Earth Bound / Tropes A to G

You finally got here. This is the first "Your Tropes" page. But it's mine now. Take it from me, if you dare...

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Tropes A To G | Tropes H to M | Tropes N to S | Tropes T to Z

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A

• Aborted Declaration of Love: It's strongly hinted that Paula tries to confess her feelings for Ness at the end of the game, but "forgets".
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The maximum level is 99, but reaching it is mainly only helpful for increasing your party's durability for taking on the final area. At the end of the game, Ness will probably be Level 80 and the rest of the party will probably be Level 65-70.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Not only the Fourside sewer is one of these, but it avoids the "not walking through sewage" thing because there are ladders going right down into the muck.
• Abuse Discretion Shot: At the beginning of the game after returning to Pokey's house after seeing the meteor, Pokey's dad decides to discipline him and Picky for sneaking out at night. He takes them upstairs and off-screen, and a smacking sound is heard. If you talk to Pokey before leaving the house, he'll say his butt really hurts. This is only in the original Japanese version, and is bowdlerized in the North American release; Pokey is simply said to have been grounded instead, and the slap is replaced with a different noise - one you'll hear later in combat associated with "talking attacks," such as someone grumbling under their breath, causing a PC's Guts to go down.
• Abusive Parents:
  • In the Japanese version, Porky and his brother are beaten off camera by their father after you bring them back home at the start of the game. In the English version, the sound effect was changed to the one later used when enemies use "verbal attacks" (which has its own implications relating to emotional abuse), though Porky still ends up being banned from dessert for the rest of the decade (of course, since the game takes place in 199X, it's unclear exactly how harsh this punishment is). Their mother is also strongly implied to be abusive, as she says that her husband is "too soft" on them. At best, she's terribly neglectful, as she clearly doesn't care a bit when the abuse is happening right in front of her, or even when Porky disappears off the face of the earth.
  • Also, when you talk to Porky after that off-camera incident, he'll say, "My butt hurts!" in the original version, while in the English version, he says, "My dad really got after me. He said I get no dessert for the rest of the decade..."
• Abusive Precursors: The series doesn't reveal much about Giygas's species, but what we do get implies that they're no better than he is. The hieroglyphs of Scaraba, which Ness and company see in a Summers museum, mentions that "the invaders" have constantly struck at Earth for centuries from their "evil stronghold".
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Yes, this is Earthbound, a game about an alien invasion, psychic powers and walking, exploding trees, so disbelief CAN be suspended, but the real puzzler in a real life situation is that hotels in Eagleland allow children to rent rooms without an accompanying adult, much less how a realtor can legally sell a house to minors...
• The Ace: Ness. Pretty much everyone he knows tell him what a brave, outgoing, smart, adorable, and all-around excellent person he is. His neighbor and "friend" Porky, on the other hand...
• Action Girl: Paula, with both her Frying Pan of Doom and Psychic Powers.
• Action Pet: Ness' dog King at the beginning of the game...and then his Lovable Coward side kicks in.
• Addressing the Player: Used in one of the most emotional boss battle endings ever.
• Adults Are Useless: You have to stop a gang in your hometown because the cops and mayor cannot figure it out, you have to fight the local police force because they're jealous of you for stopping said gang, you have to save Paula because her dad is too scared and worried to do it alone, you have to get the zombies out of Threed because no one there knows what to do, you have to get the Runaway Five out of crippling debt twice... That said, this is also Inverted on many occasions like with both of Ness’ parents, Frankie, Everdred, and Poo’s master. Plus some of the aforementioned useless adults end up becoming incredibly helpful after you help them or in the case of the police after you beat them.
• Adventure Towns: One city is filled with delinquent children, another has a cultist group just around the corner, another is in the middle of a Zombie Apocalypse...
• Aerith and Bob:
  • Ness, Jeff, Paula and... Poo? Heck, even Ness may qualify.
  • Talk to the Sanchez brothers in the desert between Threed and Fourside. In order, their names are Pancho, Pincho, and Tomas Jefferson.
• An Aesop: "Don't judge a book by its cover. Rather, it's the content that matters most.": Although Orange Kid is a model citizen who is popular, industrious, and sociable, his narcissism makes him a smooth-talking snake oil salesman who, in exchange for $200, shoves a useless item onto Ness that does nothing but satisfy his sense of self-importance. On the other hand, Apple Kid becomes a crucial contributor to Ness's battle to save the Earth despite being a slob who is shunned by the Twoson community.
• A.I. Roulette: More striking because there are multiple AI moves that do nothing, and still more that inflict bad status effects on the enemy that uses them. Much of this, though, serves to enhance the game's odd world and contribute to the Rule of Funny.
• Alas, Poor Villain: If the world of Magicant in this game is a reflection of Ness's own internal strengths, memories, and feelings, then Pokey's presence would imply that despite all the crap his neighbor puts him through, Ness does still yearn to be friends with Pokey in some measure, a particularly poignant example since nobody else really seems to bat an eye at him disappearing from Onett and as Mother 3 shows, he never truly returns and isolates himself from everyone and everything for eternity. As a result, him having a place in Ness's mind and spirit is kinda sad since it means at least one person DID care even though he became the Big Bad/The Dragon of the games.
• Aliens Speaking English: Giygas apparently does...kind of. Considering his backstory, it makes sense. Another theory is both the protagonist and antagonist have psychic powers, so they would be able to communicate with each other that way.
• The All-American Boy: Ness, of course.
• All Cavemen Were Neanderthals: One of the enemies hanging out around Stonehenge is the stereotypical neanderthal, complete with fur tunic and club.
• All in a Row: How the party always travels on the Overworld.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Giygas' agents invade Onett in the game's final act.
• Almost Dead Guy: Buzz Buzz gives you a truly amazing speech before knocking off, one that you can have him repeat over and over.
• Always Night: Threed, at least until the zombie infestation is cleared up. As is Moonside until you realize it's a neon-hell-colored hallucination.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: In every battle. Psychedelic animated colorscapes are in the background of most.
• Ambidextrous Sprite:
  • The Runaway Five's bus instead says YAWAИUЯ when facing left. Naturally, due to this trope, the Cyrillic letters are 100% unintentional.
  • The same goes for Porky's heli.
• Ambiguous Gender: Giygas is almost always referred to as male, but one NPC questions whether or not this is correct, presumably since it's never easy to pin down gender when dealing with aliens.
• Ambiguous Situation: During the final battle, is Porky or Giygas in charge? The game leaves it up to the player to decide.
• An Ice Person: The PK Freeze series, learned by Paula and Poo. There's a chance to solidify the target with it as well.
• Animate Inanimate Object: So many enemies. This is a game where stop signs, possessed garbage cans, and anthropomorphic molecules are likely to try and kill you.
• Anti Poop-Socking: If you run a very long session of playtime in the game, your dad will call you to suggest taking a break. Oddly enough, he can still call you about this before you get the Receiver Phone in Twoson. This can even happen while playing as Jeff during his introductory side-quest in Winters; if this happens, Ness' father belatedly realizes he's called the wrong number.
• Another Dimension: Both Moonside and Magicant are sort of Another Dimension-Phantom Zone hybrids.
• Anthropomorphic Food: You get attacked by coffee cups at one point.
• Arc Villain: Prominent in the first half of the game, with Frank in Onett, Mr. Carpainter in Twoson and Happy Happy Village, Master Belch in Threed, and Monotoli in Fourside, three of which interestingly enough perform a Heel–Face Turn. Though the real Arc Villain of the first half of the game is the Mani Mani Statue, a corrupting illusion device that Giygas uses to get people to do his bidding.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: A cop at the beginning is annoyed because: "a meteorite crashed, the Sharks are running wild in town, you kids are wandering around," and he's hungry. At least he has his priorities straight.
  • Mayor Pirkle also gets in on it after you beat Frank. He uses metaphors that amount to basically 'you kicked their asses' and ends it all with "...And you made them wet their pants."
• Artifact Mook:
  • The Mole Playing Rough. They first appear in the Lilliput Steps, an underground cave, where they're a decent foe (oh, and the boss there is a giant mole, so there's a mole theme in that cave). However, for some reason, the designers put some specific points (to be exact, in the Dusty Dunes Desert, Summers's beach, and the Deep Darkness) around the game where one of them always spawns if you walk around there. Not only they're incredibly weak by that point, but they're places where you wouldn't even expect to find a mole. It has been suggested that these three enemies were intentionally put there by the developers so that status ailments work properly on the overworld, as the three locations happen to be the only ones where the player comes out of a scene with overworld status effects disabled.^ExplanationThis, not the fact that the Final Boss has been beaten, is why the Shattered Man glitch occurs. The same effect can happen in a frame-perfect speedrun if the player avoids an Event Flag in Moonside and then loses to the Evil Mani-Mani, or if he manages to avoid all encounters in the desert and then loses to one of the bosses there. This is presumably why the Mole Playing Rough is in a location almost guaranteed to block the player’s path and force a battle.
  • Another famous example is the Mad Ducks (an enemy encountered back in Winters) behind the store in Saturn Valley. Even stranger is the fact that they are in an area that you can't reach unless you exploit a glitch.
  • Mad Ducks also appear in the underground tunnels in Dusty Dunes Desert. They're incredibly weak enemies at that point (to the point that, to be able to provide a bit of challenge, they spawn there in absurdly high numbers), and it also makes one wonder what a duck is doing in a desert cave.
  • Talah Rama's cave in Dusty Dunes Desert is for some reason populated by enemies by found back in the Milky Well cave. Not only are they weak at that point, they'll also run away from you if you've already defeated Trillionage Sprout (which most likely you'll have done by that point).
  • The area between Threed and Dusty Dunes Desert will sometimes have New Age Retro Hippies, enemies encountered back in Twoson. They're also on a high ledge, which your party cannot reach. ^note This example in particular happens because that area is actually placed in the game files near the tunnel entrance in Twoson. There's a enemy spawning point located on the Twoson tunnel entrance, which is also active even if you're on the Threed side. Sometimes, an enemy can spawn there as if you were in Twoson. However, you wouldn't know that unless you're inspecting the game ROM.
  • The Dungeon Man is full of these. His first floor contains enemies that were in the Fourside Department Store. The dead ends on his second floor contains enemies from Moonside, an area you can only enter once. His third floor contains a "monster zoo," which invokes this trope.
• Artifact of Doom: The Mani Mani Statue gives off greedy thoughts to any nearby individual who comes across it.
• Artistic License – Space: The meteor at the start of the game leaves an extremely small impact crater, just big enough to contain itself, with a few smaller craters here and there from debris. An actual meteor strike would result in a much larger crater several times wider than the rock itself, thanks to it being more akin to a large explosion caused by striking the ground. Since the in-game meteorite is around the size of a police car, its impact would've destroyed the hill it landed on and caused additional damage to the surrounding area (including Ness and Pokey's houses) in real life.
• Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation:
  • When Nintendo of America was localizing Mother 2 into EarthBound, they made their own versions of Ness and Paula's clay model art. While the original artwork is faithful to their in-game appearances, the US artwork for the two differ in several ways: for one thing, they were both made taller than Jeff and Poo (possibly due to them both being aged-up to 13 as they were both in the 11-12 range in the Japanese version). Paula lost her bow, possibly in an attempt to make her look less feminine, Ness's hat is flipped the other way, the tuft of hair sticking out of his hat is now pointing left and made spikier (it was pointed downward and more rounded in the Japanese version), and he wears a slightly more serious expression on his face. Nintendo did not change their sprites in the game proper to match the new artwork.
  • Paula is depicted with a hand-bag in all of her artwork that is never seen in-game.
  • Pokey Minch's official artwork, based on his appearance at the start of the game, features him wearing baggy blue shorts held up by a single suspender. His appropriate in-game sprite, however, depicts him wearing overalls with both suspenders up. This would go on to influence his design in Mother 3, which features him wearing overalls like his sprite in EarthBound.
  • Picky Minch's clay model depicts him with a large "P" on his shirt. His in-game sprite, however, features an "M" to better fit within the constraints of the game's downward walking animation, which takes the forward-facing sprite and horizontally flips it back and forth. Meanwhile, his hand-drawn artwork features a completely different outfit, depicting him in black pants, a blank black shirt, pink shoes, and a pink bib (his clay model and sprite, for comparison, show him wearing a black tee shirt, blue shorts, and blue shoes).
  • Frankie Fly's clay model and in-game sprite are mirrored versions of one another, which affects the positioning of his knives and the buttons on his suit jacket. In addition, his clay model wears a solid red suit compared to his sprite's pinstripe suit and his sprite lacks the knife-shaped pendant that his clay model wears.
  • Mr. Carpainter's sprite is a mirrored version of his clay model. Consequently, while his clay model depicts him holding his paintbrush in his right hand and pointing to it with his left, his sprite holds his paintbrush in his left and points to it with his right. Additionally, his clay model wears a black tie that blends in with his shirt, while his sprite wears a yellow tie.
  • Master Belch's clay model is blue with a dark green coat of slime on the back of his head. His in-game sprites, meanwhile, depict him as a solid teal-green.
  • The Mani Mani Statue's clay model depicts it with a metallic gold surface, which is accurately conveyed on its overworld sprites. However, its battle sprite depicts it with a neon pink and purple sheen; its proper gold coloration is instead possessed by Ness' Nightmare, which takes the Mani Mani Statue's form.
  • The Pogo Punk's pogo stick is depicted as a large blade in his clay model, while his sprite depicts it as a large spike.
  • The Worthless Protoplasm is depicted as grayish-pink in its official artwork, but its in-game sprite is bluish-purple.
  • The Ghost of Starman's in-game sprite depicts it with a pink aura, a glowing pink visor, and a pink emblem on its chest. Its clay model, meanwhile, lacks the glow and features a black visor and a red emblem.
  • The Teddy Bear is depicted with orange fur and a white muzzle in its official artwork, while its in-game sprite sports burgundy fur and a dark pink muzzle.
• Ash Face: Colliding with a person or obstacle when attempting to teleport causes the user to turn black with soot and a smile.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: When you get to the Lost Underworld, your size shrinks thanks to how huge everything (including the enemies) are compared to your normal size.
• Attack Reflector: Two levels of the Shield PSI (β and Ω), which reflects damage back to the enemy. The Diamond Dog has one active at the start of the battle with it, leading to...potentially disastrous results should a powerful attack be used against it.
  • The Franklin Badge reflects certain One-Hit Kill moves back at the user.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Porky's battle music starts out 8-bit and simple, reminiscent of Dragon Quest, the series which inspired this one. A minute in, the instrumentals revert to heavy metal.
• Award-Bait Song: "Smiles and Tears". It had official lyrics in the Japanese instruction booklet, but it didn't have official vocals until 2010. A remix of it eventually made its way into the Super Smash Bros. series.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Casey Bat. Extremely high attack power, incredibly bad accuracy that'll have you missing more than hitting things. However, since the game only checks for Ness's attack power to determine whether or not you instantly win a battle if you sneak up on enemies from behind, it's a good way to avoid some fights. (What this item is a reference to.)
  • The higher levels of PSI Rockin can feel like this because it requires significantly more PP than any other PSI move in the game. And unlike Paula and Poo, Ness doesn't have access to PSI Magnet to replenish PP. It does have its uses, like when you REALLY need to kill something fast, or when all the enemies are on separate "rows", making it impossible to hit everything with PK Fire.
  • Condiments, outside of one exception. The idea is having it in your inventory increases the effects of healing items if it's a good combo, and decreases their effect if it's a bad one, but thanks to the limited inventory you have in the game, said space it takes up could be better used for another healing item, in addition to the fact that they activate any time you use a food item, regardless of whether it's a good combo or not. Most players usually dump them the second they get one in their inventory instead of risking forgetting about it and wasting one of their healing items. ^NoteHowever, sugar packets can be used to increase the effects of the Rock Candy's effect of increasing a stat at random to two instead of one, making it one of the very few rare times you'd actually want to have one in your inventory.
  • Starstorm Ω is extremely powerful and hits all enemies, but it's also very expensive to cast and Poo's PP is pretty poor compared to Ness's huge PP pool. By the time you learn the ability, you're at the end of the game with only a few random mooks to use it on and the Final Battle mostly consisting of one target.

B

• Badass Adorable: All four of the main cast. Special mention goes to Paula, a blonde-haired, hair-bow wearing little girl in a pink dress who is capable of setting you on fire with her mind, and Jeff, a cute little dweeb whose weapons of choice include lasers, bazookas, life-sucking machines, and rocket launchers.
• Badass Normal: Jeff doesn't have any PSI. He doesn't need it.
• Bad Future: According to Buzz Buzz, this was the state of the future under Giygas's control. It was presumably averted with Giygas's defeat.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: While Ness is naked in Magicant in the Japanese version, he's wearing pajamas in the English version.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: How Poo attacks physically; unlike the other characters, equipping him with weapons actually lowers his attack power. The only exception is the Sword of Kings.
• Barely-Changed Dub Name:
  • Porky was changed to Pokey. Super Smash Bros. Brawl reversed it.
  • Threek to Threed
  • Scarabi to Scaraba
  • Sky Walker to Sky Runner.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Ness's Nightmare, an Evil Mani-Mani lookalike in the deep recesses of Ness's mind.
• Because Destiny Says So: Ness only sets out in the first place because Buzz Buzz came from the future saying that he had to.
• "Begone" Bribe: Repeatedly talking to a certain NPC in the hotel in Summers will result in several short, unique responses before he eventually gives the player $50, implicitly to get them to stop bugging him.
  "Here, get yourself a juice or something..."
• Better than a Bare Bulb: Brick Road's dungeon has tons of signs that lampshade many dungeon clichés. So does Dungeon Man, his second dungeon.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Giygas and Porky Minch, or so it seems; no one can be completely sure if they're equals, or if one is pulling the strings of the other. It seems to be implied that at the start Giygas was influencing Porky's dark side and Porky was a simple mook, then later on The Dragon, but near the end of the game when Giygas is so batshit insane to the point where he barely comprehends what's happening around him, Porky takes advantage of that and becomes The Starscream.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Threed when Ness and Paula first arrive is crawling with ghosts and zombies. Even after the problem is taken care of, the town's colors are muted and it has a cemetery which make it a Halloweentown.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The first "Your Sanctuary" boss is the Titanic Ant.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • "All of a sudden, some guys rushed into the room! It was the Runaway Five!"
  • Poo shows up to blast Master Barf with the Starstorm attack he left you in order to learn.
  • Jeff is this to Ness and Paula, although not the player; you actually have to go save Ness and Paula while playing as Jeff.
  • And the player.
• Bigger on the Inside: All of the houses and buildings in the game use this concept.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family/Dysfunctional Family: With the exception of Picky, you can count on the Minch family to be just plain evil.
• Bizarrchitecture: By default, entering a home places the door on the right side of the screen even though you entered from the front of the building outside. This wouldn't be much of a problem, until you realize that the large hole in the house you can buy should be plainly visible from the outside. (And even that would create problems, as it's supposed to face the ocean, which would demand the door be on the left.
• Bizarro Universe: Moonside.
• Black Comedy: As seen on a sign at the Onett hospital.
  ("Tombstone Blow-out Sale" - We have a special discount for those who have passed on in this hospital. What would you like written on your tombstone? - Onett Hospital Surgery Team)
• Blah, Blah, Blah: If you talk to the officer next to Chief Strong who had scolded you for entering Giant Step, he'll say the following dialogue:
  Police Officer: So here you are. You're the little delinquent that came back from Giant Step! Now you listen here... "Don't Enter" means just that— DO NOT ENTER! You got that? And furthermore... Blah blah Blah blah It's usually those tax evaders who... Blah blah Blah blah We don't enjoy blocking off the roads, you know... Blah blah Blah blah It's usually the local whiners that make a big deal about emergencies and meteorites! Blah blah Blah blah Blah blah
• Bland-Name Product: The Bus that serves route between Twoson, Threed, and Fourside is a "Gray Hand Bus" (Greyhound Lines in real life).
• Blatant Lies:
  • The fruit stand in Happy Happy Village claims to work on the honor system because "we trust you". The owner is not-so-discreetly standing 15 feet away and monitors the stand to make sure everyone pays.
  • The bellhop who visits you after you stay the night at Fourside's hotel says that reading you the headline of the morning paper is a service only his hotel offers. Every other hotel in the game does the same thing.
• Bleak Level: The final area of the game, the Cave of the Past, is a stark departure from the rest of the game. Whereas other areas were quirky and colorful with an eclectic variety of sights and sounds, the Cave of the Past is a stark gray series of cliffs in a sea of equally gray fog at the center of the Earth. The level is punctuated only by eerie silver orbs, a sole, tentacle-like spire, and the vaguely Freudian entrance to the dark, pulsating lair where Giygas resides. Likewise, the background music consists solely of the Lyrical Cold Open to "Deirdre" by The Beach Boys, slowed down to resemble an elegiac wail of wind.
• Bones Do Not Belong There: The desert areas feature skeletal scorpion enemies called Skelpions. In real life, scorpions don't have endoskeletons.
• Book Ends:
  • That red static on the title screen sure looks like the unstable Giygas being fizzled out of existence at the game's end.
  • The first area you explore along with the last area you explore in the present is the hill where you discovered the meteor.
  • The second scene of the game and The Stinger open with one of the Minch brothers pounding on your door in the middle of the night.
• Books That Bite: See Everything Trying to Kill You.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Final Starman.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Avoiding enemies. Enemies are visible as sprites outside of combat, giving the player a chance to engage or avoid battle - and they de/respawn when you walk a few steps past the edge of the screen, so walking away then returning will let you spawn easier enemies - or no enemies. Enemy pathing is also quite bad, so it's easy to get enemies stuck behind trees or around corners to evade them. While you gain no EXP from avoiding enemies, EXP isn't that necessary in this game because of the overall ease in leveling up. Exploding trees, PSI Magnet, nasty status effects, all completely irrelevant if you simply choose not to fight the enemies that use them in the first place.
  • Jeff's Slime Generator has the effect of choosing a random enemy for a chance at "solidifying" them, causing them to miss a turn. Virtually every enemy in the game is vulnerable to it, including bosses, allowing Jeff to effectively stunlock many otherwise tough enemies. Combined with Paula and Poo's PSI Freeze randomly solidifying as well, many bosses may never get a turn.
  • Jeff's Neutralizer "removes the effects of PSI" from everyone, friend and foe. Most notable among its effects, it removes all shields, and unlike the Shield Killer item, it never fails, making it very useful against bosses who start the battle with a shield, especially if it's a reflective shield.
• Boring Return Journey: Subverted. It's entirely possible to have one after defeating Giygas, but since you can teleport by that point, there's really no reason to. Though by that point almost every NPC will have new dialogue about how awesome you are that you saved the world.
• Bottomless Bladder: There are washrooms, but they're always occupied.
• Bowdlerization: As one would expect from a game localized in the nineties, there are quite a few of these; EarthBound Central compares and profiles them here.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The humanoid enemies and some of the animal enemies are suffering this as a result of Giygas' influence, leading them to attack the party. Once they're smacked around enough they snap out of it.
• Brats with Slingshots: Several slingshots are available as alternate weapons, in keeping with the theme of children using improvised weapons. They offer high attack power, but only a 75% accuracy rate.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: When Ness takes Paula back to her house and talks to her mother, she says that she has made "a hand-made band-aid. Oooh! That rhymes! I'll call it a Hand-Aid!" This was actually added to the English translation, as the Japanese version did not give a reason for the Hand-Aid's name.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The fourth wall is a bit soft in this game.
  • In the beginning of the game, if you have your bat without having it equipped and talk to Porky before leaving your house, he'll specifically tell you to equip it. If you respond no to his question of if you know what equip means, he'll say "'Equip' is used a lot in games like this, but you already knew that..."
  • In the First Town, a dog tells Ness that he's been possessed by the spirit of the game designer to explain something.
  • Those good moles who give you game advice. "Oh, I mean in front of you!!"
  • You, the player, enter your name multiple times throughout the game, under the guise of Jeff's friend Tony contacting you via phone.
  • Finally, the player helps to destroy Giygas, and is thanked by name, as per above.
• Breather Episode:
  • Twice during your adventure, the coffee and tea breaks. Relaxing music plays as a recap of your adventure scrolls by and Ness enjoys a little break. Interestingly, the Japanese text for these scenes has kanji in the text, despite the rest of the game being solely in kana.
  • Summers has very few enemy encounters, and is sandwiched between the fifth "Your Sanctuary" location and the significantly more dangerous Scaraba.
  • After finishing the pyramid, you go through Dungeon Man, which has relatively weak enemies for most of the dungeon and plenty of amusing signs written by Brickroad. Immediately afterward, there's Deep Darkness, which has strong enemies and swamps that drain your health.
• Broken Bridge:
  • Lampshaded — the Onett police department is famous for closing roads, and are reportedly going for the world record of most roads closed because of emergency.
  • Also played straight, in that there is also a literal broken bridge in Peaceful Rest Valley. When you first enter the dungeon, you must take the long way around the bridge, but after you defeat Mr. Carpainter, one of the former cultists comes to his senses and repairs the bridge to let you take a shortcut back..
  I wonder who made the bridge impassable? Why would someone do this? Crud...
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Deep Darkness is a swamp the characters must move across to access Tenda Village. Some parts of the swamp have very deep muck which causes loss of HP.
• Build Like an Egyptian: The whole town of Scaraba has an Egyptian feel. One of the main dungeons in the game is the Pyramid located right in the center of the region, which is also a Temple of Doom.
• Burger Fool: Generic NPCs throughout the game, and Frank Fly gets a job doing this in the ending.
• But Thou Must!: When Porky wakes Ness up in the middle of the night, he asks him to help find his younger brother, Picky. If you refuse to help him, Porky says he will "say something that will cut you like a knife", and then bring up the Yes/No choice again. If you refuse again, he will say that he was just kidding, and won't actually say anything like that, and then asks you again, keeping you in a looped conversation until you say Yes.
  • This can happen again near the end, when Dr. Andonuts prompts Ness to push the button in the Phase Distorter to send the party to the past. If you (as Ness) say No, then Andonuts will tell Jeff to do it. If you have Jeff say No, the doctor will comment on how Jeff lost his nerve before going back to Ness, and so on until one of them says Yes.
  • After defeating Giygas, Paula will ask you (as Ness) to take her back home. No matter how you answer, either "yes" or "no", she'll tag along with you anyway, following you everywhere you go until you bring her home.
• Buy or Get Lost: Many of the shopkeepers will call the player out if they don't buy anything. For example, drugstore employees proclaim that the player has hurt their feelings by not purchasing any items. The shop music is even titled "Buy Somethin' Will Ya!"

C

• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Psychic Points, or PP, take the place of standard MP to match with PSI being the series' equivalent of standard RPG magic. Also, critical hits are called "SMAAAASH!!" hits instead.
• CamelCase: EarthBound.
• Carnivore Confusion: One of the healing items in the game is hamburgers. Later on, you have a conversation with a cow.
• Car Fu: The primary attack for Mad Taxis is them accelerating up to speed in an attempt to run you down.
• Cast of Snowflakes: There's a few clones here and there, but the NPC sprite variety in this game is very impressive, especially compared to other RPGs at the time.
• Celebrity Endorsement:
  • In Japan, EarthBound was heavily promoted by Takuya Kimura (who is still the ideal man of most Japanese women today) of the boy band SMAP. He was on the advertisements and commercials — granted that the game was also advertised towards young women, there's a likely chance that many women started playing the game because of him. Not only that, but all the nameable characters could be named after the members of SMAP using the "Don't Care" option!
  • Similarly, one of the biggest selling points for the series as a whole in Japan was that Itoi is a popular celebrity and the games were something he made, to the point where tagging his name onto the ads was a big part of the campaign.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The game for a majority focuses on giving the player specific emotions, Happiness, Sadness and Humour … when you reach the Cave Of The Past the game only tries to make you feel one specific emotion throughout the entire dungeon: Fear.
• Chekhov's Time Travel: The Meteor that starts off the adventure by bringing Buzz Buzz to Onett is used much, much later to gain the material used to go back in time to defeat Giygas.
• The Chosen One: Or rather, the Chosen Four. They're the only ones that can stop Giygas and prevent a Bad Future.
• Chromatic Arrangement: The flashing lights of the various PSI Rockin attacks are red, blue and yellow.
• Climax Boss: The Mani Mani Statue is built up as a major force in the plot from the beginning of the game, and is responsible for corrupting Carpainter and Monotoli. It's fought in Moonside, which is an alternative dimension accessed from the last Eagleland city Ness visits, and leads into the second act, where Ness and his friends go abroad.
• The Colored Cross: They removed all the red cross logos that were on hospital buildings in the original Japanese version.
• Cool Sword: The Sword of Kings, the only weapon Poo can equip that doesn't lower his attack power.
• Coming of Age Story: A subtle example. This game is a Coming of Age Story in the guise of an offbeat JRPG adventure.
• Company Cameo: A billboard in Threed has an ad for HAL Laboratory, and a building in Fourside is booked for a meeting about the creation of EarthBound 2. Only APE Software Development team members are allowed inside, though.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The Clumsy Robot allegedly has a move which has it eat a bologna sandwich and recover all its HP. In fact, it doesn't do a goddamned thing — the "HP are maxed out" text and healing noise are both faked by putting them in the Flavor Text. This trick makes the Runaway Five's Big Damn Heroes moment feel all the more like they're pulling your ass out of the fire.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Several music cues are taken from the previous game. For example, Ness's eight "Your Sanctuaries" (places where he finds the Eight Melodies) use for background music a remix of Queen Mary's lullaby, aka the original Eight Melodies. Also, the first time you leave your house during the day, "Pollyanna" (the outdoor theme from EarthBound Beginnings for when Ninten travels alone) plays for a few bars before seguing into the Onett theme; the full song is used for Ness's house from this point until the endgame.
  • Among these, certain other recurring elements and lines of dialog were Lost in Translation. One instance is the Strawberry Tofu, which was localized as Trout Yogurt. Another is that the first boss of the game (translated as Starman Junior both here and the original game's English prototype) is implied to be the same character, since only one ever shows up, it retreats in EarthBound Beginnings, uses a similar "insect" insult as Giygas in the past title, and there is an unused sprite of its capsule device.
  • Much like the first game, the second and third party members start at level one, while the fourth joins at level 18.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. Most bosses in the game can in fact be targeted with instant death attacks. Not only that, but because the hypnosis and brainshock status effect vulnerability are inversely based on the same value, it's impossible to be immune to both, so every boss (including the final boss) will have a minimum 50% vulnerability to one or the other.
• Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Most notably, Ness gets in a fight with a bunch of cops to get on with his mission. To be fair, they were corrupt and under the influence of an Artifact of Doom, but still.
• Copy Protection: Legendary for its unusually fiendish brutality. If you ran the game from a copied cartridge or cartridge-copying device, bad things would happen. Should you get past the abnormally high amount of enemies it adds, the game suddenly crashes and all your saves are deleted during the final boss fight.
• Corrupt Politician:
  • B.H. Pirkle, Mayor of Onett. He lets the police set up road blocks for no reason, and he bribes a teen to take care of his gang problem for him. After Ness deals with it, the mayor gives him the key to a broken shack outside of town, but keeps it a secret so he cannot be held responsible for anything bad that might happen. This leads Ness, a young boy, to get in trouble with the police, who for some reason opt to solve the dispute by having 5 of their guys fight him one-on-one.
  • Gelegarde Monotoli of Fourside, under the influence of the Mani Mani Statue, kidnaps Paula. He gets better.
• Cosmic Horror Story: After the Genre Shift from comedy, occurring roughly around the Stonehenge base assault.
  • Cosmic Horror Reveal: By the time you meet Giygas. The game tells you vaguely about Giygas throughout, but it takes almost the entire game to find out he's an Eldritch Abomination.
• Covers Always Lie: On the cover, Ness is reflected in the Final Starman's visor. By the time you do encounter the Final Starman, you'll be in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The offense? You're in robotic bodies at that point, so Ness's face is not visible.
• Crapola Tech: You can donate money to the Orange Kid in Twoson, who claims that he will use it for research. Eventually, he gives the player the Suporma ("Super Orange Machine"), which plays a song that is not heard, called "Ode to Orange Kid," and then breaks.
• Crapsack World: Corruption and incompetence is everywhere, but these traits are frequently seen in authority figures such as politicians and cops. The townsfolk don't fare much better, as most of them are either socially inept, jerkasses, or just too plain lazy to give a hoot of what's going on. Ness and his friends really have their work cut out for them.
  • Crapsaccharine World: However, everything is still so bright, colorful and lighthearted that you have to pay very close attention to notice or, even then, take it very seriously. That is, until Giygas shows up and blows the saccharine disguise to atoms.
  • Special mention goes to Fourside, which is obviously based on major big cities and as such has skyscrapers, a massive department store, several restaurants, a museum, and a theater. Everything seems fine except one person controls everything including the police, the manager of the theater scams the Runaway Five and tricks them into crippling debt, the department store loses power and suddenly becomes infested with monsters while Paula gets kidnapped at the same time and finally, the Mani Mani statue is located in the storage area of a random Cafe. All that on top of the fact that taxis, roadway signs, and even random people will suddenly come out of nowhere to fight you.
• Creative Closing Credits: The background of the credits feature all of the photos taken by the flying photographer (the one that says, "Say, 'Fuzzy Pickles'!") The more photos you collect, the more complete the slide show is.
• Creepy Cemetery: Threed has one the first time you enter there. Come on, were you NOT expecting enemies? Thankfully it becomes much more cheerful after defeating Master Belch.
• Creepy Child: Porky Minch. He's just your standard insufferable brat at first, but he gradually gets so much worse.
• Critical Hit: SMAAAASH attacks can be made, both by your party and the enemies. The chance to make a critical hit is usually quite low, but melee weapons such as bats have a greater chance to do this. Critical hits will ignore all Defense stats, and since your party is generally well armored, enemies that SMAAAASH you can easily deal a One-Hit Kill to weak party members such as Paula. This is especially prevalent with mice; mouse-type enemies have massive Guts stats which allow them to deal critical hits much more often than any other type of enemy (on the flipside, their standard attacks deal pathetically low damage).
• Critical Hit Class: Mice and rat enemies have a high chance to deal critical hits.
• Crutch Character:
  • The Teddy Bear is a variation on this, since as long as you have it in your inventory, enemies have a chance to attack it instead of a party member until it takes too much damage and is destroyed; helpfully, this also applies to status-inducing moves, which are just plain wasted on the bears with no drawback to the player. Early on in the game, it's exceptionally useful for protecting yourself, and the one Paula comes with can help protect her long enough for her to start catching up to Ness. Later on, however, as your party grows, the enemy has more of a chance of hitting your party members (especially with multi-target PSI spells) and the Teddy Bear is no longer durable enough to withstand those attacks.
  • Ness's dog (default name King) is a more standard example. He's completely optional to recruit (he's only available when Ness and Pokey go to look for Picky), enemies can't target him, and he randomly acts in battle to help take down the various dogs, crows and snakes that show up on the way to the meteor. Once you reach the meteor, he books it and never rejoins.
• Cult: The Happy Happists. They all dress the same and live in an isolated community in the middle of nowhere, and kidnap little girls. Blue, blue...
• Curtain Call: The cast roll at the very end of the game.
• Cut the Juice: When Ness and Jeff inflict enough damage on the Clumsy Robot, the Runaway Five burst in, and turn it off by flipping a switch on its back. If you inflict enough damage by its own attack, the Runaway Five turn the robot off a second time because of a glitch.

D

• Daddy's Girl: Paula appears to be very close to her father, who loves her to pieces in return.
• Damage Over Time: Whenever a character receives damage or healing, their Life Meter rolls down or up to the new value over time (rather than instantly), the speed of which is governed by the character's individual "Guts" stat. Side effects like Critical Existence Failure do not trigger based on the raw damage a character has received, but the value that's currently shown on their meter instead. When a fight ends, the rolling stops, regardless of what value it was progressive toward.
  • More traditional examples persist as well, with status ailments like poison or disease, which simply deal steady HP damage each turn (or while walking around the overworld).
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Clumsy Robot — your party is incomplete for this fight, and the Robot can take a lot of punishment. Worse, at any time, it can "eat a bologna sandwich" and fully restore its HP... Or appear to, anyway. The sandwich actually does absolutely nothing, and the battle dialog actually lies to your face about it.
• Darkest Africa: Much as Dalaam is an amalgamation of Asian Small Reference Pools and Scaraba one of the Middle East, Deep Darkness is a pretty clear reference to Heart of Darkness.
• Dark World: Moonside, though it's a hallucination caused by the Mani Mani Statue.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: While you lose half your money when your party is defeated, the ability to keep your money in an ATM (plus the fact that money usually is added to your ATM account rather than given directly to you) basically means that you never need to lose ANY amount of money. A game over is more or less an inconvenience, rather than any sort of peril to avoid.
  • It's worth it to note that dying and continuing leads to only your front character being alive (and with no PP). In certain areas, this leads to some difficult situations.
• Debug Room:
  • Fairly elaborate, accessible only with these Game Genie codes: 6B88-54D4, 3188-5404, 3E88-5464. This menu contains, among other things, a Kirby sprite as the menu cursor — an artifact left by a HAL Laboratory programmer, perhaps.
  • Although, another more well-known debug menu exists as well — one intended to be used during the game, similar to Super Mario RPG. This menu is also reachable via one of the options from the former... and is significantly trickier to figure out, since it remains untranslated from Japanese despite the lack of a Japanese font. Only a few words are recognisable as compressed garbled Engrish — "SUND" for Sound, "TRP-T" for Teleport, and "GtZStTI" for Goods Edit, for example.
• Deconstruction: Of the "young kids saving the world" plot. While innocent undertones are included, it factors in several characters emotions and thoughts and brings light to several disturbing tones in stories of the sort, such as Ness's homesickness.
• Deep South: Twoson can be depicted as this, which is not without reason (it's named after and is pronounced the same as Tuscon, Arizona). It can also be depicted as a Sweet Home Alabama.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Frank Fly, Everdred, and a few other supporting characters.
• Degraded Boss: The Kraken. When you first fight him he is a major boss who capsized your boat. The upgraded versions of him you fight later appear as regular enemies and can be taken out by Ness alone without much trouble.
• Desert Skull: You can actually have a conversation with a cattle skeleton in the Dusty Dunes Desert.
• Determinator:
  • Any character, if their Guts stat is sufficiently high, will hang in there through repeated mortal blows for a very long times - enough, usually, to heal them completely.
  • The Hit Points in this game rolls down, much like a odometer in your car. When a character takes enough damage to be knocked out, it will say "X has taken Y points of mortal damage!" but they won't actually die until the meter rolls down to zero. This will lead to you rushing to heal the party member or end the battle before their HP counter rolls down to zero and they die. There's a chance that the game will omit the "mortal" part in the message and the meter will stop at one instead of zero, the chances of this happening depends on the character's Guts stat.
  • There's also an item called the "Sudden Guts Pill" that, when used in battle, will temporarily double the character's Guts stat for the duration. However, it's incredibly rare, and the one shop that has it sells it at a ridiculous price.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In the monkey caves at Dusty Dunes Desert, you need to give the monkeys a certain item so they'll let you pass. Depending on the items that you have, this may or may not turn into a Chain of Deals-type quest. There are two monkeys that ask for Hamburgers... however, Double Hamburgers also fit the requirement.
  • Several key items are sent to Escargo Express to avoid Unintentionally Unwinnable situations:
    • Buzz Buzz will give the Sound Stone to Escargo Express if your bag is full. This actually proves to be beneficial in the long run, as it's a Clingy Macguffin that takes up a single inventory slot alongside the ATM card if gained normally, but even in storage, it still works alongside the plot.
    • If Paula has the Pencil Eraser when she gets kidnapped by the Dept. Store Spook, you'll get a call from Escargo Express saying that she gave it to them. This is because you need the Pencil Eraser for the monkey caves in Dusty Dunes Desert, which you must complete before you can rescue Paula.
    • When you reach the end of the Scaraba pyramid, Poo will leave your party which will turn the game into an unwinnable situation if you put the Hawk Eye in his inventory, right? Instead, you'll get a call from Escargo Express saying that Poo gave the Hawk Eye to them for safekeeping and that you can have the item delivered to you for free.
  • If the Clumsy Robot is fought before doing any of the required events (which can only be done with cheats), it will pour smoke from out its body that will cause Ness and the party to be teleported outside the building.
  • If you've been playing for too long, Ness's dad will call you and tell you to go to bed. Where this trope comes into play is if this happens while you're in control of another character, Ness's dad will wonder why he's calling you instead.
  • Several times, there are instances where if a specific character is unconscious, cutscenes will play out differently. For example, when you return Paula to her dad near the start of the game, and she is unconscious, her dad will fail to notice her and mention something like having a dream that she would be here. Or later in the game, when Jeff's friend Tony calls you, if Jeff is unconscious, Tony will wonder where Jeff is, and request you hold the phone to Jeff's ear so he can hear Tony. Calling Dad, Mom, or Escargo Express will result in different dialogue if Ness is unconscious (Dad wonders why Ness is speaking in a different voice, Mom recognizes the caller as one of Ness's friends, and Tracy acts formal and professional).^note One notable subversion, however: if you obtain the signed banana peel from Venus while Ness is unconscious and Paula is in the lead of the party, the dialog will still play out as if Ness were there- causing Venus to kiss Paula instead.
  • In Scaraba, Ness doesn't get sunstroke as often as the other characters because he wears a hat.
  • The Playable Epilogue has several unique features for players who go out of their way to seek them out:
    • All phone calls result in unique conversations since the player no longer needs their services: Dad starts to tell you about the experience needed for the next level, only to laugh and say you don't need to hear that or save your game; Mom looks forward to you coming home soon; Escargo Express informs you that Tracy no longer works there and they are currently unable to make any deliveries or pickups; Mach Pizza's only deliveryman quit, so they're closed; and Stoic Club is shut down and replaced with the Lazy Cowpoke Stop 'n Go truck stop.
    • Ness can finally return Overcoming Shyness to the Onett library and the bike to the Twoson bicycle shop. How considerate!
    • If you take said bike into the Deep Darkness and ride it through the swamp, it gets its own unique sound effect that never plays at any other point in the game.
  • During the end credits, the photographs accurately reflect your party at the time the photo was taken. This includes teddy bears, unconscious party members, temporary party members, etc.
  • If you return to Deep Darkness after defeating Giygas, the water is no longer poisonous, removing the one conceivable way you could die in the endgame.
  • After a few sequences in which control is taken away from the player, a flag is set where overworld effects no longer occur, and, were the player to die through a scripted encounter while this flag is active, the game suffers a myriad of strange glitches. Random encounters, however, be they won instantly or fought normally, set the flag to off properly, and so the developers put in places for a Mole Playin' Rough, a weak enemy the player is sure to kill instantly, to spawn where the flag is set and does not otherwise turn off properly, to ensure it switches off safely. It's still possible to circumvent their intentions if you go out of your way to in the post game, however.
  • The Fire Spring is intended to be the final Sanctuary location, however because half of the Sanctuaries aren't necessary to advance the plot^note Lilliput Steps, Rainy Circle, Magnet Hill, Pink Cloud, you can do any of the four last and the cutscene will play at the last Sanctuary you cleared.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Ness didn't, Paula didn't, Jeff didn't, Poo didn't, but you, the player, sure as hell did!
• Dirty Coward: One man in the circus tent in Threed abandoned his wife and children to flee from the zombies, and doesn't care what happens to anyone else. He has no idea why his family refuses to speak to him in the ending.
• Disc-One Nuke: When guiding Jeff out of Winters to join Ness's party, you'll notice that the store outside of the Snow Wood Boarding School sells the T-Rex's Bat, Non-Stick Frying Pan, and Coin of Silence at insanely high prices, yet you don't have access to the ATM (since Jeff doesn't own an ATM card). Meanwhile, the various enemies appearing throughout Winters during this portion sometimes drop food items that can be sold at varying low prices. If you have enough patience, you can earn and sell enough items to raise enough money to obtain any of these items, so that when Jeff actually JOINS the main party, he can equip these items to Ness and/or Paula to make them insanely overpowered for this early in the game. Most people go for just the T-Rex's Bat, since at $698, it's the cheapest of these overpowered items. However, some people are patient enough to raise an additional $1490 for the Non-Stick Frying Pan and $2500 for the Coin of Silence. Regardless, if you're up to the challenge, you can potentially overpower at one or more party members,
• Dismantled MacGuffin: In musical form: the Eight Melodies, scattered across the Your Sanctuary locations, combine to form the Sound Stone's song.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Porky's motivation for the remainder of the game.
  • Ness is taken to the Onett police station and is forced to fight against five police officers (actually four, as the last one flees after Ness takes out his colleagues) and their boss just for trespassing.
• Don't Explain the Joke: In the Japanese version, the welcome sign for Twoson tells you that it is the second town and asks, "Did you notice?" The English version handles this by saying, "We got this name because we weren't first."
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: The Plague Rat OF DOOM.
• Dramatic TV Shut-Off: The final battle against Giygas uses this trope as a form of Painting the Medium. Once he is defeated via the player themself praying for the Chosen Four's safety, Giygas devolves into red TV static (the same kind seen when booting up the game) as he slowly disintegrates. The sequence ends with several seconds of static, at which point the game appears to shut itself off, indicating his demise.
• Drone of Dread: The music to Cave of the Past, the final area of the game.
• Drunk on Milk: Jackie's Cafe in Fourside was actually originally called "Borges's Bar" (a nod to Jorge Luis Borges) in the Japanese version but was changed due to Nintendo's censoring guidelines. Of course, this means that the guy who is slightly pink and keeps drinking his "coffee" is...
• Dub Induced Plothole:
  • In addition to replacing the phrase "Gyiyg Strikes Back" with "the war against Giygas", the revelation that Giygas is attacking from the past near the very end of the game was changed to the more explicit Giygas attacking from the DISTANT past - the implication being that the events of EarthBound Beginnings are overwritten.
  • A minor instance- renaming the "Tonzura Brothers" to "Runaway Five" causes a problem as there are clearly six members on stage during the concerts. Curiously enough, though, while the keyboardist is seen performing on stage, he is never seen with the group in any of their other scenes, so he may not be considered an official part of the band.
• Dub Name Change:
  • Too many to list, but worthy of note is that the trope-naming New Age Retro Hippie was more simply known as a "carefree guy" in the Japanese version, with the English translation giving the trope name.
  • Threek was changed to Threed — although it was most likely intended to sound like a combination of "three" and "eek!" due to the zombies, Nintendo of America didn't want people misreading it as "Three K," in other words, "KKK."
  • Offensive spells had their prefixes changed from PK (psychokinetic) to simply PSI in the translation, possibly for consistency with defensive moves like the shields.
• Duel Boss: Ness's Nightmare. Also, the bosses encountered before rescuing Paula - Frank, Frankystein Mark II, Titanic Ant, and Mr. Carpainter. (If you gave Ness a different name, then Ness's Nightmare will be renamed accordingly as well!)
• Dynamic Akimbo: The normal pose of the Starman enemies.

E

• Eagle Land: The Trope Namer.
• Early Game Hell: While the game is overall easy, the beginning up to the point when Paula joins Ness is by far harder than the rest. The problems are:
  • Each party member gets their own inventory space, but this means that it's very small when you only have Ness. Even worse, you are required to have some of his already limited space occupied by several important key items. Those being the ATM Card, Sound Stone, Receiver Phone, and Pencil Eraser. On top of that, the equipped weapon and armors take up to an additional FOUR slots total. This means out of Ness's already limited 14 slots, you only have 6 open slots for items.
  • PP recovery items can't be purchased until much later, and finding them is incredibly rare, which makes it difficult to save PP and requires lucky encounters with Magic Butterflies to replenish it. But even if you had access to PP recovery items, Ness probably wouldn't have the inventory space to keep them. This creates a feedback loop of sorts; PP restoration is limited, so the player wants to keep healing items in Ness's inventory, but space is limited, so the player would rather heal HP with PSI, but PP restoration is limited...
  • While Ness hits hard and has high HP, he's very slow, so enemies usually get to go first. This means that every battle, even if Ness is capable of one shotting the enemy, he's still likely to take damage before he can do so and get whittled down. This is especially bad when facing multiple enemies at once, where Ness will be battered several times before even getting a chance to act. The rolling HP mechanic helps, but at this early point, not only does Ness not have enough HP to take full advantage of it yet, but most of the enemies aren't dealing enough damage in one hit for the HP to roll down for much longer than a couple seconds at most. The player can easily be left in a Healing Loop. Combining this issue with the PP recovery issue, PSI Rockin, Ness's only option for multi-target attacking's expensive PP cost (10 for α, 14 for β) has limited usage. And by using Rockin, you're consuming PP that could be used on healing, potentially preventing you from having enough health to make it through the rest of Peaceful Rest Valley.
• Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: Ness and company manage to defeat Giygas before he truly begins attacking Earth in force.
• Easter Egg:
  • Early in the game, the police chief will explain that "...kids like you should be at home playing Nintendo games in a time like this!"
  • Then again, if you go back to Onett later on, you'll find the police chief talking about how he's having a hard time playing this game called EarthBound.
  • If you visit a certain area in Onett after defeating Giygas, you can read a newspaper that has a story about Onett's police chief completing EarthBound (1994), and asks, "Where is the sequel?".
  • There's also a planning meeting for EarthBound 2 in Fourside. Which only twists the knife internationally.
  • One of the Sharks, a local gang Ness fights early in the game, asks if you'd like to join. The correct response in order to continue the plot is "no". Answering "yes" will prompt the gang member to tell you to come back after completing EarthBound.
  • One girl NPC asks "Has EarthBound been released yet?"
  • There's a Mr. Saturn living in Happy Happy Village. If you knock on the door, it'll be unsure if it's okay to let you in, but come back after having visited Saturn Valley and it'll invite you inside.
• Easy EXP: The caterpillar-type baddies you find in the deserts are rare, but experience points pinatas.
• Eccentric Townsfolk: Hippies, angry ladies, drunks...
• Edible Theme Naming: Apple Kid and Orange Kid.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Giygas's army has one at Stonehenge.
• Eldritch Abomination: Giygas is a famous example, at least within the video game community. By the time you get to him he is basically a formless blob of hate.
• Eldritch Location: Moonside. Also, it's entirely possible that Giygas is sufficiently large and amorphous that once he's released from the Devil's Machine, he is one of these of his own accord instead of being just an Eldritch Abomination.
• Elemental Tiers: Elemental attacks have different areas of effect. Freeze is a single-target, Fire hits a whole row but does less damage, and Thunder targets a random enemy and is prone to missing frequently unless there are many enemies. So even if you're facing a lightning-vulnerable boss you probably want to use ice, and same goes for if the fire-weak enemies are on multiple rows.
• Emergency Transformation: Dr. Andonuts transplants the heroes' souls into robot bodies. Without them, you can't stop Giygas in the past.
• Empty Levels: Characters only tend to get really powerful stat increases when they reach a level that's a multiple of four. Otherwise, level-up stat boosts might be as little as a single extra hit point.
• Encounter Repellant: If you're powerful enough or have defeated an area's boss, enemies will run away from you. Also, if you engage an enemy that you would clearly curb-stomp in battle, the game skips the fight and just awards you an instant victory.
• Enemy Summoner: Too many to list, but special mention goes to the Loaded Dice, whose only ability is to summon other enemies.
• Energy Weapon: They're a favorite weapon of the alien machine enemies, as well as the Starmen. Jeff gets in on this with some of his weapons, including his Ray Guns.
• Enfant Terrible: Porky takes this trope to a whole new and scarier level.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: This is how Prince Poo gets two critical level ups. Coupled with a Journey to the Center of the Mind, it's also how Ness gets his biggest level up of the game going into the Grand Finale.
• Escape Rope: The Exit Mice. They can even be found in long dungeons!
• Epileptic Flashing Lights: The game will be one of the many that Nintendo has edited to take these out in its Virtual Console release. Mainly, some of the stronger PSI attacks put out one hell of a seizure-inducing light show.
• Every Japanese Sword is a Katana: The EarthBound Player's Guide in North America depicts Poo's Sword of Kings as a katana, even though its Japanese name is "Ouja no Tsurugi" and its depiction in the Japanese manual shows it as a tsurugi.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: Why else is Threed in the game?
• Everytown, America: Onett is the quintessential '50s Amer- er, Eaglandian town, replete with school, burger joint, arcade, City Hall and gang of street toughs. And a meteor, but we don't talk about the meteor. Twoson and Threed may also count, but Onett is the more obvious one.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Animals, stop signs, hippies, robots, animate cups of coffee, and a hundred other weird monsters, including those goddamn exploding trees!
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Monotoli Building. It is so large you can barely see the top. Luckily once you're inside you can skip most of the floors on the elevator.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: Ness and his friends defeat Giygas by getting the entire world to unite in a prayer for his defeat. Then Paula asks you, the player, to join in. Effectively, you defeat Giygas just by wanting him dead badly enough.
• Expy:
  • Ness, Paula and Jeff are near-identical to their original EarthBound Beginnings counterparts Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd, and even hold many of the same abilities. Frank Fly appears to be an expy of Teddy, but he's not playable.
  • The main two of the Runaway Five (Lucky and Gorgeous) bare a striking resemblance to The Blues Brothers crossed with Mario and Luigi.
  • The Starmen feature an uncanny resemblance to the...figure in the infamous 'Solway Firth' photograph. Note the white suit/skin, the dark visor where the eyes should be, and the Starman's trademark Superman pose.◊
• Expy Coexistence: The creature Tessie who lives in Lake Tess in Winters is a Stock Ness Monster. A newspaper headline mentions Tessie is the cousin of Nessie.

F

• Fan Sequel: Cognitive Dissonance. — or Fan Prequel, rather.
  • Not to mention it heavily inspired Homestuck; the name of which is intended as a Shout-Out to this game.
  • The Halloween Hack is a seemingly humorous sequel that takes place a few months after the end of the game. "Seemingly" humorous, because it gets Darker and Edgier very fast.
• Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: The Apple of Enlightenment prophesied that the boy named Ness would defeat Giygas. You really only hear about the Apple of Enlightenment very late in the game, but it still isn't important to your goal anyway.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Eagleland is the Trope Namer for Eagleland and obviously represents the United States. Fourside in particular is clearly meant to evoke New York City.
  • Winters is clearly Great Britain, with references to the Loch Ness Monster, Stonehenge, and the British boarding school system.
  • Summers is the French Riviera, possibly Monaco (it is a long, narrow city-state with references to a "King Summers" in the background fluff).
  • Dalaam is various flavours of East Asian culture, but the asceticism (the emphasis on Mu or emptiness is blatantly Buddhist) and the extremely high elevation both evoke Tibet specifically.
  • Scaraba is obviously meant to represent Egypt, with the pyramids, Sphinx, and hieroglyphs.
  • The Deep Darkness represents Darkest Africa, the dense jungle and abundance of water suggesting the Congo in particular.
• Fantasy Counterpart Map: Official artwork of a world map shows that Eagleland represents The Americas, Foggyland represents Europe and Chommo represents eastern Asia.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Zombies, ghosts, dragons, telekinetic powers, aliens, talking animals, a loch Ness monster clone, time travel, robots... really, it gets to the point where it's quite possibly satire.
• Father Neptune: The captain outside the boat you're supposed to get on when going to Scaraba.
• Fight Woosh: There are four different kinds. The gray woosh means that the battle will go on as normal. Sneak up behind an enemy to get a green woosh and a surprise attack. Don't let the enemy sneak up behind you or you'll get a red woosh and they'll get a surprise attack on you! The fourth kind is the spiky one used for bosses.
• Final Dungeon Preview: There's a cave in the Lost Underworld that takes you to a small area in a void of black, with grassy jagged pathways out of reach and a reverberating brassy sound (in reality, it's the first few notes of the French National Anthem). This is actually the present-day version of The Cave of the Past, a barren area full of enemy robots but completely devoid of organic life aside from the final boss that you face at the end of the game.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three types of offensive PSI Paula can learn: PK Fire, PK Freeze and PK Thunder.
• First Town: Onett being the town Ness lives in. Once again like the previous game, Ness lives just on the outskirts of downtown, as well as the Minches.
• Fission Mailed: Defeating Giygas leads to a cutscene in which the game erupts into static and then appears to turn off the television it's being played on, much in the same way a CRT TV turns off. The screen stays black for a full 13 seconds before the game continues.
• Fluffy Cloud Heaven: The Pink Cloud is, true to its name, a pink cloud. It is also located in Dalaam which is a kingdom in the sky.
• Flunky Boss: Both Titanic Ant and Trillionage Sprout start with a couple of minor enemies in tow (Black Antoids and Tough Mobile Sprouts, respectively)
• Food as Bribe:
  • How you befriend the Apple Kid in Twoson (in addition to paying to fund his research) and Gerardo Montague in Dusty Dunes Desert.
  • You also need to give a scruffy guy in Fourside a food item in order to talk to a wounded Everdred.
  • The Tenda in the Lost Underworld open their village gates for you when they find out you have Tendakraut.
• Forced Level-Grinding: A little, mostly just to get Ness and Paula's levels up early in game.
• Foreshadowing: The hint about the sequel can be found in the final moments of final battle.
  Porky: "Ness! Now, I... well... It's going to seem like I'm running away. But perhaps I'll just sneak away to another era to think about my next plan."
  • Another very subtle example, the Mani Mani Statue is gold, but purple in battle. The very last boss fight in the game is against Ness' Nightmare, the evilness in Ness' mind... It looks almost identical to the Mani Mani, except... purple in the the over world, golden in battle.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Inverted; the fourth wall doesn't protect Giygas from you.
• Free-Handed Performer: The Runaway Five: despite bearing that name, the lineup consists of four instrumentalists and two frontmen who only sing and dance à la Blues Brothers.
• Free-Range Children: The Chosen Four themselves, as well as some of their friends from around the world. Deconstructed, as Ness has to deal with crippling homesickness the entire way, and the world isn't exactly kind to them.
• From Beyond the Fourth Wall: You kill Giygas. You, personally, called by your name when everything else has failed.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Paula's strongest weapons.
• Funny Photo Phrase: The Photo Man asks members of the Chosen Four to say, "Fuzzy pickles!" whenever he takes a photo of them. In the Japanese version, he instead instructs them to say, "Cheese sandwich!"
• Fun with Palindromes: Giygas' Japanese name, Gyiyg.
• Futureshadowing: "The War Against Giygas!" can be this.

G

• Gadgeteer Genius: Jeff, in spades. He can repair and use broken items the party finds, building machines that block enemy PSI, prevents an enemy from moving, raise the party's defense for several turns, steal an enemy's HP, nullify an enemy's shield, and just plain shoot lasers at things.
• Game-Breaking Bug: One that would be very hard to come by, but still present nonetheless. In the ending sequence after defeating Giygas where you can roam around freely with no enemies there is one place where enemies can still appear. If you didn't defeat the enemies on the upper floor of the museum in Summers, they're still there and can still be fought, but if you manage to lose this fight, the game doesn't know how to handle it, and the Game Over screen simply repeats endlessly.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • One notable piece is the fact that each party member has one thing that sets them apart in their attacks: Ness focuses on protecting others because he's the leader, Paula is the PSI powerhouse and resident medic because she wants to get stronger and become independent, Jeff builds things in the night because of his inferiority complex, and Poo is the debuffer because of his disarming nature.
  • Possibly the best example is Ness homesickness status effect. It happens when Ness is between levels 16^note Around the level at which he leaves Onett for Twoson and 75^note Which he should get to after completing Magicant and getting the large amount of experience at the end, and corresponds to Ness being strong enough to be away from home, but still weak enough to be distressed about it.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: If you play for more than two hours in a single sitting, including if you restore a game state (e.g. if you save your state after an hour and a half of gameplay, Ness's father will call him about half an hour later), Ness's father will call him and suggest that he take a break. This can happen before Ness gets the Receiver Phone from Apple Kid a few hours into the game, meaning that Ness somehow takes the call without a phone.
• Genius Loci: Dungeon Man. It even goes far enough to say that he's a walking, talking dungeon made from the dungeon builder Dungeon Man, AKA Brick Road.
• Giant Footprint Reveal: The first Sanctuary location is Giant Step, so named for the single enormous humanoid footprint left in the top of the mountain. The art style of the game makes it a little uncertain how big the footprint actually is, and it's the only one of its kind. Its presence is never explained, simply left as a Riddle for the Ages.
• Girl of My Dreams: Can happen with Ness — if he sleeps in inns before he battles the Happy Happyists, he will receive psychic pleas from the imprisoned Paula. And it also happens with Jeff, who receives similar psychic pleas from Paula when she and Ness are trapped in Threed.
• Give Me Your Inventory Item: Happens three(ish) times, none of them avoidable:
  • Apple Kid requests some food before taking your cash investment in his inventions. He lives in town so skinflint players can easily bring or go obtain a $2 salt or ketchup packet to feed to him rather than surrender a more valuable hamburger.
  • Gerardo Montague, the desert miner, likewise requests food. He lives at the far end of the desert so unless you knew to bring something cheap to give him, he'll probably take a food item you thought highly enough of to keep in your limited inventory - or force you to go find/buy one if you have nothing.
  • A scuzzy looking guy in Fourside won't let you have his spot to rubberneck at a person passed out in an alley unless you give him something. Unlike the others, he will accept anything, not just food, but since he's also in town and much more obnoxious than the other two, you may still feel the urge to run to the Dept Store to buy him a salt packet just out of spite.
  • The desert monkey cave is essentially a fetch quest puzzle where you must bring requested items to specific monkeys, so inevitably uses this to a certain extent. However it's ultimately averted, because although most of the items are mundane consumables you could buy in a store, the cave itself gives you all but the first two items you need through chests, and refunds even those initial items at the end.
• Global Currency: Slightly more acceptable here. Sure, the world only uses one currency, but it's dollars. And stuff in other countries is more expensive, but this may be because of the Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness, and one of the last towns is a tourist resort where everything sells for double what it does anywhere else. The signs for stores in other countries also make a point of stating that they do indeed accept Eagleland currency, something real foreign stores would do to promote tourist spending.
• Go Back to the Source: Ness and the others must fight Giygas at a point in time when he was much weaker.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: While fighting the Big Bad, the only way to beat him is to use the up until then useless skill "Pray," which causes all the NPCs in the world, plus the player, to pray together, which destroys him.
• Good Hurts Evil: How Giygas meets his end.
• Good Morning, Crono: Justified by the fact that the game begins in the middle of the night. The main character is wide awake by the time the sun rises.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: In accordance with the game's childlike tone, a number of characters go out of their way to not swear. One of the funnier examples being an enemy battle cry being, "Don't go to Heaven!"^note It's commonly believed that this is a censored phrase of "Go to Hell!", but this is actually a direct translation from the original Japanese.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The eight melodies for the Sound Stone, which are plot crucial. There's also the optional photo spots with the flying photographer, which are later added to the Creative Closing Credits. These photo spots are hidden, but the maps are designed in such a way that you'll probably stumble over these Easter Eggs anyway.
• Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: Dr. Andonuts has several beakers and flasks on both of the desks in his lab, despite only being shown working with machines.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The hieroglyphs at the museum in Summers imply that Giygas's race has invaded Earth at least once before.
• Green Hill Zone: The town of Onett has very green grass and, being Ness's hometown, it is where the very first leg of the journey takes place.
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • Quite a few, ranging from Porky, his brother Picky, Ness's dog King, an alien insect from the future, Jeff's friend Tony, to an invisible man with a unibrow and a gold tooth, a giant animated tower, to inanimate teddy bears, demonic ghosts that can possess you, and manifestations of Ness's subconscious. Some of them are more useful than others.
  • In the last moments of the final battle with Giygas, the player — as in, the one holding the controller — as in, YOU join the party. And it is awesome.
• Guide Dang It!: EarthBound came with a free Player's Guide so that first-time players could figure out what they're supposed to do if they got stuck. Either that or pay the Hint guy to get a clue on the next place to go or the next thing to do.
  • Figuring out that you're supposed to have Paula pray repeatedly in the final battle can be tough without checking a guide, as the game only drops a few subtle hints.
  Porky: Do you want to scream for help here in the dark?! ... I know you have telepathy, or something, so just try and call for help...
  • Possibly making it even tougher is when, when you pray for the eighth time, you get a message saying "Paula's prayer was absorbed by the darkness." This can make players think that it will no longer be effective and you're supposed to return to simply beating Giygas up again. Actually, you're supposed to pray AGAIN, one last time, to finish the battle.
  • Buzz Buzz does somewhat tell you even from the start. His final words are of you having to "unite with the Earth's (power)". This can be seen as both having to find all Eight Melodies, and as uniting all as one in prayer.
  • Original copies of the game were bundled with the complete strategy guide at no extra charge (and the Virtual Console release was accompanied by Nintendo releasing said guide as a free download on their website). So if you must shout "guide dang it!" you need not shout too loudly.

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