• Badass: A Lightning Bruiser Magic Knight with the powers of darkness who occasionally swaps out his Keyblade for Dual Wielding Laser Blades or a terrifying Shadow Monster. In whatever incarnation he appears, Xehanort is always awesome.
  • Badass Baritone: Always has a very deep voice, with the exception his incarnation in 3D, but even then only in Japanese, the English voice plays this straight.
  • Badass Longcoat: Even his Black Cloaks are Badass Longcoats.
• Big Bad: Of the series, and nearly every game.
  • Hijacked By Xehanort: Has been behind the events of every game to date, with the exception of coded, but his involvement is generally only revealed partway through a given game.
• Black Magic/Casting a Shadow: Prefers using dark magic, though certain incarnations lean on it more heavily than others.
• Body Surf: Xehanort has transferred pieces of his heart into over a dozen different bodies, including Terra, most of the members of the True Organization XIII, and temporarily Riku. Also, he can surf between the bodies of the True Organization XIII at will, owing to the mechanics of Time Travel.
• The Chessmaster
• Dark Is Evil
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Though Master Xehanort is calm and collected, his other incarnations are far more prone to fits of rage and total insanity.
• Evil Mentor: If a Xehanort ever tries to help you or give advice, never, ever, listen. Terra and Riku had to learn this lesson the hard way.
• Evil Sorceror/Mad Scientist: Regularly uses both machines and magic to experiment on and learn to control people's hearts.
• Evil Sounds Deep
• Evil Counterpart: To Sora, as an evil keyblade wielder from Destiny Islands with multiple incarnations.
  • Shadow Archetype: To Riku, who also lost himself in darkness in pursuit of his ambitions, but has since managed to pull himself back and maintain his sense of morals. Ansem shifting to being Riku's Arch-Enemy/Enemy Without exemplifies this.
• Evil Plan: Always wants to get his hands on Kingdom Hearts by sacrificing a bunch of innocent people.
• The Faceless: His face is always hidden behind a hood or a turned back or a shadow the first time you see him.
• Faux Affably Evil: His incarnations are all faily polite and well-spoken, which makes their highly manipulative natures that much creepier. His new incarnation in 3D particularly acts friendly and personable, even while planning to make Sora the 13th vessel for Xehanort.
• For Science!: Everything he does is in the name of furthering his knowledge of hearts and darkness, even if it causes The End of the World as We Know It.
  Eraqus: "You would risk an apocalypse out of sheer curiosity?!"
• A God Am I: Wants the power and knowledge of Kingdom Hearts to become a Physical God and remake the universe in his image.
  • In Their Own Image
• Hades Shaded
• I Have Many Names: Xehanort, Master Xehanort, Xemnas, Ansem, No Heart, Terra, Xigbar, and Saix.
• Just Between You and Me: Inevitably explains his entire plan to the heroes. Unfortunately for the heroes, this quirk has yet to work against him. He even starts exploiting this in later titles to Mind Rape and screw with his enemies.
• Lack of Empathy/The Sociopath: Although this seems to have been augmented by corruption by darkness, all Xehanorts have issues empathizing with others. Ironically, Master Xehanort is the only one to show the slightest hints of compassion and caring, towards Eraqus and Ven.
• Large Ham: Master Xehanort even provides the page image. Every Xehanort is over the top and gives giant, sweeping, evil speeches. Averted with Young Xehanort, who's comparatively muted and calm.
  • Evil Is Hammy
    Xehanort: "DARKNESS!"
• Legacy Character: The Xehanorts all share very similar appearances, outfits, personalities and goals, while fighting style varies but there are definitely repeated themes. Justified in that they're all the same person in various alternate incarnations.
• Magic Knight: Every incarnation is very skilled with both melee weapons and magic.
• Manipulative Bastard
• Me's a Crowd: Eventually has 13 different incarnations through the use of Time Travel, Literal Split Personality, and Grand Theft Me.
• The Men Behind The Monsters: Emblem Heartless, Nobodies, Nightmare Dream Eaters, and Unversed originate and, except the latter, are led by some form of Xehanort. The Dream Eaters were indirectly created by Ansem as a result of some of the Heartless-attacked worlds remaining submerged in sleep.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Every time Xehanort speaks, he can never seem to keep his arms or hands still.
• Obviously Evil: Between the silver hair, yellow eyes, and black and red clothing, it's pretty clear he's a villain. Master Xehanort, in particular, takes this trope and not only runs with it, but goes Gummi Ship flying with it.
• One Steve Limit: Played straight at first but gradually subverted, early in the series there were several "Ansems" and "Xehanorts", but it's now known that all of the latter are the same person in different forms, while with the former, a few people have just stolen the name as an alias and there is only one actual Ansem. This has lead to a few of them being given in-universe titles or Fan Nicknames to refer to them separately.
• Pointy Ears: Every incarnation, due to corruption by darkness, other than the uncorrupted Young Xehanort.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Xehanort's plans to get Kingdom Hearts revolve around sacrificing others in horrible ways.
  • Ansem uses the pure hearts of seven young women to try and create a portal to Kingdom Hearts.
  • Xemnas makes a fake Kingdom Hearts by combining the hearts from thousands of Heartless.
  • Master Xehanort tries to summon Kingdom Hearts by splitting a single person into pure light and pure darkness, and then making one consume the other.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Master Xehanort's black and red cloak, passed on to Ansem, and Xemnas's Black Cloak and red Etheral Blades.
• Relationship Voice Actor: Master Xehanort is voiced by Chikao Ohtsuka, while Terra-Xehanort and "Ansem" are voiced by his son, Akio Ohtsuka.
• Seeker Archetype: A villainous example. All his incarnations seek to understand the true nature of their world, only to cross the Moral Event Horizon in search it. They even go by the monkier "the Thirteen Seekers of Darkness"
• Significant Anagram: Nomura chose the name Xehanort because without the X it was an anagram of both "Another" and "No Heart."
• Soul Jar: Every Xehanort holds some fragment of Master Xehanort's heart.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: His natural eye color, which is also given to his assimilated hosts.
• Teleport Spam: Always makes use of Flash Step or dark portal teleport attacks.
• Thinking Up Portals: All of Xehanort's incarnations have access to Corridors of Darkness.
• Thirteen Is Unlucky: His incarnations have been trying to form a group of thirteen of themselves for more than the past decade to have the "Darkness" half of the χ-Blade.
• Unreliable Narrator: Because of Retcons his reports rarely have any factual information by the time the next game is released.
• Visionary Villain: He may have some roundabout and cruel methods, but everything Xehanort does is in the name of finding Kingdom Hearts and recreating the universe as he sees fit. 3D reveals that even Ansem and Xemnas were just working on a very complex scheme laid out by Master Xehanort that ultimately leads back to this goal.
• White Hair, Black Heart: The only exception is Master Xehanort, as he's bald from age.
• X Makes Anything Cool
  • Let X Be the Unknown: Uses X in his names and iconography, including the names given to the member of the Organization XIII. This stems from Master Xehanort's obsession with the χ-blade. They're also a "Recusant's Sigil" that marks the bearer as Xehanort's property and a potential vessel for his heart.

Master Xehanort

• Animated Armor: His armor, the Bonus Boss No Heart.
• Back from the Dead: Is reborn as a human in Dream Drop Distance, after the destruction of his Heartless and Nobody in the previous games.
• Badass Grandpa
• Bald of Evil
• Beard of Evil
• Big Bad: Of Birth By Sleep, and as the original Xehanort (sharing this position with Young Xehanort), the franchise itself.
  • Bigger Bad: Of the earlier games, through his incarnations carrying out his plans.
• Cain and Abel: He mentions several times in his writings that he considers Eraqus a brother. And yet he murders Eraqus' body in Birth By Sleep.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: Leonard Nimoy, best known as Spock Prime of Star Trek: The Original Series, in the English release.
• The Chessmaster: Plays everyone in Birth By Sleep. Everything Ansem and Xemnas did was also part of his plan to create 13 avatars and start a second Keyblade War.
• Combat Tropes
  • BFS: His Keyblade◊ is one of the larger ones.
    • An Axe to Grind: It's curved blade and spiked shaft give it this appearance.
    • Evil Weapon: His keyblade is an expression of the evil inside his own heart.
    • Morph Weapon: His Keyblade can become a floating shield, body armor, and a set of wings. As of Dream Drop Distance, it can even be used with different Keychains by different members of the True Organization XIII to have different Keyblade variants.
  • Elemental Powers:
    • An Ice Person: Has a preference for ice — he freezes Ven, tosses out Blizzard attacks in battle, and ends his Keyblade combos in a blast of ice.
    • Blow You Away: His Storm of Blades in the Keyblade Graveyard in Birth By Sleep seems to be through the use of wind and the Keyblades littering the battlefield.
    • Dishing Out Dirt: Can raise massive pillars of earth to launch opponents into the air or separate them from their allies.
    • Shock and Awe: Calls down lightning strikes.
  • Flash Step: Uses short range Super Speed for his form of Teleport Spam.
  • Kung-Fu Wizard: Even as an old man possesses Super Strength and a vast array of dark magic.
  • Squishy Wizard: Being an old man, he's rather slow and prefers to use magic from afar while teleporting to avoid you.
  • Storm of Blades: Can summon a barrage of keyblades to launch at opponents.
  • Super Strength: Despite being a Squishy Wizard, he's strong enough to damage Ven's Power Armor and hold off Terra's attacks with one hand.
• Crazy-Prepared: Managed to plan for his various incarnations defeats in every single game of the series.
• The Determinator: He will do anything to obtain the power and knowledge of Kingdom Hearts.
• Evil Counterpart: To fellow Keyblade Master Eraqus, as well as Sora and Riku.
• Evil Laugh
• Evil Old Folks
• Fallen Hero
• Gambit Roulette: Everything Ansem and Xemnas did was planned out in advance by him. Further, Maleficent, Sora, Riku and most of Organization XIII were all Unwitting Pawns in his plans.
• Graceful Loser: He took his failed attempt to gather the Thirteen Seekers of Darkness in 3D fairly well. Of course, the fact that he plans on trying again helps.
• Grand Theft Me: Transfers his heart and mind into Terra's body at the end of Birth By Sleep.
• I Need You Stronger: Keeps forcing Terra to use the power of darkness in order for it to corrode Terra's heart enough for Master Xehanort to take over his body].
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Terra then uses The Power of Hate to turn into Animated Armor and kick the crap out of the new Terra-Xehanort.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Despite being a pretty boy and Tall, Dark and Handsome most of his life, he ends up a creepy old bald man.
• Kick the Dog: Kills Eraqus and destroys the Land of Departure, then gloats about it to Terra.
• Lack of Empathy: Feels no remorse for all the evil he's done or lives he's destroyed.
• Leitmotif: "Xehanort".
• The Man Behind The Monsters: He created Vanitas, the source of all Unversed.
• Master Swordsman: As shown when a full-memory Terra-Xehanort and when in a Villain Override of his younger self in Birth By Sleep and Dream Drop Distance respectively, he wasn't named a Keyblade Master on magical prowess alone.
• Meaningful Name: The "Master" title, as the original version of Xehanort, a Keyblade Master and leader of the True Organization XIII.
• Not Helping Your Case: Certainly reinforces Eraqus's negative views about Darkness.
• Old Master: The only reason he doesn't use his Keyblade directly in his fight with Terra is because his body is too old for him to be fast enough with it. He's plenty strong, however, and time has given him a vast array of magical abilities.
• Pet the Dog:
  • His reports show he was a far cry from an evil mastermind even a few years before the events of BBS, and that he seriously considered just quietly live out his final years in peace.
    Report VIII: "Ordinarily, Keyblade Masters take pupils under their wings, malleable minds in which to impress the precepts of the Keyblade wielder and keep our profession alive for generations to come. Was my time drawing to an end, then, after all I had accomplished since casting away the place of my birth? Surely waiting for a quiet death would not do, not when there was still so much I needed to see for myself. Powers help me, I thought, my body is so old..."
  • He also took Ven to Destiny Islands after the creation of Vanitas to let him live out his final days peacefully before falling into an eternal coma.
• Power Gives You Wings: His armor, No Heart.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Vanitas' red.
• Rule of Symbolism: His Keyblade Armor is bright white with feather motifs, and his Keyblade Glider is a set of wings to play up comparisons to Fallen Angels like Satan.
• Slouch of Villainy: Gets a magnificent one in Dream Drop Distance, complete with propping his hand on his fist and folding his leg up onto his knee.
• The Sociopath: Began as Well-Intentioned Extremist, but suffered Motive Decay till he became only interested in acquiring knowledge and power by whatever means.
• Start of Darkness: Xehanort would have been just another youth looking for an escape from his home much like Riku if not for the intervention of his Heartless Ansem who had travelled back in time to facilitate his escape. Which means Xehanort was responsible for his own Start of Darkness.
• Thanatos Gambit: Xehanort lets Terra beat him into submission to see if Terra is now strong enough to be a worthy vessel.
  Xehanort: Only now, have I truly won...
• The Unfettered
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He once believed that the universe was too full of light and believed a balance between light and darkness was the way for a perfect world to exist. His solution — begin a Keyblade War to engulf the worlds in darkness, and when he wins and claims the power of Kingdom Hearts, he can remake it in his image of balance. However, he's since become Drunk on the Dark Side, and his only goal these days is power and knowledge for the sake of having them.
• Worthy Opponent: Considers Mickey Mouse this, instead of just another tool for him to use.
• Xanatos Gambit: If "Ansem" and Xemnas find the real Kingdom Hearts, Master Xehanort wins. If they're killed instead, Master Xehanort gets to come Back from the Dead and finish the job himself.

Terra-Xehanort

Click here

to see Xehanort as he appears in Birth By Sleep (spoiler warning)

• Badass Armfold: His pose when commanding the Guardian.
• Combat Tropes
  • BFG: Ultima Cannon.
  • BFS: Uses a big Keyblade. Master Xehanort's, in fact.
  • Blade Spam: Uses long Keyblade combos, based on Terra's Ars Solum and Dark Impulse.
  • Colony Drop: Meteor.
  • Dishing Out Dirt: Quake.
  • Get Back Here Boss: Dashes around and is immune to damage after you use a special attack like magic or a shotlock.
  • Guardian Entity: The Guardian, a Heartless born from the darkness in his heart.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Has Terra's power and vitality combined with Master Xehanort's experience and training.
  • Magic Knight
  • Mirror Boss: All of his attacks are taken from Terra, including Block-Counter Hammer, Ars Solum, his Dark Impulse combo, Dark Volley, Ultima Cannon, and a variant of Meteor.
  • No Cure for Evil: Averted, he has Curaga.
  • True Final Boss: Of Birth By Sleep, averted in Final Mix though.
• Deceptive Disciple: Perverted the research of his mentor Ansem for evil purposes.
• Evilutionary Biologist: His experiments on the The Heartless helped turn them into an entire army of darkness.
• Lack of Empathy
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Had his memories locked away by Terra at the end of Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep to prevent Master Xehanort from controlling his body. Unfortunately, the memories eventually start coming back. Also Lampshaded by Braig.
  Braig: Please tell me the amnesia was just a sick joke. Boy, this is some cliché."
• Literal Split Personality: Was eventually split into "Ansem" and Xemnas. Xemnas kept his more hands-on combat style and is hinted to retain some of Terra's devotion to Ven and Aqua, while "Ansem" kept the Guardian and his magical prowess, as well as Master Xehanort's outfit.
• Living Shadow: His Guardian Entity.
• Loss of Identity: Most of his motivation was built up to be based around this before The Reveal in 3D.
• The Man Behind The Monsters: Created the crest Heartless and brought countless wild ones into the Realm of Light as well.
• Meaningful Rename: Changed his name to Ansem after banishing his former mentor and taking over his kingdom.
• Monster Sob Story: Became obsessed with the workings of the heart because of his lost memories, and it lead to him doing increasingly amoral experiments to try and understand them. Subverted in Dream Drop Distance, where it is revealed this was actually because Master Xehanort was slowly taking back over.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Turned himself into a Heartless and a Nobody so he could acquire more power and further Master Xehanort's plan.
• Mysterious Past: His past is unclear till Birth by Sleep where it's revealed he's Terra after the original Xehanort took over his body.
• Neck Lift: Tries to choke Aqua to death at the end of Birth By Sleep.
• Ominous Latin Chanting/Ominous Pipe Organ: "Dismiss", his second battle theme in Birth By Sleep.
  • Boss Remix: Contains fragments of character themes.
• Relationship Voice Actor: Is voiced by Akio Ohtsuka in the Japanese version, son of Master Xehanort's japanese voice actor Chikao Ohtsuka.
• Retcon: The reports he wrote directly contradict his time travel plot.
  • Maybe not. While he definitely got some of Xehanort's memories back, he may not have gotten all of them.
• The Sociopath: After all, he is Master Xehanort.
• Start of Darkness: Kingdom Hearts/Birth by Sleep.
• That Man Is Dead: "Terra's heart has been extinguished! Smothered by the darkness within him!"
• Theme Music Power-Up: Inverted — when it comes time to fight him with Lingering Will in Birth By Sleep, the music for the fight is Rage Awakened, the Will's theme. Which accurately reflects what's about to happen.
• Villainous Breakdown: The only time he loses his cool in Birth By Sleep is when the Lingering Will forms, prompting a snarl of protest. In the subsequent battle he begins by walking towards the Will slowly, attacking with a few Dark Volley shots and blocking attacks, but as the battle wears on he begins rapidly teleporting, cranks "a few" Dark Volleys into Beam Spam, and begins using Ars Solum liberally.
• Voices Are Mental: As covered under Relationship Voice Actor, Xehanort is voiced by the son of Master Xehanort's voice actor, the intended effect presumably to be that the two characters have the same, but age-affected, voice.
• Walking Wasteland: His presence in Radient Garden causes an aura of darkness around the world, and while it may just be the time of day there, it's also nighttime when the player investigates.
• Would Hit a Girl: Ask Aqua.

"Ansem", the Seeker of Darkness (Xehanort's Heartless)

• A God Am I: Wishes to access Kingdom Hearts to use as a source of ultimate knowledge and power.
• Arch-Enemy: Is treated as Riku's after the first game.
• As Long as There Is Evil: Ansem was able to remain alive due to his control of Riku, allowing him to continue to exist as long as Riku held darkness in his heart. However, he was destroyed when DiZ's machine at the end of II purified Riku's heart.
• Back from the Dead: You'd think that Riku getting purged of him at the end of II would finally do him in, but nooooo. While 3D ends with him and Xemnas returning to their own times, Master Xehanort still needs them for his grand final battle.
• Badass Arm Fold: His default posture while fighting with his Guardian.
• Badass Long Coat
  • No Shirt, Long Jacket: Well two coats undone anyway.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: He gets what he wants and obtains Kingdom Hearts's power in the end. Unfortunately for him, it turns out to be light power, not dark power like he thought it was, and he basically implodes as a result.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Maleficent, though Ansem is the bigger Bad.
• Brown Cloak: After destroying Radiant Garden, he unlocked his own heart to traverse worlds and gain more knowledge. Until he possessed Riku, his Heartess could only appear as a hooded figure in a brown cloak with a creepy voice. It turns out the journey also involved Time Travel, which required him to give up his "physical existence".
• Celestial Body: His Guardian in his second form in 3D.
• The Chessmaster: Masterminded the entire plot of Kingdom Hearts
• Chewing the Scenery: Good Lord, once he gains a body of his own, every scene he's in feels like it's being torn apart between his teeth, even the ones where he doesn't have a face!
  "KINGDOM HEARTS! FILL ME... WITH THE POWER... OF DARKNESS!!!"
  • Let's put it this way. He features in the same game as a number of Disney Villains, whose hamminess is the stuff of legend, and he manages to out-ham them ALL.
• Co-Dragons: He and Xemnas seem to be this in Master Xehanort's True Organization XIII, being his left and right hand men.
  • Demoted To Dragon
• Combat Tropes
  • Air Jousting: His Dark Rush Attack.
  • Attack Animal: The guardian itself is invincible and more or less a this for Ansem.
  • Black Magic/Casting a Shadow: All of his attacks.
  • Barrier Warrior: Uses both his Guardian and magical barriers offensively.
  • Deadly Disc: Most of his battles involve shooting these at you.
  • Energy Ball: Another common attack of his Guardian. His final form in 3D will use a very powerful version for his desperation attack.
  • Double Weapon: His final form uses a lance resembling two huge Soul Eaters fused together.
  • Fusion Dance: With the Guardian for his final forms.
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: Summons Energy Balls which fire them.
  • Guardian Entity: "Come, Guardian!" His entire fighting style involves it in some way (except for his final form's spear).
  • Power Floats
  • Size Shifter: He's absolutely enormous for his final battle in the first game.
  • Sphere of Power: In his new battle phase in 3D his Guardian becomes one.
  • Sphere of Destruction: His new attack in 3D is to trap you in one.
  • Teleport Spam: Ansem does this with his Guardian for his Dark Shadow attack, sending him into a portal into the ground and rising and uppercutting the enemy.
• The Corrupter: Manages to not only be this to Riku for Kingdom Hearts, but also to Young Xehanort, through the use of Time Travel to impose his own Start of Darkness.
• Creepy Monotone: Earlier in the game when he was wearing a brown cloak and wasn't wolfing down scenery.
• Demonic Possession: Of Riku in part of Kingdom Hearts and once in Chain of Memories.
• Enemy Within: To Riku from Chain of Memories through the explosion of the Kingdom Hearts encoder in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Enemy Without: Acts like this to Riku in Dream Drop Distance.
• Eldritch Abomination: Being a Heartless and all.
  • Humanoid Abomination: He's the only intelligent, fully-sentient Heartless we've seen thus far, though he only gets the "humanoid" part after possessing Riku.
  • Dramatic Irony: Not to mention Cosmic and Historic. Considering that Terra, who eventually became Xehanort, wanted Riku to take up his sword...
• Flanderization: In the original game, Ansem was simply very misguided rather than evil. His experiments, while horrifyingly amoral, were done in the name of genuine scientific curiosity, and lead him to believe that all beings are born from darkness and that darkness is thus the source of all power and knowledge. He encouraged Riku and Sora to accept this and open their hearts to darkness to be stronger, and was disappointed when Sora refused to accept his beliefs as fact. Subsequent appearances however have played up the Card-Carrying Villain aspects more, and he's now the Xehanort most likely to embrace his evil nature compared to Master Xehanort's Well-Intentioned Extremist and Xemnas's Tragic Villain. This is due in part to the Retcon that "Ansem" was actually Ansem's apprentice — when Leon and Aerith say that Ansem was once the wise and kindly ruler of Hollow Bastion it makes it sound like this "Ansem" Jumped Off the Slippery Slope when his curiosity went too far, but as Ansem's traitorous apprentice, he's much more clearly evil.
• Gloved Fist of Doom
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Kingdom Hearts, the so-called ultimate darkness he was searching for, turns out to be light, and ends up doing him in.
• Kneel Before Zod
  "You are weak. You need darkness. Surrender. Bow to darkness. Bow to me."
• Lack of Empathy
• Leitmotif: With the exception of the first game's final battle, any battle theme involving him opens with a series of six organ chords.
• The Magnificent: Seeker of Darkness. This becomes far more relevant as the games go on.
• Manipulative Bastard: Played both the villains and Riku through their darkest desires.
• The Man Behind the Man: To Maleficent
  • The Man Behind The Monsters: To the Emblem Heartless.
• Living Shadow: The Guardian.
• No Name Given: Sort of. While there's several Ansems in the series, Xehanort and Riku were just using it as an alias while the real Ansem is of course the original. This Ansem however never got his own name, and is thus referred to as "Ansem SoD" to differentiate him from the actual Ansem, or is otherwise just "Xehanort's Heartless".
  • The name stems from when he introduces himself precisely as "Ansem, the seeker of darkness," which is why the nickname has persisted so long.
  • The reason he never got a name of his own is that he is a direct continuation of Terra-Xehanort, who went by the name Ansem and never saw fit to do any differently.
• Omnicidal Maniac
• Only Mostly Dead: Even after being destroyed by Kingdom Hearts, a small piece of himself was still alive in Riku. It got purged in the sequel.
• The Other Darrin: Billy Zane in the first game, unfortunately replaced with Richard Epcar from Kingdom Hearts II onward. This led to more Flashbacks With The Other Darrin in Kingdom Hearts II.
• Pointy Ears
• Red Baron: The Seeker of Darkness. Not exclusive to him.
• Sequential Boss
• Significant Anagram: Probably unintentional, but "nAmes" is surprisingly relevant to anyone with the name Ansem; they all have more than one name.
• Shirtless Scene: As the final boss of the first game. What a bod.
• The Sociopath: Literally heartless, not to mention it comes with the territory as an incarnation of Xehanort.
• Starter Villain: For the entire franchise. Though he does return in later entries as well, alongside other villains, and suffering no Villain Decay in the process.
• Straw Nihilist: "All things begin in darkness, and all so end."
• Time Travel: The reason for his Brown Cloak in Kingdom Hearts, and also how he influenced the plot both in Xehanort's distant past and after his own destruction.
• Took a Level in Badass: Most players agree that Ansem was not a terribly difficult final boss in Kingdom Hearts 1. For his return in Dream Drop Distance, on the other hand...Ansem becomes a much, much harder fight than he ever used to be, effectively using projectiles and melee attacks together to make combos, having multiple phases that both have huge amounts of health, and in a display of Cutscene Power to the Max, he subdues Riku almost effortlessly. That's quite a step up there.
• Vocal Evolution: Richard Epcar's voice acting improved a lot between KH2 and Re:COM, although it's more like the vocal director gave him some breathing room instead of forcing him to try and out-ham Billy Zane with unsuccessful results. He's also significantly better in Birth By Sleep.
  • Also, Akio Ohtsuka himself was actually over-the-top hammy to an annoying level in the original Japanese version of Kingdom Hearts, but also sounded a lot better in Re: COM.
• You Don't Look Like You: As of 3D Xehanort was given a completely new face to better resemble his other incarnations.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After Kairi completes the Final Keyhole Ansem says this to her, which unfortunately for him was the one thing Riku wasn't willing to do.

Xemnas

Unknown (Young Xehanort)

• Ambiguously Evil: If you thought that Xemnas' claim to villainy was hazy enough, this guy's moral standing is even foggier. Everything, from his rather impersonal dealings with the heroes (remember, this is Xehanort we're talking about) to his reaction to Sora's inquiry about him working with the new Organization (which prompts Young Xehanort to admit he doesn't even fully know what will come from aiding his various time-space continuum-displaced incarnations), casts a shadow on where he stands in relation to the others and even brings up the question of how much of this is of his own accord in the first place. The storywriters clearly have something in mind, as Ben Diskin has mentioned that he was deliberately instructed to not make the character sound stereotypically evil.
• The Assimilator
• Badass Baritone: In the English version, at least compared to his very youthful Japanese voice.
• Because Destiny Says So: Not even Xehanort himself is above his manipulations — Young Xehanort says that although he'll forget what he's learned of the future when he returns to his own time, the knowledge will remain in his heart and he will inevitably live out the life he is meant to lead to bring everything to this point. He also comments that a rule of time travel is that you cannot change events that are meant to happen, implying this to be in effect for the entire series.
• Berserk Button: In his Birth by Sleep fight, trying to attack him while he's in the middle of his Beam Spam is a bad idea. He usually stands there and lets his beams do the work, but try and attack him and he decides to start attacking you again while the beams are still firing, and this will likely get you killed.
  • And then in Dream Drop Distance, the only time he breaks his Creepy Monotone is when Riku tries to rescue Sora before he can be made the 13th Xehanort vessel. However, Word Of God reveals that this may be more a Berserk Button of Master Xehanort, who imposed Villain Override on him and caused the personality change and enhanced power set.
• Bishōnen: While Ansem and Xemnas also apply, this one has the youthful face to go with it.
• Black Cloak
• Bonus Boss: In Birth by Sleep.
• Call Back: In 3D, as he attempts to rewind time, you will be bombarded with attacks from his Birth by Sleep battle.
• Chekhov's Gunman: First appears as a Bonus Boss in Birth by Sleep; his next appearance in Dream Drop Distance sees him as The Heavy.
• Combat Tropes
  • BFS: His variation of the No Name in 3D is huge.
    • Cool Keyblade: The keyblade associated with him, No Name. He wields a variation of it in 3D.
    • Laser Blade: Dual wielding laser blades! The Keyblade you get from him, No Name, is also essentially a Laser Blade Keyblade. And then in 3D he wields a variation of it over his laser blades for the first part of the battle with him.
    • Morph Weapon: Combines his separate blades into one, throws them out as orbs of light to shoot out like projectiles, elongates them to stab forward, and can whirl them through the air like a whip. Also does many of the same tricks with his Keyblade in 3D.
    • Bifurcated Weapon
    • Double Weapon
    • Javelin Thrower
    • Whip Sword
    • Reverse Grip
    • Sword Beam
    • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Does this during one of his combos.
  • Beam Spam: Can shoot barrages of darkness that will afflict you with Slow.
  • Crosshair Aware: Go ahead, try to charge up your Shotlock and see just how aware of the crosshairs he is.
  • Doppelgänger Attack: The second phase of the fight in 3D is a Doppelganger Battle — you can't actually damage Young Xehanort himself, you have to attack the clock emblem, which is producing a constant stream of clones to attack.
  • Elemental Powers
    • An Ice Person: In 3D he can fire ice shards at Riku
    • Blow You Away: In Birth By Sleep he can use Whirlwind to the Void and knock away your commands.
    • Playing with Fire: Can use Mega Flare and Raging Storm in Birth By Sleep, and in 3D he can use a fiery variation of Whirlwind to the Void in the second phase of his battle.
    • Time Master: He can avert No Cure for Evil by rewinding time to before you hit him. It even makes the background music go in reverse for a few seconds. His desperation move in 3D is this on a larger scale — he rewinds the battle to the start of the fight, even replacing the intro cutscene over again to complete the illusion, but he only recovers two bars of health. He's also able to resist Mickey's fourth-level Stopza spell, which even Ansem and Xemnas are halted by.
  • Lightning Bruiser
  • Mirror Boss: Has many of the same commands as you such as Meteor, Raging Storm, Mega Flare, Collision Magnet, Restore Barrier, Sonic Blade, Vanitas's X-shaped Sword Beam, Marluxia's Doom and Whirlwind to the Void, Laser Blades like Xemnas, can clone himself like Xemnas, and in Dream Drop Distance he even wields a Keyblade. Dream Drop Distance also justifies how he can do this, since he's a young Xehanort that has visited multiple time periods to gather alter-egos of his future self. Notice most of those attacks can be used by people Xehanort has corrupted.
  • Turns Red: When low on health in Birth by Sleep he'll turn invisible and will begin using multiple attacks at once. And then in 3D, he gets faster, teleports more often, and his attacks are harder to avoid.
• Climax Boss: In 3D. The actual Final Boss is almost an afterthought after the intensity of his fight and the plot revelations accompanying it.
• Creepy Monotone: Much like Ansem, he never raises his voice or shows much any emotion outside of facial expressions. Justified, as he's taking part in events he's going to forget about once he's done, is doing things he's meant to do anyway, and probably doesn't fully understand what he's been told — his emotional investment in things isn't much.
• Fan Nickname: Mysterious Figure, which is from the Brady Games Birth by Sleep guide. The name is unofficial, but persists in the fan community for the sake of distinction from the original Unknown.
  • A handful of fans also refer to him as Soranort. Because at this point, he's bound to be related to one of them somehow.
    • Hats off to whoever originally came up with this one, as his entire plan in 3D is to create/become a literal "Soranort."
  • As of the release of 3D, he's been referred to as Trollanort, thanks to his affinity for playing literal mindgames and his bordering-on-unfair use of time control in his boss battle. Other variants include Clockanort and "TOKI WO TOMARE-nort".
• The Heavy: In Dream Drop Distance.
• Help Your Self In The Future: This is essentially what he's doing, helping his future self form the new Organization XIII advance his Me's a Crowd plot.
• Interface Screw:
  • He can actually knock commands off of his opponent, who is forced to scramble to pick them up off the ground while dodging his attacks.
  • It's a bit unclear if it's actually intentional on the developers' part, but in 3D his Teleport Spam is too fast for the camera to track at times, so if you're locked on it can seriously screw with your dodging.
• Invisibility: Has a penchant for going invisible and pulling out an instant KO combo.
• Leitmotif: "Xehanort -The Early Years-".
  • Battle Theme Music: "Dark Impetus" and "L'Impeto Oscuro."
• Mind Rape: Subjects poor Sora to this.
• Mythology Gag: He's a thematic retraux of the Unknown Bonus Boss from Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, wielding similar weapons and appearing in a similar fashion, and like it foreshadowing the Big Bad of the next game.
• Painting the Medium: He can knock the commands out of your menu, when he reverses time the music goes backwards too, and he teleports to avoid your targeting sensor when you try to use a Shotlock. And then in 3D he can replay cutscenes.
• Punch Clock Villain: In a certain sense of the word — as far as he's concerned he's just doing what's destined to be done, and while such acts are evil, there's no malice in his demeanor. And given that this is a teenaged Xehanort from before he Jumped Off The Slippery Slope, how evil he was before Ansem told him about what he's going to end up becoming is up for discussion.
• Shout Out: During his Desperation move, he yells out "TOKI WO TOMARE!"
• SNK Boss: He can clone himself, with all five clones able to attack individually, his "Colision Magnet" attack stuns you so the follow-up attack doesn't trigger Second Chance, can blow your command cards across the arena forcing you to pick them up, and any time you land a hit on him he may decide to rewind time to undo the damage and recover from the blow. This is in addition to his lightning-fast, powerful attacks. Then he gets weak, when he turns invisible, preventing you from targeting him, and begins to use multiple attacks at once, in addition to all of the previous.
• Speed Echoes/Teleport Spam: During his battle in 3D he'll teleport just as you initiate an attack, leaving an afterimage.
• Stable Time Loop: It's implied he became able to move through the worlds and leave Destiny Islands because of Ansem, and though his memories of what he's learned regarding what his other incarnations will do will be erased when he returns to his own time, the knowledge of the events will remain embedded in his heart and draw him to live them out.
• Start of Darkness: His meeting with Ansem SoD.
• Theme Song Reveal: According to Word Of God, his theme "Dark Impetus" contains a clue to his identity. It seems to take elements from "Rage Awakened" (Terra's Lingering Sentiment), "Darkness of the Unknown" (Xemnas' final battle theme in Kingdom Hearts II), and "Lord of the Castle" (Marluxia's final battle theme in Re:Chain of Memories). Which mostly all fits together when you learn he's a younger Xehanort that orchestrates the re-creation of Organization XIII.
• Time Travel: Is a younger Master Xehanort traveled forward in time from the past.
• Trailers Always Spoil: It's not much of a spoiler listing him here in the Xehanort section, since the trailers for Dream Drop Distance spoiled his status as yet another Xehanort by simply showing what he looks like — it's just a matter of figuring out in what way.
• Troll: Most of his appearances throughout 3D are him just appearing to taunt Sora and occasionally Riku before vanishing. Turns out this is precisely the idea, since he's luring Sora deeper into his dream world in order to Mind Rape him.
• Villain Override: According to the Ultimania for 3D, Master Xehanort did this to him for the battle with Riku in Where Nothing Gathers so as to be able to override the Stopza imposed by Mickey.

Braig / Xigbar

Isa / Saix

Vanitas

• Anime Hair: Exactly as ridiculous as Sora's. Just black.
• Artificial Human
• Ax Crazy
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: With Ventus.
• Bilingual Bonus/Multiple Reference Pun: "Ventus" (Latin for "wind") and "Vanitas" ("emptiness") sound similar, and both can be defined with the kanji 空, which means both "sky" and "emptiness". And could also, due to one of those meanings, be read as "Sora".
• Black Knight
• Blood Knight: He seems pretty excited about the idea of a massive war starting up, especially after he gets his hand on the Chi-Blade.
• The Cameo: Shows up with Young Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], confronting Sora in one cutscene, and nowhere else in said game. Tetsuya Nomura says that this is meant to be a representation of Ventus' heart reacting to Xehanort's darkness.
• Collapsible Helmet
• Combat Tropes
  • BFS: The χ-Blade.
    • Cool Keyblade: Void Gear, his Weapon of Choice, until he gains the χ-Blade
  • Combat Pragmatist: Don't expect a fair fight from this guy. Aqua learned this the hard way.
  • Elemental Powers
    • Black Magic/Casting a Shadow: As a being of darkness and an apprentice of Xehanort, it's a given
    • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Can wield potent dark variations of Fire, Ice, and Thunder spells and can combine the former two with melee attacks
  • Flash Step
  • Lightning Bruiser
  • Glass Cannon: In a sense. He has the strength and speed of a Lightning Bruiser, but has poor defense.
  • Sword Beam
• Compressed Hair
• Classic Villain: Representing Envy, Pride, and Wrath.
• Cool Helmet: Although it's called a "mask" in Birth By Sleep.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Considering he was "raised" by Master Xehanort to be a powerful weapon, it's safe to say he never had a chance at a normal life.
• Dark Is Evil/Dark Is Not Evil: In the novels, while Vanitas is a being of Darkness, he didn't start out as evil. However, after four years under Xehanort's "care", he became the cold sociopath he is today.
• Demonic Possession: Does this to Ventus. It doesn't last though.
• The Dragon: To Master Xehanort during Birth By Sleep.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: Early on he's not pleased with Ven's progress and tries to kill him when he decides Ven is useless for their schemes. It's also hinted he was supposed to kill Aqua in the Radiant Garden, but she proved stronger than they expected so he let her live in case they needed a back-up if Ven turned out to be a bust.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette
• Eldritch Abomination: He is a being of pure darkness whose existence unbalances the laws of the worlds, and he is the source of all Unversed.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Played straight when Ventus's heart connects with Sora's.
  • Lampshaded by Master Xehanort,
  Master Xehanort: He has no control over the darkness in his heart. The Keyblade is not his to bear. He's an abomination beyond hope of salvation.
• Emotional Powers: Has the ablility to spawn the Unversed from his negative emotions.
• Enemy Without
• Evil Counterpart: To Ventus.
• Evil Twin: To Ventus, and to Sora, kind of.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Zig Zagged. Vanitas can use both ice and fire-based attacks.
• Evil Laugh
• Expy: Well let's see, his outfit is similar to Riku's Dark Mode, he takes the same battle stance as Riku, and he even dons Riku's iconic pose in the opening cinematic.
  • Yet it's Sora he has a connection to, through Ven, and he looks like Sora with black hair and gold eyes and an epic Slasher Smile. He even has Sora's voice.
  • In Japan, he is thought to be an Expy of Jagi from Fist of the North Star.
• The Faceless: Until part way into the final battle against Ventus.
• Faux Affably Evil: Especially toward Ventus.
• For the Evulz: It's indicated that he doesn't really have or need a reason to restart the keyblade war; he's just excited by the idea of a universal conflict, especially now that he's the guy with an Infinity+1 Sword.
  • An alternate reason, in the novels' version of the story, is that he wanted to rejoin with Ventus, thus not being all alone anymore. However, this isn't exactly reflected in his actions; early in the story, he was perfectly willing to annihilate Ventus for being too weak, and considered Aqua a decent backup plan for forging the χ-Blade.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Vanitas of the novels is extremely envious of Ventus' friendships.
• Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: Subverted. He has eyes as large as Ven's because he's a Sora look alike.
• Grand Theft Me: Not nearly as successful as Xehanort, though, but manages to possess Ventus.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: His first encounter with Ven.
• Just Between You and Me: Does this without shame, confident the heroes cannot do a thing about it.
• I Need You Stronger: He's always going around telling people whom he fights to get stronger, and to show him their power. Why exactly is one of the key points of Birth By Sleep.
• Kick the Dog: Breaking Ven's toy Keyblade that Terra gave him in front of Aqua.
• Knight of Cerebus: Though to a lesser extent than Master Xehanort, but he's played dead serious with little to no comedic elements to him.
• Lack of Empathy: Doesn't care about anything but himself.
• Laughing Mad: In Japanese and English. Not all the time, granted, but he does have his moments, such as after his battle with Aqua in Radiant Garden.
• Literal Split Personality: He is the personification of the darkness that Master Xehanort ripped out of Ventus's heart.
• Made of Evil: He's quite literally made from Ven's darkness.
• The Man Behind The Monsters: Is the source of the Unversed.
• Manipulative Bastard: Though nowhere near Xehanort's level, he manages to coax Ventus out of the Land of Departure.
• Meaningful Name: His name is derived from the Latin word for emptiness, indicating his state of existence. Also, it sounds similar to Ventus, hinting at a connection between the two. It's also similar to "vanity", reflecting his smug, self-absorbed nature. And, as mentioned above, the Japanese character for emptiness can also mean sky, hinting at his connection to Sora.
• Mook Maker: He can create the Unversed from his negative emotions, and if an Unversed is destroyed, then he can absorb their negativity to spawn new Unversed. This gives him an endless supply of Mooks. However, this is only in cutscenes, not gameplay.
  • Walking Wasteland: And he puts that power to deadly use.
• Not So Different: Before the final battle with Ventus, Ven declares he's willing to risk losing his heart forever by destroying the χ-Blade and saving Terra and Aqua. In his Desperation Attack, Vanitas shatters the station they're on. Keep in mind the platforms in the Dive to the Heart are implied to be reflections of the heart, indicated here by Vanitas appearing opposite Ventus on it — in other words, Vanitas is willing to take the same risk as Ven.
• Obviously Evil: At no point could this guy pass for a good guy. Even Terra immediately knows he's a villain who must be stopped.
• Only One Name
• Omnicidal Maniac: Heavily implied to be this in the game, but never outright stated. By the end of his backstory in the novels, he wants to make everyone, in every world suffer. In the game, he gets really excited by the prospect of the Keyblade War, and the legends about it's catastrophic, universe-ending consequences.
• Person of Mass Destruction: Is the source of the Unversed, who inhabit and terrorize the entire World.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He'd like to just kill his enemies straight-off, but he's smart enough to know that this won't get him anywhere and bides his time accordingly.
• Psycho Strings: During one or two notes at the beginning of his theme, "Enter the Darkness".
• Pure Is Not Good: He's made of pure darkness. This seems to be the root of the Unversed.
• Recurring Boss: For Aqua and Ventus in Birth By Sleep. Although he's the reason why Terra went out to the worlds, however, he is only fought once in his story, and never speaks.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over
• Red Herring: At first glance, he has a lot of similarities to Riku, wearing an outfit similar to his Dark Mode and using the same battle stance. But then the mask came off, and his appearance seemed to be essentially a darker clone of Sora's.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Master Xehanort's blue.
• The Resenter: To Ventus in the novels.
• Slasher Smile
• The Sociopath: Fits all the criteria of one, but is a low-functioning sociopath in comparison to Xehanort.
• Smug Snake
• The Starscream: It's hinted he planned to take the power of Kingdom Hearts for himself once he got the χ-Blade.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes/Red Eyes, Take Warning: Although he has gold eyes in all of his appearances, accoridng to an interview from Nomura, Vanitas resembled a heartless-like creature with red eyes before Ven joined his heart to Sora's to give Vanitas Sora's general appearance.
• Theme Song Reveal: His battle themes borrow from Sora's leitmotif.
• Too Slow: One of his stock lines.
• Villainous Breakdown: After being defeated for the final time by Ventus, he's reduced to panicking and attempts to grab the floating χ-blade before dying. It almost makes you feel sorry for him.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Is portrayed as such in the novelization, in stark contrast to the unrepentent sociopath in the actual game. He's unable to control his ability to spawn Unversed, which are created autonomously every time he feels a strong emotion, and he hates them as a sign of his lack of control and a reminder of the true nature of his existence. Furthermore Master Xehanort forced him to train by fighting the Unversed, and Vanitas felt the emotions and physical pain they did upon being killed every time, which in turn fueled his dark emotions more and spawned stronger Unversed. And while all this Training from Hell was going on, he was still connected to Ven and felt all the friendship and happiness Ven was experiencing training under Eraqus.
• Would Hit a Girl: More like Would Stab A Girl.
  • Stab Them While They Are Down

Riku Replica

• Always Someone Better: His motivation for defeating Riku.
• Artificial Human
• Become a Real Boy: His entire motivation.
• Berserk Button: He has two — getting anywhere near Naminé (Sora's storyline) and being called a "fake" (Reverse/Rebirth).
• Beta Test Baddie
• Chekhov's Gunman: After finishing Chain of Memories, he dies and is literally forgotten until 358/2 Days came out, and it turns out Xion is a Replica just like him.
• Cloning Blues
• Cool Sword: His copy of the Soul Eater.
• Fake Memories: Throughout Sora's storyline, since Vexen had him implanted with the memories Naminé was force-feeding Sora to see what would come of it.
• Fan Nickname: Repliku. Ironically, this is also his actual name in the German edition of Chain of Memories.
• Go Out with a Smile
• Green Eyes
• Heel Face Turn: At least during Sora's storyline; in Riku's, he goes to antagonize the real Riku after Marluxia's death due to Axel's goading.
• Hot Blooded: Maybe even moreso than Riku in Kingdom Hearts, and that's saying something. However, this is justified by the fact that Vexen doesn't really understand hearts, not having one himself, and by the fact that Larxene manipulates him into it the entire time.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: More like pushed off by Axel.
• Killed Off for Real: In a series where several recurring characters suffer from losing their hearts, which Word Of God states is different from death since they can regain their hearts, the Replica is one of the few characters confirmed to be dead. Bizarrely, though, he is referred to as having "seemingly" died in Dream Drop Distance's story recaps.
• Mirror Match: During Reverse/Rebirth.
• No Place For Me There: After Marluxia is defeated he essentially says this to Sora.
• Obi-Wan Moment: See his quote above.
• Only Known As His Origin
• The Rival
• Shadow Archetype: To Riku.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the manga.
• Talking to Himself: Quite literally happens any time he and the real Riku face each other.
• Teleport Spam: If you hated Riku's Dark Aura back in the first game, you will loathe this guy.
• Tragic Villain
• White Hair, Black Heart
• Yandere: For Naminé. The scary thing is that the Organization's plan basically amounted to Sora becoming just as crazy as him concerning protecting Naminé.

Sephiroth

• Arch-Enemy: Cloud's, naturally, to the extent that he actively seeks out Cloud midway through II for no reason other than to taunt him. His skirmishes with Sora and Tifa in the same game were more impersonal than malicious, making this Sephiroth simply "antagonistic" than outright "evil."
• Badass: Cloud, no slouch himself, struggles against this guy, who doesn't show as much as the slightest amount of effort in any of their encounters. He even brushes off Sora's win like it was nothing.
  • Badass Longhair
  • Badass Longcoat: Of the No Shirt, Long Jacket variety.
• BFS: Wouldn't be Masamune if it wasn't ridiculously long.
• Bishōnen: Lacks the textbook personality, although when he was voiced by Lance Bass, his combat dialogue did show hints of it.
• Blade Spam: His Flash technique in KHII, of the "Simultaneous Blade Spam" variety. Sephiroth dashes past Sora, and if you don't use the Block Reaction Command, Sora instantly is bombarded with about 7-9 slashes.
• Bonus Boss: Though his That One Boss status is diminished in Final Mix+ by the introduction of Terra, Roxas, and the Data Organization XIII.
• Casting a Shadow: A few of his attacks in both games, as well as the Battle Aura he adopts in later phases of his boss battle.
• Colony Drop: His most powerful attacks involve meteors, naturally, though they're on a Dissidia scale rather than the planet-crushing one from VII.
• Enemy Without: It is heavily implied, if not outright stated, that he's the physical embodiment of Cloud's own darkness rather than the "real" Sephiroth. To further emphasize this point, Sephiroth has the exact same facial features as Cloud, even sporting Cloud's blue eyes instead of the green eyes the Sephiroth of FFVII possesses.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: It's jarring hearing Superman taunt you in battle.
  • It's less jarring when you take into account that in his previous appearance, it was Lance Bass taunting you in battle.
• Mr. Fanservice: Come on, it's Sephiroth.
• Never Say "Die": Pseudo-example, his declaration in the first game of "I will lead you to the Promised Land" becomes more threatening when you remember that most interpreations of the "Promised Land" in VII were that it was The Lifestream.
• One-Hit Kill: Or more like a One Hit Combo Kill, if you don't know what you're doing.
  • Can happen literally in the first game if you're underleveled/unprepared, seeing as Sephiroth uses no combo attacks sans a Limit Break very similar to Cloud's Omnislash.
• One-Man Army: Carves through a horde of Heartless like cake while Leon and Cloud are plain outnumbered - just to taunt Cloud and teleport away. Enemy Mine isn't a philosophy of his.
• One-Winged Angel: Notably averted, despite being the Trope Namer. This seems to be a trend in recent years (with the exception of the hip wings). If you're being literal, he has one wing in the first game and three in KHII - on the other hand, the hip-wings do make an interesting callback to his actual One-Winged Angel form.
• Only Cloud Can Kill Me
• Only One Name
• Perpetual Molt
• Playing with Fire: Just because, though it's possibly an application of Evil Is Burning Hot.
• The Other Darrin: Lance Bass — yes, that Lance Bass — in the first game, George Newbern in the second.
  • And with it, came the realization that the words for his HP To One deathmove were "Descend Heartless Angel," not "Sin Harvest."
• Rapunzel Hair
• Red and Black and Evil All Over
• A Sinister Clue: Subverted; he wields the Masamune with his right hand in this continuity.
• The Stoic
• Teleport Spam
• White-Haired Pretty Boy
• Winged Humanoid

The Hostile Program

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot
• Didn't Need Those Anyway: Its armor.
• Foe Tossing Charge
• Frickin' Laser Beams: Sweeps the area with these.
• Get Back Here Boss: Spends alot of the battle moving to different points in the area, firing lasers.
• Game-Breaking Bug: On early PS3 consoles, the Hostile Program could get a glitch where it would be invincible, this has been fixed via updates.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In an odd variation, when the Program is hit, it drops cluster orbs, which don't defeat it, but can be used to cripple its movement and make it easier to hit. The Program does this through no fault of its own, so it isn't a Tactical Suicide Boss.
• No Name Given
• Raymanian Limbs

The Experiment

• Body Horror: Its pieces can be taken off and put together again.
• Decapitated Army: Each part can move on its own, but the creatures torso needs to be beaten for it all to be brought down.
• Eye Beams: The head can juggle you with these.
• Only Known As The Experiment
• Shown Their Work: The pieces the creature is made from are background props from the movie - e.g, its right arm is a machine from Oogie's Lair.
• Vacuum Mouth: Its left arm, when detatched.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: All its doing is trying to find a heart of its own, unintentionally taking away joy in the process.

• Adorable Evil Minions: Albeit with a few genuinely scary exceptions.
• Always Chaotic Evil
• As Long as There Is Evil: They're born from the darkness, and so long even a single heart has a bit of darkness in it, they'll always exist. However, it was only due to Xehanort's experiments that they were able to invade the Realm of Light, their inactivity in Birth By Sleep suggests perhaps they could be marginalized in the Realm of Darkness again.
• Bigger Bad: As the very embodiments of darkness and the main reason so many people and worlds are destroyed, they're the most significant evil force in the game universe. However as creatures of instinct with infinite numbers they aren't actual "villains" in terms of plot, thus the actual villain roles go to human characters.
• Bishonen Line: Zigzagged. Several of the strongest Heartless (Invisible, Neo Shadow, Darkside, etc) look more humanoid than their lesser counterparts, and Xehanort's Heartless, the most powerful Heartless of all, looks entirely human. On the other hand most Heartless including bosses look like monsters.
• Cute Bruiser: Most of them look too cute to be an army of bloodthirsty creatures.
• Eldritch Abomination
  • Lovecraft Lite: No one actually has an epic grade Freak Out when they show up, and even the most powerful of them can still be defeated.
• Elite Mook: Invisibles are universally the strongest pureblood Heartless short of Darksides and other bosses. The strongest Emblem Heartless varies, but the Angel Star and Defender are commonly among the toughest.
• Enemy Mine: They stop fighting against the Nobodies during the Battle of Hollow Bastion any time Sora shows up, but also ally with Organization XIII at one point.
• Fisher Kingdom: While the Pureblood Heartless keep their appearances in all worlds, Emblem Heartless change their appearance to reflect the world they're in. As a result they can appear as almost anything, from cars to sorcerers to ghosts to plants.
• Giant Mook: At least one a game, such as the Large Body or Fat Bandit. They also No Sell against front attacks.
• The Heartless: The Trope Namer.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side: In the words of Saix, the Heartless ally with whoever's the strongest, which is why most of them defect from Maleficent's service to ally with the Organization.
• The Legions of Hell
• Light Is Not Good: The Angel Stars.
• Made of Evil
• Manipulative Bastard: They've no problems taking advantages of people's inner greed and anger; even Maleficent, a Manipulative Bastard herself, was manipulated by them.
• Metal Slime: Various mushroom-type Heartless, usually rare and/or hard to kill, but yield great rewards.
• Our Monsters Are Weird
• Palette Swap: Many of them have recolored stronger forms. The music-themed spellcasters all share the same appearance aside from color.
  • Most of these appear in either the Final Mix games or in Days. The Final Mix games also give most of the regular Heartless more psychedelic color schemes. Additionally, one of the bosses in Days, a Darkside palette swap, can summon Shadows that are purple rather than the normal blueish color.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Their sigil is a black heart with jagged red lines. Many stronger Heartless add red, purple and blue to their color scheme.
• Slasher Smile: Some of them have those.
  • Jagged Mouth : Goes with the Slasher Smile
• Sigil Spam: Emblem Heartless, who the apprentices branded to further distinguish them from the naturally-occuring "Pureblood" ones; presumably either the apprentices or Maleficent are responsible for the enormous emblem on the Hollow Bastion castle.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes
• Theme Naming: The mushroom type Heartless are called "Color Fungus-type" (Blue Truffle, Gold Tricholoma), while the floating spellcaster Heartless are "Color Music-type" (Emerald Blues, Crimson Jazz).
• The Usual Adversaries
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: They always ally with the strongest villains to further their goals of conquest. Those villains who are too weak are abandoned or brought into their ranks.
• You Have Failed Me: See above trope.
• Zerg Rush: Their main "strategy". Since Sora is basically a One-Man Army, it usually fails.

Sora's Heartless

• Big Bad: Of coded.
  • Arc Villain: For coded.
• Bishonen Line: Transforms into Anti-Sora, complete with Keyblade, after being defeated as a Darkside.
• Bold Inflation: As one can tell by his all caps quotes.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He's actually the same Darkside you fought at the beginning of coded. But as they realize at the end of the game, as you've been killing Heartless to gain power, he's been absorbing their fragmented data to do the same.
• Combat Tropes
  • Doppelgänger Attack
  • Elemental Powers:
  • Light 'em Up: Surprisingly, instead of Dark attacks, it fights almost exclusively with Light attacks.
    • Pillar of Light: One of its attacks heavily resembles Roxas's Magic Hour.
  • Playing with Fire/An Ice Person: In its first form, he casts Debug Blizzard with his left hand and Debug Fire with his right.
  • Megaton Punch
  • Spin Attack
  • Storm of Blades: Launches light Keyblades at you and calls on a barrage of them for its Desperation Attack.
  • Sword Beam
• The Corruption
• Eldritch Abomination
• Evil Counterpart: To Sora. Data-Riku even comments that as Sora got stronger killing Heartless, their data was absorbed by his Heartless so it could grow stronger too.
• Flat Character: Those two lines of dialogue at the top of his profile and under his picture? They're about all he says the entire game, and you don't even confront him until the final battle. Justified, as he's really just a Shadow Heartless pumped full of power, and by nature Heartless are driven by instinct and lack higher intelligence.
• From Nobody to Nightmare
• Glowing Eyes of Doom
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes
• Light Is Not Good: Despite fighting almost exclusively with light attacks, it is still The Virus and a member of The Heartless.
• Living Shadow
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: No one ever thought about the fact that when the data Heartless are killed, they don't fade into hearts like real Heartless, and thus never thought about what happened to that destroyed data. Turns out this guy was absorbing it to grow stronger and stronger.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: In the first game, it was just a little shadow. It takes quite a few levels in badass in Coded.
• Only Known By His Origin
• This Was His True Form: He is only defeated when Mickey separates him from the power he got from corrupting the journal and reduces him back to the form of a lowly Shadow.
• Took a Level in Badass and Jerkass
• Tron Lines
• The Virus
• You Will Be Assimilated

Darkside

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
• Casting a Shadow
• Large and in Charge: The second one fought is stated in Jiminy's Journal to have led the Heartless that destroyed Destiny Islands.
• Living Shadow: The one in the tutorial is introduced as one, though all things considered, it's most likely not the case for the other ones.
• No Mouth
• Palette Swap: The Dark Follower in Days and the Shadow Heartless it summons.
• Prehensile Hair: Averted. Despite looking like shriveled tentacles, its "hair" just sort of floats around its head.
• Recurring Boss
• Summon Magic: It can summon Shadow Heartless. Not only that, its Palette Swap can summon palette-swapped Shadows.
• Torso With A View: The hole is, of course, heart-shaped.

Guard Armor/Opposite Armor

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
• Chest Blaster: A variation. One end of the Opposite Armor's torso can aim at Sora and fire a homing energy ball.
• Cognizant Limbs
• Didn't Need Those Anyway: Part of both battles involves detroying the bosses' limbs.
• Essence Drop: The limbs drop HP orbs when destroyed.
• The Faceless: The Guard Armor and its palette swaps have their visors down, concealing their eyes. Averted with the Opposite Armor.
• Foe Tossing Charge: Not a charge exactly, but in Days, the Guard Armor and Powered Armor will walk at you, which can knock you back.
• Palette Swap: The Red Armor, which is fought during a tournament at Olympus Coliseum, but doesn't get named until Final Mix, which also gives the Guard Armor and Opposite Armor a more varied color scheme. Days gives us the Powered Armor, which is blue.
• Raymanian Limbs
• Spin Attack: Both Heartless can do this with their hands. The Opposite Armor can also do this with its head. The Guard Armor's torso does this when its limbs are removed.

Trickmaster

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
• Breath Weapon: In Days, the Crimson Prankster's fire breath seems to be similar to real life fire breathing except that it's weaponized and has a much longer range.
• Boss Arena Idiocy: Played straight in the first game and subverted in Chain of Memories. The only way you can hit this boss is to get up on the table at the center of the room and attack its faces. In Chain of Memories, however, it can collapse the table.
• Dual Boss: The Crimson Prankster is an unusual case. It splits into two. If one copy is defeated and the other is left standing, the first one is revived with the same health as the second.
• Essence Drop: It drops HP orbs when stunned.
• He Was Right There All Along: In Chain of Memories.
• Incendiary Exponent: The Trickmaster has to light its batons on fire before it can shoot fireballs at you. The Crimson Prankster lights itself on fire and spins at you.
• Multiple Head Case: Averted. Despite having five heads stacked on top of each other, it single-mindedly attacks Sora and company.
• Palette Swap: The Crimson Prankster appears in Kingdom Hearts 358 Days Over 2 and has the same appearance as the Trickmaster except that its color scheme is lighter. It also has a very different battle style. Final Mix gives the Trickmaster itself a similar range of colors arranged differently.
• Playing with Fire: It can use its batons to shoot homing fireballs. The Crimson Prankster has a wider range of fire attacks.
• Spin Attack: The Crimson Prankster does this while on fire.

Stealth Sneak

• Chameleon Camouflage: See Visible Invisibility below.
• Dual Boss: With Clayton.
• Eye Beams: Homing ones.
• Horse of a Different Color: Clayton is riding it when it first appears.
• Palette Swap: The dark gray Sneak Army, which is fought in a tournament, but only gets named in Final Mix. Final Mix also gives the normal Stealth Sneak a pattern of dark lines on a solid green body rather than the regular camo pattern.
• Razor Wind: It can shoot a small one at its targets.
• Visible Invisibility: Its camouflage ability is a type 2, appearing as a large blur.
• The Worf Effect: It knocks Tarzan halfway across the battlefield when it first appears. The trope is subverted if Tarzan is in your team during the battle, in which case he will not have taken any damage.

Pot Centipede

• Big Creepy Crawlies: One of the few insectoid Heartless in the series.
• Casting a Shadow: The antennae on its abdomen segment use a darkness attack.
• Get Back Here Boss: If it is joined with any Pot Spiders, it moves constantly.
• Mini-Boss
• Shock and Awe: It electrifies its front antennae to attack.
• Spin Attack: Sometimes does this when not connected to any Pot Spiders. It's the only way it can move without them.

Parasite Cage

• Attack Its Weak Point: An orb of darkness inside its mouth is vulnerable while it's stunned. Hitting it does more damage than attacking the boss normally.
• Breath Weapon: See Hollywood Acid below.
• Combat Tentacles
• Essence Drop: Attacking the orb of darkness in its mouth causes it to drop HP orbs.
• Hollywood Acid: Used as a hazard on the battlefield. In the first game, it uses its tentacles to suck it some of Monstro's stomach acid and use it as a Breath Weapon: In Chain of Memories, it spits it at you.
• Palette Swap: In Final Mix, its lower body is orange, its head is a dull yellow and its tentacles are green.
• Platform Battle: In Chain of Memories, the only way to avoid being hurt by the acid is to stay of the four circling platforms in front of the boss.
• Standard Status Effects: Its poison breath can poison Sora in the first game.
• Stationary Boss
• Status Buff Dispel: Its enemy card in Chain of Memories does this once per battle if equipped.

Behemoth

• Attack Its Weak Point: Its horn.
• Casting a Shadow
• Dummied Out: From Kingdom Hearts II due to technical issues.
• Palette Swap: It is blue in Final Mix, which also gives the Arc Behemoth and Destroyed Behemoth.
• Purple Is Powerful
• Recurring Boss: Appears multiple times in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon and is always fought alone.

The Phantom

• Attack Its Weak Point
• Barrier Change Boss
• Black Cloak
• Bonus Boss
• Casting a Shadow
• The Faceless: Aside from the Guard Armor and its palette swaps, it isthe only Heartless we've seen with no glowing yellow eyes visible.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Its energy orb must be attacked with physical blows or one of these three spell types.
• Palette Swap: In Final Mix, its cloak is light gray with smoke patterns on the sleeves.
• Shout Out: Appears similar to Lord Ombra from the Peter Pan novel Peter and the Shadow Thieves.
• Time Master: Uses the clock tower to inflict Doom on your party members one by one, and then eventually on Sora.
• The Voiceless

Kurt Zisa

• Anti-Magic: Can disable Sora's ability to cast magic.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
• Bonus Boss
• Casting a Shadow
• Contest Winner Cameo: Named after a contest winner.
• Detached Sleeves: Detached pantlegs as well.
• Dual Wielding
• Loin Cloth: With the Heartless symbol on it.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Six arms. One pair holds the swords, another generates its Anti-Magic ability.
• One-Dimensional Thinking: How Sora and co. try to escape getting crushed by it after the battle. Carpet has to save them.
• Random Drop: Destroying the energy orbs that power its Anti-Magic ability sometimes nets you a healing item or two in addition to the normal HP orbs. As with other drops, this is influenced by the Lucky Strike ability.
• Sequential Boss: It cycles through three modes until it is defeated.
• Sinister Scimitar
• Spin Attack: It can use vertical and horizontal variations of this.
• Turns Red: It used a wider range of abilities the more it is damaged.
• The Voiceless

Antlion

• Blow You Away: It uses a whirlwind as a shield.
• Dishing Out Dirt: It can send shockwaves through the sand.
• Fast Tunnelling: When it goes out of sight.

Infernal Engine

• Annoying Arrows: The archers fire these.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The Battering Ram it uses for its most Foe Tossing Charge attack.
• Battering Ram: Its weakest point.
• Crosshair Aware: Similar to attacks by the cannon Heartless, a crosshair will appear under Roxas when the archers fire their arrows.
• Drop the Hammer: One of its weapons is a large hammer on a mechanical arm.
• Exploding Barrels: One of its attacks involves rolling these across the battlefield.
• Foe Tossing Charge: It uses a Battering Ram for this. It is at its most vulnerable while this attack is charging.
• Mook Maker: It spits out crates of Soldier Heartless when its archers are gone.
• Shock and Awe: The archers' arrows are a lightning-elemental attack.
• The Worf Effect: It throws the Beast over the wall prior to the battle.

Leechgrave

• Cannibalism Superpower: It got as powerful as it did by eating other Heartless.
• Combat Tentacles: It is the source of the Tentaclaw enemies fought in previous missions.
• Deadly Pollen: It has two attacks that release poison clouds, which drain Roxas's health if he does not move away.
• Dinner Deformation: If one of Tentaclaws swallows Roxas during the boss fight, one of these moves along the tentacle until the flower spits him out.
• Poisonous Person: Its projectile attack releases poisonous pollen on impact and the flower spews clouds of poison.

Ruler of the Sky

• Abnormal Ammo: Its mouth is a treasure chest which can shoot gold coins.
• An Ice Person: It can summon pillars of ice around the battlefield.
• Bling of War: Its wings are made of golden swords.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: It can fly past the edge of the battlefield while you can't.
• Foe Tossing Charge: It uses this when its body starts glowing red.
• Giant Flyer
• Greed: Captain Hook's lust for treasure caused it to appear.
• Invisible Wall: It uses the one around the battlefield to its advantage.
• Making a Splash: It fires homing balls of water from its tail.
• Pirate Parrot: Based on one.
• Treasure Chest: What it disguised itself as when Captain Hook found it.
• Turns Red: It becomes more aggressive when its tail is destroyed.

Dustflier

• Bonus Boss: Defeating it is the optional objective in Mission 89 and it only appears after you defeat six other giant Heartless.
• Breath Weapon: Fireballs that fly at you, though they're not homing once they start moving.
• Damage Sponge Boss: Has health and defense comparable to the Zip Slasher. It gets even more health in Mission Mode.
• Giant Flyer
• Foe Tossing Charge: This is its weakest attack.
• Marathon Boss: You'll spend a lot more time dodging it than attacking, especially if you wind up with a status effect.
• Our Dragons Are Different: It's a variant of the Tailbunker, which in turn is based on the Wyvern from the first game.
• Palette Swap: Of the Tailbunker from earlier Twilight Town missions.
• Playing with Fire: Its Breath Weapon.
• Shockwave Stomp: One that has a HUGE range.
  • Planar Shockwave: It radiates outward into empty air if the Dustflier lands on the stairs, making it harder to dodge.
• Standard Status Effects: The shockwave attack randomly selects from several of these. Its Breath Weapon inflicts burn.

Possessor/Thresholder

• Casting a Shadow: The Thresholder can unleash homing balls of darkness.
• Demonic Possession: Possessors can take control of inanimate objects, resulting in the Gargoyle Knight and Gargoyle Warrior enemies appearing.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin
• Get Back Here Boss: Averted with the Possessor only due to the battlefield being relatively small.
• King Mook: The Thresholder is this to the Gargoyle Knight and Gargoyle Warrior enemies with the twist that it appears at the same time as the first example of each.
• Mini-Boss
• Sequential Boss: Bringing the Thresholder's health to zero will allow you to force the Possessor to appear. The Possessor will fly around the room for a short time before possessing the door again. Rinse and repeat until the boss is defeated.
• Stationary Boss: The Thresholder stays in place due to being a door.

Shadow Stalker/Dark Thorn

• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The corrupted ballroom.
• Demonic Possession: The Shadow Stalker attacks from control of the back windows, the chandelier, the floor and a random pillar In That Order.
• Casting a Shadow
• Chained by Fashion: Both of them.
• Evil Makeover: It does this to the ballroom as the battle starts.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: The Shadow Stalker does this before shooting lasers out of two point on the chandelier's edge. The Dark Thorn actually pulls the chandelier down and rides it around the room, something that you can do as well with the proper reaction command.
• King Mook: The Shadow Stalker is this to the Possessor Heartless.
• Sequential Boss
• Shout Out: Word Of God says that the Dark Thorn's design was based on Ifrit.
• Spin Attack: The Dark Thorn uses these.
• Torso With A View: The Dark Thorn has a heart-shaped hole it its chest.
• Visible Invisibility: Type 2. The Dark Thorn appears as a shimmer while invisible.

Illuminator

• Get Back Here Boss: It sometimes zips around the room when you get close, especially when Barbossa is at low health.
• Ironic Name
• Overly Long Tongue: Though it's not used for attacking.
• Palette Swap: Gets one in Final Mix +. The palette swap has a pattern that looks like TV static superimposed on the new coloration.
• Wall Crawl

Volcanic Lord/Blizzard Lord

• Acrofatic: The Volcanic Lord can bounce Sora to attack.
• Agony of the Feet: The Volcanic Lord can inflict this on Sora's allies.
• An Ice Person: The Blizzard Lord.
• Breath Weapon: The Blizzard Lord can use this.
• Dual Boss: Subverted. One attacks while the other floats around nearly out of range. You can attack the floating one, but you can't lock on and there is a chance of any hits being blocked. You can also fight them individually in one of the Paradox Cup tournaments.
• Get Back Here Boss: Subverted. See Dual Boss above.
• Harmless Freezing: The Blizzard Lord can inflict this upon Sora's allies.
• Magic Staff: Both of them use this.
• Mook Maker: They can split into several Fiery Globe or Icy Cube Heartless respectively.
• Palette Swap: Subverted. The staffs have different designs and their pants have different patterns.
• Playing with Fire: The Volcanic Lord.

Prison Keeper

• Cephalothorax: While its does have a cage hanging from the bottom of its head, its arms are attached to the head as well.
• Get Back Here Boss: When it's not trying to bite its target, it's usually floating around high enough that you have to jump off of the highest point in the area to get at it.
• Palette Swap: Gets one in Final Mix +.
• Wingding Eyes

Storm Rider

• Attack Its Weak Point: Destroying the nubs on its shoulders will stun it. Actually getting up on its back to do so is another matter.
• Get Back Here Boss
• Giant Flyer
• Our Dragons Are Different: Apparently, it was an actual dragon that was corrupted by the Heartless.
• Palette Swap: Gets one in Final Mix +.
• Shock and Awe
• Throw Down the Bomblet: It can drop a whole bunch of explosive spheres while flying across the battlefield air raid-style.

Grim Reaper

• Cold Flames: These appear around it while it is in its undead form.
• Blow You Away
• Greed: Luxord describes this Heartless as "a veritable maelstrom of avarice."
• In Name Only
• ((Mayincatec}}
• Recurring Boss: You fight it twice. It's more powerful the second time.
• Palette Swap: Gets one in Final Mix +.
• Supernatural Is Purple

Groundshaker

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: It's the second-largest Heartless in the series right after the One-Winged Angel form of Xehanort's Heartless.
  • Kaiju: Certainly big enough to qualify.
• King Mook: To the Shaman and Living Bone Heartless.
• Mask Power: The mask serves as one of the Heartless's vulnerable areas.
• One-Winged Angel: Technically, this thing is Scar's Heartless.
• Palette Swap: It gets one in Final Mix +
• Planar Shockwave: Despite the shockwaves being a few feet feet in the air.
• Playing with Fire: It can use a homing fire attack with a VERY long range.
• The Power of Hate: It is implied that it was Scar's hatred for Simba that caused his to become this.
• Rapid Fire Fisticuffs: The "rider" section does this when it goes invisible.
• Shockwave Stomp
• Wingding Eyes: The main body has them.
• Witch Doctor: The "rider" section of the Heartless.

The Red-Eyed Heartless

• Casting a Shadow
• Chained by Fashion
• Doppelgänger Attack
• Fan Nickname: "Red Eye" or "Hunter of the Dark", the latter after its boss theme.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: While all the Bonus Bosses appear with little backstory, this one's existence is canon. Justified in that it appears in the Realm of Darkness where of course anything could attack you at any time without warning or reason.
• Jagged Mouth: Like several other Heartless.
• Jaws First Person Perspective: A terrestrial variant when it charges at Aqua.
• Large and in Charge: Rivals the Darkside as one of the largest Pureblood Heartless ever seen.
• No Name Given
• Playing with Fire
• Red Eyes, Take Warning
• Slasher Smile
• True Final Boss: Actually the last enemy of the Secret Episode, replacing Terra-Xehanort in this regard for Birth by Sleep.

• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Twilight Thorn.
• Cold Sniper: Snipers.
• Dance Battler: Dancers.
• Elite Mooks: To the Heartless. Nobodies are only born when particularly strong hearts are lost, so they're not as common as Heartless but are more powerful and have some minor form of intelligence instead of just going on instinct.
  • The Nobodies are an unusual example of this trope in that most Nobody varieties qualify.
• Empty Shell
• Evil Weapon: Berserkers wield "cursed hammers". This probably explains the "Berserk" Reaction Command and the fact that it seems to drag them around.
  • Creepers can turn into these.
• The Faceless: Most varieties, but look closely at the Dragoons.
• Fantastic Racism: Not by them, but rather of them. Most anyone who talks about Nobodies, up to and including Sora, talks about them as being emotionless abominations that do not deserve to exist, often in arguments with members of the Organization XIII themselves. This is most prominent in II, but is toned down in later ones, to the point where in 3D, Sora's next outing with Riku, Sora is appalled by injustices done to the Organization XIII by Xemnas himself, and tells Roxas that he always wanted to tell him he deserves as much as anyone to be his own person, not just to be Sora.
• Hoist By Their Own Petard: How Reaction Commands around lesser Nobodies seem to operate, using their own powers against them.
• Humanoid Abomination: In direct opposition to The Heartless (who take on more monstrous forms as they become stronger), the strongest Nobodies are human-like in appearance. They also move and walk in ways that highlight how un-human they are, such as "swimming" through solid matter or walking on air. Characters in II also comment that by the nature of their existences, they are unnatural abominations that should not exist, though later games have toned down the Fantastic Racism.
• Intangible Man: Assassins can phase through solid objects.
• It Was With You All Along: As Dream Drop Distance reveals, Xemnas lied about the nature of Nobodies to further the Xehanorts' schemes. Nobodies do start without hearts, but as they connect to others, they develop emotion, and can grow new ones. By refusing to accept their own emotions and connections, the hearts are suppressed, allowing others to put their own in their place, specifically Xehanort's.
• Nice Hat: Dancers wear one.
• Nobody Counterpart: Twilight Thorn is this to Darkside. The Berserkers may be this to the Lance Soldier Heartless, which also has a weapon that drags it around.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Believe it or not, they are merely reanimated corpses. Very powerful, intelligent corpses
• Power of the Void: Sorcerers attack with Hard Light cubes of Pure Energy, being Xemnas' personal type. Also technically, all Nobodies are beings born of Nothingness.
  • The Twilight Thorn's main attack, which fires thorned streamers at its target, is similar to one Xemnas's attacks.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Creepers shapeshift into various forms freely, including swords and spears.
• Sigil Spam: An inverted Heartless / Mark of Mastery logo based on Master Xehanort's armor. You could make a drinking game out of how many Nobody symbols there are decorating the Organization's castle, but you'd probably keel over before reaching the top.
• Theme Naming: Except for Dusks and Creepers, all the "lower" Nobody types are named after Final Fantasy job classes.
• Uncanny Valley: An Invoked Trope in how the lesser Nobodies move, ways that seem wholly unnatural.
• Undying Loyalty: Implied in the Dusk fight in II if taking into account Roxas' actions at the end of Days. The Dusk Roxas fights still calls him "my liege", in spite of the fact that Roxas abandoned the Nobodies. Also, late in II, upon coming to The World That Never Was, Roxas still has control of Samurai Nobodies, in spite of fighting them on the way out of the Castle That Never Was weeks prior. An exception seems to have been made for Axel and his Assassins, however, so perhaps it was just Roxas, or because the situation was less dire for the Organization XIII as a whole at the time.
  • Or perhaps the Samurai Nobodies were just random Nobodies wandering around Dark City, and Sora's Battle in the Center of the Mind with Roxas coincidentally occurred at the same time.
• The Usual Adversaries
• Weapon of Choice:
  • Barefisted Monk: Dancers.
  • BFS/Drop the Hammer: Berserkers.
  • Blade Below the Shoulder: Assassins, all down their arms.
  • Blade on a Stick: Dragoons.
  • Death Dealer: Gamblers.
  • Natural Weapon: Dusks.
  • Pure Energy: Sorcerers.
  • Dual Wielding/Katanas Are Just Better: Samurai.
  • Shapeshifter Weapon: Creepers (see above).
  • Sniper Rifle: Snipers.

• Emotion Eater: They apparently feed on negative emotions, though this is largely an Informed Ability.
• Eldritch Abomination
• Expy/Suspiciously Similar Substitute: In terms of appearance and behaviour, there really isn't much that separates the Unversed from the Heartless. Of course, Birth by Sleep takes place before the Heartless were a world-spanning threat, so the Heartless themselves couldn't be used.
  • One could argue that they are extremely similar to The Noise, after all; both of them are extensions of negative emotions and appear to be very similar in design.
• The Heartless
• Made of Evil
• No Ontological Inertia: Once Vanitas is destroyed, barring Gameplay and Story Segregation in the Final Episode, the Unversed vanish from the worlds.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning
• The Usual Adversaries

Mimic Master

• Doppelgänger Attack: Manifests clones of the party members from its pages.
• Playing with Fire
• Throw the Book at Them
• Yin Yang Bomb: Sends out beams of light and darkness

Iron Imprisoner

• Chained by Fashion
• Drop the Hammer
• Playing with Fire
• Red Eyes, Take Warning
• Sealed Evil in a Can
• Took a Level in Badass: Each incarnation gradually frees itself from its bindings, becoming stronger and faster.

Vanitas Remnant

• Casting a Shadow
• Glass Cannon: Only one health bar, but insane power.
• Last of His Kind: In a sense, he can be considered the last of the Unversed in existence.
• No Cure for Evil: Famous for averting it; he heals himself to full HP if the player heals themselves.
  • Loophole Abuse: But only with Cure commands, items and attack commands that also heal get no reaction.
• Playing with Fire
• Sword Beam
• Teleport Spam

• Adorable Evil Minions: Zigzagged. Spirits are all cute or at least friendly-looking, but Nightmares run the gamut from just as cute to genuinely threatening.
• Adventurer Outfit: As its name would suggest, Iceguin Ace's attire resembles an ace pilot.
• Astral Projection: Aura Lion and Keeba Tiger.
• Bears Are Bad News/Pandaing To The Audience: Kooma Panda can invoke both with its Nightmare and Spirit variations.
• Big Friendly Dog/Mega Neko: Meow Wow, Flowbermeow, and Meowjesty.
• A Boy and His X: Not only are Spirit-Type Dream Eater recruitable and can be raised like pets, Sora and Riku also develope quite adorable relationships with their starter Dream Eaters, Meow Wow and Komory Bat, the first of which Sora ends up lovingly nicknaming "Eata". Sora ends up keeping all his Dream Eaters for companionship in the end, when he decides to embark on a journey on his own.
• Cephalothorax: Pricklemane.
• Chest Monster: Jestabocky, which is very annoying when looking for chests you possibly missed. Perhaps in this form he's a Chestabocky.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The Kyroo series of Dream Eaters. Sir Kyroo is a winged frog that weilds a lily pad and cucumber-like vegetable, which gives the appearance of a knight. Chef Kyroo gives off the same imagery, but with a chef's hat and weilding a pan and a pot lid. <Lord Kyroo is a frog who is also a proper knight, wearing a cape and weilding an actual Rapier and shield. In addition to the usual movements of the other Kyroos, he blows a kiss with a visible heart coming out. He's also a Bonus Boss, and the only Nightmare (if he is one) that doesn't seem to want to kill you, but rather says "I challenge thee", something the player can decline, and leaves the battle once the player deals a fair amount of damage. The actual fight has him running away pretty cowardly, ironically enough, but once defeated he gives the recipe for a spirit version of himself that fights like a proper knight. They're Knights Errant, travelling with the player.
• Cute Kitten: Necho Cat and Frootz Cat.
• Dance Battler: Necho Cat and Frootz Cat.
• Dark Is Not Evil: They're expressions of darkness, just like the Heartless, but many are perfectly non-antagonistic.
• Dem Bones: Skelterild and Fishboné.
• De-power: Staggercep Dream Eaters have an attack that can prevent Sora and Riku from using commands.
• Detachment Combat: Skelterild and Fishboné.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Tyranto Rex and Skelterwild are based on Dinosaurs but have Draconic traits.
• Eldritch Abomination
  • Lovecraft Lite: See Dark Is Not Evil above.
• Elemental Embodiment: Of Darkness, more or less-they aren't actually corrupted hearts like the Heartless, they seem to be creations of Darkness itself, devoid of any foreign influence. Each Dream Eater is also associated with one element, which will determine it's strengths and weaknesses as apropriate:
  • An Ice Person: Ducky Goose, Iceguin Ace, Juggle Pup, R & R Seal, and Skelterwild.
  • Casting a Shadow: Fishbone, Frootz Cat, Ghostabocky, Keeba Tiger, Komory Bat, Majik Lapin, Necho Cat, Peepsta Hoo, Toximander, and Woeflower.
  • Light The Way: Aura Lion, Flowbermeow, Halbird, and Pegaslick, as well as the boss Spellican.
  • Making a Splash: Fin Fatale, Sir Kyroo, Tatsu Steed, Wheeflower, and Zolephant, as well as the boss Chill Clawbster.
  • Non-Elemental: The Dream Eaters not mentioned elsewhere go here, as well as these bosses: Hockomonkey (both versions), Queen Buzzerfly, Wargoyle (both versions), Brawlamari, Holey Moley, and Anti Black Coat Nightmare.
  • Playing with Fire: Chef Kyroo, Drak Quack, Eaglider, Hebby Repp, Ryu Dragon, Sudo Neku, Tatsu Blaze, Tyranto Rex, and Yoggy Ram, as well as the boss Char Clawbster.
  • Shock and Awe: Cyber Yog, Electricorn, Jestabocky, Lord Kyroo, and Thunderaffe, as well as the boss Commantis.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire > Blizzard > Thunder > Water > Fire... Light and Dark-type Dream Eaters are both strong and weak against each other. Fire-type Dream Eaters also have a slight weakness against Blizzard, while Blizzard-type Dream Eaters have a slight resistance against Water. The seventh type of Dream Eaters don't really have a weakness or resistance, but may be a little weak against all elements if they are physically inclined.
• Everything's Squishier with Cephalopods: Brawlimari.
• Everythings Worse With Bees: Queen Buzzerfly.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin/You Are the Translated Foreign Word: The Japanese names of the different species tend to be very cut-and-dried or bilingually redundant. The English version's names, when not adapting puns, retain this redundancy, but tend to go for odd spellings for the Japanese portion of the name, such as adapting "Kaeru Chef" as "Chef Kyroo".
• Expy: Story-wise, mentioned in-universe; it's mentioned that they're the equivalent of Heartless in places where the Heartless can't spawn. Gameplay-wise, they avert it though; while Nobodies and Unversed had equivalents/analogues to certain Heartless enemies, the Dream Eaters lack any of those.
  • The Kyroos appear to be expies of Frog from Chrono Trigger, being knightly frogs. They also have their own version of his jumping slash, and Lord Kyroo acts very chivalrous and speeks in Ye Olde Butcherede English just like Frog despite being a Nightmare. Their Link Attack with Sora, Decussation, is basically Frog and Chrono's X-Strike dual tech spammed repeatedly. The base Sir Kyroo is also water elemental.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Spirits apparently have golden eyes when in a neutral mood but can change to turquoise or green in other circumstances.
• Feathered Fiend: Halbird, Eaglider.
• Frogs and Toads: The Kyroo series. The Lord Kyroo is a Bonus Boss.
  • Cowardly Boss: Similiar to Deathgaze, Lord Kyroo will run away once enough time has passed, forcing you to track it down anew. It's HP won't recover between battles, also (thankfully) like Deathgaze.
• Hair-Raising Hare: Me Me Bunny and Majik Lapin.
• The Heartless: Much like their Trope Namer cousins. Inverted for Spirits, who are born of powerful positive emotions, and it shows.
• Light 'em Up: Dream Eaters such as Pegaslick can use light based attacks such as Spark.
• Light Is Not Good: Some Nightmares such as Pegaslick are able to use light-based attacks.
• Lucky Translation/Woolseyism: A little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. Wandanyan's name doesn't simply mean Wonder Meow, but it is also a pun on the onomatopoeia for a dog's bark, (wanwan). By using the English onomatopoeia "bow wow" for the pun, they were able to keep the spirit of Wandanyan's name as Meow Wow.
• The Man Behind The Monsters: Notably averted, unlike the other monster species, who were all created and/or led by an individual villain. Perhaps this is one reason why certain Dream Eaters are benevolent.
• Maniac Monkeys: Hockomonkey.
• Mascot Mook: Possibly due to overwhelming popularity, Meow Wow is THE Dream Eater, with a giant baloon based on Flombermeow in Traverse Town and its face adorning all the icons in the spirits menu, and is also the trophy in the Flick Rush. They're also the picture above.
• Monster Clown: Jestabocky. Their Japanese name, "Obake Pierrot", is basically a direct translation of the trope's name.
  • Non-Ironic Clown: Their Spirit versions.
• Mons: The spirits, which very similar to Spectrobes (another Disney property interestingly enough), can be created and used as your party fighting alongside you. They grow stronger with battle, but can also be trained using Toys and simply petting them. In return, they get more competent AI and can unlock commands.
• Obviously Evil: It's not exactly difficult to tell a Nightmare from a Spirit.
• Owl Be Damned: Peepsta Hoo.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Ryu Dragon and Drak Quack.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Wargoyle.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Jestabocky and Ghostaboky.
• Palette Swap: The Spirits and Nightmares are this to each other. They're both brightly colored, but Spirits tend to be pink, turquoise, and white while Nightmares tend to be purple, yellow, and black. There are also special Nightmare variants that use paler colors than regular Nightmares.
• Panthera Awesome: Aura Lion and Keeba Lion.
• Pegasus: Pegaslick.
• Piranha Problem: Fin Fatale and Fishboné.
• Pun: A great many of their names amount to this, with varying degrees of lameness. For example, "Holey Moley".
• Recurring Boss: The Spellican.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Nightmares.
• Repetitive Name: Many, but not all of them have names that consist of the English name of the animal they resemble followed by a phonetic variant of the equivalent Japanese word (or vice versa).
• Rhino Rampage: Drill Sye.
• Seahorse Steed: Sora can invoke this trope with Tatsu Steed and Tatsu Blaze.
• Sigil Spam: Interesting in that they have two different ones. Spirits have their own Sigil and so do the Nightmares.
• Stock Dinosaurs: Three: the T. rex-based Tyranto Rex and Skelterwild, and the Triceratops-based Cera Terror.
• Turns Red: Several Dream Eaters will invoke this trope literally.
• The Usual Adversaries
• Unicorn: Electricorn.

Anti Black Coat

• Beam Spam
• Black Cloak
• Casting a Shadow
• Dual Wielding
• Enemy Without: Manifests from within Sora and is a Nightmare type Dream Eater.
• Evil Counterpart: To Riku, the counterpart Spirit that has been protecting Sora during the exam.
• The Faceless: Except for the eyes, nothing is seen of the face at all.
• Glowing Eyes: The only visible facial feature, setting it apart from many other Black Cloak and In the Hood figures in Kingdom Hearts.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Black, purple, and red? This thing screams evil.
• HP To One: The Life Drain attack mentioned below inflicts this on you. Then he gets mad and starts zooming in for a sword combo before you can heal...
• In the Hood
• Laser Blade: Like Xemnas and the Unknown it wields two, but its are purple and black.
• Life Drain: Can drain Riku's HP into health orbs it absorbs for itself.
• No Cure for Evil: Averted.
• No Name Given
• Nothing Is Scarier: A hood obscuring everything but a Mook-like pair of eyes is rather creepy.
• Power Floats
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: Many of its attacks are red and black.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning
• Sigil Spam: A Nightmare emblem appears on its back when it notices the Spirit on on Riku's clothing, and the emblem appears in several of its attacks.
• Sword Beam
• Teleport Spam
• Theme Song Reveal: Averted. Its battle theme takes cues from "Hunter of the Dark", the battle theme for the giant red-eyed Heartless Aqua foughts in the Realm of Darkness, but they have no connection.
• The Voiceless