show Reveal in Episode 8 — most of the plot is Tohya Hachijo (aka Battler) recreating the events of Rokkenjima 1986 as mystery novels in the same way Beatrice wrote several manuscripts that she threw into the sea in bottles, after he recovered his memory of what happened.
• Mercy Kill: Ange did one to Eva near the end of the fourth arc. Also, Beato gave one to Maria and Rosa in the third arc.
• Message in a Bottle: The ending of "Legend of the Golden Witch." It's later revealed that there were several of these (though only two of them were found).
• Meta Fiction: The story is essentially about how mystery stories are created, and the VN operates on several levels of "meta" realities. For starters, there's the board (aka, the events of each episode), then there's the "Meta World" that Beatrice, the Witches, and Meta-Battler exist on, and then even past that there's the top level reality that Ange lives in.
• Metaphorically True: Anything said in Red needs careful attention paid to its Exact Words. It is however absolutely true to the person saying it. Even that might not always help: in EP6 it's heavily implied that EP2's Red Truth that " Kanon died in this room!" can only be true metaphorically.
  • This is also in effect if you're an anti-fantasy reader. For example- Beatrice says that the murders were committed via magic. In one of the later arcs, it's revealed that Kumasawa once described magic as a form of trickery and misdirection, and it's heavily implied that a lot of the circumstances meant to make the murders seem like they were done through magic (such as by creating locked rooms) are in reality accomplished through misdirecting observers. In a sense, the murders were indeed done by magic, but not the spell-slinging kind- more like the kind a Stage Magician would use.
• Mind-Control Eyes: In EP6, Jessica takes on these, though they're really just an indication of how she's hardening her heart.
• Mind Screw: Ryuukishi07 is a master of this.
  • Wait, what? Everybody's alive again? What do you mean, "wrap party"? So, what, everybody dying was some TV show we were all watching or something? Beatrice!? What are you doing here?!...Wait, none of this was some weird meta gag?! Of course, if you played Higurashi, it's a double-whammy of a Mind Screw, since Higurashi had wrap parties too. It's just that those ones were non-canon. Thus, when Umineko pulls out the first tea party, the results were a subversion of their use in the previous games.
  • This goes to new levels in EP5, where depending on how you look at it, there can be 3 or 4 levels of Meta-Worlds.
  • Episode 6 has another massive one: Ange is reading the part of Dawn to Featherine where Beato asks about information of "old" Beato, in which Featherine opens a door to bring Virgilia and Beato to look through her library. Then later, while Ange is still reading she stops and asks Beato, who was still in the library, a question. It is common for readers to clutch their heads in confusion at that point.
  • Ange's tribulations in 1998 in particular are really hard to follow. In Episode 4, just after Eva's death she jumps off a building but survives, and she goes on a trip with her bodyguard, questioning various people and finding bits of information about Rokkenjima, before going there herself and being killed by said bodyguard. In Episode 6, she is alive again, back to a few days before going to Rokkenjima, in the house of a person she isn't supposed to have met that day; after which she goes to Rokkenjima again, and is supposedly killed by Amakusa again. In Episode 8, she is somehow back at the top of the building, jumps off again and kisses the concrete, implying that she didn't survive the jump in Episode 4 and 6. But in the fantasy ending she is back at the top of the building again and this time decides not to jump, thus living happily ever after. While in the trick ending she ends up back on the boat going to Rokkenjima, where she figures out that Amakusa and The Captain are plotting with everyone else to kill her when she gets there, so she kills them instead, sailing off into the sunset on the boat, with Erika appearing beside her. But, by choosing the Magic Ending, the secret tea party of EP8 shows that, decades into the future, she became a successful children's book author, and meets the amnesiac Battler during that time. However, the manga endorsed by the author, gives the red truth "Ange Ushiromiya dies without fail in 1998". Good luck making sense of all that in an anti-fantasy perspective.
• Mind Screwdriver: The sound novel itself is very careful to give the player enough clues and hints to reach the truth themselves without ever explicitly telling them the answer. The manga (supervised by Ryukishi himself) both adds more clues and explicitly lays out the solution for the reader, as well as confirming once and all the truth of what happened on Rokkenjima during the tragedy.
• Missing Mom: Battler's mother Asumu died, and it's stated outright that Kyrie is more of an older sister than a mom to him. In fact, Battler is distanced from Rudolf because he married Kyrie too soon for Battler's taste. Of course, it turns out Asumu wasn't his real mother, and Battler has a HUGE Heroic BSoD when he finds out.
• Mirror Character: After their characters end up being fully explored, Rosa and Maria become this for each other; Maria represents the little girl of lost innocence that Rosa once was just as Rosa represents the resentful and vengeful woman that Maria probably would have risked becoming if she hasn't died too soon.
• Mobile Shrubbery: One of Battler's more ridiculous theories in Episode 2 involves Piece Beato sneaking into Maria's bedroom and stealing the chapel key while hiding in a cardboard box.
• Monty Hall Problem: In the EP8 manga, Jessica and George use this on Ange during a game of hide-and-seek, with the trope named outright.
• Mood Whiplash: A pretty strong element all throughout the series. While the pattern in Higurashi's arcs was to begin light and funny and get progressively darker and scarier, Umineko relies more on unexpected emotional shock.
• Mooks: All of the goats, who are also faceless goons.
  • Subverted in one scene of the EP4 visual novel where one of the goats reflects upon its life before triggering too many loser flags and dying at the hands of one of the heroes.
• Morality Kitchen Sink: Becomes increasingly apparent as the story goes on, particularly in the Answer Arcs. While Beatrice sets herself up as the clear main villain in the opening chapters, later episodes add a lot of depth to her character, and reveal that she's not nearly as malevolent as she'd made herself out to be. As more information is revealed about the Ushiromiya family, both outwardly decent people and seeming Jerkasses are shown to have Hidden Depths, capable of doing both good and terrible things depending on the circumstances. Battler himself is one of the few characters who stays heroic throughout, and in the final episode tries to help Ange look past the ugliness of the Rokkenjima tragedy to realize that no matter how horrid the truth may be, her family truly cared about her and will always be with her.
• Multi-Gendered Split Personalities: Zig-zagged. Kanon and Shannon are alternate personas of the culprit, Sayo Yasuda, who is female. However, she was designated male at birth but raised as female after the accident that left her unable to have children as a baby. Much of her conflict comes down to not feeling fully comfortable as either gender.
• Multigenerational Household: The main house.
• Multiple Endings: Unlike Higurashi before it, Umineko has two endings, which are based on the single choice the player is offered input on. It's very clear which is considered the 'true' ending, though, mostly due to that ending having an extended epilogue sequence.
• Multiple Reference Pun: Similarly to Higurashi, although it may be a bit far-fetched. "Umineko" is the Japanese name for the black-tailed seagull, but it literally means "sea cat". The term used to describe the endless possible scenarios of Rokkenjima is the "catbox". So the title can mean "When the seagulls cry" or "When the cat in the middle of the sea is dead".
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • It's kinda hard to remember with all of the sound effects and shiny slashes that when characters use red text, blue text, and gold text, they're really only rebutting each other's arguments. It's like the most shiny debate club competition EVAR.
  • Remove the color tints and special effects at the end of EP4 and you get Battler trying to speak but choking halfway.
  • Lambdadelta's power include bombarding her opponent with… candies.
  • Dawn has a particularly interesting case and even lampshades it. Erika picks a fight with Maria over the fact that Maria claims Beatrice made candy appear from an empty cup. It escalates to the point where Maria and Erika have a Truth battle to determine whether or not this candy trick was an act of magic. It's a Wizard Duel meets bickering over candy with a 9 year old.
    Cornelia: Let it be known that this fight has no point...
• My Greatest Failure: The focus of the EP8 manga is the Ushiromiyas coming to terms with the mistakes they made in life. This includes Eva's remorse for mistreating Ange as her stepmother, Natsuhi's for maiming Beatrice/Sayo, Rosa's for not empathizing with Maria despite her own experience with bullying, Beatrice/Sayo's for constantly escaping to fantasy instead of addressing her issues, Kumasawa and Genji's for encouraging her escapism, and being too passive with her situation respectively, Kinzo's for being an awful father, Nanjo's for not correcting his ways, George and Jessica's for not letting Sayo feel comfortable to admit her issues, and Rudolf and Kyrie's for not being better parents. The overall lesson Ange learns is changed from the truth of the Rokkenjima incident not mattering to recognizing it as a culmination of her family's mistakes and suffering.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Genji, Shannon and Kanon seem rather unconcerned in the face of Kinzo's actions and all the murders that occur. In reality Kinzo is long dead and Shannon and Kanon are in fact the same person, Sayo, who is Kinzo's illegitimate child with his daughter Beatrice II and is the one Genji considers his new master. Sayo plans the Rokkenjima tragedy in suicidal loathing for the Ushiromiya family and Genji's guilt at driving her into this state is what motivates him to help Sayo at any cost.
• Mysterious Purple: The series makes use of Languages Of Truth: for example, speech in red is always true; no falsities can be spoken using red text. Purple text is similar with a caveat: it is always true unless if spoken by someone who committed a murder. Not only does this make whether or not the speaker is a murderer ambiguous, it also makes it a mystery for the player as to whether or not the statements itself were true, a lie said by a murderer, or a true statement, just said by a murderer.
• Mystery Fiction: A classic form of this, being a whodunnit. This is a misdirection, as the story is better defined as a "whydunnit" instead.
• Mythology Gag: Many references to Higurashi.
  • The Touhou fan song "Pettan Pettan Tsurupettan" was used because the lyrics referenced Oyashiro and footsteps.
  • 34 sympathizes with Eva's "unfortunate childhood a bit".
  • Maria's letter to whoever discovers the bodies at the end of EP1 is nearly identical to the one Keiichi wrote in Higurashi's Onikakushi-hen.
  • Unimpressed by his hypotheses at the end of EP4, Lambdadelta suggest that Battler's next crazy theory should be that everyone on the island is infected with Hinamizawa Rokkenjima Syndrome.
  • Similarly in the first novel, Battler makes it clear that "he's not infected with some disease that makes him scratch his throat to death if he doesn't fondle breasts".
  • The Seven Sisters' outfit looks suspiciously like Angel Mort's uniform.
  • One of the riddles in EP8 is the exact same riddle Keiichi used to trick Satoko at the start of the zombie tag in Higurashi.
• Nazi Gold: The true origin of the 10 tons of gold, as revealed in Episode 7. To be more exact, it was fascist Italian gold.
• Nested Story Reveal: Episode 8 reveals that most of the plot is Toya Hachijo's attempt to recreate what happened in Rokkenjima by writing mystery novels ("Forgeries") based on the original two message bottles that washed up on the shores of Japan.
• Never Found the Body: Anyone who survives until the end of the arc tends to die in this manner. However, even during the arcs, Kanon seems to have these sorts of deaths a lot.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • The anime's next-episode trailers are full of blatant lies and out-of-character behavior. They're hilarious. Except the last one.
  • The trailer before the release of the first game opened with the words "No Knox, No Dine, No Fair". Episodes 5 and 7 introduce incarnations of the Knox and Van Dine rules respectively.
  • A website version. Alchemist announced a Umineko project, but used different characters drawn in the Umineko portrait style. This all turned out to be a joke and the characters were for their new game Galgun, but at the same time they announced Rondo of the Witch and Reasoning
• Nightmare Face: Really gets ramped up in the PS3 remake; they generally involve shadowy brows, extremely wide grins and bugged-out eyes. Beatrice provides a comparison the PC and PS3 sprites.◊ And let's not get into the manga, where every chapter is guaranteed to have at least one grotesquely deformed expression.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Beatrice is prone to these, and Maria's giggling sometimes morphs into it as well. Lambda has her "O-ho-ho-ho-ho!" in the Visual Novel as well.
• No Body Left Behind: The Stakes are some of the few characters NOT to leave gruesome corpses. Unless they're the ones doing the killing, but that's another matter… This also happens every time Kanon dies.
• No Name Given: Kinzō's wife and Maria's father remain ghost characters until the very end.
• Not so Fast, Bucko!: Used horribly effectively in Requiem. The funeral is over, the rain stops, everyone can go, a sweet piano music plays along with the "Umineko no naku Koro ni" ending screen. Then in the Tea Party, we are brutally reminded that Bernkastel is the Game Master of this Episode. Of course, all the Tea Parties have a twist, but this one is almost an Episode of its own (it's even divided in chapters).
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: Amakusa tries to pull this on Ange in the Trick ending, upon which she calmly replies that the Tokarev does not have a safety and shoots him to death.
• Occult Detective: The Witch Hunters in Episode 4.
• Of Corpse He's Alive: In EP4 it's revealed that Kinzo has actually been dead for almost two years, and Krauss and Natsuhi have been keeping up the illusion that he's still alive by telling everyone else that he's shut himself in his study and refuses to come out. Natsuhi's tendency to hallucinate that Kinzo is still alive and encouraging her is also meant to fool the reader at first.
• Official Couple: There are nothing but these. Not much room for Shipping in this series. George/Shannon, Jessica/Kanon, Rudolf/Kyrie, Eva/Hideyoshi, Krauss/Natsuhi, Beatrice/Battler, Lambdadelta/Bernkastel. However, when you take into account that Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice are the same person, things get really complicated.
• Older Than They Look: Eva is 50 years old and looks in her mid-thirties at most. Her siblings (Krauss is a few years older than Eva, Rudolf is around 40 and Rosa in her mid-thirties) aren't shabby in the youthfulness department as well, and Kyrie as well. Ironically, it's her husband Hideyoshi who looks how you'd expect from a middle-aged man.
• Ominous Latin Chanting:
  • The anime's opening.
  • The visual novel openings as well. It's gotten to the point where Akiko Shikata created a new version of the VN's original opening entirely in Italian.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: Odds are, if you're magical, your theme tune hits this trope. For some examples, we have "Organ Opusculum No. 600,000,000 in C Minor" (Beatrice), "happiness of marionette" (Eva-Beatrice), and "Dance of the Moon Rabbit" (the Chiester). Though as a subversion, the latter two sound pretty joyful. The best example of the trope in the series is probably Kuina in Episode 5.
• On One Condition: If you find the gold before midnight of the second night, you win! If not, "The witch shall be revived. None shall survive."
  • And even when someone DID find it, "When the seagulls cried, there was but one survivor."
  • In EP5 the gold was found and a murder occured anyway. Furthermore, while the game ended before everyone died, the author implied in an interview that more people die anyways.
  • Not to mention EP7: Everyone works together to find the gold… and promptly turn on each other.
• One-Woman Wail: Several of xaki's musics are based on this in the soundtrack. She does the wail herself too.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Beatrice's name is treated as a title, and indeed, when Eva-Beatrice becomes the new Endless Witch, Beatrice claims that she is now "nameless." Battler then gives her the nickname "Beato" to use, which has been used for her more often than not since.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Lambdadelta toward Bernkastel. Beato toward Battler and vice versa.
• Ontological Mystery: How part of EP6 is played out.
• Opening a Can of Clones: Given all the Reality Warper and Your Mind Makes It Real-type tropes that are involved, this was kind of inevitable. The red text is supposed to defuse the problem a bit, although a lot of it simply hinges on your trust of Beatrice in general.
• Our Hero Is Dead: Happens quite often thanks to Death Is Cheap, but is very notable towards the end of EP5 after Battler and Beatrice's utter defeat by the hands of Bernkastel and Erika.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: Beato's explanation of 1967 Beatrice's existence is that Kinzo created a homunculus of her and trapped her soul in it. In EP7, it turns out that this probably isn't true.
• Out of Character: Ronove and Beatrice in Forgery No.XXX (which features an Axe-Crazy version of Battler).
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: Finding the culprit requires to think some aspects in an unorthodox way. Namely, you have to understand that "a person" doesn't necessarily refer to a physical person (which is heavily foreshadowed in the early episodes), and relatedly that in Beato's mouth, "dead" doesn't necessessarily mean physically dead.
• Painting the Medium:
  • Red truth is for an absolute truth. Blue truth is for a magic-denying theory, and later to emphasize logical arguments. Gold truth is for those who have understood everything of the game board. And Twilight has the purple declaration for important testimonies in Bernkastel's mystery game. Every piece can use the purple declaration, and it's used to speak the truth, like the red, but the culprit(s) can lie with it.
  • All dialogue is spoken aloud in the anime (duh) but red text tints the scene red, zooms around in white font, with butterflies circling it, and makes a high-pitched buzzing. (Blue is the same sans butteflies.) In some instances for the final episode of the anime, the text doesn't appear, but the sound effects (a slashing noise for red and a booming noise for blue) remain to imply that what they say is "colored."
• Parents as People: A pretty sharp contrast to Higurashi, where you don't even see the protagonist's parents' faces.
• Parental Incest: Kinzo fathered a child with the daughter he had with the original Beatrice. What's worse is that since he saw Beatrice II as the reincarnation of her mother, and she could neither return nor understand these feelings, he essentially raped her.
• Parent with New Paramour: Battler took very poorly to the fact that Rudolf remarried so quickly after Asumu's death.
• Pastel-Chalked Freeze Frame:
  • Each member of the cast gets an introductory one in the first episode of the anime.
  • The Anime's depiction of the meta-world may qualify for this as well.
• Pater Familicide: Essentially, Kinzo's plan is this plus spouses and grandkids. Subverted, since Kinzo's dead before it all happens..
• Pensieve Flashback:
  • Ange with Maria's diary.
  • The anime adaptation also uses this for the meta-scenes.
• Perilous Marriage Proposal: In every scenario, the murders begin the night George proposes to Shannon (Although the scene itself is only shown in two arcs, it's implied or stated to have occurred in all the others as well).
• Philosophical Choice Endings: Episode 8 shows the player a magic trick involving making candy appear, and asks if it was real magic or a trick. This choice leads to the appropriately-named Magic and Trick endings.
• Pimped-Out Dress
• Pixellation: It's used a few different times in the anime, although it's removed on the DVDs.
• Posthumous Character: Asumu as well as Kinzo and Beatrice. On the magical side, we have Chiester 556.
• Postmodernism: And how. The series uses so many tropes from the Metafiction Index that the truth loops around itself and reality becomes unstable. Between deep discussions of what consists mysteries, implications that some of the narrative is untrustable, lampshades of Invoked Tropes, and the entirety of the Meta-World, the viewer is left to guess wildly about what is going on.
• The Power of Love:
  • According to Episodes 3 and 4, magic was originally intended to bring about happiness and gained its powers through the efforts of love. Knowing Ryukishi, this was completely intentional.
  • This trope is actually examined in different ways throughout the series, and in some cases it's deconstructed most notably in Kinzo's case, since while he and Beatrice Castiglioni were deeply in love, his love for her combined with her Death by Childbirth drove him to sexually abuse their daughter just because she so closely resembled her mother.
    • It's also implied that it lead him to killing all the Japanese and Italian soldiers in the base, or at least manipulating them into killing each other.
• Powers That Be: The Witches' Senate may be something of the sort. We are never really explained what it is, what kind of power it has or how its members are designated. We just know that Bern, Lambda and Featherine are part of it and that it's a very bad idea to go against it. It's to the point that Lambdadelta herself takes it very seriously when she invokes her authority as a member of the senate.
• Present-Day Past:
  • Internet as presented in Umineko would seem plausible if the story were at least set somewhere in the 21st century. In 1998, though? It wasn't big to the point of having millions of people posting theories about the Rokkenjima incident.
  • Maria says that one of her favourite anime series is "Card Master Sakura" (a very obvious reference to Cardcaptor Sakura), to the point that it is the naming inspiration for Sakutarou. Though one could assume that the show Maria likes isn't necessarily the same one as Cardcaptor Sakura, the latter series' original manga began in 1996 while its anime first aired in 1998, while Sakutarou was made in 1986 at the very latest.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted with such frequency that the exceptions become suspicious.
• Prolonged Prologue: Legend of the Golden Witch is basically one long prologue, with the meta-duel between Battler and Beatrice beginning only at the very end of the Tea Party.
• Psychic Powers: How some believe Ange is able to "talk" with pre-Rokkenjima Maria through Maria's diary.
• Psychological Thriller: While there are ample amounts of gore, especially in the first three episodes, the tension still mostly stems from wondering why all this is happening and the characters trying to figure out this seemingly unsolvable puzzle.
• Pun-Based Title: One of the music tracks, Proud Dust, is a pun on the double meaning of the Japanese "hokori", which can be either "pride" or "dust".
• Puni Plush: Ryukishi07's (in)famous drawing style consists big heads, round faces and… weird hands. Really weird. It appeals to many fans thanks to its expressiveness though.
• Puzzle Thriller: Not only the hero, but the players must first figure out how the narration works before they can solve any puzzle. As long as you just take what is shown to you at face value and assume the narration is objective, you won't go anywhere.

Q-T

• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Stakes of Purgatory and the Chiesters.
• The Rashomon: Suspend any expectation that a Third Person Omniscient camera will show the objective truth, or even the characters' honest perspectives. Events and conversations may contain truth, even if they never happened.
• Rays from Heaven: This visual novel does this at the end of Ep 7 after Will solving all of Beatrice's games and riddles, letting Beatrice, in the form of Claire, die in peace. Lion also learns how lucky they should be in not having become Sayo Yasuda. The sunlight is even described as looking as a staircase to heaven.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: "H-His anti-magic resistance level is at Endless Nine!"
• Real After All: Possibly. After it is seemingly established that witches and fantasy creatures are essentially imaginary beings (or at best exist on a different plane), Episode 8 shows Ikuko/Featherine using the red truth during a press conference in the real world, and not aging the slightest bit in something like 40 years, thus implying that witches do exist after all. Like an ultimate Mind Screw from the author.
• Real-Place Background: Like in Higurashi, the original sound novels mostly use photos as backgrounds. The Ushiromiya mansion is based on the Kyu-Furukawa Gardens in Tokyo.
• Really 700 Years Old: Both Bernkastel and Lambdadelta, as well as Beatrice. In Beatrice's case, though, it's subverted.
• Recurring Riff: The major composers each have a prominent one:
  • zts has goldenslaughterer
  • dai has hope
  • Luck Ganriki has Organ Short #600 Million in C Minor
• Recursive Canon:
  • Revealed to be the case in EP8.
  • Also parodied, in episodes 2 and 3 Maria watches an episode of Higurashi: When They Cry.
    • Even back in EP1, Battler mentions reading Higurashi.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Both the Stakes and Chiesters, as well as Lambdadelta (but only in the anime and PS3 remake).
• Red Herring: One that can be suspected as early as Episode 2 if you pay close attention. Not only are the "epitaph murders" not part of any revival ceremony, the one who supposedly begun said ceremony is long dead.
• Relationship Upgrade: Jessica and Kanon in EP6.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: The Witches love this trope:
  • Episode 2's Tea Party, where Rosa's relatives are repeatedly killed, have specific parts of their body harvested and made into food, and are then brought back to life so more ingredients can be taken.
  • In Episode 3, EVA-Beatrice forces Rosa (and Maria) to experience all of her childhood fantasies, which are all deadly: having mountains of cake and jelly (each Giant Food crushes them to death), flying as butterflies (and being eaten by a spider), and flying as humans (they fall onto a spiked fence).
  • In Episode 4, Maria repeatedly kills and revives Rosa as revenge.
• Retcon:
  • An integral part of the plot. If I mention quantum post-selection paradoxes, would you understand?
  • In EP6, Battler initially provides Erika with faulty tape to prevent her seals, but later retroactively gives her proper tape out of pity... Erika then retroactively seals some rooms to force Battler into a Logic Error.
• Rivals Team Up: Who's whose rival is rather floating, but there are several occasions.
  • In EP5, Battler, Ronove, Virgilia, Gaap, and the Seven Sisters of Purgatory all band together to give Erika and the Eiserne Jungefrau (particularly Dlanor) a serious beatdown.
  • In EP6, Gaap and George and Ronove and Jessica in the first twilight. Kyrie and Leviathan also
  • In EP8, Will and Dlanor team up to fight the goats.
• Rewatch Bonus: Much like Higurashi, rereading through Umineko can feel like you're experiencing a completely different story. Umineko takes it farther, though, due to its overall theme of Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, its exploration of the mystery genre, and its initial premise being much more of a Mind Screw than Higurashi's was.
• Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: A few of the Battler's theories to solve the murders involve this trope.
• Rule 34: The TIP "Game Master Battler" might be a parody of this rule, as Battler takes advantage of the power of the Catbox to have every female character (and yes, that includes Ange) crawl at his feet.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Subverted in the same way as Higurashi, but slightly more ironic, as those who die first do so as sacrifices to summon Beatrice or not, since that's not why the murders are happening.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • Episode 4. In order to gain two, sacrifice one: Your life. Your loved one's life. Everyone else's lives. Amusingly, everyone shown indicates one of the choices, then goes on to Take a Fourth Option anyways.
  • The entire plot is a sort of variation. Battler must accept magic's existence or blame one of his close relatives. As Beatrice gleefully points out several times. He has big qualms with both.
• Sawed-Off Shotgun: The weapons for most of the adults.
• Say My Name: All the time. (Beeeeeeeeeeaaatriiiiiiiiiiice!)
• Scare Chord:
  • A rather terrifying one.
  • Episode 4 somehow manages to make a *pin pon* sound like a scare chord when Gaap stops pretending she's in trouble.
• Science Destroys Magic: This is the witches' defense for why they don't use magic openly: People don't believe in it anymore which undermines its effectiveness. The validity of the argument is intentionally ambiguous.
• Schrödinger's Cat: The Rokkenjima incident is considered a "cat box" because there is virtually no trace of the Ushiromiya family to confirm their deaths. They are in fact dead, but 900 tons of explosives blew away all the evidence.
• Secret Underground Passage: Rokkenjima used to be a military base, so now it gets used for the passage to Kuwadorian.
• Sequel Hook: "Let's meet again. When something else cries…"
• Serial Escalation: Everything that happens in one game usually gets this treatment in the next; heck, it also happens in the middle of the games themselves, from the awesomely epic magic shows to the badass BGM to the number of characters per game to the ridiculous and outrageous theories for the murders to the amount of memes generated per game. Special mention goes to Episode 5, in which the "Holy Shit!" Quotient reaches its peak.
• Servant Race: Furniture is apparently this. Later subverted, since not only is it implied that many of the furniture characters are really Imaginary Friends, but as the series goes on it becomes more apparent that whenever Shannon and Kanon use the word "furniture" it doesn't actually refer to their race or social status; rather, it refers to how Sayo Yasuda believes that her damaged body which is "unable to love" makes her less than human.
• Sex Equals Love: One of Sayo Yasuda's issues and part of her primary internal conflict. The accident she suffered as a baby left Sayo with a body that was unable to have children and, it is heavily implied, unable to have sex at all. Her inability to consumate her love with George (and ultimately bear his children) is one of the primary things that slowly pushes her over the edge.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Though the phrase is never used, some characters discuss whether the story itself should be this in EP8. Whether the story itself was this is a frequent bone of contention for the fandom.
• Shameful Strip: After Battler surrenders to Beatrice in the second arc, he is stripped completely except for a chain around his neck that Beatrice uses as a leash.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page here.
• Shouting Free-for-All: Deliberately invoked by Beatrice and company during the climax, to stall for time, while Battler/Ange/Lambdadelta leave to retrieve the Book of the Single Truth
• Show Within a Show: Played for laughs in the manga, where Maria (and Ange in an omake) watches a show called "Magical Bern-chan".
• Sickeningly Sweet: Played with at the beginning of Episode 3. One cute scene has the cousins and Shannon all fooling around on the beach, then everyone promising that they will always get along while holding hands, with Jessica lampshading how embarrassing it is… and then the screen breaks and we brutally switch to the meta-world, while Beatrice cackles that, nope, there won't be such happy ending. Did we mention she is a bit of a Troll?
• Sigil Spam: The One-Winged Eagle crest of the Ushiromiya family shows up quite often; all the Ushiromiya family members and servants have the crest somewhere on their clothing (except for Natsuhi and Gohda, who Kinzo doesn't trust), it's on Kinzo's stationary and personal seal, and the hidden gold bars all have the crest on them. EP7 reveals that it's not an original symbol, and it derives from a faded imprint of the Italian Social Republic's eagle on the gold bars.
• Slasher Smile:
  • Everyone who is involved with the murders of family (Eva, Eva-Beatrice, Kinzo/"Goldsmith" come to mind) has one.
  • In the manga, Dlanor "GREAT EQUALIZER IS THE DEATH" Knox gains a Slasher Smile at one point.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: Level 5 (Full Lockout). Ye gads, get out of order or miss a segment or two in either, and you can end up so lost. And, this is the same, whichever medium you're playing/ watching/ reading them in.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: Averted. They do exist, but Rosa doesn't want anything to do with them since they may find out about her less-than-stellar parenting of Maria.
• So Happy Together: In the first arc, George proposes to Shannon in a gazebo with all sorts of pretty music playing in the background. Guess who's one of the people found dead the next morning, with the engagement ring on her finger? Double Subverted since Shannon wasn't really among the corpses, but she was probably the murderer.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Episode 3. People getting killed horribly with this music in the background.
  • That's nothing compared to Eva-Beatrice's theme song: It's even called Happiness of Marionette. So when does this play? Whenever the villain of this arc is contemplating how she'll torture people, of course!
  • Note: if, when playing Umineko, a piece of music is played containing either a pipe organ or a harpsichord (unless it is in the beginning, setting up the Rokkenjima family gathering), NOTHING positive is going to happen in that scene. No matter how happy, fun, pleasant, or uplifting it my sound, some serious shit is going down. Someone is either going to: A) Die horribly, B) Have their perception of reality shattered, C) Get trapped in a horrific logic error, D) Have their argument torn to shreds, E) THINK that they are going to win, then get completely and utterly beaten, or F) All of the above!
• Split Personality: Eva-Beatrice and Eva, which could also qualify as something of a Literal Split Personality and possibly an Enemy Without. It is deconstructed however when we learn about the real origin and why Evatrice was created.
  • Rosa is very often implicated to have one both inside the story by her daughter and outside by some fans.
• Spoiler Opening:
  • In each arc the opening animations change, most notably the portrait. The second animation set shows Beatrice's Human Form, and the third set shows Eva-Beatrice, Virgilia, and the Chiesters. The fourth one shows all three portraits, another Chiester, and Maria's witch outfit.
  • The opening of the PS3 port is very bad with it. Showing quickly important scenes without context may not be bad enough, but showing characters whose very existence are a big surprise for first time players make sure a good part of the mood of the first few episodes are completely changed.
• Stay in the Kitchen:
  • While growing up, Eva was repeatedly told by her family that she fails as a woman because she didn't know how to do feminine things. The creation of EVA-Beatrice seems initially largely stems from her resentment of this.
  • Also, Krauss repeatedly shuts Natsuhi up. Unfortunately this isn't to his benefit, since she basically runs the house and has much more common sense than he does while he squanders their money on poorly thought-out business ventures.
• Stealth Pun: Why is Leviathan's hair an odd shade of green? She's green with Envy.
• Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle: Many of the puzzles in the quiz mini-game of Episode 8 are of this kind.
• Succession Crisis:
  • There were all sorts of tensions laid about. Then Beatrice's letter shows up (effectively forcing the current heir, Krauss, to fight for his position), and all hell breaks loose.
  • According to Battler's final game, this is apparently subverted, since Kinzo makes an official succession ceremony and distributes the inheritance to the family.
  • Also averted outright in EP7, since there is no epitaph and Kinzo already has an appointed successor, Lion Ushiromiya.
• Summation Gathering:
  • In EP5, Erika invokes the trope intentionally, and indeed, all the common elements of the scenario are present. It's subverted in that the obvious suspect, Natsuhi, is innocent, and being falsely accused. Erika doesn't really care about this one detail, however.
  • It's also extensively discussed in EP5. While talking with Virgilia about mystery novels, Battler realizes that someone putting this trope into motion has the same effect as telling the reader that at that point in time, there should be enough clues to solve the mystery. Shortly afterwards, Battler re-reads the story thus far and learns truth of the mystery, indirectly telling the audience that it is possible to deduce the truth.
• Summon Magic: Just about all furniture requires this.
• Super-Fun Happy Thing of Doom: Some of the "Tea Parties" may start as cheerful and humorous after-parties, but they usually do not end this way. And more often than not they contain some horrible reveal or twist.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The grown-ups want to find the hidden ten tons of gold to solve their financial problems. This makes perfect sense... until Episode 7's Tea Party, where we are shown some people finding the gold and realizing that they'll have to sell it before it can be of any use to them, and selling several tons of unmarked ingots without attracting suspicion will be very difficult. This is alleviated somewhat by Kinzo having already sold some of the gold on the black market and putting the money onto a card that is also included as part of the treasure. And the fighting over how to share the gold makes this the least of their problems.
• Switched at Birth: Battler is Kyrie's son.
• Symbolic Cast Fadeout: The character portraits in the character bios on the TIP menu fade into gray and get splattered with blood in the matter they died.
• Take Me Instead: Rosa tries it by expressly asking Beatrice to take only her and spare Maria when she shows up to stop Eva-Beatrice from torturing them again and give them a Mercy Kill instead.
• Take That, Audience!: A rather unsubtle one in EP8 towards the readers. A seemingly endless bunch of goat-headed creatures making hilariously stupid theories and demanding answers from the creators. Some readers took offence. Lampshaded in-story.
  The enjoyment comes from sorting and thinking to reach the truth, and not demanding it.
  • This actually starts as early as EP2, not as direct but also not subtle, when characters scold or complain about other characters (usually Battler, but not always) not even trying to think.
• Take Up My Sword: In EP5, Battler becomes the Endless Sorcerer after Beatrice is killed by Erika
• Taking the Bullet:
  • In the second arc, Jessica takes a Stake for Kanon. It doesn't really accomplish much, since Beato has 6 more.
  • In the third arc, Belphegor does this to protect Eva-Beatrice.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • Gleefully averted, at least some of the time. In the first arc, Kanon has a long rant about how he's going to kill himself and ruin Beatrice's plans, but she sics a Stake on him before he gets around to acting on it. There's also an awful lot of people dying in the middle of trying to say something important.
  • The anime, on the other hand, fell victim to this trope with Jessica falling to the ground in Bullet Time and talking at the same time.
  • Played straight later in the novels, Battler's debate with Beato at the end of the fourth arc and the trial at the end of the fifth arc last a minute each.
• Talking to Themself: It takes more than half the series for the readers to realize that this trope is in effect whenever Shannon talks to Kanon, but in Episode 7 this fact becomes obvious. Also, no matter how you look at it Beatrice is doing this with many of the fantasy characters, as well as Shannon and Kanon, in both the Meta-World and the piece-world.
• Tangled Family Tree: And how. It's revealed in EP7 that Kinzo had a daughter with Beatrice Castiglioni, and then had another daughter/son with that daughter. Said second daughter/son is in a relationship with at least two of Kinzo's grandchildren. Gender ambiguity actually being a plot point here. You do the math.
• Tempting Fate: "Unless messing up sets off a trap that blows up the island, of course." You just had to say it, Beato.
• Ten Little Murder Victims: Essentially the whole plot is based on this trope. The Trope Namer is even referenced in End of the Golden Witch and parallels are drawn.
• Ten Paces and Turn: Rudolf duels a stake with this trope involved. And then, in the sixth episode during the duels between Shannon and Kanon, later - Beatrice and Erika.
• Theme Naming:
  • With the exception of Kinzo, the blood members of the Ushiromiya family all have Western names transliterated from kanji. Battler is the Odd Name Out, being a translation instead. Sayo is even more of an Odd Name Out but is a justified case, unlike Battler's. The four siblings in particular (Krauss, Eva, Rudolf and Rosa) all have German names.
  • Many of the servants have 音 (non/on/ne, meaning "sound") as part of their names.
  • All the women related to Battler also are named from Christian mythos (Kyrie Eleison = The Kyrie Prayer, Assum = Assumption into heaven, and Ange = Angel).
  • As for the magical characters, several are named after characters appearing in Dante's The Divine Comedy: Beatrice, Virgil (Virgilia), and Bernard of Clairvaux (Clair Vauxof Bernard) are all Dante's guides.
  • The demons' names are taken from the Ars Goetia (Ronove, Gaap, Zepar and Furfur), and the Stakes of Purgatory are all named after demons that are associated with the sins they represent according to Peter Binsfield's classification of demons.
  • The Chiesters are named after different types of ammunition.
  • Dlanor A. Knox and Willard H. Wright are both named after detective novelists (Ronald A. Knox and S.S. Van Dine, respectively), who each wrote a set of guidelines on how mystery novels should be written in order to be solvable.
• There Are No Therapists: Even though the Ushiromiya family could all really benefit from some therapy, this trope is justified since during the 1980s therapy was frowned upon in Japan (and unfortunately still is).
• They Killed Kenny Again: Every. Single. Character.
• 13 Is Unlucky: A total of 13 people are killed in the epitaph's ceremony.
• Time Bomb: Kinzo would set one for When the Clock Strikes Twelve as a motivational exercise, which apparently never failed, but someone else will let it time out at the end of Oct 5th.
• Time Travel: Ange is an interesting case. It is not clear when or where the Meta-World is, but Battler and Beatrice's fight takes place in 1986; Ange lives in 1998 and with Bernkastel's assistance reaches the Meta-World. One way of explaining this is that since Episodes 1 and 2 (sans Meta-World sequences) were found as message bottles after 1986, all Ange is doing is metaphorically going back to 1986 and trying to find out what really happened. In such a case, this probably counts as a subversion.
• Title Drop:
  • Over and over again by Battler. "When the seagulls cry" refers to when the typhoon is over and everything's safe. It's also used at the very end to give the body count. Er… perhaps "survivor count" might be a better description.
  • Rosa does this on two separate occasions; one in the second arch and one in the third.
  • Several Episodes also drop their own title in the dialogue.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Both In-Universe and invoked. In fact, it's largely the point of the final episode, which points out that the Ushiromiya family could not have been nasty to each other all the time and that the previous episodes more or less both showed the family at their worst and that said worst is more or less only the theories of a bunch of gossipers.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In EP2, there's Shannon. In the first arc she seems to be a generic shy Moe Meido archetype who becomes cannon fodder early on. Cue the second arc when she stands up to the witch who's supposedly killing everyone and basically tells her that because she gets enjoyment from seeing them squirm, she's not going to react to give her the satisfaction. Not to mention the barrier powers...
  • In EP4, both Jessica and George: formerly damsels in distress give Ronove and Gaap a run for their money.
  • Battler, who was level grinding throughout the entire series so far, and boy does it show in the later ones.
  • Rosa at the height of EP8 gets so tired of being literally The Chew Toy of the witches in the past arches that when Erika makes the mistake of denying her love for her daughter Maria, Rosa proceeds to repay her by delivering her own butt on a plate silver (and Erika manages to save herself and get away from her only because Rosa has restrained herself on purpose).
  • After spending so much time being exploited, mocked and finally cruerly discarded by Bernkastel and having faced many doubts about her ability to really be able to save and bring back her family, the ability to be able to overcome her grief coupled with awareness that all her family, despite everything, loved her allows Ange to use her powers as a Witch of the Resurrection to their full potential to materialize a Golden Truth (i.e. her own truth) to finally defeat Bernkastel in a single unified assault along with the rest of the Ushiromiya and allies.
• The Tragic Rose: The rose garden in front of the Ushiromiya mansion, and Maria's search for her marked rose serve to symbolize the troubled relationship with her mother, who is pointedly named Rosa.
• Translation Punctuation: Depending on the language. The characters' native language is Japanese, and when a character is speaking in English or another language the dialogue will be written inside square brackets or angle brackets. This is used more in the author-endorsed fan patch by Witch Hunt than the original Japanese to avoid confusion about the dialogue.
• The Treachery of Images: A plot point actually. Battler is nearly won over in the third arc when Beatrice starts showing him visually spectacular witch battles, but Virgilia reminds him that this is still a narrative being told by Beatrice, so he should take the visuals with a few cellars of salt. By the time the 7th arc rolls around it's blatantly obvious in regards to at least 3 characters, if not more. Those who want to solve the mystery by then should take to heart the fact that the story is basically lying to the readers as much as it can without distorting the truth.
  • According to Dlanor's version of Knox's 9th, "It is permitted for observers to let their own conclusions and interpretations be heard," this is Fair Play. Everything shown in a character's Point of View, including internal monologues, is construed to be their "conclusions and interpretations", and therefore as honest and reliable as that character is.
• Troll: The witches in general, though depending on the witch, their trolling can be somewhat amusing in a dark comedy sort of way. Special nod goes to Bernkastel, whose trolling is not only incredibly cruel, but absolutely not funny. She ain't called Trollkastel for nothing you know.
• Tsundere:
  • Jessica, though like Mion from Higurashi: When They Cry she's an unconventional example in that she's neither overly tsun nor overly dere.
  • Beato towards Battler. In Beato and Battler's case, this is subverted massively in Episode 3, but appears to be true in Episode 4 anyway. Battler even talks about it in EP5.
  Battler: When she comes back again, I'm going to tell her "You're such a tsundora."
• Two Aliases, One Character: Actually Three Aliases, One Character. Shannon, Kanon and Beatrice are all the same person; they're alter egos/Imaginary Friends of Sayo Yasuda. In a twist on this trope, while these characters are all shown talking to each other at various points, the catch is that no one In-Universe ever sees them together outside of fantasy scenes (which are narrated by Beatrice, who's an Unreliable Narrator).
• Two Dun It: A possible theory about the truth of Rokkenjima is that the events are caused by two teams working independent of each other, one planning and one opportunistic. The first one is the servants and one of the siblings (which one depends on the arc) led by Sayo Yasuda who plans the murders (the one among the sibling and a few of the servants think it's just a game) in order to become free from her fate or that Battler solves the case and finds out the truth. The other one would be Kyrie who took a chance when the gold was found.

U-Z

• Umbrella of Togetherness: George and Shannon do this in the first arc when the typhoon hits.
• Uncommon Time: "Proud Dust" is an intense, headbanging piano crescendo with a slightly disorienting 13/4 time signature that reinforces its chaotic feel.
• Understatement: Episode 22's title in the anime, "Problem Child". In regards to Maria. For some context, that's the one where she kills her mother over and over and over. Hard not to cheer for her though, considering that Rosa is not exactly the best mom either.
• Unexpected Successor: Kinzo, actually. The Ushiromiya family used to be very powerful, and Kinzo was a member of "a branch of the branch family". Then, an earthquake took out just about everything, and it was up to Kinzo to restore the family to its former glory. But not exactly, as the elders of the family were still alive and intended to use Kinzo as a figurehead, and he even knew that they were going to make a puppet out of him. Somewhere along the lines, he decided to take matters into his own hands, presumably with the help of Beatrice Castiglioni.
• Unexplained Recovery: What happens when a new game begins after the last, in which Everybody Dies. Or at least a majority of the cast.
• Unreliable Narrator: A key part of the plot. It's explicitly stated that anything not in red text is liable to be false. What is in red text? ...Not very much...
  • Episode 5 spells out what can and can't be taken as reliable: For episodes 1-4, only scenes that piece Battler narrates, For episode 5, only scenes that Erika narrates (which are very few).
  • This applies in a broader sense later on, once you learn that Episodes 1-2 were written by Yasu, and Episodes 3-6 by Tohya; each of them places far more emphasis on things relevant to themselves. Yasu's episodes are unreliable beyond that because they were written before the actual event, while Tohya's place much more emphasis on how Yasu was influenced by Battler, which makes it impossible to know how reliable that really is.
• The Unreveal:
  • We are never shown what Ange saw in Kawabata's house in Episode 4. It's only shown in a TIP of Tsubasa.
  • The reader never learns what really happened on Rokkenjima. They are only ever given hints to reason the answer for themselves. The reason given in-game is that by never revealing the truth, Ange's hope for a miracle that everyone survived can never be denied. The truth is at least something disturbing enough to drive poor Ange to suicide after she reads Eva's diary, which contains the One Truth.
    • In the manga, The Unreveal about the diary becomes The Un-Twist, as its contents pretty much show the Episode 7 Tea Party.
• The Un-Twist: invoked Ryūkishi07 perfected this to an artform. A rule of thumb when you're reading Umineko is that offhand comments or theories made by the characters should not be dismissed casually. This trope is outright mentioned in Our Confession.
  "If, say, Natsuhi says that the servants are the culprits, the reader will naturally assume she must be wrong. It's a confusion technique."
• Unusual Euphemism: Referring to the servants as "furniture" ("kagu" in Japanese). EP7 reveals that it was coined by Sayo Yasuda, and it's actually a euphemism for something worse; namely, because of her mutilated body which "can't love", she may as well not be human... in fact, she may as well be furniture.
• Updated Re-release: Like Higurashi, it has a remake on a Sony console.
• Uptown Girl: George, a member of the obscenely wealthy Ushiromiya family falls in love with Shannon, one of the servants at the main house. Similarly, Jessica Ushiromiya falls in love with Kanon, a male servant. Subverted when it turns out that Shannon and Kanon are actually the same person, Sayo Yasuda, who is Kinzo Ushiromiya's illegitimate child and the true head of the family.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Battler speculates that the reason Maria is so calm about everyone dying is the promise at the tenth twilight that she'll reach the Golden Land and everything will be restored: and her mother will be nicer to her to boot.
• Verbal Tic: Maria often makes a whining "uu~" sound. In EP4 it's revealed that she makes that sound so much because she believes it's a spell for happiness, and thus she'll make that sound even more when she's feeling unhappy or stressed.
• Villain-Based Franchise: Subverted in that Bernkastel wasn't a villain in Higurashi.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The original VNs allow you to "execute" characters to see how they died.
• Viewers Are Geniuses:
  • In order to understand what the series really is about, you need to pay attention to a lot of small details such as where the characters get hurt, where do they die, who talked about fantasy, etc.
  • However, Ryūkishi felt obliged to add hints like the catbox talk in Banquet because after Episode 2 many people had started giving up when the fantasy scenes popped up. In other words, he was forced to realize that, no, viewers are not geniuses.
• Weirdness Censor: In the anime, almost no attention is drawn to Maria's cackling, odd foreknowledge, and general sociopathy by other characters (the biggest example is probably the Mood Whiplash above). In the manga, Battler reacts with proper dread at her mysterious statements most of the time, and while he tries to laugh it off in the visual novels, he does find it troubling.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Natsuhi has this to Kinzo, her father-in-law, as she loves him very much and desperately wants his approval. And she wants it so bad that she is driven to psychosis after he dies, imagining his ghost is praising and reassuring her. Bernkastel later makes a point of telling her in the red that he never thought she was good enough.
• Wham Episode: Practically every single episode of the visual novel is one, having at least one major revelation about what's going on. If not in the episode itself, then in the tea party and ????.
  • The anime's episode 18. This is partly due to Compressed Adaptation.
• Wham Line: Many statements in red end up being this.
  • Episode 4:
  Lambdadelta: HEY. IN YOUR 1986, DID BATTLER ONII-CHAN COME HOME?
  • Episode 6:
  Dlanor: Kyrie Ushiromiya cannot save you.
  • Another red in Episode 6 that has screwed more than one mind:
  Erika: I am the visitor, the 18th human on Rokkenjima!
  Battler: Sorry, Erika, but…
  Beatrice: Even including you…
  Both: There are 17 people. *cue gunshot and credits rolling*
  • Episode 7:
    Bernkastel: This game will not have a happy ending.
• Wham Shot: Episode 7's tea party: Rosa is shot during an argument with Eva and Hideyoshi. Neither of them shot her...and then it cuts to Kyrie pointing a gun at them with a smug smile on her face.
• What You Are in the Dark: The reason the 'catbox' of Rokkenjima is closed. Everyone has a motive that isn't quite extreme enough for murder. But what do they do when presented with a pile of riches and the means to remove all evidence of what they did to secure it?
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: Twice. Usually, on the first day, there will be a time jump from around midnight to around six AM, implying that that's when the first murders occur, although the fourth arc is a little different. By midnight of the second night, well...
  • In Ep7, the siblings very nervously watch Kinzo's grandfather clock reach midnight, uncertain whether the explosives it's rigged to are armed or not.
• Which Me?: There are about twelve different versions and variations of the Beatrices. Eleven if Shannon and Kanon are separate people, but that's still one hell of a lot. Some of them have their own names (Ange-Beatrice is usually known simply as "Ange", unless some distinction between 1998 and meta-1986 needs to be made), some have last names that are applicable (Beatrice Castiglioni), and some of them simply have fan-created names, because otherwise, you wouldn't be able to figure out who someone was referring to (Moetrice, suit![or sometimes, piece!]Beatrice, Beatroll, etc.).
• White Magic: According to Virgilia, this was initially the purpose of Endless Magic. However, the magic itself can be used for either this or Black Magic depending upon the intentions of the user.
• Whodunnit to Me?: "Battler Ushiromiya, at this time, I will kill you. And right now, there is no one on the island other than you. The only one alive on this island is you. Nothing outside the island can interfere in any way. And of course, I am not you. However, I am here now and will kill you."
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The relationship between Battler and Beatrice is this towards The Divine Comedy with Beatrice waiting for Battler to find the truth referencing the eternal lady waiting for Dante at the top of Mount Purgatory. Several other names in the series also references the book and fulfill the same roles.
  • The book and the similarities are referenced in EP5 when Battler reaches the truth:
    ''Vergilius guided Dante to Mount Purgatory, ... and brought him below the feet of the eternal lady who waited at the top, Beatrice. Therefore, ... the innermost depths lay not at the bottom. ... but at the peak of Mount Purgatory. The eternal lady... had been waiting there for Dante... the whole time... And then...I...knew.
  • The mystery setting is also explicitly inspired by And Then There Were None: people gather on an isolated island and receive a mysterious message sent from an unknown person. And then people are killed one by one, following a text displayed in the house. This is mentioned in Episode 7.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Most of the witches have been driven near-mad with sheer boredom after centuries or even millennia. Bernkastel repeatedly refers to boredom as "the witches' sickness".
• Wife Husbandry: Kinzo to Beatrice Ushiromiya/Beatrice II. Yes, the one he fathered.
• A Wizard Did It: What Beatrice claims regarding her closed room murders. Battler's goal is to prove her wrong.
• Word Purée Title: A good number of the musics in the OST have this, like "System 0", "Lie-alaia", "Bore-ral", "F Style", "LixAxil", "l&d circulation" or "Ruriair". The climax musics from zts are all english words approximately mashed together with no space: "worldenddominator", "dreamenddischarger" or "lastendconductor" to name a few.
• World of Buxom: Virtually every female over the (apparent) age of 13 is noticeably… "blessed". Especially true of the Ushiromiya clan. Boobs in this series come in two sizes; almost non-existent (Lambdadelta, Maria) and DD (every other female). Bernkastel is either totally flat or mildly busty depending on the author.
• World of Ham: Virtually every single argument in the series, even the most mundane ones, is undeniable Ham-to-Ham Combat. Then the colored texts and magic weapons come into play, and the scenery is literally torn to pieces.
• World of Symbolism: After getting past the initial Mind Screw, one can see the fantasy scenes as being symbolic of various things, from aspects of murder mysteries to the characters' inner conflicts.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Most characters have realistic hair colors, but there are exceptions; Battler and his sister Ange have bright red hair, Bernkastel, Erika and Zepar all have blue hair, Dlanor has lavender hair, Chiester 45 and 410 respectively have pink and teal hair, Leviathan has green hair, and Amakusa and Clair both have white hair. Most characters with unusually colored hair aren't human or are magical in some way.
• Worthy Opponent: Battler and Beatrice refer to each other as this constantly.
• Wrestler in All of Us: In the fighting game, Ange with her DABURU JAAMAN.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • Battler doesn't believe in the supernatural and tries to find mundane explanations for everything bizarre happening on the island. Oddly enough, Beatrice seems amused by his denial and traps him in a time loop, challenging him to find a mundane explanation each time. Or something. He eventually realizes by EP5 that he must change his priorities, and becomes one of the most appropriately Genre Savvy characters in the series.
  • Also, it may be Erika and Dlanor case in EP5. They use the "fact" that they are in a mystery to use Knox's Decalogue as basis of most of their deductions. However, it was never stated that the Decalogue is really valid (Dlanor even acknowledges this).
• Yellow Brick Road: Jessica and the Killer Electric Fan. Basically, Jessica wrote a nonsensical script for the school festival play, but Lambdadelta found it amusing to enchant it. So when she, Battler and Shannon try to rehearse it, they are transported in the world of the play and must follow the script until the end to get out. At the end, a giant killer electric fan appears beneath their feet, despite being mentioned nowhere in the script. It turns out Jessica wanted to write "FIN" at the end but wrote "FAN" instead.
• You Already Changed the Past: Despite Ange's goal being to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, there is nothing she can do to change the future; nearly everyone who was on Rokkenjima will die, she will still have a miserable and unpleasant relationship with Eva, and though Battler technically survives he will no longer consider himself her brother.
• You Are Worth Hell: The fantasy ending of the series has Battler declare this for Beatrice.
• You Bastard!: In the Tanabata side story, Bern addresses the reader several times during her section, repeatedly asking, implying, and outright stating that they prefer seeing the sort of twisted 'wish-granting' she indulges in. Looking back, considering how Higurashi's ending was criticised because it was "too happy" for the series, she may not be totally wrong.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Ange helps even knowing that going back in time to help Battler won't fix her own timeline: just the one that Battler will now go to which makes her a Future Badass. In the end she can't fix Battler's timeline either, but it still turns out that aside from Eva he was the only one to make it off of Rokkenjima alive.

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When the seagulls cry, none are left alive.

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