Attack On Titan / Tropes G to L

Tropes for Attack on Titan
Tropes A to F (Famous Last Words) | Tropes G to L | Tropes M to R | Tropes S to Z (Wham Episode)

G

• Gaia's Lament: After the Rumbling, not only has 80% of humanity been wiped out, but the world's ecosystem has been devastated. Eren points out that he's crushed most of Marley's forests and left behind a barren wasteland that'll be flooded with insects that've grown fat on carrion. If he hadn't been stopped, the entire world outside Paradis would've been crushed as well.
• Gambit Pileup: Initially, it was just humans vs Titans. Then the threat of the Titan Shifters is revealed, with their motives initially completely unknown. Political intrigue builds up as Erwin plots the overthrow of the aristocracy, him trying to save humanity while Zackly just wants retributions against the upper class, only to learn human civilization is actually controlled by the Reiss family. And the Military Police brigade serving the Reiss family is actually loyal to Kenny Ackerman, who intended to betray them before learning his plan was hopeless. Grisha Yeager appears to have had some plan in stealing the power of the Coordinate from the Reiss family, but what he was planning is unclear and he may have done more harm than good. And then it turns out that the Titan Shifters are actually working for the wholly human nation of Marley, which itself is at war with the rest of humanity outside the Walls. There are at least seven factions working against each other while the normal Titans continue to eat humans they can get their hands on.
  • Now you have the added parties of the Anti-Marleyan Volunteers^note Zeke's followers, aka Yelena and co. and the Yeagerists^note Floch's group.
• Game Changer: Humans on Paradis Island are losing ground against the Titans, until they get their own Titan and develop anti-Titan weapons such as the Thunder Spear and Executioner from Hell.
• Gaussian Girl: Mikasa is portrayed this way the first time Jean sees her, resulting in Love at First Sight. Krista also occasionally gets a more low-key version when she's being particularly kind to people.
• Gender Is No Object: Female soldiers are treated exactly the same as their male peers, held to the same standards and serving in the exact same capacity. They also wear the same uniforms, which have a decidedly unisex look (i.e. the female soldiers don't just wear male uniforms). Whether this complete and utter equality extends into society as a whole is unclear. Most of the political leaders, priests, and military top brass seem to be male, though.
• Genghis Gambit: Discussed within the series, in a conversation between Dot Pixis and Eren. Pixis tells him about an old story from the time before the Walls, and the idea that if people had some greater threat, the wars that plagued humanity would cease. He then jokes that this doesn't seem to be true, as humanity continues to fight with each other in a barely-maintained order. Eren dismisses this story as nonsense.
• Genre-Busting: Overall, it's a Shōnen series with an After the End Zombie Apocalypse and Military-Warfare backdrop that's dark enough to nearly co-qualify as a Seinen, and as mentioned below, it quickly turns into a Humongous Mecha story and a Conspiracy Thriller manga with an additional heavy emphasis on the ongoing Ontological Mystery.
• Genre Shift: Starts off as the disturbing combination of "group of friends fights monsters to protect humanity" and "humanity fighting a futile war against extinction to an outside threat". Ends up heavily adding elements of the flesh-and-bones version of Humongous Mecha as the Titan Shifters brawl it out with each other along with Ontological Mystery and a dash of sinister Ancient Conspiracy and Government Conspiracy though the aforementioned is still a prevalent theme throughout.
  • After Chapter 90, with the Titans completely cleared from Paradis Island, the story also moved away from the Zombie Apocalypse backdrop and turned into a straight up war story about the two human factions and their respective Titan Shifters. And as of Chapter 100, the Ontological Mystery aspects of the story are also slowly being phased out as more and more of the truth is revealed during the war arc.
• Gentle Giant: Team Dad Reiner, who towers over his fellow trainees and is built like a linebacker. His Heterosexual Life-Partner Bertolt may also count, being incredibly tall, noted to be The Quiet One and a follower at heart. Horribly subverted, when it turns out both are not only Titan Shifters sent to infiltrate the human ranks... but the two Titans responsible for breaching the Walls in the first place. Though things are more complicated, as it's revealed since that neither of them actually wanted to do it, and they're both struggling with crushing — and in Reiner's case, mind-breaking — levels of guilt; and that their affection for their comrades was genuine.
• Geodesic Cast: Over time the Ensemble Cast divides into Cast Herds with the core characters in two guys and a girl Power Trios. For example the main character trio (Eren, Armin, and Mikasa), the 104th B-Team trio (Jean, Conny, and Sasha), the Warrior Trio (Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie) and the Survey Corps veteran trio (Erwin, Levi, and Hange). Particularly by season 3 these names tend to always come up together. Each trio also goes into the series finale missing a member, Erwin, Bertolt, and Sasha are dead and Eren is the enemy.
  • Eren, Erwin, Reiner, and Jean can be seen as counterparts as the leaders of the their teams that bear incredible burdens. Mikasa, Levi, and Annie are stoic fighters that are always focused on getting the job done. Armin and Hange are both known for their intelligence, and Armin and Bertolt are both known for their meekness. Sasha and Conny don't directly foil anyone in the other groups however.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Happens often, especially from Mikasa to Eren. Understandable that so many people lose their cool considering the stress environment that they live in.
  • At one point, Eren headbutts Mikasa and tells her to pull herself together when she tells him she would disobey their superiors' orders to look for him during the Battle of Trost.
  • In Chapter 66, Eren is halfway to a Heroic BSoD after the revelation that his father ate Historia's older sister to steal the gift that could potentially save all of humanity and gave it to him, even though Eren isn't of the Reiss bloodline and therefore can't use it to its full potential. He even begs Historia to eat him and use it, declaring that it's too much to live like this. Historia slaps him and states that she is getting him out of there so he can save humanity, since she isn't going to.
  • Done word-for-word by Jean in Chapter 77 after Reiner seems to have been successfully killed. Connie and Sasha are openly crying because of this, but Jean grabs ahold of their collars. However, despite proclaiming the success and calling Reiner an evil bastard a few seconds earlier, it's clear he's about to break down too, noting that they "only killed one of [their] best friends", making this a Subverted Trope.
• Ghibli Hills: Though it's a Crapsack World, it sure is a beautiful one. Might be justified beyond Wall Maria, since humans haven't lived out there for a century and Titans don't appear to do much to the land, but even within the Walls, humans haven't had much environmental impact for it to leave a scar. It goes to show that the world isn't a nightmare world in itself: the Titans just make it so for humans exclusively.
  • We later learn that Titans exclusively hunt man. They ignore all other potential prey and do not do anything unwarranted to the environment. Humans have been brought to the brink of extinction, but the rest of the planet is probably better off.
• Gilded Cage: In Eren's opinion, the walled cities are this. Most of his peers are content to live inside the Walls indefinitely, but he repeatedly compares it to a birdcage and is determined to see the outside world. He is proven right after The Reveal.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: A pack of Titans briefly demonstrate this after receiving orders from Eren to kill Reiner and Bertolt. Results in an Oh, Crap! moment for the latter.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Things get so bad by Episode 8 that the best plan Armin can come up with is using a Titan to kill the rest of the Titans. The very idea of a plan using Titans is completely crazy to the humans except that he's sharp enough to pick up on how this particular one really is only targeting Titans, not humans. Later on Pixis (with Armin) comes up with another absurd plan to retake Trost: use Eren's Titan form to seal off the Wall when it's not certain he can control himself. Again, things are so bad that this is their best possible option.
  • In the aftermath of the 57th Scouting Expedition, Erwin gives Eren express consent to use his Titan form as a last resort in stopping the Female Titan. This is exactly what ends up happening, but Erwin later admits that he could not have anticipated the level of destruction that was caused in the process.
  • In Chapter 48, Erwin's plan to stop the Armored Titan is to lead a herd of normal Titans towards it so that Eren can be rescued in all the confusion.
  • Eren enacts the Rumbling because he has realized the world won't stop with exterminating the Paradisians.
    • Similarly, the surviving members of the Survey Corps and the Warriors as well as Zeke's group team up to stop Eren, despite them being bitter enemies.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Subverted. When the main form of combat is high-speed aerial acrobatics, goggles are pretty much the only way to keep from losing one's vision-correction apparatus. They also serve much in the same way as pilot's goggles (although that raises the question of why more characters don't wear them). Examples of characters that wear such goggles include Hange of the Survey Corps and Rico from the Garrison.
• Gone Horribly Right: The titan guillotine works! ...Too well. It turns out the titans were a buffer between Paradis Island and the outside world. The outside world wants ALL Eldians dead with extreme prejudice; and the titan deterrent isn't there anymore.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Mikasa's eyes instantly switched from adorable Tareme Eyes to sharper Tsurime Eyes after Eren's Rousing Speech during her flashback.
  • One of the reasons for the sheer Uncanny Valley of the Titans is that compared to the stylized manga humans, they are drawn in a realistic style which makes them look very disturbing. One of the ways to distinguish a regular Titan from a Titan Shifter is that shifters share the same stylized faces and eyes as their human forms. This is why Eren as a regular realistic-styled Titan in Grisha's flashback is so utterly horrifying.
• Good Parents: Grisha and Carla Yeager. They are shown to have been very loving parents and their son and daughter both adored them. It was the death of Carla that kick-started Eren's desire to join the Survey Corps and kill every Titan that he can.
  • Grisha turns out to be a bit more complex, as he's resented by his older son Zeke. While he was a good parent to Eren, he's presented as incredibly flawed.
  • Mikasa's biological parents as well.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: The Titans are regularly blown apart by cannon fire, sliced and diced by swords, and even injured themselves on a regular basis. But since they Feel No Pain and regenerate, very few things slow them down for more than a moment. Literally the only way to kill them is to do sufficient damage to the nape of the neck.
  • Eren, Ymir, Reiner, and Bertolt all suffer pretty horrific injuries and recover from them quickly. It contrasts starkly with how easily and horrifically humans are torn apart in battle.
  • During the savage beating Levi gives Eren during his trial, he knocks out Eren's tooth. To everyone's surprise it grows back in no time at all.
  • Eren, in his Titan form, tends to rely more or less on simply smashing his opponent to death. The beatings are so fierce that they frequently leave his own limbs horribly mangled, but luckily his healing factor repairs them in no time.
  • It turns out the healing factor stops working if the Titan in question has no will to live. This happens to Reiner during the Liberio battle.
• Gorn: Human-Titan battles get messy fast. Notably and unlike most examples of this trope, when this happens to the humans it tends to be poignant or tragic rather than entertainment factor. When it happens to the Titans, the trope is played more straight.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The anime, while still being violent on its own right, is far less explicitly gory than the manga.
  • Happens to Eren's mother in the first episode. While the audience doesn't see everything that happens, both Eren and Mikasa get to witness it in full as Hannes runs away with them. In the manga however, her death is shown a lot more graphically.
  • Also happens to both of Mikasa's parents in Episode 6's Flash Back.
  • Happens again in Episode 7. A soldier turns his gun on himself and fires, horrifying his fellow soldiers who are splattered with his blood. Another random soldier being eaten later in the episode is given this treatment as well, and viewers can hear the cries of fear from another one.
  • In the anime, soldiers who are caught in a Titan's grasp are usually killed offscreen, although we may see blood splatter as well as hear their screams.
  • Averted in Episode 13. After the battle, Jean sees Marco half-eaten, and lying on side of a building.
  • In Episode 17, we only see the spray of blood from the Female Titan's fist when Reiner allegedly gets popped like a grape. Includes a bit of Bait-and-Switch, as the Female Titan is actually the one bleeding.
  • Averted again in Episode 21. The remains of Levi's squad are shown at least twice after they've been killed. It's not too pretty, either.
  • Mostly averted in Episode 22 during the messy fight against the Female Titan (except for its eyes getting stabbed through).
  • Played straight in Episode 25, when Eren crushes the Female Titan's skull with his bare hands. Her eyes are seen bulging out briefly before the scene cuts away to blood splattering on nearby buildings.
• Government Conspiracy: Oh, yes. The noble Reiss family are the true rulers of the Walled cities, using the Wall Cult and the Military Police Brigade's 1st Squad to guard their secrets and enforce their will. The Wall Cult serves to protect the Walls, preventing the populace from learning that the foundations are dormant Colossal Titans. The 1st Squad quietly disposes of anyone that causes issues — intellectuals, inventors, explorers, the overly-curious, and anyone who happens to get in their way. They have intentionally stagnated technology, preventing the invention of better firearms, hot-air balloons, or any inquiries into the pre-Wall past. Erwin's father was murdered because he had discovered signs of how far the conspiracy went, theorizing that a Mind-Control Conspiracy was responsible for the lack of knowledge about the outside world.
• The Grappler: Inverted during Eren's first fight against the Armored Titan, Reiner. While Eren's Attack Titan form can match the Armored Titan in terms of raw physical strength, it's a Glass Cannon unable to bypass the Armored Titan's defensive capabilities (that is, the hardened plates covering the Titan's body giving it it's moniker), and summarily gets struck to the ground each with each hit from the Armored Titan. Eren only manages to start turning the fight in his favor when he catches the Armored Titan off-guard by using an outside sweep takedown and armbars, both of which involve grapples and throws.
  • Played straight in their second fight, though it's the Armored Titan that actually grapples Eren this time, having learned from their previous fight, and itself adapting to Eren's Hardening ability, which greatly increased Eren offensive capability to the point that he can smash through Reiner's armor.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: A pair of these attached to a full body harness is standard equipment for the soldiers, being all that keeps them alive against the Titans.
• Gratuitous German: The first line of the anime's opening theme: "Sind Sie das Essen? Nein, wir sind die Jäger!"^note "Are you the food? No, we are the hunters!"
  • The second theme is even worse about this, since practically every line is half German, half Japanese.
    • more specifically "O, mein Freund! Jetzt hier ist ein Sieg. Dies ist der erste Gloria." ^note "Oh my friend! Now here's a victory! This is the first glory."
  • Both opening songs have German names: "Feuerroter Pfeil und Bogen" & "Die Flügel der Freiheit"^note "Fiery Red Bow And Arrow" & "The Wings of Freedom" are Title Dropped within the lyrics.
  • On a lesser note, many of the character's names are Germanic in nature. Makes one wonder if the only nation that survived the initial war lived in central Europe. Which would explain the European architecture found in Shinganshina. Which would make the Japanese names present seem more like Gratuitous Japanese.
    • It's later revealed that most of the characters in the walls are all from the same race: Eldian, which seems to be a Germanic Fantasy Counterpart Culture as stated above. Mikasa is the last person from the nation of Hizuru within the walls, which is very much inspired by Japan.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Kingdom of Marley, are the ones who stole the Nine Titan Powers from Eldians, and started war with them. They are also responsible for the Titan attacks and ones behind the whole conflict throughout the series.
  • The First King of Eldia, whose cruelty, greed and ambitions paved way for 2000 years of violence.
  • Eren Yeager, manipulating his father to kill the Reiss Family and feed himself to his younger self.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Jean, who maintains a rivalry with Eren because of his crush on Mikasa.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality:
  • Chapter 55 drives this home repeatedly, showing just how blurred the lines have become. Ultimately, every group seems to believe their actions are necessary or justified, and getting their hands dirty for the sake of the greater good. Hange and Levi brutally torture a captured enemy for information, while Erwin and Pixis plot to overthrow the rulers and install Historia as a Puppet Queen. Armin openly considers the advantages of a False Flag Operation, and reminds the others that from here on out they will have to kill their own kind for nothing more than because they are from another Branch — stating that they are no longer "good people". It's eventually confirmed in Chapter 77 that the Titan Shifter warriors truly believe that they're fighting a battle against evil (though it's unclear if they think all people within the wall are evil, or merely necessary sacrifices to fight the Reiss family and the nobility), and that they're doing the right thing in "ending this cursed history."
  • The Reveal of the existence of Marley goes into it further - the Eldian Warriors and Warrior trainees of Marley fight to help the empire of Marley hold onto its power and join in on demonizing the island of Paradis' inhabitants despite being oppressed by Marley, as the rest of the world probably hates the Eldians even more and would likely have all Eldians exterminated if they had their way. Paradis, of course, fights back for its own survival.
• Grievous Harm with a Body:
  • The Titan that attacks other Titans tends to favor this method of fighting groups.
  • The Beast Titan (Zeke) threw Mike's horse at him.
• Grotesque Gallery: Titans are a seriously freaky-looking bunch, ranging from distorted semi-humans to skinless horrors in appearance.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: The goal to wipe out the Titans. Subverted when members of the 104th have trouble turning their blades on their former comrades.
  • Further subverted: it turns out Titans all used to be humans. Humans that were probably forcibly herded over to mindlessly attack them, even.
  • Marley does seem to have this attitude towards Eldians, however, especially Paradis Island.
  • Eren towards humanity itself.
• Guns Are Worthless: Played with. While huge cannons rip through Titans easily due to them being Made of Plasticine, the Titans' Healing Factor doesn't let it keep them down for more than a couple of minutes. It is somewhat averted, as cannons are pretty effectively used for slowing the Titans down to give the civilians time to evacuate. Furthermore, high-explosive shells are used to wipe out Titans in Trost towards the end of the battle. And after Titans are sighted inside Wall Rose, the Garrison uses cannons to bring Titans down and let elite soldiers like Rico finish them off.
  • Subverted in Episode 8 where Military Police Brigade rifles are ineffective at killing Titans alone, but are effective at temporarily blinding them.
  • Played completely straight with the Armored Titan, whose armor plating is so strong that cannon shots do nothing to slow it down.
  • Further played with later on in the series: The Anti-Human Suppression Squad wields dual pistols to devastating effect, slaughtering several veteran members of the Survey Corps in an instant.
  • And averted even further on the series: The technologically more advanced humans from beyond the Walls have developed more advanced rifles, machine guns, and specialized anti-Titan artillery that can effectively one-shot a Titan and even effortlessly penetrate the Armored Titan's armor.
  • The soldiers of Paradis later use the Anti-Human Suppression Squad's gear in their campaign against Marley.
• The Gunslinger: The Military Police's Anti-Human Suppression Squad turn out to be this, using special maneuver gear and dual pistols. They especially dispatch three veteran Survey Corpsmen in an instant, establishing themselves as a serious threat.
• Guns Akimbo: The Anti-Human Suppression Squad dual wields pistols instead of swords, since their targets are other soldiers Later this equipment setup is used by the soldiers of Paradis in their campaign against Marley.
• Gun Fu: They combine wrist-mounted Maneuver Gear with pistols, allowing them to pull off aerial maneuvers and take on soldiers armed with swords.
• Gut Punch: The audience is given a good punch in the innards during the very first episode. The overwhelming fear and despair present in the atmosphere make the first two episodes particularly hard to watch and embeds a constant reminder of how bad humanity's situation is in our minds.

H

• Hair Color Spoiler: Plus Eye Color Spoiler. Attentive viewers will notice that the Rogue Titan and the Female Titan have the same hair and eye color as Eren and Annie. Not a coincidence!
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Krista and Ymir. Reiner and Bertolt. Jean and Marco.
  • Gabi and Falco are this, too. As are Zeke and Pieck (or, alternatively, Pieck and Porco).
• Half the Man He Used to Be:
  • Marco, to the extent that it's become a fandom meme.
  • Franz also gets bitten in half during the same battle. (In the anime, the view of his lower body is blocked by Hannah, but you can still tell that his legs aren't there.)
• Handshake of Doom: Eren and Reiner reunite after their last encounter on Paradis Island four years prior, with Falco bearing witness to the meeting after unknowingly bringing the latter to him. After a conversation, Eren shakes hands with Reiner, to which he reveals he cut himself before their meeting, and thus can transform into a Titan at any time. Sure enough, right after Willy Tybur announces his declaration of war against the people of Paradis, Eren turns into his Titan form and bursts out of the building behind him.
• Hand Cannon: The Thunder Spears, which were developed by the Survey Corps, are essentially dual-wielding rocket launchers.
• Hand Wave: Mikasa. Her unnatural skill level rivaling that of Levi, a long standing captain of the Scout Regimen, is due to ancient Eldians experimenting on their ancestors to create natural-born warriors. She eventually becomes his informal second-in-command on the field, as he usually pairs himself with her.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: The government tends to take this approach, only humoring the Survey Corps but primarily being concerned with maintaining the Status Quo even while humanity is slowly dying off.
  • Turns out they do this on purpose.
• Healing Factor: An ability inherent in all Titans until they're put down for good.
  • This was the deciding factor in the first battles between Titans and humans, as humanity had possession of weaponry that could easily blow off Titans' heads but they just kept growing back.
  • Titan Shifters in human form benefit from this ability, too. Something minor like a missing tooth takes only a few minutes to grow back, and depending on their experience, it can take only a couple of hours for whole limbs to grow back. Reiner in particular has mastered his healing factor to an extent not seen before. For one thing, he can turn it on and off at will, which helps with his spying mission since the regenerating wounds produce conspicuous steam. Through some trickery involving his spinal cord, he can keep himself alive even after having half of his head blown off and then he goes on to regrow his entire brain.
• He Didn't Make It: In Episode 7, Mikasa meets up with Armin. She asks him what happened to Eren, and although he doesn't say anything at first, his tears clue her in that he died.
• Heel Realization: In chapter 134, the entire humanity, especially Marley, finally admit that, all the hatred they inflicted upon Paradise and The Eldians is brutally returned to them in the form of The Rumbling, and swear to to be better if they somehow survive.
• Heir Club for Men: Completely averted. While the majority of leadership positions are held by men in the series, women are shown to freely inherit without any question or concern. Historia Reiss takes the throne without any indication that a Queen is unusual, while Frieda Reiss and Lady Tybur both inherited their clan's Titans over their brothers. Hange Zoe also takes over the leadership of the Survey Corps with no opposition to her.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: An epic one occurs in Episode 24, after Eren shifts into a Titan and then punches the Female Titan right in her face.
• Helpless Kicking: Happens often, owing to the fact that people getting eaten by mindless giants is part of the premise. Two notable examples are: a member of the Scout Regiment who, when his squad gets attacked by a group of titans, the last we see of him are his legs sticking out of a titan's mouth and squirming about right before it slurps him. The other is during the fall of Wall Maria, when a panicked civilian woman gets plucked up and eaten by a titan. As she's carried out of frame one of her slippers falls off and lands in the foreground.
• Here We Go Again!: Very heavily implied in the epilogue of the story: A young boy finds the tree Eren was buried in years after Paradis is destroyed in a war…and it has grown to resemble the tree Ymir fell in centuries ago.
• Heroic BSoD: Armin suffers one during the first half of Episode 6, after being the sole survivor of his squad, and watching Eren get eaten by a Titan right in front of him.
• Heroic RRoD: Eren seems to get this from overuse of his Titan form, getting a nose bleed and looking feverish after blocking a cannonball (which may be connected to him being trapped in a Lotus-Eater Machine the next time he tries) and Reiner pretty much telling him that they are physically unable to transform too many times. This is proven when Eren later tries to shift and fails, being too worn down by battle.
  • A much more severe version of this happens later during Hange's tests with Eren to mimic the Female Titan's hardening ability. The third time he transforms, his Titan form is missing about half of it's flesh and is causing Eren to fuse with it. By the time they cut him out, he is missing his eyes and parts of his skull are exposed. Thankfully, due to his healing factor, Eren heals up in about a day.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Eren dives into a Titan's mouth to pull Armin out. He succeeds at the cost of being swallowed whole (minus an arm).
  • The concept of this trope is very thoroughly deconstructed. A lot of characters attempt to bravely sacrifice themselves, so that their comrades and loved ones may live on. When they get to the "sacrifice" part, however, they suddenly start desperately clinging on to life, realizing that they would do ''anything'', so that they may survive. Unfortunately for the cast, folks usually reach this epiphany, mid digestion...
  • Furthermore, the very conceit and morality of sacrificing your life is repeatedly attacked. There's one character who's called out for not asking for help, in the hope she might die and be remembered as someone who went down helping others. Her critic even admits that she might have conscious noble goals, but is still doing it for selfish reasons as well.
  • Armin tanks the Colossal Titan's steam blasts, getting cooked alive, all in order to provide a diversion for Eren to finally take him down.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: The Survey Corps are fighting and giving their lives for humanity. To the general public however, they are typically seen as dissenters who only manage to get themselves eaten and are wasting the people's tax money. Later, the Survey Corps are framed with murder and are outright seen as fugitives and villains to the public.
  • The entire world wants Eren Yeager dead and sees him as a threat. Subverted, in that Eren had already completed his Protagonist Journey to Villain at that point.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Several examples who are at least this.
  • Eren and Armin, childhood friends who were later made into a Power Trio when Mikasa joined them.
  • Erwin and Levi, noted for their deep trust of one another.
  • Reiner and Bertolt are childhood friends, and are very rarely seen apart.
  • Jean and Marco, at least until Marco's death made it into a Tragic Bromance.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Discussed extensively within the series, both by the narrative itself and the characters. Leaders such as Erwin and Pixis embody the belief that throwing away human compassion is necessary to win against the Titans, ruthlessly sacrificing the lives of their soldiers for even the smallest chance of victory. Armin comes to believe that throwing away one's humanity is the only way to win against monsters, while Jean expresses to him doubt over whether such methods are truly worth it. Mikasa has honed herself into a ruthless fighter for the sake of Eren, even going so far as to threaten the lives of her own comrades. On the other hand, Eren is a far more literal example: becoming a Titan in order to fight against the Titans, but also struggling to embrace the ruthless actions others ask of him. Finally, there are the other Titan Shifters, who play with this trope in an interesting fashion: their own humanity comes back to haunt them, causing them to make critical mistakes. Annie spares Armin, and finds her mercy repaid with being exposed and trapped by the military. Reiner is unable to cope with the guilt of his actions, suppressing his memories and creating a false persona in order to cope. Bertolt internalizes considerable remorse and self-loathing, unable to act on his own even to prevent Reiner's Sanity Slippage and when his own emotions boil over, he makes reckless mistakes that allow Eren to be rescued. Finally, Ymir fell In Love with the Mark, and is successfully blackmailed.
  • Eren wanted to save humanity by destroying all the Titans. Now, Eren wishes to save the Eldians (those who can turn into Titans) by destroying humanity.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: A staple of this series. Aside from the normal Titans, whose goal is to just eat people, there are three villainous factions whose end goals are unclear. These are the Titan Shifters, the Beast Titan, and the Government Conspiracy. It is possible to make some inferences, however.
  • The Titan Shifters goal was at first to bring down the Walls, letting humanity be devoured by the Titans. Later, one of them states they can abandon that goal if they take Eren back to their homeland. A similar sentiment is expressed towards Ymir, the Beast Titan, and Krista which combined with their obvious guilt suggests that they really just want to go home, but require something of value to justify them going back. What this home is, who sent them and why, and why they could abandon that mission with certain hostages, is all unclear.
  • The Beast Titan is a complete enigma. He takes an interest in the 3DG and can turn humans into Titans but why he does either is unknown. He organizes an attack on Castle Utgard and cheerfully allows a survey corps member to be eaten, so he's not on humanity's side. He's also a target of the Titan Shifters but the reasons for this, and exactly how he's a target, are unknown. Basically, he shows up, demonstrates that he has unclear connections with most major players of the story, is radically different from anything else we've seen, and then vanishes.
    • Even after we learn who he is and what he's supposedly trying to do, nobody trusts him and his loyalty is still up in the air.
  • The Government Conspiracy is trying to maintain the status quo within the Walls. It's clear there's more to this than maintaining civil order and their connection to the Wall Cult means they know about the Titans in the Wall. One member keeps silent even when told that silence will result in the end of humanity, which the heroes take to mean whatever they are hiding is more important than the annihilation of the human race.
  • The villain of the final arc, Eren Yeager invokes the Unspoken Plan Guarantee, and he succeeds brilliantly. Even after stating his objective, he is still an enigma, even to his closest friends.
• Hidden Depths: A major part of the story. Almost every single character of some note gets a flashback or a bit of a shared flashback to show how varied and distinct the characters are, with many having a darker side to their outwardly noble intentions and actions or a more sympathetic origin for their flaws. This heavily ties into just how often characters are forced to confront traumatic experiences that can break them psychologically. It's also important to note that a good chunk of them, especially those who've displayed a keen and sympathetic knowledge of the human condition or justice, are nonetheless infiltrators sent by the Titans, forcing them to be completely reevaluated.
• History Repeats:
  • Discussed by Eren and Armin when Eren sees children who remind him of himself, Armin, and Mikasa, and notes that the kids will probably see what they saw when the Colossal Titan broke the Wall. It's then averted, as Armin says that this time there are soldiers on the Wall who are ready to fight, and that those soldiers are them, and they succeed in stopping the Titan and saving the people inside the Wall.
  • Mentioned by Kruger to Grisha as a motivator for trying to break the cycle of hatred and doom.
  • Chapter 139.5 serves as an epilogue to the series, showing Mikasa getting married and having children while continuing to visit Eren's grave until the day she dies. Civilization progresses and skyscrapers are built, until a war breaks out and reduces the city to ruins. All the while, Eren's tree grows until it towers over everything else, a hollow cavity forming at its base where Eren's head was buried — much like the one Ymir tried to hide in millennia earlier. Untold decades later, a child implied to be one of Mikasa's descendants comes across the giant tree and peers curiously into the cavity.
• Hold the Line: Happens often, usually to give the civilians time to evacuate.
• Hope Spot:
  • In Episode 5, things look hopeful even as the Trost gate is smashed. Triumphant music plays as the Garrison vanguard rushes to intercept the first wave of Titans, the Trainees get ready to test their mettle as soldiers, the civilians look like they have enough time to evacuate, and in general humanity looks much more ready than last time. Then we find out that the experienced vanguard was routed, the Titans made it into Trost, and the forward group Trainees get decimated, including Eren's own squad followed by Eren himself.
  • In Episode 21, Levi's squad takes on the Female Titan. It seems to go rather well for them, as they manage to blind her, and then shear off enough of her shoulder muscles that her arms fall down from her neck. Then she suddenly grows back one eye, and manages to kill all three of them in less than a minute. And moments later, she seems rather scared of Eren in Titan mode, but barely manages to defeat him, as well as capturing him.
  • In the flashbacks of episode 87, when the scouts visit Marley in disguise. They hear word of an Eldian Civil Rights group, which gives them hope for diplomacy with Marley. When they attend a meeting, they discover that the group only supports rights for the interned Eldians in Marley and is just as fearful of the "Island Devils" of Paradis as the rest of their countrymen.
  • In chapter 137, Armin convinces Zeke in helping him stop Eren, inspiring him to sacrifice himself to end the Rumbling. The Survey Corps blow Eren's titan head off, revealing the spine-like organism that is the origin of the titans, and with Reiner holding the latter down, Armin uses his Colossal Titan transformation as a nuke to finish it and Eren off once and for all. Happy ending, right? Wrong. The following chapter, Eren is revealed to still be alive with a colossal Attack Titan form, and the organism secretes a vapor that turns all non-Shifter and Ackerman Eldians into Titans, including Jean, Connie, Gabi, and the Warriors' families, in order to kill the Shifters. Mikasa, after finally finding her resolve, is forced to enter Eren's titan and decapitate him herself.
• Hope Springs Eternal: Historia's own take-away from Eren's death and witnessing the Yaegerists form a fascist regime in the power vacuum that followed is that humans will always fight, and continue to fight for peace. That peace will always result in conflict again, but it's important to fight for that peace.
  Historia: The end to Titans does not mean the end to this conflict. Eren made that clear when he gave me his knowledge of the future. The future Eren showed me is behind us now, but his knowledge has left me with a clear perspective on these events. I'm sure that this was not the result of Eren's choices alone. All of us add shape and color to this world, with every choice we make. Perhaps this generation is cursed to live lives divorced from peace, but if we must fight, let it be for an end to fighting. Eren feared that this war would go on until either Eldia or the world was gone, but in the end, he left it in our hands. Now with this brief reprieve comes out chance to choose how to live in a world without Titans.
• Hopeless War: Humanity has gained absolutely nothing from the various battles against the Titans, so much so that joining the Survey Corps is considered outright suicide. They're not entirely wrong. The Battle of Trost is literally the first triumph in human history.
  • And then they find out they're fighting almost every nation in the world and are extremely behind technologically.
  • The rest of the world vs Eren Yeager and his army of Wall Titans.
• Hot-Blooded: Eren's biggest strength and weakness, as he sometimes crosses into Leeroy Jenkins territory, particularly when he was trying to avenge Thomas — his single-minded pursuit of the abnormal Titan that had devoured him made him blind to the other Titans nearby, losing a leg and getting his team killed in the process. After the Time Skip, he becomes more composed and calculating.
• Hourglass Plot: At the beginning of the story, Marley was the aggressor and its Warriors were the main antagonists for the first half of the story. Towards the final arc of the story, Eren becomes the Big Bad who wants to destroy the world (starting with Marley), while the Marleyan Warriors are racing against time to stop him from further destruction.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Reiner and Bertolt, the two tallest members of the 104th Trainee Corps, may have romantic interests in the two shortest girls in the Trainee Corps. Like most things in the series, things are still unclear.
• Humanizing Tears: The series usually deals with Inelegant Blubbering, but several notable examples stand out.
  • Emotionless Girl and resident badass Mikasa shows little vulnerability or emotion, right up until she is reunited with Eren after his supposed death. Her stoic mask finally breaks, and she cries while holding him in her arms, showing her softer side for the first time.
  • After The Reveal that he is the Colossal Titan, it seemed as though quiet Bertolt Hoover was the only villain without any remorse over his actions. But when his former friends push him hard enough, he suffers a Villainous BSoD and begins to cry hysterically while alternately admitting he knows his actions are unforgivable and stating that his time as their comrade was the only time he was genuinely happy. This breakdown is sufficient to defuse Mikasa's Roaring Rampage of Revenge and earn the offer of a Last-Second Chance from the others. His statement that he can't do that, while crying and begging someone to "please find us", reveal him to not be the soulless monster the audience expected.
• Humanoid Abomination: Titans. A recap: They are large, fast, mindless and came out of nowhere. They have a healing factor, which means that destroying their heads does not really slow them down. The grossest part, is they probably do not need to eat humans. They have no digestive organs and after filling their stomach with humans, they just vomit it all out and eat more. They were able to eat most of the human race to extinction, to the point there is only one race of humanity left.
  • Then there are the implications that Titans are Human All Along...
• Humans Are Bastards: Even with the ever-present threat of Titans, famine, and disease... humanity still has plenty of time to lie, cheat, steal, and murder. For every heroic character, there are plenty of cowards and criminals ready to show the worst of humanity.
  • The entire war between Eldia and Marley, and by proxy, rest of the world began with one ordinary, but extremely vicious, cruel and greedy human.
• Humans Are Flawed: A major theme of the series, exploring how humanity deals with extreme circumstances like famine, land shortages, floods of refugees, and of course giant monsters that want to eat them.
• Humans Are Morons: Explored, with people questioning whether humans need to be ruled to survive and Eren outright comparing society's complacency to livestock. This may even be intentional on the part of the government, as interest in lost knowledge from the outside world is considered heretical and banned. In fact, the 1st Brigade is charged with murdering intellectuals and scientists, to prevent too much free-thinking.
• Humans Are Warriors: Deconstructed. A human society under constant threat of extinction will naturally value its soldiers and military. In the world they live in, being in the military is well-regarded and the only way to advance socially; those that choose manufacturing or hard labor are considered cowardly. This leads to a lot of ordinary young men and women enlisting to save face and are hoping to make something of their lives (Jean enlisted because it's the only way for commoners to get into Wall Sina, Connie wants his village to think highly of him, etc.) even though a lot of them frankly have no place being on the battlefield. Even if they're physically capable of passing training, most lack the mental fortitude to actually fight in traumatic and stressful situations, leading to their quick deaths. Most of the Garrison and Military Police Brigade members freeze up and falter in combat, with only a few (mostly in the Survey Corps) being both brave and skilled enough to fight Titans on a regular basis. Possibly Reconstructed with Armin, who isn't very suited for soldiering but still remains valuable on the battlefield because of his intelligence.
• Humongous Mecha: No really. The Shifters' Titan forms are a flesh-and-bone version of this, with some fight scenes screaming Neon Genesis Evangelion.
• Hunter of His Own Kind: All the Titan Shifters are this, to one degree or another. Eren plays it absolutely straight, using his Titan form to fight for humanity, while Ymir eventually reveals herself and fights to protect Krista. On the other hand, Annie, Reiner, and Bertolt kill Titans in order to maintain their cover.
• Hypocrite:
  • All of the enemy Titan Shifters were oppressed by Marley, who constantly berates the Eldian for all their ancestors who died to Titans. Yet they consign countless hundreds of innocents who were once living in peace and safety to the same horrific fate, and would in fact allow all of the Paradis Eldians to die in this way. All so that their families will not be seen as monsters.
  • And Marley's military personnel has to be the worst example of all since while the Titans were wiping out the Middle Eastern army, they berated the Eldian soldiers about how the Titans did the same to their ancestors while they are now using the Titans just to gain more territory and power.

I

• I Got You Covered: Elite soldiers cover Eren's attempt to seal the gate of Trost.
• I Just Want to Be Free: An important theme for Armin and Eren since The World Is Just Awesome to them, though the rest of humanity seems to have forgotten about the world outside. Best exemplified in Episode 13.
  Armin: [earlier] So why do you want to go to the world beyond the Walls?
  Eren: From the time we are born, we are free... it doesn't matter how strong those that would deny us that freedom are... flaming water... frozen earth... I don't care what it is!... The person that sees them will be the freest person in the world! Fight... I'd gladly give my life for that! It doesn't matter how terrifying the world is! It doesn't matter how cruel the world is! Fight... Fight... Fight... FIGHT!!!
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: In Episode 12, both Mikasa and Armin struggle to get through to Eren when he loses control of his Titan form and is stuck in a kind of Lotus-Eater Machine. Eventually, Armin manages to snap Eren back to his senses.
  • Falco does this to Reiner during Liberio, but can't get through to him. Gabi later shouts Reiner out of his PTSD-enduced state.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: There are few situations that warrant a drink more than being in the grip of a Titan. To emphasize the cruelty of the series, one guy who is in this situation finds a bottle of good wine and tries to have one last drink...but the bottle is empty.
• I "Uh" You, Too: In the Season 2 finale, after Eren's Heroic BSoD, Misaka gives him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, which is reminiscent of a love confession, complete with sparkles, and showing the two of them facing each other in a field of flowers like they're going to kiss. The word "love" (or "suki" or "daisuki") is never used, but it's pretty clear what Misaka means. Eren's response indicates he understands what Mikasa meant, and feels the same way.
• I Want Them Alive!: A few examples, both heroic and villainous:
  • After Eren is revealed to be the Rogue Titan, the other Titan Shifters make it their mission to capture him, such as the Female Titan when the Survey Corps does their 57th Expedition outside the Walls.
  • After Eren is ordered to go into the innermost Wall, Armin finds Annie and begs her to help them in to assist Eren's escape, since him being handed over to the Military Police Brigade meant certain death. She is reluctant to do so at first, but then ultimately agrees. When they're about to go through an abandoned underground tunnel to get closer to the Wall however, Annie is very hesitant to go down there. Mikasa then directly accuses her of being the Female Titan, and several Survey Corps members hiding nearby ambush her, and attempt to capture her before she can bite herself to transform. Unfortunately for them, the ring she had put on earlier had a hidden barb, and she is still able to wound herself and transform even without biting her hand.
  • Subverted after Reiner and Bertolt are exposed and transform to fight the Survey Corps. Hange recognizes that there's no possible way to capture the traitors alive, and gives explicit orders to Armin and the other soldiers present to kill them if they see a chance.
  • Later on, the Survey Corps learn about certain critical limitations present in all Titan Shifters, namely that they are unable to generate a Titan while healing from severe injuries such as severed limbs. The secondary objective during the reclamation of Wall Maria was to incapacitate at least one enemy Titan Shifter in this manner, and use the Titan Serum Levi acquired from Kenny on a soldier close to death. The soldier would then devour the disabled Titan Shifter, gaining their powers and saving the soldier's life in the process.
• Identical Stranger: Ilse Langnar is this to Ymir.
• Idiot Ball:
  • To say this of any of the Eldians of Paradis consuming wine from an enemy nation passed on to them through the hands of the very people who were once at war with them, some of whom have since shown themselves to be no less hostile to Paradis than prior to the events of the Return to Shiganshina arc, and all while Zeke Yeager's loyalties were yet to be ascertained....Is a massive understatement. Said oversight left the island at the mercy of a potentially massive Titan outbreak, which comes to pass when Zeke screams during the Marley's attack on Shiganshina. The surviving soldiers as a result are forced to slay hundreds of their own comrades before said outbreak is finally stopped, just as Eren has activated the Rumbling.
  • Arguably, the Marley's entire campaign to destroy the Eldians on Paradis has been this. By antagonizing the island and waging war against the Walls, they only ended up attracting the wrath of Eren Yeager, who through his awakening of the Wall Titans via the Rumbling has triggered the very apocalypse the Marley had once sought to prevent.
    • Before that was the decision to punish Eldians by Titanizing them and unleashing them on Paradis to harass the Walls. This was a poor decision on two fronts. First, any invasion by Marley would have to go through that constantly growing army of Titans. This led to the death of a Warrior and Marley temporarily losing control of one of the Titan Shifter powers. Second, the king inside the Walls has Coordinate which could be used to take control of the Titans at any time.
  • The failure of the Survey Corps to secure the blimp as they fled Liberio, during which they were still in enemy airspace. While they are busy celebrating their crushing victory, they leave one soldier to monitor the blimp's path of escape, and perhaps most egregiously nobody mans the gunner's nest situated by the still-open hatchway. Such half-assed precautions prove fatal not just for said sentry, but also for Sasha as Gabi Braun kills both in her near-suicidal effort to board the blimp. Lampshaded later as Jean admits they had "gotten too careless".
• If We Get Through This…: Happens before the trainee's first mission in Trost. Sasha got her hands on big 'ol slab of meat (a luxury since so much land was lost to the Titans) and decided to stash it away for safekeeping. All the recruits decided that they would all share the meat once their duties were done with. Unfortunately, it wasn't Sasha's meat that ended up getting eaten later.
  • Ymir jokingly asks Krista to marry her if they survive the battle.
• If You Thought That Was Bad...:
  • Most of the story, from the Battle of Trost to the Return to Shinganshina (close to 90 chapters of the manga), takes place in less than four months. If it were more condensed, it would be a hair short of being a battle royale.
  • Yes, the Colossal Titan is huge, but it's dwarfed by Rod Reiss' Titan Form, a fiery, mindless behemoth twice as tall and several times more massive than the Colossal. Born out of a bad inoculation of Titan serum (Reiss took it by mouth instead of injected), it overshot its original intentions like twenty-fold, killing his own private 1st Brigade MPs when the cave where it rose from collapsed on top of them. The damn thing cannot even walk in its two feet and has to drag itself face down. Keep into consideration that Reiss originally wanted to inoculate Historia so that she could eat Eren to regain the Coordinate... but "overkill" is too little a word to describe how much he screwed up. That motherfucker's huge!
  • The Survey Corps has a survival rate of about 50% for new cadets. The recent battle during the Return to Shinganshina arc, in turn, saw only 9 survivors, out of which only one was a new recruit. It signified the loss of Commander Erwin and most of the experienced personnel, amounting to more than 90% of the troops having been slaughtered. As such, this single battle is the single biggest loss of life in the history of the Survey Corps, greatly diminishing the worth of the victory. It gets even worse, as the quest for Doctor Yeager's basement did not offer solutions to the Titan problem, but rather added to the troubles of the people of the Three Walls by revealing the military superpower that has kept them under Titan siege for a century. Pretty bad, huh?
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: Enforced by the government. Books and other recordings about the outside world have been banned so long that people have completely forgotten about it. Armin and Eren get a hold of a book and they're amazed at the idea of deserts, mountains, and the like existing.
  • Turns out that this is because the rest of the world wants the people within the walls exterminated. Once they learn of their ignorance, the other nations fear they might become a formidable enemy..
• I'm a Humanitarian: Titans. Human eating is their common activity. They seemingly don't have any digestive organs nor derive any actual nutritional value from eating humans, and whatever's left of the remains is eventually just regurgitated back up.
  • How can you tell a Titan Shifter from normal Titans, other than their intelligence? None of them have any interest in eating humans. Even when he goes berserk, Eren tries to smash Mikasa with his fists, but never attempts to grab and devour her, as a normal Titan would. Ymir did eat a childhood friend of Reiner and Bertolt before their horrified eyes, but it was before Ymir regained control of her senses. In fact that's exactly how she regained her senses - by eating a Shifter, as revealed by Rod Reiss.
  • Hange also mentions a clan of human cannibals in Episode 15 when conducting research on captured Titans.
• Image Song: A series of these were released to accompany the second season.
  • Eren Yeager: "Helpless World"
  • Mikasa Ackerman: "No Matter Where You Are"
  • Armin Arlelt: "Far Away"
  • Jean Kirschtein: "Rusty Honesty"
  • Reiner Braun and Bertolt Hoover: "Alternative Drive" ^note Reiner only has spoken lines, as a result of Yoshimasa Hosoya falling ill during production.
  • Levi: "Dark Side of the Moon"
  • Erwin Smith: "Hope of Humanity"
• Immediate Sequel: The second season starts immediately after the first season ended. The last episode of the first season showed Pastor Nick yelling at the Survey Corps members to keep the two fighting titans away from the walls, and the stinger for that episode showed the face of a titan inside the wall as a piece of it crumbled away due to damage. The first episode of the second season opens on the Survey Corps members staring up at the face in the wall, just as Nick finally catches up to them. We then get a flashback to twelve hours ago, meaning that part of the episode was actually running concurrently with the first season's last episode.
• Impending Clash Shot: This features Eren in mid air with the 3DMG Dual Blades about to clash with the Colossal Titan in volume 1's cover. also present in a different angle in the form of a Hit Stop in the anime's opening.
• Improvised Bandage: During the siege on Castle Utgard, Reiner breaks his arm, and Historia rips her skirt to use as a makeshift splint.
• Inconsistent Spelling: Eren/Elen, Levi/Rivaille/Revi, Erwin/Irvin/Elvin, Krista/Christa, Arlert/Arlelt/Arelet, Bertolt/Bertholdt... It would take too long to list them all. Not to mention the various spellings of Eren's last name of Jaeger/Yeager/Jeager/Jäger etc. (though the official translation is "Yeager").
  • Zeke vs. Sieg. One is a perfectly normal Germanic name with biblical undertones, the other is the German word for victory, which could be a nod to him being Eldia's last hope.
• Inelegant Blubbering: This happens often to several characters, especially Armin and Eren.
• Inherent in the System: The major flaw of the military. Those who score the highest in things like 3D Maneuvering in training, and are thus best able to fight the Titans, get preferential treatment in becoming part of the highly coveted position of Inner-Wall Military Police Brigade to protect the interior and the king, and are thus the furthest from any actual combat where they could put their skills to use. Furthermore, Annie points out that while the corrupt and selfish soldiers may be immoral, they are normal, and any system that expects and depends upon the vast majority of its soldiers to be moral paragons is doomed to fail. No specific entity or organization blamed for the situation: it's just what happens when one's position in the organization is based upon who has the most skill in combat and a society is lulled by a hundred years of general peace.
  • Furthermore, those savvy enough to figure this out prioritize their training, slacking off on the hand-to-hand combat skills that aren't graded as highly as 3D Maneuvering. Thus, those placed in the Military Police Brigade, and therefore the most likely to actually need to fight human sized opponents, would be less capable at doing so.
  • However, the competition for the top spots may make the people who end up fighting the Titans much better trained.
• Instant Armor: Titan transformation is essentially a particularly bizarre and extreme version of this, conjuring a colossal organic 'suit' around yourself out of thin air.
  • The Female Titan has a more advanced version of this and can temporarily harden its skin making it essentially invulnerable to a soldier's attacks. Disturbingly, it can also do this with its only weakpoint!
• Internal Death Squad: The Military Police Brigade's Anti-Personnel Control Squad was formed in secret under the leadership of Kenny Ackermann, (officially) to counter the Survey Corps in case they ever turned their attention from the Titans to internal politics. Like the Survey Corps, Ackermann's squad is trained in the use of vertical maneuvering gear, giving them incredible mobility in urban warfare; unlike the Survey Corps, who are only equipped with anti-Titan swords, they have long-range handguns that are specifically designed to kill humans.
• Interrupted Cooldown Hug: Jean and Connie attempt a verbal one on Reiner and Bertolt, though how successful it ultimately might have been remains unknown because Erwin interrupts with a suicidal Zerg Rush.
• Inter-Service Rivalry: Between the three army branches: Survey Corps, Garrison, and Military Police Brigade. The three view each other with suspicion to the point where the (corrupt) Police Brigade think that the Survey Corps wants the Rogue Titan in order to seize power of the inner circle from them. It doesn't help that there's a strong disconnect between who gets highly regarded (Police Brigade) and who actually does most of the fighting (Survey Corps).
• Invulnerable Horses: Although Titans ignore all other organisms, horses are vulnerable to injury or death since escape on horseback offers the best chance for a human survival, yet it's still no guarantee since Titans are that damn persistent to get at humans.
• Irony
  • Eren has an all-consuming hatred of Titans but is a Titan Shifter himself, and several of his friends turn out to be the very Titans he hates. Furthermore, Eren has the ability to command regular Titans. Finally, he achieve’s his dream of killing the Titans…by trampling 80% of humanity under their feet.
  • Eren doesn’t eat Annie so they can obtain her intel. As eating a Titan Shifter gives the recipient their memories and Annie encases herself in crystal afterwards, they would have only obtained the intel if they did eat her.
  • The Armored Titan is a villainous Bruiser with a Soft Center.
  • The Colossal Titan is really an Extreme Doormat with an officially ranked Self-Esteem of a 2 out of 10.
    • The person who inherits it is also extremely meek. Granted, he didn't have a say in the matter.
  • Four of the top five recruits in the 104th Trainee Class, trained to fight and kill Titans, are actually Titans themselves.
  • The human characters struggle with becoming monsters to fight effectively. The monsters (Titan Shifters) struggle with their humanity, which decreases their ability to fight effectively.
  • Eren's hatred for the Titans stems from one eating his mother. He is the Titan that ate his father. His father's first wife also was the one who ate his mother in the first place.
  • The nameless soldier in Chapter 80 freaking out about how his death will be meaningless? He's the only one that seems to have survived the suicidal charge against the Beast Titan in Chapter 81.
  • The Mindless Titans that spend most of the series as a huge threat to the people within the walls, pushing them to the brink of extinction: they are in fact a major deterrent to the people of the outside world mounting a full-scale invasion of Paradis, the island where the walls are located.
• It Can Think: When Eren first engages a Colossal Titan in battle, he notices that it purposely attacked the gate (the weakest point of the Wall) and took out the mounted cannon atop the Wall, and he realizes that the Titans must be intelligent.
  • A similarly surprising moment comes when the Rogue Titan puts its fists up in a boxer's stance, and then scores a One-Hit Kill on an enemy with a carefully-aimed left hook to its weak spot.
  • The Female Titan, when she lifts up Armin's hood gently to see his face. She also specifically protects the back of her neck when Jean attempts to attack it, something they've never noticed a regular Titan doing. When it runs off later, Armin notices she's heading towards the likely location in the formation Eren is located.
  • The Beast Titan can not only think, it speaks in an utterly polite fashion, and removes Mike's equipment with the intention of examining it later.
• It's Personal: Eren when he sees the abnormal Titan who ate Thomas while in Titan form. He suddenly gains the strength to overpower the numerous Titans pinning him and charges the abnormal one uncaring of the fact that his arms are being torn off in the process. He then proceeds to bite the Titan's weakspot and throws him at the other Titans while simultaneously decapitating the one he was biting.
  • Eren's feelings towards the Colossal and Armored Titans who destroyed his hometown. It's the same as his feelings towards all Titans, but worse.
  Eren: I'll do everything in my power to make your deaths as excruciating as possible.
  • Gabi, after Eren and the Survey Corps destroy her hometown and kill her friends.

J

• Japanese Spirit: Each of the three main characters exhibit strong examples of all three virtues, although with their own failings in some ways.
  • Eren is flat out stated in the story to be more Persistent than anyone. Unfortunately, his ego writes checks that his body can't cash. He's an example of a character who has strong willpower but not the raw talent or insight to go with it, and as a result, he repeatedly suffers injury, failure and setback, which makes even his strong willpower constantly falter. True to the Japanese Spirit archetype, the persistent character is the most important one, and The Protagonist, and he has a number of hidden "talents/powers" which only work if he holds on to his persistence even in the face of death. His Evil Counterpart, Reiner, is initially stated to be a soldier that possesses incredible willpower. However, it is his wavering conviction that causes him to slowly lose his mind.
  • Mikasa is described as one of the most Talented soldiers of all time. But she's somewhat lacking in the resolve and persistence departments. While, yes, she will do anything to save Eren from danger, this is due more to him being a Living Emotional Crutch and not because she has any particular goals of her own. If nothing else, she's the epitome of what women traditionally used Japanese Spirit for (helping the man they most treasured above all else). Bertolt is also noted to possess exceptional talent, but he lacks the resolve necessary to make the most of it. Instead, he rarely acts on his own and depends too much on others to make decisions for him.
  • Armin's Insight is pretty much the ray of hope that our protagonist holds onto. He's physically weak, but he's called one of the most brilliant soldiers, and his strong idealism to see the outside world still motivates his friends. Annie is incredibly insightful about human nature and shares this with Eren on several occasions. But her resolve ultimately falters, when she is unable to kill Armin and later emotionally manipulated into a trap by him.
• Just Before the End: Very possibly. What with the constant threat of the Titans, and the very real possibility that another Colossal Titan could show up at any time and knock down the remaining Walls, the end of the world feels very imminent throughout the series.
  • There's now the threat of Eren activating the Coordinate and having the millions of Colossal Titans within Paradis Island's walls destroy the entire world.

K

• Kaiju: The Colossal Titan. 60 meters (roughly 200 feet) of skinless steaming monstrosity.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Zig-zagged and downplayed. While the blades that are part of the Vertical Maneuver Gear are definitely katana-like, they break quite easily and generally seem to be less effective than regular swords. They are definitely better Titan slaying weapons than anything else in the show, save for Eren's Titan form and Titanshifters in general.
  • Played straight in the original one shot of the series, where regular katanas were the main weapons against the Titans and could even shoot fire.
• Keeping the Handicap: Titan shifters are able to suppress their Healing Factor to pretend to be normal people:
  • Reiner deliberately keeps his arm broken so he won't be exposed as the Armored Titan. Once he outs Bertolt and himself, he promptly fixes the wound.
  • After the Time Skip Eren does the same, keeping his missing leg to maintain his cover as Kruger, a shellshocked Marlayen soldier.
• Kill All Humans: Titans explicitly target humans alone, ignoring any other animals they come by. It's not even because they're hungry; they don't need to eat.
  • Kill All Humans is eventually subverted. Armin states that Titans don't want to kill humans, they want to eat them. While there is a lot of rather obvious overlap between the two, the distinction becomes important when the Female Titan is very pointedly killing humans, not at all trying to eat them, indicating it is a Titan Shifter. And later it's implied that eating isn't what the Titans are really after, they're instinctively trying to regain their humanity by eating a Titan Shifter, like Ymir did.

L

• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • A side effect of the serum that Eren was injected with. Levi points out how (in)convenient this is.
  • Discussed in Chapter 78. A few chapters before, Reiner survived lethal damage by dispersing his brain's functions to the rest of his body. He repeats it again in Chapter 77, and here Bertholdt explains to the readers that the destruction of Reiner's brain would have resulted in memory loss when it regenerated, had he not extended that "neurological transfer" to his Titan's body and brain as well.
  • It turns out that the Coordinate has this effect.
• Last of His Kind: Mikasa Ackerman is the last living person of Asian descent (from her mother's side), as the rest were wiped out by the Titans and government pogroms. However, this turns out to only be true for Paradis; Asians are doing just fine in the rest of the world, as made evident by the Japanese-esque nation of Hizuru.
• Last-Second Chance: Jean and Connie desperately try to talk Reiner and Bertolt down, using The Power of Friendship. After this triggers Bertolt's Villainous BSoD, Mikasa calms down from her previous murderous rage and asks him to give Eren back. He regrettably responds that he can't, and after several more casualties, the group ultimately manages to rescue Eren, leaving Reiner and Betholt behind.
• Laughing Mad:
  • In Episode 23 of the anime, Annie starts laughing after Mikasa calls her out as the Female Titan.
  • In Chapter 50 of the manga, Eren laughs manically as he watches Hannes being devoured by the same Titan that ate his mother.
    • Later on, he laughs at Sasha's death, to the shock of everyone in the room. Quite why he laughed has yet to be explained.
• Law of Conservation of Detail: The anime compresses a lot of manga into 25 episodes, so even seemingly insignificant details are likely to be important or hint at future reveals. For example, paying very close attention to the actions of Annie, Bertolt, and Reiner reveals some subtle foreshadowing about their true nature.
• Left Hanging: Chapter 44 offers a flashback of Annie and Mikasa about to square off in a training fight, causing all the others to flock around them in excitement over who the winner will be. We're never told however, as that's where the flashback ends.
  • Word of God later confirmed they had been so equally matched the instructor had to interfere and call it a draw.
• Let Them Die Happy: Levi at one point comforts a dying soldier that he fought well and helped the cause. It is unclear whether this was the truth or simply kindness.
• Life/Death Juxtaposition: In Chapter 134, a baby is shown being saved as thousands or millions, including the baby's mother, die by either falling into the sea and drowning or getting crushed by Eren's Wall Titans.
• Lightning Bruiser: Titans are far faster to move and react than their size might suggest, especially the human piloted ones.
  • To put in in perspective, small flying insects, if they could think, might think we're slow and ponderous due to our size compared to them... but most of us are more than quick enough to slap them aside easily. The same applies to the Titans who do not move slowly simply because they are large, which makes them all the more terrifying to fight. The only thing that makes the strategies humans employ work is how stupid they are. The Human-Titans are almost impossible to kill thanks to having human intelligence, speed, and strength, only scaled ten times in size.
• Like an Old Married Couple: Eren accuses Franz and Hannah of this, which they vehemently deny. Turns depressing when Armin finds Hannah trying to revive Franz, or rather, Franz's upper half.
• Line in the Sand: Erwin to the 104th Trainee class when it comes time to choose their branch. Most leave but those that stay behind join the Survey Corps, including many of the top 10.
• Living Emotional Crutch:
  • Eren to Mikasa. Mikasa is completely loyal to Eren and only joined the military to protect him; her dependency stems from how he saved her from human traffickers who murdered the rest of her family.
  • Krista to Ymir. Darker example, though, as Ymir is willing to side with the villains and take away Krista's future if it means having her to herself.
• Living MacGuffin: Everyone wants Eren in some way, whether it be to dissect him for information, use him as humanity's ultimate weapon, influence others and hide dirty secrets, or to kidnap him and bring him back to his fellow human-Titans.
  • Later on, he and Krista become this to an unknown faction within the Walls with a lot of connections to both the military and the Wall cult. Their goals are as-of-yet unrevealed. All we do know is that they're likely the ones who vied for Eren to be taken in by the military police and killed Pastor Nick when trying to get information out of him.
• Living on Borrowed Time: Armin gets a case of this where after suffering from Fifth-Degree Burns across his entire body, the Survey Corps uses their syringe of Titan Spinal Fluid on him to turn him into a Titan and devour Bertholt to gain access to the Colossal Titan and the Titan-Shifters' natural Healing Factor to save his life. Immediately after gaining these powers and recovering the notes kept in Erens' basement by Grisha, they learn about The Curse of Ymir: where all Titan-Shifters have a life-expectancy of just 13 years after gaining their powers.
• Living Structure Monster: it is revealed at the ending of the anime/midpoint of the manga that the Walls surrounding their City in a Bottle are actually living creatures. As in, the walls are made of Colossal Titans' hardened Instant Armor... with the aforementioned Titans inside the Walls as foundations.
  • Also, Eren potentially has the power to control them and set them free. Which is what he ends up doing.
• Locked Out of the Loop: During the 57th expedition beyond the Walls, the Survey Corps runs into many problems once the Female Titan shows up. After it's captured, Eren and a few others discuss what happened, and he realizes that even some of the more veteran troops were unaware of the plan to capture her. However, he quickly realizes that the plan was made in such a way because of the high possibility that there was a spy within their ranks informing the Titan Shifters of things the humans were planning on doing. This also explains why different groups were told different things before they headed out, such as where Eren was in the formation, so that it could narrow down who was leaking the information.
  • Turns out that this is what Paradis Island is to the rest of the world.
• Lost Colony: Grisha's diary reveals the walled city was founded by the deposed royals/aristocracy of a country called Eldia to protect the citizens, potential Titans, from being used by the Marleyan government. Thanks to the Reisses' memory manipulation, the surrounding Titan menace, and being on an island, no one in the city believes there's any other humans left on the planet, let alone a technologically advanced country that fears the army of Colossal Titans hidden in the walls — and then Marley's Titan Shifters attack, leading to Grisha turning Eren into a Titan Shifter, the discovery of the Colossal Titans, the government of the Walls learning they aren't the only humans alive and that their neighbors are hostile, Grisha hiding his diary for Eren to find, and Eren finding many, many personal reasons to use his powers against Marley, none of which would have happened (probably) if they had just left the city alone.
• Lost in Translation: The Double Meaning of the series' title in Japanese is lost in its English translation. It makes enough sense why they changed it; Shingeki no Kyojin, translating into "Titan of the Advance", doesn't appear to make sense grammatically in English or Japanese. But the reason behind the weird title is that this is actually the true name of Eren's Titan form, the Advancing/Attack Titan.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Eren loses control of his Titan form during the Trost counter-offensive, as his consciousness enters a dream-like state of being back home with his family in Shiganshina. Armin breaks him out of it.
  • Ymir states she was trapped in an "endless nightmare" during her time as a Titan. Bertolt implies this may be the norm for all of them, which leaves absolutely horrifying implications about the true nature of the Titans.
• Love Epiphany: Marlo thinks of Hitch and realizes he might have feelings for her after all... just before dying against the Beast Titan.
• Love Triangle: Implied between Krista, Reiner, and Ymir, with Reiner (though we don't know if he really has a crush on Krista or is just messing with Ymir) and Ymir both looking at Krista. This ends when Krista returns Ymir's feelings and Isayama confirms their romantic relationship, and is further eliminated when Reiner reveals that while Krista is cute, he has other motives for wanting her unharmed.
• Lovecraftian Superpower: Titan-shifting.

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