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Fairy Tail / Tropes T to Z

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Fairy Tail provides examples of the following tropes:

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    T 
  • Tag Along Kid: Wendy is something of an aversion, sure she is a kid and prominently joins team Natsu, but unlike most tagalongs, Wendy can more or less take care of herself. Romeo is often seen among the other Guild members in later chapters. Averted in the past, where the kids formed their own magical teams distinct from the adults.
  • Taken for Granite: Evergreen's power.
  • Taking the Bullet
    • Jellal does this for Natsu in Chapter 159. This is what convinces him that the taker can be trusted.
    • Which causes a flashback to when Simon takes a bullet for Erza and Natsu.
    • Gajeel does this as well for Natsu against Laxus in his arc.
      • He seems fond of this trope. Before that he takes it for Levy when Laxus attacks her.
    • In the Phantom Lord arc, Erza does this. More like taking the Wave-Motion Gun though.
    • Gray does this for Juvia in Chapter 334. Bit more graphic than the other examples too.
  • Taking You with Me: Racer to Lyon. It didn't work.
    • Also, Tempesta to the entire town of Hargeon. Worked on over a hundred Hargeon inhabitants, and almost worked on Laxus, Yajima, and the Raijinshuu.
    • Again in the arc with Jackal to Natsu, Happy, and Lucy, too, when the former essentially uses his Curse to try to suicide bomb the latter. Happy grabs Jackal and flies him above the city and out of harm's way. He survives. With Ash Face, and a new afro.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Averted. As the Quirky Mini Boss Squad is introducing themselves in Chapter 32, Natsu hurls two giant fireballs at them mid-sentence.
    • A vicious subversion in Chapter 81 in Erza's childhood. one of the other slaves tries to confess his love for Erza only to be gunned down viciously. It should be noted that this took place during the middle of a violent REVOLT so this was to be expected. Seriously the slave was holding the Idiot Ball in that case.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Lucy gets this at least twice. Once in her fight with the rock-and-roll assassin in the Tower of Heaven, where she specifically talks Juvia out of the Mind Control that she has been put under, and later in the Oración Seis fight, where Lucy convinces most of Angel's Celestial Spirits to defect.
  • Talk to the Fist:
    • Natsu against Jellal
    Jellal: Pathetic, [evil laugh], how utterly foolish. Now, that's called dying in vain, Simon! The situation hasn't changed one bit! No one can leave this Tower ali—
    Natsu: [POW] SHUT UP!
    • Gray against Ultear
      Ultear: I'm the head of the Seven Kin of Purgatory. Someone like you is no match for the likes of—
      Gray: [POW!]
  • Team-Based Tournament:
    • The S-Class exams involve teams of two- one person being the mage who is seeking promotion, and the other being a chosen partner who can be anyon besides another candidate.
    • The Grand Magic Games involves guilds entering teams of five people, plus one alternate. In most events, the mages compete individually, but they fight in pairs later on, and the entire teams compete together on the final day.
  • Technical Pacifist: The Fairy Tail guild as a whole.
  • Tempting Fate
    • Non-lethal version: there is an amusement park inside the king of Edolas' freaking huge castle, to the shock of Lucy, Natsu, and Gray. Natsu was pleased.
    • Lucy also does it earlier in the same arc, complaining of boredom and wanting something exciting to happen. And then all of Magnolia Town gets sucked up by Anima...
    • "You'd be a really scary enemy, Juvia!" Time for Rock of Succubus. Lucy, you've really got to stop doing this.
  • The Gloves Come Off: Averted (albeit just barely) during the Grand Magic Games, when Lucy received a brutal beatdown from Minerva that strayed just on the side of the line that kept it from breaking the rules. Erza managed to defuse the situation, but the entire situation was within a hairsbreadth of degenerating into a showdown between Sabertooth and Fairy Tail that completely threw the competition rules out the window, and likely would have drawn in all the friends Fairy Tail had in the other competing teams as well. Which was at least half of them.
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Evil
    • Fairy Tail's original example was from Tower of Heaven. Fairy Tail is the good, Erza's old friends are the bad, and Jellal and Trinity Raven are the evil.
    • In the beginning of the Grand Magic Games, Fairy Tail is trying to regain their reputation, and Sabertooth may be a bunch of Smug Supers trying to stop them, but at least they aren't cheating like Raven Tail.
      • On the final day, Erza, Kagura, and Minerva get into a three way battle, and Minerva manipulates Kagura's rage at Jellal to make her go Ax-Crazy on Erza.
    • And from a later arc, Fairy Tail is trying to save a village that's been frozen in ice by finding the Eternal Flame. A treasure hunter (read: pirate) guild has shown up to steal this flame, but the real enemies are Minerva and Doriarte, who want to kill everyone there.
    • This seems to be Mashima's favorite trope now. From the Tataros arc, you have Fairy Tail as the good, Crime Sorcière and Oración Seis as the bad, and Tataros themselves as the evil.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill
    • Jose is not happy with just firing a Wave-Motion Gun at the ruins of Fairy Tail's base and its wounded members. He then turns his own base into a Humongous Mecha Wizard, which proceeds to draw a magic seal that will wipe out an entire town.
    • Likewise with Laxus attempting Fairy Law during his arc.
  • There Was a Door: Gildarts does this a lot by accident. It's a side-effect of his destruction based powers and general ditziness. It got to be such a problem that there's a system set up under Magnolia that shifts the whole town around to give him a straight path to the guild hall. Natsu does it on purpose to emulate Gildarts in the latter's debut chapter.
  • Third-Person Person: Juvia talks this way.
  • This Cannot Be!
    • Jellal screams this before being defeated.
    • Same with Cobra when Natsu stops thinking.
  • This Is Unforgivable!
    • Natsu in the Edolas Arc (justified considering the humans there are ready to not only kill all Fairy Tail members, but even to slaughter a whole species just so they can continue using magic for amusement purposes). Cue Unstoppable Rage.
    • Also Natsu when battling Zancrow after seeing that Grimoire Heart's Master Hades had given Makarov a giant buttkicking.
    • The general guild reaction to the attack by Phantom on Shadow Gear.
    • Black Wizard Zeref tells Hades that making him forget his compassion is an unforgivable sin. Then he kills Hades in cold blood.
  • Tickle Torture: Lucy suffers this at the hands of Eclipse!Vertigo in episode 211
  • Time Skip: Gets one after the S-Class Trial arc, of seven years, no less. And the series actually manages to subvert this trope. Those who were on Sirius Island were frozen in time, so they didn't age one bit and feel like a few hours have passed, while the rest of the world is seven years older. Also "Those who were on Sirius Island" consists of the entire main cast (Natsu's team) AND nearly all the important secondary characters (Juvia, Gajeel, the Take Over siblings, Cana, Makarov etc). Only a small handful of characters experience the skip.
    • There is another one just a few chapters later, but it's only three months. Hilariously enough, the main characters go through a similar subversion again, spending a day in the Celestial Spirit World while the three months pass in the real world.
    • Following the Tartaros arc, there is a one year timeskip.
  • Time Stands Still: Racer's power is not super speed, but slowing down everybody else's perception of time to make him seem faster Which causes some Fridge Logic. Earlier, Brain ordered him to fetch Jellal's coffin, and he said it would take at least half an hour. If his powers basically allow him to slow the perception of time of everyone in a determined range, then he was as good for this task as everyone else. However, this could be explained that he used his Dead Gran Prix motorcycles to do it. Also, maybe he'd fooled his own allies about the nature of his power.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball: First in the episode where Team Natsu gets briefly sent back to the past, creating a Stable Time Loop that affects their present selves Note , and later during the whole mess with the Eclipse Portal. The dragon army came from the past, Future Rogue came from the future to summon the dragon army from the past, and Future Lucy came from a DIFFERENT future timeline to stop Future Rogue from summoning the dragon army in the first place. Destroying the portal in the present timeline ended the time travel magic, sending the dragons back to the past and erasing the futures from which Future Rogue and future Lucy had come.
  • Together in Death: Future Lucy and the rest of Future Fairy Tail following the destruction of the Eclipse Gate.
    • Mavis and Zeref near the end, as each is finally able to honestly confess their love for each other, triggering the primordial magic that simultaneously breaks their immortality curses and allows the two to finally die together.
  • Tomato Surprise:
    • Loke is the Celestial Spirit Leo.
    • Also, in the Galuna Island arc. Turns out the villagers weren't humans cursed to turn into demons, but shapeshifting demons who were cursed into forgetting what they were and start to think they were humans. But, fortunately, Our Demons Are Different.
    • Mystogan turns out to be the Jellal from Edolas, thus why the two look identical.
    • Everyone in Cait Shelter but the leader, Wendy, and Carla were illusions the leader created so Wendy could have friends, and the leader himself is only a spirit.
    • Grouchy old Porlyusica is the Edolas counterpart to Grandeeney, Wendy's missing dragon guardian. She's human because dragons don't exist in Edolas.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl:
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Book of Zeref.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Natsu screams out fire, after seeing Makarov lose his trunks, Gray and Gajeel look through the telescope anyway.
  • Too Injured to Save: After Future Lucy takes the blow from Future Rogue's attack that was aimed for her present counterpart, her wound is revealed moments later to be fatal when Wendy, the resident healer of the group, replies sadly that the wound is to deep for her to heal and it results in death not long afterwards.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Strangely averted for Lucy, the main character. She is getting better with her celestial spirits, but she's still not at the same level as Natsu, Gray, or Erza. Then again, those three are pretty damn powerful.
    • Lucy officially takes a few levels after unlocking her Second Origin. She can now summon multiple spirits at once, combine their attacks, and double her magic power with Gemini to cast Urano Metria on her own.
    • Unfortunately, that didn't stop her from getting beaten silly twice, whilst battling against Flare and Minerva (granted, she would've won against Flare, if it weren't for her cheating).
    • This is definitely enforced after the one year time skip thanks to her Star Dresses. While she admits that she's not on Natsu's level if he decided to go all out, she could still give him a good sparring session.
    • The real star of the trope here is Wendy. She starts out a Shrinking Violet, but once she's invited to join Fairy Tail and gains more confidence, especially with help from fellow Dragon Slayers Natsu and Gajeel, she gets better and better, becoming a crucial support wizard and eventually a capable offensive wizard worthy of the title Sky Dragon Slayer. By the Alvarez Empire arc, she's a full-blown Little Miss Badass, staring down one of the most powerful wizards in the world, in the full power of her Dragon Force, and said wizard takes her seriously.
  • Tournament Arc:
    • The S-Class Trial arc.
    • The Grand Magic Games
    • The S-Class Trial is put on hold after barely 10 chapters however, and what follows is the (as of yet) longest arc in the series with the regular formula of unorganized fights against an evil Dark Guild. Also, the Grand Magic Games are strongly implied to be Not Just a Tournament.
  • Tragic Dream: Jellal's dream of a world of freedom may count, in a sort of twisted way.
  • Training Montage: Triple Subverted, when preparing for the Grand Magic Games. It's set up perfectly for one, but it turns out the celestial spirit world is in trouble. Looks like they're going to be busy for the next three months... Oh wait, it's only a party, looks like the Training Montage is back on! OH WAIT. Maybe not.
  • Transformation Is a Free Action: Averted in the manga—Erza is known to be exceptionally fast with her Exquipping. In the anime, they play it straight when she's bringing out the big guns.
  • Transformation Sequence: Erza when she Exquips her more powerful armors in the anime. And is later averted.
  • Transforming Mecha: Jose Porla can transform his entire castle in a giant mecha.
  • Traumatic Superpower Awakening: A flashback shows Erza first using magic after seeing a friend die.
  • Trojan Prisoner: Erza, who is the one Dressing as the Enemy, "captures" Natsu and Gray to lead them to the King.
  • True Companions: The cornerstone trope of the entire series.
  • Tsundere
    • Edolas Lucy
    • Levy towards Gajeel (in the anime).
    • Carla, whom Happy note  has a crush on.
    • Ren from Blue Pegasus
    • Gray sometimes
    • Gajeel is hinted to be one too
  • 24-Hour Armor: Erza borders on this as a psychological hang-up. She gets better.
  • Two-Person Pool Party: A flashback in the manga reveals Mavis and Zeref had sex at a lake once, resulting in the conception of their son.

    U 
  • Unconscious Objector: At one point, Natsu fights with Gray while sleeping. Characters around them promptly lampshade it.
  • Unholy Nuke
    • Jellal's spell Altairis consists of an extremely devastating orb. In the anime it sucks all the shadows in the room towards it and makes Natsu sick just by standing near it.
    • Later, Brain / Zero's spell "Genesis Zero" is pretty much this, only with a tsunami of black shadows.
    • Grimoire Law. Implicitly, anyway, as it's never actually used.
  • The Unreveal: Used in Chapter 297 when Jellal finally confronts the hooded figure with Zeref's aura. While her identity is apparently quite shocking, the audience has to make due with a To Be Continued notification.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Fairy Tail tends to attract people who wear their hearts on their sleeves, so when they get angry, they get REALLY angry. This goes double for Natsu.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Aside from Lucy, no one really cares about the council envoy's appearance.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Jellal is victim of this twice. He spends eight years as Ultear's pawn, and then Brain uses him to awaken Nirvana. To a lesser extent Reitei Lyon and his entire group, everyone working under Jellal in the Tower of Heaven, the first magic council. Basically, if you've spoken to Ultear, assume you're being used.
  • Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: Despite Natsu and Gajeel being first generation dragon slayers, they show themselves capable of curb-stomping third generation ones (dragon slayers who are not only taught by dragons, but also have lacrima implanted in them).
  • Utopia Justifies the Means
    • Jellal (subverted in that he was being manipulated) and the Kingdom of Edolas who used magic to suck up lands made up of innocent people from an alternate universe and turn them into crystallized magic. Just so his kingdom could continue using magic. The king, Faust, takes it a step further by being willing to sacrifice even his own subordinates just to achieve his goal.
    • Mystogan as well, in case you didn't believe he really was Jellal's Edolas counterpart.

    V 
  • Verbal Tic: Too many characters in Fairy Tail.
    • Almost all of Lucy's celestial spirits have one based on the animal they resemble. Taurus, for example, elongates anything that has a "moo" in it. Amusingly, Sagittarius (who looks like a human wearing a horse costume) adds "Moshi Moshi" (the customary Japanese "hello" greeting) to everything he says, and Cancer suffixes everything with "ebi" (a.k.a. prawn). That last one really disappointed Natsu and Happy, who were certain that he was going to say "crab" as his tic.
    • Cancer's tic is changed to "Baby" in the English dub, as it sounds like "ebi" and can fit with the dub Cancer's voice style. Sagittarius's tic was dropped in the dub.
    • Most, if not all, the male cats in Extalia do this as well. Happy's dad says "Kaah!"
    • Ichiya and Nichiya say "Men!" or "Man!"
    • Hot Eye/Richard and "Yes! (desu ne/desu yo!)" ("Oh yeah!" in the dub.)
    • Kinana says "-kina" pre-Time Skip.
    • Dan Straight, an anime-only character from the Key of the Starry Sky arc, ends virtually all of his sentences with "ze yo".
  • Vicarious Gold Digger: Jude Heartfilia’s reasoning for instigating the Phantom Lord arc was to kidnap his daughter Lucy so that he could force her into an Arranged Marriage with Duke Sawarr Junnelle, the heir to the Junnelle corporation so that Jude could gain the Junnelle’s vast fortune and land in order to save the Family Business from ruin, making it clear that he’s Only in It for the Money rather than for his daughter’s happiness.
  • Victoria's Secret Compartment: Erza, in an omake chapter.
  • Villain Ball: The ONLY reason Vidaldus doesn't ultimately win is because he'd rather use his powers to watch a Cat Fight between Lucy and Juvia rather than hypnotizing them both.
  • Villainous Breakdown
    • The realization that he is alone, his underlings are defeated, and everyone else in the guild are risking their lives to stop him completely shatters Laxus' composure. Unfortunately, instead of collapsing, he goes into Unstoppable Rage.
    • The Oración Seis seems pretty prone to this. Both Racer when Lyon figured his powers out and Angel when Gemini disobeyed her in favor of Lucy's kindheartedness towards celestial spirits have broken so far. Brain has a pretty good one in Chapter 138 too, with eyes bulging out and everything.
    • Edolas!Erza when she's screaming about how Edolas will suffer without magic. Like Laxus, she also goes into Unstoppable Rage, not that it helps.
    • After his defeat, Faust becomes completely horrified when he sees images of Igneel, Grandeeney, and a hungry-looking Metallicana staring down at him. His face completely breaks down, and eyes bulge out, before fainting from sheer shock.
  • Virginity Flag: Because Lacade's wide scale pleasure magic only affects those who have already "tasted the forbidden fruit", its use reveals who amongst the cast are virgins. Some obvious, like outright parents Alzack and Bisca being affected or Celibate Heroines Lucy, Wendy, and Erza being unaffected.Some more surprising, like Hard-Drinking Party Girl Cana being unaffected (though it makes more sense once you recall she can't seem to find her Mister Right). Irene, Mavis, and Zeref being affected are serious Foreshadowings.
  • Voice of the Legion: Lullaby in the anime.

    W 
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: Gray, and to a lesser degree Natsu (he wears a vest, but it's not covering much).
  • Walking Wasteland
    • Gildarts' power causes everything around him to be destroyed if he doesn't pay attention and control it. He is also The Ditz. The town Fairy Tail is based in actually changes shape to accommodate his presence by elevating all the houses and creating massive straight roads leading directly to the guild.
    • Chapter 200 introduces a new character who drains the life out of everything around him. He seems to have even less control over his power than Gildarts. He's The Black Wizard Zeref.
  • Weaksauce Weakness
    • Natsu suffers from an extreme form of motion sickness. Lampshaded when it was first revealed. Oddly, the fact that he can use Happy to fly does not cause this. This is pretty ridiculously HandWaved by Natsu simply stating that "Happy isn't a vehicle!". This from the guy who gets nauseous on top of a still raft. Also, Happy isn't a vehicle, but apparently Lucy is.
      • Turns out, ALL Dragon Slayers have this weakness eventually, apparently including 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation. Even Acnologia, assumed to be a 4th-Generation (self-taught) Dragon Slayer, suffers the effects.
      • Subverted so far with Wendy, she doesn't seem to have any problems with vehicles (and if you think she's casting Troia note that Wendy says casting the spell too many times lowers its effectiveness so sooner or later she'd be showing signs of motion sickness if she were using the spell on herself).
      • Then again, she's probably too young to be a 'real' Dragon Slayer already, and thus for the motion sickness to kick in. And it might take while, since Gajeel's only got it very recently.
      • It turns out the latter was true. After the second time skip, she finally develops a case of motion sickness herself.
      • Irene, the inventor of Dragon Slayer magic, later explains that the extreme motion sickness is caused by imbalance between their visual acuity, and how their semicircular canal, which regulates balance, perceives things.
    • Edolas!Natsu has the exact opposite weakness. He's only badass while he's in a vehicle. Otherwise he's a complete wuss.
    • Fried really cannot handle himself around fanservice. Too bad for him then that not only are his opponents in Chapter 204 women, not only are they in bikinis due to the temperature, but both of them can summon even more women. Subverted in that he was faking it all along as an excuse to lose to his opponents out of guilt about nearly killing them in the past. Bickslow even calls him out for choosing such an unbelievably ludicrous weakness.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist
    • Jellal is basically the living embodiment of this trope before he loses his memory.
      • Even afterwards, he always seems to retain extremist solutions to various problems, making him a semi-heroic version of the trope.
      • His Edolas counterpart displays the same tendancies as he wipes out all magic in Edolas to end the conflict and sets himself up to be killed in a Zero-Approval Gambit.
    • Laxus has shades of it as well.
  • Wham Episode: Now with its own page!
  • Wham Line:
    • From Chapter 416:
    Makarov: Fairy Tail will disband.
    Zeref: You will have to surpass me Natsu...or should I say E.N.D.: Etherious Natsu Dragneel
    • Chapter 424:
    Gray: May Zeref's will be done!
    • Chapter 425, it turns out there was more to Future!Rogue's warning than what we were previously shown:
    Or Frosch will be killed by Grey.
    • Chapter 465 has quite possibly the biggest Wham Line yet in the series.
    Zeref: My name is Zeref Dragneel. I'm your brother, Natsu.
    • Chapter 513, turns out there's more to Irene besides being Erza's mother.
    Eileen: My full name is Eileen Belserion... the former queen of the dragons.
    • Chapter 514, during a flashback to Irene's past:
    Irene: Your power...the power of a dragon... could you not attach it to me?[...]A power with which I could fight against the evil dragons...the power... of a Dragon Slayer!
  • What Happened to the Mouse?
    • What the heck happened to Erigor "the Shinigami" and Kageyama from the Lullaby arc? Erigor showed up again in Episode 55 of the anime, only be easily beaten by Natsu and have his clothes stolen by Jellal. He shows up again as a member of the Oración Seis.
      • He shows up yet again as a member of the Reborn Oración Seis during the Key of the Starry Sky filler arc.
    • Where the hell was Angelica during the Nirvana arc?
    • Whatever happened to Gray's smoking habit from the first few chapters?? (Then again, maybe the magazine higher-ups didn't want that in the story considering their demographic and a teen protagonist smoking being imitatable...)
    • What happened to the 13th Gate key? Yukino doesn't use it after its debut despite being in several situations where it would come in handy. It does return in the Eclipse Celestial Spirits Arc in a different form and is implied to a dark and forbidden key, but still...
    • A lot of characters who appear in the guild very early on (like Drov, the buck-toothed jerk who actually has his name dropped like a character who is meant to be important, and Mickey Chickentiger and her pet bird) don't show up anymore because their characters go nowhere and Hiro just unceremoniously drops them, using the Time Skip when the guild fell into decay without its strongest members as the excuse to push them out of the story by saying they up and left because working at the guild wasn't putting enough food on their tables anymore. Some have such little impact on the plot and are so transparent they don't even make it into the anime. There's also the three extras from the chapter quietly introducing Kinana (who plays a much more prominent role in the anime); Joey Fullborn, at least, shows up in the 2014 anime during the climax of the Grand Magic Games Arc among the crowd of guilds gathered at the courtyard fountain, apparently having transferred into Quattro Cerberus, implying that these guild members who leave probably left after certain events took a toll on their fellowship or their plans took them elsewhere, and when the guild actually disbanded, it can be Hand Waved that the disappeared extras never came back and only the most devoted members we know best returned.
    • What in the world were the useless keys that Hades collected to "awaken" Zeref???
    • During the marathon episode, Fried traps Evergreen, Bisca, and Max Alors inside a magic cage that won't open until they study for and ace an exhausting magical test. It's set up like it's going to be a running gag/B plot, but it never comes up again and the three disappear for the remainder of the episode.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Sugarboy informs Gray that the key to the Dragon Cannon can be used to change everyone back from Lacrima, and then freaks out after Gray destroys it anyway. Subverted when Gray reveals that he can duplicate the key out of ice.
  • Whip of Dominance:
    • Lucy is a mage who specializes in summoning Celestial Spirits to fight alongside her, and has a whip as her personal physical weapon, to reinforce her theme as a spirit tamer. At first she only has a normal whip, but later she gains a unique magical whip called Fleuve d'Étoiles.note  which has many more magical abilities which she often uses in conjunction with the abilities of her spirits.
    • Lucy Ashley, Lucy's Edolas counterpart also has a whip as her primary weapon, though she switches up the tamer theme for a Dominatrix theme, acting more sexually confident and being Dressed Like a Dominatrix with thigh-high boots accompanied by her black leather Leotard of Power with a large erect collar and Navel-Deep Neckline.
    • The anime-only Eclipse Virgo (the Brainwashed and Crazy form of Lucy's Celestial Spirit Virgo) is a whip-wielder with an explicit Dominatrix theme, with a militaristic black leather uniform and a sadistic and domineering personality that is obsessed with using her whip to punish Lucy.
    • Kyôka the leader of the Nine Demon Gates is a sadistic and domineering woman who greatly enjoys torturing and humiliating others, especially if they're strong. While her primary weapon is her Wolverine Claws, she can magically alter them to become whiplike appendages, which she often does in combat or when she wants to give someone A Taste of the Lash.
  • Wild Card Excuse: Happy's answer to questions such as "Why are you blue?", "Why can you fly?", or "How come you can talk?" is always "Because I'm a cat!" cheerfully and likely intentionally ignoring the fact that these questions are because he is a cat. ... and then not even THAT is correct, as he's just a fantastical creature that only resembles a cat.
  • Will They or Won't They?
    • Alzack and Bisca are this trope personified. It's their main character trait, even.
    • Not as prominent, but there's plenty of this between Erza and Jellal as well.
    • Same goes for Lucy & Natsu, there's clear evidence on Lucy side and implications on Natsu's that they like each other as more than friends, but nothing concrete really comes of it in the main story.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Black Wizard Zeref. After having been built up as The Dreaded throughout the entire series, someone almost every single Dark Guild in existence idolizes, being behind just about everything bad that has happened in the last four hundred years either directly or indirectly, and being terrifying enough to make even the Magic Council have a Mass "Oh, Crap!" just at the mere suggestion that he has returned... when he finally appears on screen, he's a self-hating, reclusive emotional wreck who wants nothing more than for Natsu to kill him and put him out of his misery. That is, until Master Hades' evil plan goes horribly right and makes Zeref realize that Humans Are Bastards and should be killed because of it.
  • The Worf Barrage: A sustained assault against the Big Bad of the Sirius Island arc, from a united front of various Fairy Tail members using some of the most powerful techniques seen in the series so far, successfully destroyed his cape and made him mad (maybe he liked the cape).
  • The Worf Effect:
    • Fairy Tail gets hit hard by this in their first fights against Legion during the Key of the Starry Heavens filler arc with Gildarts getting stalemated by Byro via Anti-Magic and Mirajane just getting taken out before she can do anything. However the rematches end decisively in Fairy Tail's favor, once they get their act together.
    • Bluenote Stinger, who was The Dreaded in the Sirius Island arc, is briefly reintroduced at the beginning of the Reunion arc for the sole purpose of putting Natsu's growth during the Time Skip to scale.
    • Zig-zagged: The strongest mage in the continent of Ishgal seemingly curb-stomps the second- through fifth-strongest mages. Then, they get up and combo-attack him. Then, he reveals that he has a magic that lets him use eight dragonslayer powers and curb-stomps them again. Then comes the Worf part: Acnologia in human form shows up and tears a hole in him instantly and seemingly without even having to use a spell.
    • Fairy Glitter is a powerful attack known as one of the "Three Great Fairy Magics" that ended up in the hands of Cana. However, the attack does no damage whatsoever the two times it's used against Bluenote and Acnologia.
    • Does Crime Sorciere ever defeat anyone? While Ultear has her moments, their role in the story, especially once the former members of the Oracion Seis join, just tends to be to job out to whoever happens to be a threat in the current arc.
  • Worf Had the Flu: According to the author, the reason Midnight beat Jellal so easily was because of the self-destruct spell that had damaged Jellal a few chapters earlier on top of his Laser-Guided Amnesia. Alternatively, some fans have pointed out that, if you consider Midnight's ability, it's highly possible Jellal tried to one-shot him with one of his spells and had it reflected back in his face.
    • Zeref also gives one to explain how Ultear beat him. His explanation can be summarized as "because I didn't want to kill her, my magic was ineffective. Now that I'm out for blood I'm back to full power."
  • World of Badass: Actually subverted. Despite the fact that there are loads of badass characters, who tend to hog the spotlight, only 10% of the Fairy Tail world's population can use magic. But Grimoire Heart plans to use Zeref to create such a world, where only the badass can survive.
  • World of Buxom: Almost every female character has very large breasts, with important characters often being even bigger than the rest. Levy is the most notable exception that isn't an underage girl, though even she was thoroughly stacked when she debuted.
  • World of Muscle Men: Even males otherwise lacking muscle mass will have a six-pack unless they're young, old, or fat.
  • World of Technicolor Hair: The setting has every shade of technicolor hair under the sun. For example, protagonists Natsu, Porlyusica, and Sherry have varying shades pink hair, Erza has cherry-red hair, Jellal, Wendy, and Juvia have varying shades of blue hair, Mirajane and her family have white hair, Brandish has lime green hair, and so on.
  • Would Hit a Girl
    • Gajeel, who spends a good few minutes just beating Lucy silly. And he would have kept on doing it if Natsu hadn't shown up, righteously pissed off. He's doing it BECAUSE he knows Natsu is coming.
    • This seems to be in effect for the entire world of Fairy Tail, actually. There doesn't seem to be a distinction made between genders at all, at least as far as fighting goes.
    • Natsu actually invokes this when he suggests a round of fighting to find out who is the strongest wizard in Fairy Tail.
      Happy: "Natsu... I don't think you should go picking battles with girls..."
      Natsu: "Guys or girls has nothing to do with it!!"

    X 
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: Brain in his plan to obtain Nirvana. He originally intended to get it by himself, but when he realized that Wendy was with the group sent to stop him, he used her to make his plan move faster, having her heal Jellal, who would in turn fetch Nirvana for him. When Jellal attacked him, instead of going This Cannot Be! he ordered Cobra to follow him. His assumption was right, as Jellal restarted Nirvana... With the intent of destroying it. But, instead of breaking down or trying to force Jellal to obey him by any meaning, Brain simply deactivated the self-destruction spell Jellal cast on Nirvana, succeeding in his plan at last.

    Y 
  • Year Inside, Hour Outside: Inverted in the Celestial Realm, where one day in there is equal to three months outside.
  • Year X: The story takes place in "X784". X791 after the Time Skip.
  • Yin-Yang Bomb: Sting and Rogue's combo attacks are these.
  • You Are Too Late: Despite Erza and Minerva killing Kyouka, it wasn't in time to stop Face.
  • You Can't Go Home Again:
    • When the guild war with Phantom Lord is over, Lucy flat out tells Jude that, after all that's past between them, she can't return to her family's estate. Eventually, Jude loses his fortune, including his estate, and dies towards the end of his daughter's seven-year disappearance.
    • Wendy's original magic guild, Cait Shelter, turns out to just be an illusion created to comfort her while she was growing up. Wendy is grief-stricken upon learning this, but Erza comforts her by offering her a new start with Fairy Tail.
    • At the end of the Edolas arc, Extalia is destroyed and the magic in Edolas is expelled, leaving the Exceeds searching for a new home.
  • You Have Failed Me:
    • Brain gives Cobra this treatment after Natsu nearly beat him with a single roar.
      Brain: (after shooting Cobra in the shoulder) "I don't need the six demons if such an average guild can defeat them so easily, you trash!!"
    • Yukino was forced to strip and erase her guild mark, therefore kicking her out of the guild after losing to Kagura.
    • Subverted. Sting and Rogue after losing to Natsu and Gajeel. They were beat up by their guild master and when Sting's Exceed tries to reason with their guild master, he was promptly killed (or so we thought).
  • Your Magic's No Good Here: When the main characters get transported to Edolas, they find out that their normal magic doesn't work, there are limited magic energy resources, and people have to use magic tools.
  • Your Princess Is in Another Castle!
    • The Edolas arc: Team Natsu manages to keep the Lacrima from crashing into the Exceed homeland and Mystogan suddenly arrived to warp the Lacrima back to Earthland, back to their original forms. Everyone begins to celebrate and things seem peachy... then Erza Knightwalker fires a shot at Pantherlily and comes after the group with the Edolas army in tow!
    • End of the S-Class Trial arc: Fairy Tail manages to repeal Grimiore Heart despite taking some serious damage and wounds. All the members come out alive and are healed. Laxus is back even though no longer a member and Cana reveals to Gildarts that she is his daughter who then accepts her. All seems right with the world... wait whats that ominous evil looking dragon over the island?

    Z 
  • Zero-Approval Gambit: Mystogan decides to unite Edolas... by draining it of its dwindling magic and offering himself up as the villain that Pantherlily will kill, thus making him the new king. Pantherlily has some complaints with that plan, and wants to turn it around so that he'll be the villain, and Mystogan, who is Edolas' long-lost prince, will be the hero. Things hits a serious snag when both of them realize they can't bring themselves to kill the other. Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy manage to salvage the plan by posing as rampaging demons for Mystogan to defeat, and the reverse anima conveniently sucking them back to Earthland makes it look like they're defeated and banished by his hand. The same spell is also the reason why Pantherlily can't be said hero, as it banishes him to Earthland, too.
  • Zodiac Motifs: All of Lucy's star dresses and by extension their mixed versions all follow a Theme Naming after the Western Zodiac such as her Aquarius star dress being in reference to Aquarius, her Leo star dress in reference to Leo, etc. This is justified In-Universe as her star dresses allow her to borrow the abilities and to a degree the magic power of her gold keyed spirits who are based around the Western Zodiac themselves who Lucy can summon.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Parodied. Ichiya sets one off in a Halloween Special ("Fairy Tail of the Dead Meeeeeeeeen"); an experimental parfum he was working on is released into the water, turning anyone who sniffs it into a mindless shambler with his face, repeating his Catchphrase and turning anyone that gets close enough into more of them.

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