Fate Grand Order / Tropes A to C

Tropes for Fate/Grand Order
Tropes A to C | Tropes D to I | Tropes K To P | Tropes Q To Y

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A

• Abhorrent Admirer: While a lot of the female Servants have a thing for the protagonist and they know it, they're flat out scared of some, annoyed by others or just unwilling to deal with them.
  • During the second Halloween event, "Super☆Ghouls 'n Pumpkins," Yanderes Raikou and Kiyohime (and a more reserved Serenity) literally try to sniff the protagonist out at one point (even using NP to reveal them) and the entire party flees from them in terror. They start swimming through lava to get to the protagonist (who fled by using a decoy).
  • Swimsuit Lancer Tamamo is more aggressive than her Caster self and Tamamo Cat (as seen with her self-proclaimed nickname: Tamamo Shark) and she's made her desire for the protagonist very clear. She even gives you a drink spiked with ketamine on Valentine's Day!
  • Then there's Artemis and Orion, a pair so annoying that when you do their interludes you consistently get dialogue options like 'go away' and 'I'm not here' in a futile attempt to get them to leave you alone. It seems like Artemis has a bit of a thing for the protagonist as well as Orion, but all they want is for her to solve her own relationship problems and leave them out of it.
• Action Bomb: The Chibi Nobus and most of their variants approach a Servant carrying a Hiragumo tea kettle and blow themselves up in their critical attack or special attack, though another Nobus will replace them from a portal where the exploded Nobu used to be once they did. The Mecha Nobus even do it as normal attack.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Mamoru Miyano once voiced a character who's heavily associated with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde before.
  • Ryougi has a line for Tawara Touta in My Room, whom she thinks sounds a lot like her friend, Mikiya. Both men are voiced by the same person, who is married to Shiki's voice actress.
  • This is not the first time Miyuki Sawashiro voiced a character that hates their father's guts because of the latter's actions. If anything, Mordred was the luckier one even in the context of the Nasuverse version of Arthurian Legend.
  • Mash is not the only character played by Risa Taneda who fought enemies to protect her senpai. In fact, she's similar to Yukina Himeragi.
  • Shin-ichiro Miki has played the part of a blue haired Kojiro opposite a female Musashi already.
  • Anastasia is not the first character played by Yumi Hara who is a beautiful young woman with ice powers.
  • Kenjiro Tsuda voices Sigurd who says that the version of Fafnir he remembers was a blue-eyed white dragon.
  • Rie Kugimiya voices someone with flaming red hair who is not Shana.
  • For one of the anniversary pictures, Nero is drawn in CLAMP style, in honor of her voice actress voicing their card-capturing Magical Girl.
  • One of Camazotz's titles, befitting being voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama, is "King of Braves".
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Almost entirely averted: prices for most items in shops cost the same at all points. But one notable example was the former cost for the Mona Lisa Craft Essence. The price for the first one was 1000 Mana Prisms, and the price scaled by 200 each (making the last one cost 1800 and the total cost a whopping 7000 for a fully limit-broken CE for the full 10% boost to QP gain). The playerbase was angry enough that the devs took note and now all CEs, including this CE retroactively (issuing refunds!) cost a total of 5000 Prisms at a static cost of 1000 each. It has also led to multiple lampshades from Da Vinci herself, your supposed friend, who muses that she could buy a villa, and later has her CEs stolen to produce counterfeits.
• Adaptation Distillation:
  • Servants can only have three Personal Skills in-game, so those who have more than three Personal Skills in their source material will either lose some of them or have them adapted into Class Skills (which is really a catch-all name for passive skills, even those that are not inherent to the class). Likewise, many Servants with multiple Noble Phantasms in lore will have at least one of their secondary Noble Phantasms adapted into Personal Skills, while their primary one is registered as their nominal Noble Phantasm used for their Limit Break. Achilles is the most notable case for both of these, as he doesn't have any of the Personal Skills he has in lore but instead has adaptations of his many secondary Noble Phantasms as his "Personal Skills".
  • While the crossover event with The Garden of Sinners includes elements from all the chapters/movies, most of the material, including the event map and BGM, is based on the 5th movie, Paradox Spiral.
  • The First Order anime movie is one for the introductory Fuyuki chapter. The biggest difference is probably having an adult Medusa as a Lancer, while at this point in the game she's fought as a Rider, and her Lancer form available later is still a child.
• Adaptation Expansion: Some pre-FGO Servants who had been villains or the villain's minion in their debuting work are given more character and have their different sides exposed upon their inclusion in FGO. Hassan of the Cursed Arm and Meltryllis are hit the hardest by this.
• Adaptational Abomination:
  • Tiamat of Mesopotamian Mythology here isn't just the goddess of Primordial Chaos - she's one of the Evils of Humanity aka Beasts and her nature as the ultimate My Beloved Smother is brought front and center.
  • Foreigner-class Servants are (mostly) historical people who made contact with the "Outer Gods" and manage to cling to their sanity, leaving them with some powers from the Outer Gods at their disposal. None of them has connections to the eldritch in life (as far as anybody knows, anyway...) but the game's story explains how each of them came to be. Abigail Williams (famous for her role in the Salem Witch Trials) was forced to become the host for Yog-Sothoth, while Katsushika Hokusai apparently gets contacted by what's implied to be Cthulhu, and his Trial Quest says that Abigail has inadvertently opened the way for more Outer Gods to "visit" the Earth.
  • In Celtic Mythology, Diarmuid ua Duibhne was killed by a demonic boar. This game shows that the boar was closer to an Animalistic Abomination, who eats magic runes and strikes fear even into dragonkind.
  • It's mentioned in Saber Gareth's Bond CE text that the Red Knight, Sir Ironside, was actually a Calamity of Proper Human History Britain akin to the same Calamities featured in the sixth Lostbelt's Faerie Britain.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The boar that killed Diarmuid. In myth, it was incredibly large for a boar, and evil, but the Type-Moon version outright hits Animalistic Abomination territory◊, with its in-game profile describing it as "eating runes and putting even Dragonkind to shame".
  • Many Servants are a lot stronger than in the series they're debuting from, such as Francis Drake, Jack the Ripper, or Okita Souji.
• Adaptational Name Change: Due to Alternate Character Reading, Chinese-named Servants and Noble Phantasms are referred to their Japanese names in voiced lines.
  • Lu Bu Fengxian to Ryofu Housen,
  • Zhuge Liang to Shoukatsu Koumei,
  • Jing Ke to Keika,
  • Li Shuwen to Ri Shobun,
  • Xuanzang Sanzang to Genjou Sanzou, she also refers to Sun Wukong by his Japanese name Son Goku,
  • Yan Qing to En Sei,
  • Wu Zetian to Bu Zokuten,
  • Nezha to Nata.
  • Lanling Wang to Ranryu-Oh
  • Qin Liangyu to Shin Ryougoku, although her Self-Applied Nickname "Lian" is pronounced at it is in Japanese.
  • Xiang Yu to Ko-U
  • Qin Shi Huang to Shikotei^note Actually from his title "Shi Huang Di"
  • Yu Mei-ren to Gu Bijin
  • Chi Tu Ma (Red Hare) to Sekitoba
  • Sima Yi to Shiba Ii
  • Chen Gong to Chinkyu
  • Taigong Wang to Taikoubou
• Adapted Out: Benkei, who is one of the Shadow Servants in the Fuyuki singularity, is replaced in the First Order anime adaptation by an adult Lancer Medusa.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • "Moonlight Festival", AKA Orion and Artemis' debut. You try to summon the Stars' Hunter Orion, but because Artemis is too clingy for him, you end up summoning the Moon Goddess herself (who manages to pass herself off as a Gender Flip version of Orion, which isn't too improbable considering the franchise's track record). Artemis, like any good Greek God, whimsically asks for dango to celebrate the Japanese moon-viewing festival. You get it by beating the hell out of other Servants.
  • "GUDAGUDA Honnoji" is this even moreso, with Medea complaining about her Lily counterpart and being only used for Rule Breaker spam, Gilgamesh complaining about gacha rates, and Andersen reminding the players to take it easy with the "horrible grindy event".
  • "Saber Wars" is basically one long satire on the numerous expies of Altria and how plentiful they are.
  • Valentine's Day event is one long harem story with the dangerous prospect of your harem consisting of legendary heroes. As said by the resident harem series protagonist himself:
    EMIYA: They are Servants, heroic spirits of the past, you know? Compared to normal people, they are somewhat warped in the head, to a certain extent. Physical abilities, mental ability, skills, berserking... it is all at a stage where they are right at the top. If you accept chocolates from those girls... It won’t just end like this. I will say it plainly - it will be a terrible situation. It’s unmistakably a game over!
  • "Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits" event revolves around how expensive the Mona Lisa CE was to the point where someone created a counterfeit just so people could actually have one. But later on it's revealed that it was a cover-up for Jeanne Alter's real plan, which was to summon fake Servants to accompany her. EMIYA, being a former eroge game protagonist points that she's been gathering a harem and wonders if she's actually trying to become an otome game protagonist. She of course denies it.
  • "Starry Xuanzang Goes to India" is based on the legendary literature of China, Journey to the West. Xuanzang debuts here with the game's characters humorously filling in for Xuanzang's disciples. The protagonist is Sun Wukong (because they're cosplaying him), David becomes Zhu Bajie (because he is a lech), Li Shuwen becomes Sha Wujing (a silent and reliable fighter), and Lu Bu becomes Yulong (since he is identical as his steed, the Red Hare).
  • "All the Statesmen" is an affectionate parody of an affectionate parody: The Master with No Name became a monstrous entity in addition to the Bad Boss qualities of her Learning with Manga! counterpart, the spotlight Servant was turned female explicitly for no known reason and was mistreated because she wasn't a 5-star, and Altera is fought under the disguise of "Goddess Columbia".
• After the End:
  • When the protagonist and Mash return to Chaldea at the end of the prologue, the world has ended and all that's left is Chaldea. All of human history is vanishing as well, Chaldea is temporarily a sustained paradox.
  • The latter half of the first Summer event, "Chaldea Heat Odyssey", begins when your party sails away for a day and end up going back to the first half's tropical island after 2000 years have passed. The boars have evolved into an intelligent race, but their civilization has already since collapsed.
  • The forces of the Lostbelts have completely wiped everything off the world by the end of the prologue for Cosmos in the Lostbelt.
• Albinos Are Freaks: The ostracizing of Lavinia Whateley from the Puritans in Salem is in part due to her rather sickly albino appearance that is shared by the rest of her family.
• All Just a Dream:
  • Mysterious Heroine X's storyline throughout her three interludes turns out to be this at the end.
  • The Garden of Order event took place in Ryougi's dream as she fell into a deep sleep to avoid being killed by Solomon's burning the Earth. This is only explained in an interview and is never hinted anywhere in the event itself.
  • The Prison Tower storyline takes place in a dream, with Mash and co. trying to wake the protagonist.
  • Near the endgame, Mash has several dreams sent by Solomon, with him trying to persuade her into joining him.
  • The majority of the Moonlight/Lost Room OVA happens in the male protagonist's dream, sometime after Chaldea's 2017 Christmas party and before the Prologue of Cosmos in the Lostbelt.
• All Myths Are True:
  • The Grail summons a Servant based on in-universe perceptions, concepts, and historical fact, so Servants drawn from mythology or stories are often a hodgepodge of every single story told about them. Some profiles even admit that the Servant is fictional (e.g. Assassin of Shinjuku, a character from Water Margin) or are ambiguous as to which stories were true or made up.
    • The case of the Volsunga saga versus the Nibelungenlied is an interesting one. Sigurd and Siegfried are shown to be different people who killed different Fafnirs,^note In the Nasuverse, Fafnir is not a specific dragon but a Legacy Character who takes over anyone consumed by their greed. despite the fact both heroes are obviously derived from the same legend. As such, Sigurd's Brynhildr was not the same woman as Siegfried's Brunhild, and Gudrun was not the same person as Kriemhild, with Attila/Altera/Etzel apparently only encountering the latter. That said, the similarities are certainly acknowledged, with Brynhildr mistaking Siegfried's scent for Sigurd's, and Kriemhild instinctively hating Sigurd and Brynhildr when she is finally summoned to Chaldea.
  • Most legendary figures were alive at some point in in-universe history and eventually turned into a Heroic Spirit who can be summoned by the player. Literary figures, particularly from the nineteenth century, such as Edmond Dantes, Frankenstein's Monster, and Phantom of the Opera, are also claimed to have been alive at some point in in-universe history.
  • Holmes muses on this and its implications regarding him as a fictional character in a trial quest. He comes to the conclusion that the universe doesn't want him examining this too closely. He does admit that just because a myth isn't true in one world, it might be in an Alternate Universe. This turns out to be true in the case of Kojiro Sasaki.
  • Not only is Agartha one of the EoR pseudo-singularities, it also has El Dorado, Ys, Shangri-La, the Nightless City, and the Undersea Dragon Palace inside Agartha. Laputa shows up as part of the chapter's finale. It's later revealed that Scheherazade used her Noble Phantasm to create these legendary locations in that area, modifying them for the narrative she was making and so they might not have actually existed in the Nasuverse.
  • As of Epic of Remnant IV: Salem, the Cthulhu Mythos is apparently real, at least some parts. More specifically, the Cthulhu Mythos itself might not be real, but Lovecraft's writings ended up becoming eerily close to describing being(s) from outer universe to the point that they feel like prophecies of actual things out there. For example, the god "Sut-Typhon" that Räum tries to summon is so close to Yog-Sothoth that Lovecraft describing it was enough to give it a connection to this universe. Nyarlotheph is another one, with him helping BB with her never-ending summer plan.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The head writer, Kinoko Nasu, occasionally posts a blog entry on the main story, clarifying background details and explaining some events that were implied but not explicitly shown in the game.
    • His blog entry for Camelot explains what happened to the other Knights of the Round Table that Lion King summoned, what happened before the city of Camelot was established, and how several Servants were in the circumstances they were in at the story's beginning.
    • There's a short story about the time Anchin visited Chaldea once, where every female Servant save for Mash is attracted to him at first glance. Anchin is gay and attracted to Sasaki Kojirou.
    • The blog entry for Babylonia includes an explanation for Humanity Foundation Value and how it's ranked, what damage is done in the Londinium, Camelot, and Babylonia singularities, the relation between Clairvoyants Gilgamesh and Merlin, the revival of a dead Humbaba and how Ibaraki-douji's bandit gang kept it imprisoned, and how Enkidu summoned by the Earth as a servant would be on the same level as Arcueid Brunestud. Nasu's details on Camelot in particular explains that due to how improbable the presence of Lion King was (EX Rank), all damage caused by her appearance is undone. This includes deaths, which are normally set in stone the moment they die in a Singularity.
    • One went up a few weeks after SE.RA.PH's release to expand on the conversion of Seraphix into a pseudo-singularity and reveal a few plot details that hadn't been in the story proper.
  • The Fate/Grand Order Material books reveal several things not told in Servants' in-game profiles.
    • Nearly every original Servant has a second Noble Phantasm unused in gameplay.
    • Several Servants also have skills unavailable to them.
    • Relationships between Servants that were not seen before in-game.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage:
  • The final Order, Grand Time Temple Solomon, has areas based on all of the previous singularities, with a Demon Pillar guarding each one.
  • The entirety of Lady Reines' Case Files event has a lot of stages based on previous events and certain main story chapters.
• Alliance with an Abomination: This is how the Summer variant of BB came to be: when she took over the Chaldea Observatory branch in Hawaii, she used the devices within to look into a being in outer space - Nyarlathotep himself- and said being is amused by how BB shares a similar mindset to its own that it decided to give her some of its powers to see what she would do with it. She then transformed Hawaii into a special "perpetual summer island" with her powers which involves creating a Groundhog Time Loop so that people inside them, including our protagonist, can be in eternal bliss.
• Alpha Strike: Near the end of the Okeanos arc, David, Euryale, Atlante, and Artemis all launch their Noble Phantasms at Jason and successfully bait him into keeping Medea and Hektor close to defend him, allowing the protagonists to lure Heracles into their trap.
• Alternate Character Reading:
  • Tiamat's spawn seemingly speak in gibberish when first introduced, but the English letters of their gibberish correspond to the hiragana of a Japanese computer keyboard.
    (text) ! uyq@b4e4bst<u. -s@<u. -@s!
    (translation) !Nandakōiukotokane naruhodone naruhodone! (Oh, really? Is that how it is? I understand, I understand)
  • The first Lostbelt has the subtitle "Princess of the Land of Beast" is obviously pointing that the Lostbelt is inhabited by the wolfmen race Yaga, but there's another way to see it. The Lostbelt's Crypter, Kadoc, has a surname that means "Country of Wolves", so the title of the Lostbelt can be read "Anastasia - Kadoc's Princess".
• Alternate Continuity:
  • GUDAGUDA Servants (female Okita Souji and Nobunaga et al) are not from Proper Human History and do not reflect whatever they may be like in the "canon" timelines. As such, Fate/Requiem (a PHH timeline) and GUDAGUDA feature completely different versions of Amenonuhoko, and GUDAGUDA Himiko is linked to a version of Amaterasu who has no connections to "our" Tamamo-no-Mae.
  • Certain events after the third Lostbelt chapter in Cosmos in the Lostbelt present two different continuities where they slot in: One where Chaldea is still at Antarctica and operating with da Vinci as director post-Solomon or one where Chaldea is operating at the Wandering Sea after the Earth was bleached. A third continuity for events to take place in was added after U-Olga Marie blew up the Wandering Sea base and forced Novum Chaldea to evacuate into their Cool Airship as their new permanent base.
• Alternate Self: Each summoned servant can be seen as this to the "original platonic ideal" residing in the Throne of Heroes. Under the normal rules, when a new Saint Graph is generated, only necessary memories and knowledge for this new occasion will be provided to the newly summoned Servant; they may retain a fuzzy sense of previous summons, if the Throne saw fit to grant them those memories. This Servant can go on to grow and change without necessarily affecting the real Heroic Spirit residing in the Throne. However, Chaldea's FATE summoning system scans Saint Graphs into a database instead of simply relying on the Throne's information, allowing them to retain memories between summons and even summon anomalies who were theoretically never part of the Throne, such as Cu Chulainn Alter, Jeanne D'Arc Alter, and the various swimsuit Servants. Thus, playable alternative outfits for Servants (notably summer swimsuit and holiday event variants) seem to be literally summoned as another version of that Servant, joining the original Servant already in Chaldea who had participated in the event (and come back) in the first place. Kiyohime (Lancer) will comment that there's two of them in Chaldea to love the protagonist twice as much. Other summer Servants will bemoan that they've been summoned indefinitely in their swimsuits, even in winter.
  • The start of the second Halloween event, "Super☆Ghouls 'n Pumpkins," has both the original Elisabeth and Halloween Caster Elisabeth jointly ruling their castle together (and then they merge to form another Elisabeth variant), and their justification is that their frenemy Nero also has two variants at the time (her original self and her bride costume).
  • The Lion King in Camelot is an Altria Pendragon who never died after the Battle of Camlann due to Bedivere not throwing Excalibur into the lake and instead ultimately became a goddess thanks to the influence of the holy spear Rhongomyniad. It's noted in-story that the circumstances of her existence make her unique amongst all other Altrias and that the summonable Lancer Altria, while very similar, is still ultimately a different person.
  • In SE.RA.PH, not even BB can fix Meltryllis' Saint Graph from the damage it took after using Virgin Laser Palladion, making the summonable version of her and the one who appears in SE.RA.PH two distinct selves who end up connecting with the protagonist in different ways.
  • Assassin Emiya is incredibly annoyed by this, as he comes from a timeline where he never met characters from Fate/stay Night and Fate/Zero yet Irisviel and Jaguar Warrior keep trying to connect to him because they know a different version of him.
  • It's noted that the Lostbelts actively mess with the Saint Graphs of Servants summoned by the World and as a result, their connection to their selves from previous meetings with the protagonists and even their own history is very fuzzy.
  • In Lostbelt No. 1, in order to strengthen Anastasia, Kadoc used a variant of the summoning ritual as if to make her a Servant from the Lostbelt timeline and warped her Saint Graph. This does not apply to the Anastasia you can summon and she recognizes that the one summoned under Kadoc antagonized Chaldea and tries to apologize for what she technically did.
  • The Lostbelt Kings in general (Ivan the Terrible, Scathach-Skadi, Qin Shi Huang, Arjuna Alter, Zeus, and Morgan Le Fey) are Servants from a Lostbelt timeline and are different existences from their proper timeline counterparts. In Qin Shi Huang's case, however, he is indeed the same person Jing Ke failed to assassinate since his diversion occurred after the said assassination attempt.
• Alternate Timeline: The game itself takes place in a separate timeline from Fate/stay night; both featured a Holy Grail War in Fuyuki in 2004, but while in stay night it's the fifth war, in Grand Order there was only the one. El-Melloi II's the first one to bring this up during "Fate/Accel Zero Order", because when he looked through Chaldea's records of them, they clashed heavily with what he remembers/the Association's records on them. It's revealed in the Camelot chapter that Olga-Marie's father was the victor of the 2004 Fuyuki Holy Grail War.
  • Since many of the Servants come from works that are themselves Alternate Timelines, and they can often remember those timelines; it is difficult to differentiate whose history belongs where. Waver and Dr. Roman refers to these differences as "part of the same time cluster" and are "forgivable" by the World.
  • The female version of Miyamoto Musashi comes from her own timeline which was implied to be pruned at some point. In addition, the pseudo-singularity she appears in is its own separate timeline, which is plot-critical, as the villains are taking direct advantage of that to interfere with history.
  • The Lostbelts are alternate Timelines that have replaced proper history in a certain area on Earth. The years attached to them aren't what time you're going to. It's when the timeline was changed.
  • The GUDAGUDA Series is treated as being not just a spin-off of Fate/ series, but is also considered to be a parallel timeline from the normal Fate timeline. In terms of lore, this is meant to be most apparent with the lore and characterization of Nobunaga and adjacent characters, Himiko, Counter Guardians, Sakamoto Ryouma, and Oryou. This generally means that what GUDAGUDA says doesn't mean mean that it is the case in the rest of the Nasuverse, though there haven't been many clear contradictions to tell what is the truth or not.
• Always Night: The Shinjuku pseudo-singularity has been mysteriously made to always be nighttime. Inhabitants of the city have gotten used to it and even forgotten what daytime is like. Though oddly the trailer for this chapter depicts Shinjuku during sunset.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Once Abigail awakens her powers, the courtroom she's in is partially transformed into an endless void with hundreds of glowing white keyholes.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Enemy Servants' sprites are flipped version of playable Servants, so most Servants players faced appears left-handed even if they are actually right-handed.
• Ambiguous Situation: When the protagonist and Mash ask Holmes if he actually existed, he dodges the question to point out that while there's no evidence of his existence, there aren't any of most mythical heroes either, so he shouldn't be considered special in this regard. What's more, aspects are added to their legend long after they would have died even if they did exist. The truth is that there are tangible evidence and artifacts among mages, but Holmes is keeping that kind of thing a secret from Chaldea for now for complicated Magibabble reasons. While the conversation leading to this seems to imply that Holmes may be fictional as no such evidence for him exists, the quest ends with Moriarty and Holmes bickering in a way that was specifically not present in any stories about them and therefore shouldn't be part of their relationship if they were just fabricated whole cloth. His monologue to himself suggests that it's related to the fact that there are parallel worlds, the Pruning Phenomenon, and that the Ages of Gods still exists beneath the world of man and held back by the Holy Spear.
• Amusingly Awful Aim:
  • Nagao Kagetora can't hit anything with a ranged weapon, which is why she eschews any kind of bow or gun in favor of becoming a Multi-Melee Master.
  • Aztec God Tezcatlipoca is even worse than she is, with one of this animations having him unload almost a full clip from his pistol and only hitting his target once before he just decides to melee him. It's made doubly hilarious, given Tezcatlipoca is as fascinated with firearms as Quetzalcoatl is with Lucha Libre, and pointing out his aiming issues is a Berserk Button of his.
• Anachronic Order: Some lighter events are only hazily placed in the timeline of the game and may have inconsistencies. Setsubun even lampshades this by saying that "this is a tale that may or may not have happened."
  • Several events and Interludes added during Cosmos in the Lostbelt are explicitly shown to take place before the arc begins due to how it massively and irrevocably changed the status quo of Chaldea.
• Anachronism Stew: Used continuously throughout the game, and often lampshaded. Even if the events of the game aren't directly outside of a recognizable context, the Holy Grail usually summons more actors into a Singularity, and those Servants are often more thematically appropriate than temporally.
  • The first (proper) singluarity has Marie Antoinette as a major ally because she loves France and wants to save it, despite Marie being born three hundred years after the death of Joan of Arc, which sparked this singularity.
  • Singularity 3 involves the party teaming up with Sir Francis Drake to fight... A bunch of Greek servants.
  • Chapter 5 is set in 1783, but being a singularity, almost all of America's history has blended together with towns based off the Wild West, a castle in Denver wired with electricity and guarded by police with robot suits, Alcatraz and Washington D.C. are established locations, the U.S. has all 48 continental states with modern borders, and medieval Celts are battling the Theosophical Society with the Indians on different sides. The first thing that alerts the heroes of the anachronism is when they witness Florence Nightingale yelling at Benjamin Rush about the dangers of bloodletting.
  • The seventh singularity is named Babylonia which is set in Mesopotamia during Gilgamesh's rule. However, the singularity is set in 2655 B.C. during the Sumerian civilization. Babylonia has existed around 1800 B.C., hundreds of years after the Sumerian civilization. Likewise, Ishtar's relation with Gilgamesh is based on Akkadian interpretation of Epic of Gilgamesh, as it was her Sumerian counterpart Inanna who tries to seduce Gilgamesh in the original story.
  • Wu Zetian, the empress of the Tang Dynasty, being in charge of the Nightless City of the Han Dynasty in Agartha is a subtle indicator that the fantasy lands aren't real.
  • In Salem, the buildings being inconsistent with historical records, the records found by Mata Hari on the townspeople not matching up with Chaldea's data, and a wharf that wasn't even built during the time of the Witch Trials leads the party to the conclusion that they aren't in the actual Salem of 1692 but an elaborate illusion imposed upon the area to make it function as one.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The real Grand Order, which is Goetia's way of ensuring that all seventy-two of his Pillars can be in the right place and time to create the Singularities. To do this, he created a compulsion within Magic Crests to prevent the owner from committing suicide, and then propagated the belief that magi must absolutely pass on their genes and sire a bloodline that can last forever. As these values and propaganda ensure that Goetia's seventy-two chosen bloodlines will last for three thousand years, all he then needs to do is activate the Demon Pillars within their Magic Crests during the right time period, effectively turning those bloodlines into his unwitting agents for the Human Order's destruction. Virtually every value that the Mage's Association holds dear was instilled by Goetia for his grand plan to remake the world.
• And I Must Scream: The Lahmus that appear in the latter half of Babylonia are processed from human beings. Several are shown to be non-violent or briefly turn against their programming that orders them to kill everything, with the human still being conscious and trapped in their own bodies that seek only slaughter. The player faces one of them in particular, which never attacks during the battle. It is heavily implied, that this specific Lahmu is Siduri, Gilgamesh's adviser.
• And That's Terrible: Minors shouldn't drink. A minor but frequent point since the protagonist is regularly surrounded by cheerfully-drinking characters (Arash and Tawara Touta in Camelot, Archer of Shinjuku, and Fergus mac Róich) but since they're a minor, it has to be pointed out every time that they can't drink instead of sweeping it under the rug. Archer of Shinjuku uses this trope to shade himself as a fairly decent guy for a canonically Evil character (like the other Shinjuku allies).
  • Finally lampshaded by Kiichi Hougen, who offers the protagonist a drink in one of her My Room lines. The protag's reaction is that considering all the timeline-destroying mayhem that's happened over the course of the story, they don't know exactly what year it is in Proper Human History and whether it'd be legal for them to drink yet, so they'd rather just play it safe.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Played with. All Servants are subjected to wardrobe changes after Ascension (i.e. increasing their Level Cap and granting them new skills) — with most of them usually gaining Costume Porn of all kinds. Others, however, may actually lose their initial clothes in exchange for either Power Tattoo or something else, becoming Stripperific in the process.
  • Special Servant Costume Dresses are rewarded for clearing certain conditions. Of course, accessing these requires a) that you actually summoned the Servant it's for, and b) some varying ascension materials.
    • Mash's sundress ("Swimsuit of Perpetual Summer") is unlocked by clearing a challenge quest in the rerun of the first summer event, "Chaldea Summer Memory / Heat Odyssey". She also has her in-game Cosmos in the Lostbelt cybernetic armor, Ortenaus, as an optional suit (and an obligatory in-game wear during the Lostbelt story chapter battles)
    • Medb's dominatrix get-up ("Alluring Chief Warden Look") is unlocked by beating a challenge quest in the latter half of the second Summer event, "Death Jail Summer Escape", which debuted it.
    • Nero's PE uniform ("Olympian Bloomers") is a lottery prize in the Nerofest 2017 rerun.
    • Jeanne Alter's casual clothes in the EoR Shinjuku chapter ("Witch of the Evil Dragon ver. Shinjuku 1999") can be bought as a prize in the Da Vinci Event rerun in January 2018).
    • Arthur Pendragon gets a white suit ("White Rose") for White Day 2018, and could be obtained by exchanging the seventh Rose given during the event.
    • Astolfo's civilian wear ("Memories of Trifas") and Parvati/Sakura's school uniform ("What a Girl Wants") are available at the Da Vinci Shop for 1000 mana prisms each.
    • The Summer 2018 event gives out selected outfits to event-specific Servants, such as the Count of Monte Cristo, Caster Gilgamesh, and Robin Hood. Summer BB also "technically" is given one, even if the result is technically just her losing her tan.
    • The Christmas 2018 gives the free event Servant, Quetzalcoatl (Samba Santa), two versions—which are basically just lucha libre masks superimposed on her regular Servant sprite.
    • Illya gets the Evil Costume Switch of Testament ("Testament Form") during the re-run of the Prisma Illya crossover event.
    • Archer of Shinjuku is given a grey bartender outfit ("Gray Color") for the White Day 2019 event.
    • The Summer 2019 event repeats what was done for the male Servants with Fuuma Kotaro, Siegfried, and Merlin, though they obtain casual wear rather than swimsuits.
• Angelic Abomination: Lostbelt 7 introduces "exoanthropic angels and daemons", bizarre alien beings from far beyond the observable universe who have somehow left a number of artifacts on Earth. Exactly why they're even called angels/demons is unclear—the one known artifact vaguely conforms to Semitic mythology, but they're explicitly stated not to be the angels/demons of human mythology, and the angels themselves resemble clouds of nebula gas with glowing pinpoint eyes.
• Answer Cut: In "The Little Santa Alter", Amakusa Shirou disappears after the party fights against Fuuma Kotarou and Tawara Touta, with Kotarou directly asking where he ran off to. The scene cuts to Jeanne Alter Santa Lily asking some heavy questions that are answered by a mysterious masked Servant calling himself Santa Island Mask (aka blatantly Amakusa wearing Amadeus Mozart's mask).
• Antagonist Title:
  • The Solomon and Anastasia chapters are named after their respective major villains.
  • The very title of the game itself is this, twofold no less.
    • As detailed under Ancient Conspiracy above, Observer On Timeless Temple reveals that the 'Grand Order' of Mage society was created by Goetia, the Big Bad of part 1, as a means of turning 72 Mage families into Manchurian Agents via their Magic Crests that he could 'activate' to aid him in the Human Order Incineration when the time was right.
    • The Seventh Lostbelt of Cosmos In The Lostbelt drops The Reveal that the emergence of the Lostbelts is entirely part of the Grand Order Animusphere, masterminded by Marisbury Animusphere and carried out by the "Foreign World" CHALDEAS for the purposes of ensuring human history's preservation.
• Anthology: Epic of Remnant has been described as one as each chapter is written solely by one author in their own distinct style. The thing that links them is the overarching plot of the four Demon Pillars surviving.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When progressing any sort of plot (main story or event), the mission will feature a Guest-Star Party Member in the form of the NPC Servants that are with you in-story as temporary Support Servants. While inferior to a properly-invested Friend Support, these NPC Supports are still fairly strong, occasionally have different skills and stats from the summonable versions, and are (usually) set up with the tools you need to progress.
  • During Cosmos in the Lostbelt, the game began holding story progression campaigns which distribute Leyline Stones, items which can fully revive the party in place of your Command Seals.
  • Rashomon, the first raid battle event (where the damage all players did collectively stacked up to reduce a global meter) had high difficulty spikes in its missions, and while you could still complete the first two, the third and final one was very hard to complete if you did not have specific setups. On top of that, if you died, you lost your damage progress completely. Come the "The Great Tale of Demons Onigashima" event, we had double the amount of mission choices (with smoothed out difficulties) and in the event that your team is wiped out, your damage progress is still recorded. The Rashomon rerun used the Onigashima point system instead.
  • The first Summer event "Chaldea Summer Memory / Heat Odyssey" has 2 parts like "Starry Xuanzang Goes to India", but the old CEs from "Summer Memory" also boost the second batch of event items' drop rate.
    • The event also released a new ascension material that only drops from an enemy introduced by the event and used for all the swimsuit Servants and several more Servants released after the event. After the event ended, a new free quest was added to Okeanos that featured the new enemy, allowing players to still acquire the new material (albeit at a low drop rate as per usual), the Saber free quest had this enemy type added, and Agartha added another free quest to farm the material, making it accessible for players who weren't able to play the summer events.
    • The event rerun simplified drop bonuses by making them class-based, rather then Servant-based like last time, making it easier for players to bring only one class to farm a node.
  • The second Nero Fest event premiered extra hard Exhibition battles, featuring extremely tough battles that even veterans would have trouble with and removes the use of Saint Quartz or Command Seals to continue if the party wipes out. Luckily, it only costs 1 AP, so players are welcome to try as many times as they like until they succeed.
  • Starting with the "Prison Tower" rerun event, all challenge quests only cost 5 AP and allow players to use Quartz or Command Seals to restore their team if they get wiped out.
  • Daunted by the sheer amount of text and story chapters to wade through and stymied by the AP system time-gating progress? The game's second anniversary made it so all AP for Observer on Timeless Temple is permanently half off and subsequently introduced campaigns later on to reduce it even further to only costing a quarter of the original AP required.
  • Because of the "Groundhog Day" Loop mechanics of "Servant Summer Festival!", a little BB will pop up with a sign to inform players that this cutscene has already played out in a prior loop and can safely be skipped.
  • The NP gauge has decimal values that aren't displayed when gauge is generated through attacking/being attacked, and if it lands on 99.X%, the game throws you a bone and rounds it up to 100% to avert Last Lousy Point. It is actually very hard to see 99% in this game, unless either something has drained the NP gauge (which doesn't run the check), or the gauge hits 99.00% exactly. The latter is usually only seen through underlevelled skills and passive charges; if you somehow accomplish this with attacks, maybe reconsider walking underneath any ladders today. Also, our condolences.
  • The Final Boss of Lostbelt 7 introduces a unique mechanic that makes it unlike any boss fought before. It's a Marathon Boss that with a raid boss health bar that must be depleted over the course of several fights, and any Servant that dies against it cannot, except Mash, is "Data Lost" and cannot be fielded again. To compensate for this unique mechanic, and the fact that you can't bring friend summons to this fight, the player is given several advantages:
    • If the battle becomes Unwinnable because the player has no more Servants left, the game resets the entire battle to the beginning, allowing the player to restrategize. There's also a button that forces a reset so the player can quickly start over if they realize they're in a hopeless situation.
    • For all phases of the fight, the entire party is given an unremovable damage buff. You're also given additional buffs during a certain stretch of the fight. These additional buffs appear during the last few bars of the boss's first form and disappear once the boss transforms into its more powerful second form, so the game is pretty much telegraphing that this is where you should use your weaker Servants so that you can conserve your more powerful Servants for the last stretch.
    • The normal minimum party size can be completely ignored, meaning you can just field a single Servant. This can be helpful is you have a Servant that's powerful enough to break through one of its break bars on it own, since the entire party is automatically killed after every break, meaning that the player can reduce casualties and conserve firepower for when its really needed.
  • While events are Permanently Missable Content, almost every single one—particularly those with special rewards—gets a rerun at some point. In 2023 the Japanese server also debuted Evocation, which introduced a new reward for daily missions which can be redeemed for free event (or "welfare") Servants.
• Anyone Can Die: The body count among allies tends to be pretty high, especially as the story continues, though technically most don't leave a body. At the end of the chapter or event, most Servants generally disappear unless they're given to the player to bring home to Chaldea as well, though that's not quite the same thing. In general, the only characters who can be counted on to make it through are Mash and the protagonist.
  • Olga Marie Animusphere, the Tsundere director the protagonist bonded with during Fuyuki, has a sudden bridge dropped on her at the climax when the Chaldea bomber shows their true colors, condemning them to a Fate Worse than Death.
  • In Orleans, the friendly deaths are relatively low, basically being limited to Marie Antoinette's sacrifice to stall Jeanne Alter and Sanson.
  • In Septem, Spartacus and Lu Bu are lost in the collateral of Altera Kill Satting the Roman fortress, as Boudica and Mash couldn't protect them with their defensive Noble Phantasms.
  • In Okeanos, Asterios takes a lethal hit from Hektor's lance in order to trap Heracles, giving the other heroes a chance to escape. Or not, since he's shown as having survived in Tamamo Cat's interlude.
  • In London, most of the Servant allies save Mordred are one-shotted by the newly revealed Big Bad, who stomps the party. Jekyll and Fran only survive due to not being there at the time, and Mordred is only spared thanks to Hans Taking the Bullet for her.
  • In America, allies drop like flies when Cu Alter acts as the plot reaper including Nero Bride, Billy the Kid, Geronimo, and later even Karna, after being stabbed in the back by him. Also, Arjuna sacrifices himself to destroy Medb's 28 Demon Pillars.
  • In Camelot, Hundred-Face and Serenity are killed by Tristan, Arash sacrifices himself to stop a nuke from the Lion King, Xuanzang uses all her strength to destroy the gates of Camelot, Ozymandias and Nitocris sacrifice themselves by launching Ramesseum Tentyris at Camelot and the Lion King, and Bedivere dies when he finally returns Excalibur to the Lion King. Notably, this was the actual living Bedivere. In the end, the only ones left standing are the protagonist, Mash, Fou, the Lion King, Tawara Touta, King Hassan, Cursed Arm who retires from being a Hassan, and Agravain who is basically on the verge of death by the end of the story.
  • In Babylon, most of your allies sacrifice themselves or are killed before the end of the chapter, including Kingu after switching sides and even the living Gilgamesh, though since the final boss fight takes place in the underworld, he's still available for support in that fight.
  • Finally, in Solomon, even Roman and Fou don't make it out. Roman reveals himself to be the true Solomon and erases his very existence from the Throne to stop Goetia while Fou sacrifices its intelligence to revive Mash. She doesn't appear to understand what he did for her, either, because during Remnant she comments that Fou has been acting oddly innocent and simple lately.
  • In Shinjuku, it's averted as the Servant allies more or less make it out in one piece despite the stakes. The only true casualty is Moriarty, who betrays the party and reveals himself to be one of the main villains, so he obviously has to be put down. It's rather touch-and-go with Jeanne Alter nearly dying against Hessian Lobo, but she managed to escape and turns up near the end, and Holmes, while defeated, wasn't actually killed by Moriarty but instead had his Spirit Origin absorbed by his foe for his own use, and indeed he decides to join Chaldea after the pseudo-singularity is over.
  • In SE.RA.PH, Gawain is killed by Kiara disguised as Mable. EMIYA Alter kills the last of the human survivors of Seraphix before he becomes corrupted by Kiara and turns against the heroes fully, who fatally injure him, though he lingers long enough to stop Kiara from absorbing Meltrylis as a last-ditch effort to save herself. Tristan also dies sacrificing himself to get Meltrylis to safety. Meltrylis' Saint Graph however is heavily damaged by her time travel back to her first meeting with the protagonist combined with dealing the critical fatal blow to Kiara, and BB is unable to preserve her memory data, meaning the death of her incarnation there is effectively permanent.
  • In Agartha, it's Played With. Servant allies do die, but most of them turned out to be have more villainous intentions (Columbus, Scherezade) and died after their betrayals. Wu Zetian is the exception, pulling an Enemy Mine while fatally injured and using her Noble Phantasm to harm Demon Pillar Phenex before expiring afterwards. It's touch-and-go with Young Fergus jumping into Zetian's poison pool in order to access his future self's Noble Phantasm Caladbolg, but he survives it.
  • In Shimosa, all your enemies in the Swordmaster Duels die after being defeated by Musashi. Kato Danzo sacrifices herself in an attempt to kill Limbo Caster. Senji Muramasa dies after using his NP to obliterate Amakusa's Reality Marble and destroy the castle that was vital to his plans. Your Musashi also dies after her duel with Kojiro from throwing you out of the burning castle while she remains inside to succumb to her injuries (though she returns as a proper Servant). Finally, this dimension's Musashi passes away in peace after knowing that his promise to duel Kojirou is fulfilled by the female Musashi.
  • In Salem, Sanson gets executed by the townspeople and Lavinia is killed by Räum to awaken the Outer God inside Abigail.
  • In the second storyline's prologue, Da Vinci is fatally impaled by Kotomine. She has a backup body who shares all of her memories but it's noted that Death of Personality applies to the adult version since her backup doesn't have all the experiences of the original and treats everyone else as new acquaintances.
  • In Anastasia, many of your ally rebel Yaga get eaten by the Minotaur. Avicebron dies sacrificing himself to create the core to power "Adam" to use against Ivan the Terrible. Your ally Paxti dies protecting you from the previously-allied rebel Yaga who realized that if Chaldea destroys the Tree of Emptiness, they will all die. Atalante Alter turns against you for similar reasons and dies fighting Billy the Kid. Anastasia dies protecting her Master Kadoc from Billy's gunfire. And Salieri remains behind in the Lostbelt to comfort the Yaga with his music as the Lostbelt vanishes.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: "Murder at the Kogetsukan" has several characters filling in for the appearances of otherwise unrelated people. Holmes theorizes that it's because the dream has so much new information overloading the protagonist that they subconsciously replaced everyone with people they know to stopgap an unending flow of info into their mind. Holmes takes advantage of that to become the attending detective and act out the events the protagonist already told him would happen, knowing that the protagonist will assume that Holmes is like the others as another person altogether in reality.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: Subverted. The people of Uruk are so happy and kind even in the face of weekly adversity and the events of Babylonia as they believe in and love their king Gilgamesh and wish to fight with all they have. Played straight in the case of the protagonist, who admirably rises to the challenge of saving humanity despite being a totally normal person before coming to Chaldea.
• Apocalypse How:
  • Humanity is gone. Past, present, and future. There are only temporary "singularities" left because whoever did it did it multiple times simultaneously.
  • In the third arc, the Earth has been completely wiped on the surface. The only things the Foreign God couldn't erase was a magical workshop that has never been penetrated and a few scant underground bases, none of which can actually do anything to reverse the now sterile Earth.
• Apocalyptic Log: Several reports from the Seraphix staff are spread throughout SE.RA.PH which details their slow descent into madness.
• April Fools' Day: An honoured Type-Moon tradition shows up in this game.
  • In the first April Fools' day since the launch of the game (and most April Fools following it), they replace all Servant cards in-game with artwork done by Riyo, the artist of "How to Play F/GO." Some of the game's artists also provided artwork for this.
  • The second April Fools' day event combines this with a Pokémon GO parody, where the protagonist can catch all of the Servants (including Riyo's own original Servants) with quartz. Except for one, who can't be caught, and just waves at you happily until the app closes. In North America, this was changed to a pinball game, with the Pokemon-style Servants as prizes.
  • It's the same parody game app for the third year, however, the gameplay has been changed to something more like Space Harrier and Goetia shows up as the Final Boss.
  • The fourth year has a Dragon Quest-inspired Retraux parody app called FGO Quest. Goredolf is the King, Helena was Princess Laura, and Altera is the Dragonlord.
  • The fifth year had an AR tower defense game titled MyCraft Lostbelt where players built castles and employed them against various enemies.
  • The sixth year was a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh! as Servant cards were utilized in combination with each other in a rock-paper-scissors minigame titled Fate/Freedom Order.
  • The seventh year was a baseball minigame titled Fate/Grail League in accordance with the World Baseball Clasic being held in Spring 2023. Unlike previous years, Riyo only did a select number of Servant art and every other Type-Moon artist who draws in a Super-Deformed artstyle instead handled the roster as all the Servants were dressed up to play ball.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Invoked Defiance. After Bunyan is recruited in the April Fool's event; the unlikelihood of her existence (a known fake story) is waved aside by Andersen, who comments that Chaldea has a serial killer made from the fusion of aborted baby souls, crystalized nursery rhymes, living computer programs and more in its ranks. She's not close to being the strangest Servant.
• Archangel Azrael: Alluded to with "First Hassan", the first Hassan-i-Sabbah of The Hashshashin. His Noble Phantasm is called Azrael: Angel of Death, which is a broadsword that has killed so many people that it now has a chance of killing anyone struck with it no matter how strong the target is.
• Arc Number: The number seven shows up a lot in this game as there are seven Singularities, seven Lostbelts, seven Crypters, seven Disciples of the Foreign God, seven normal classes, and seven Beasts/Evils of Humanity.
  • This is especially true with Salem, with the House of Seven Gables as a major location, the story progressing over the course of seven days, Chaldea sending a party of seven to investigate Salem, seven deaths, seven hangings, seven trials, and seven being the number counted down from in its theme song, "Heretics of Purity". Räum charges Abigail with seven crimes to get her to break down and awaken the Outer God in her and the protagonist unintentionally fulfills the seventh and last role in the plan to awaken Abigail's Outer God.
  • The significance of seven in the main story becomes more much more potent when it's spelled out that Marisbury somehow discerned there would be seven Singularities and appropriately brought in seven Crypters to manage them.
• Arc Symbol:
  • A large ring/hole in the sky appears throughout a lot of promotional material, from the OP to ensemble artwork to even the title screen. After you beat Chapter 4, that ring is revealed to be Solomon's ultimate Noble Phantasm, an actual looming threat hanging over mankind's heads.
  • The ring remains in Epic of Remnant, but looks unstable and close to falling apart. This is an indication that not all of the Demon Pillars have died yet in spite of Goetia's destruction.
  • A ray of light descending upon the Earth serves as this for Cosmos in the Lostbelt, which is what the alien invader looks like from afar.
  • The fourth title screen swaps out the ray of light for a mysterious blue crystal circle with a purple aura inlaid with various blue swirls. The "Ordeal Call" trailer indicates this is what awaits Chaldea at their old Antarctic base should they successfully overcome the trials imposed upon them by the Human Order.
  • Each Singularity/Pseudo-Singularity/Lostbelt is represented by an icon. Some of these icons just allude to the era or plot in general (ie. Okeanos is represented by a ship because of all the seafaring that takes place), but some are incredibly important as they represent the main threat (ie. Babylonia's icon is Tiamat bound by the Chain of Heaven, an endgame event for the Singularity).
• Arc Words: In Shimousa, the constant comparison to the world to hell. Each Section opens with Shinmen Musashi narrating his impending death and ending with a Signing Off Catchphrase that segues into the next Heroic Spirit Swordmaster's introduction as they seek to turn the pseudo-singularity into their own version of hell (such as Archer of Inferno's monologue full of loathing) as the villain ultimately wants to turn this Japanese-centric singularity into a Christian Fire and Brimstone Hell.
  "...Ahh, if only this world were itself a living hell."
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Certain skills, Craft Essences and Noble Phantasms can either apply the "Sure Hit" status effect that allows a Servant to ignore the Evade status, or the "Ignore Invincibility" status effect that allows a Servant to ignore both Invincibility status AND Evade status.
  • Multiple Noble Phantasms have the effect of ignoring defense buffs that enemies might have. There are also a handful of Craft Essences, skills, and Noble Phantasms that can apply it as a buff.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Jeanne delivers one to her Alter self toward the end of the first singularity, asking if she still remembers her family. It is Jeanne Alter's answer to this question (or rather, her inability to answer it) that clues Jeanne in that Jeanne Alter wasn't based on the real Jeanne at all, but was created by Caster Gilles using the Holy Grail when he couldn't revive the real deal.
• Army of The Ages: Chaldea summons Servants from all eras of history, including the present, future, and alternate timelines.
• Art Evolution:
  • As part of transitioning into Cosmos in the Lostbelt, all bronze Servants' card arts are updated to have backgrounds like higher rarity Servants, replacing the plain old summoning circle background they had in the past 2 years.
  • The PVs animated by ufotable have much better animations than the PV made by A-1, the official partner studio. Amusingly, starting with the America trailer, A-1 Pictures increased the animation quality of their previews to one-up ufotable.
    • The opening for Cosmos in the Lostbelt is made by Studio Troyca and it also has much better animation than the first opening by A-1.
  • For the animation update for Altria, people also noticed that her sprites got a drastic modification, making her a lot thinner, compared to the original sprite which several fans thought was very similar to a penguin.
  • Almost all new Servants after launch have more elaborate attack animations compared to the original set of 59 Servants to attract more players and more money.
    • The original set of Sabers use the same basic animations for attacks, but Okita, Mordred, etc. have their animations designed to fit their fighting styles, and Santa Alter actually uses her Prana Burst as part of her sword attack.
    • Jeanne Alter, in her appearance as a boss exclusive Ruler, has more or less a Palette Swap of the original Jeanne and had a simple Area of Effect Noble Phantasm. Her playable Avenger counterpart has new attack animations, and a completely different looking Noble Phantasm that only hits one enemy.
    • Several Servants from the original base game have had their battle animations updated to have more visual flair and homage their moves from other Fate media.
    • Due to several Day 1 Servants sharing generic animations, Servants like d'Eon and Heracles have had their animations updated to make them more distinct.
    • Most Servants especially the earlier ones had only one skill casting animation. Certain Servants however has a second animation which triggered when casting a particular skill (like Summer Altria and MHX after revamp), randomly triggered (like Chacha), and even later ones has 2 animations by default (like Mecha Eli-chan, Ereshkigal and Hokusai). Anastasia even has three skill animations.
• The Artifact:
  • Despite the above, the April Fools artwork by Riyo of the bronze Servants still retain the plain summoning circle background that was used since the launch of the game.
  • The Character Level system. For the first few Singularities, it was used in a manner similar to most RPGs, as a measure of gameplay-and-story progression and an indicator of the challenge of a given quest. However, for the majority of the game's lifespan now (roughly from Camelot onwards), it has just come to be expected that Servants need to be at or near max level to be effective anyway, so there's very little purpose nowadays to levels 1-70 or so.
• Artifact Collection Agency: The Folklore Department of the Clock Tower is mentioned specifically in this game as they handle forbidden artifacts that are too dangerous even for magical society which results in Räum breaking into their archives to retrieve the Silver Key for its scheme.
• Artifact of Doom:
  • As usual for the franchise, the Holy Grail. Here multiple Holy Grails have been scattered throughout time and are spewing out servants who then proceed to screw up history (a corrupted Jeanne rampaging through Medieval France, famous conquerors trying to topple Nero's reign early, Blackbeard raiding islands, Jason trying to find The Ark of the Covenant, a fog created by Babbage and Paracelsus that threatens to consume London, America threatened by a Grail-powered army of Celts, etc. Solomon needs them to anchor his demons to the world so the demons can support his NP at any time in history and to stop the planet's rotation.
  • The Okeanos chapter has the Ark of the Covenant from the Bible as the centerpiece of Jason's plans. And just like in the Bible, touching the Ark carelessly kills you outright, even bypassing Heracles' God Hand.
• Artificial Intelligence: Chaldea is using them to simulate the internet since the outside world is gone. Although it's later revealed that the simulation for an idol that Dr. Roman made might not have actually been one, since Merlin's the one running the Magi☆Mari blog.
• Artificial Stupidity: Since enemies are programmed to use their Charge attacks, including Noble Phantasms, as soon as they're ready, they can end up wasting these skills entirely:
  • Arash's Stella. If your whole team has Invincible or Evasion (such as from Jeanne's Luminosité Éternelle), he basically kills himself without accomplishing anything. In fact, one story quest in "GUDAGUDA Honnoji" has him as one of the enemies in the last battle, meaning that if he's the last one standing, just put Invincible or Evasion on one Servant, let him explode, and you'll win.
  • Jeanne's Luminosité Éternelle. If she has no allies with her who can benefit from her buffs, she basically wastes a turn, since even though she gets invincibility and health regen, she also gets stunned. In fact, she'll end up benefitting your team, since they get an additional turn to charge up Noble Phantasms and cool down their skills. And unlike the player's Jeanne, who eventually gets an NP upgrade to remove the self-stun, no such thing happens to any enemy Jeanne until the challenge quest for Imaginary Scramble.
  • EMIYA Alter as the Lost Man boss has a skill, Ampoule Application, which he'll use at the start of his turn automatically, increasing his NP at the cost of 2000 HP. However, he'll use it regardless of how much health he has left, meaning it's entirely possible for him to kill himself if you can get him below 2000 health^note which isn't easy to do, since he has 2 bars of health - the first having 245,000, and the second having 316,500.
  • Enemies can sometimes use skills that provide singe-turn buffs to themselves or their team even if they are last to attack, and as such wasting a turn. Additionally, they may still cast buffs on themselves while affected with the "Nullify Buff" effect, which basically renders buff abilities useless for a specified duration.
• Ascended Extra: Some Chaldea employees are given more focus in the prologue for Cosmos in the Lostbelt, getting names, their own artwork, and are fleshed out with a few character traits.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • King Hassan's NP animation has a glitch where any enemy killed by it would not have their death animation play, only leaving behind their loot. Fans agreed this was incredibly cool and fitting for him, so the developers left it in.
  • Card viewing had a bug where the card borders were left out, allowing players to view the full art. It was turned into an actual gameplay feature after positive reception from fans.
• Ascended Meme: Many of them.
  • As of this game, the term "Saber-face" is officially accepted as the term for Altria's many Expies as it's a hidden trait for them and then Heroine X explicitly calls them that during the Saber Wars event. It was acknowledged again during a livestream when Altria's seiyuu, Ayako Kawasumi, was discussing them.
  • Archer EMIYA's Team Mom and Team Chef status from memes has been acknowledged in-game, such as in Valentine's event when he gives kitchen tools to the protagonist, in Nero Fes when he is put in "Chaldea's Kitchen" team along with other "moms" like Boudica, Irisviel and Raikou, and during GUDAGUDA Strange Tales of the Imperial Holy Grail when Nobunaga referred to him as "the certain red cook".
  • Kojirou's REGEND. Also, his feat of clearing France from dragons has landed him with other dragonslayers for the Moon Festival event.
  • The female protagonist's psychopathic tendencies, from the Learning with Manga. This version of her appeared in the Law of the Jungle CE, in the same artstyle, still bullying Olga Marie and Mash. She pops up again for April Fools, this time strangling Solomon. Riyo has done most of the artwork for the websites promoting official streams for the game and did another CE for the New Year's 2017 Campaign. It's gotten to the point where the female protagonist's official Nendoroid figure not only has her normal face, but her face as depicted by Riyo as well, not to mention the Bond Level-increasing stretchy arm. She made her way into game canon as the main villain of the second anniversary event.
  • Riyo's chibi depictions of the Servants from the same manga became popular among fans and some imitated his artstyle to make their own. Then Riyo made his official version for all of them for April Fools.
  • One of Riyo's gag Servants became official as of "All the Statesmen" from the second anniversary. She's ascended meme personified, summoned into female form just because, and her NP animation is super short, the closest players get to a NP skip function.
  • Saber Lily's crotch-targeting Noble Phantasm is utilized as a weapon in "Saber Wars".
  • During "GUDAGUDA Honnouji", Medea whined about players' only using her to spam Rule Breaker (and that her younger version is more popular) and Gilgamesh of all people whines about the gacha's incredibly tiny chance of getting gold cards (apparently he got the other gold cards, except Altria and her expies).
  • In "Garden of Order", Dr. Roman calls Fou, "our reliable runner". "Fou running" came from how long it would take to load during events.
  • The Mona Lisa CE price has been acknowledged as insanely expensive twice, with Dr. Roman wanting her to change the prices because they're too high during the Garden of Order event. She refuses. Her iron grip on the prices and being the sole supplier of them leads to someone stealing one and distributing forgeries to the masses, leading into the da Vinci and the 7 Fake Heroic Spirits event.
  • Ruler Martha's quest in "Chaldea Heat Odyssey" pits her against Beowulf in a battle of fisticuffs, acknowledging all the Jojos Bizarre Adventure jokes that originated from their NP animations.
  • Siegfried's profile in Fate/Grand Order Material 1 has "sumanai"^note Japanese for sorry written in several places, a reference to his usage of the word used to mock him. Some events also name him "SUMANAI" in capital Roman letters.
  • The oft-used fan moniker for Caster Gilgamesh, Bride Gil, was referenced in the third Nero Fest as he gets paired up with the Bride version of Nero, their team name being Shiny Bride.
  • During Summer 2018, the protagonist can have a chance to call Ibaraki-Douji a "Banana Oni" ('Banana' written in kanji), the same way Western fans have been referring to her as. As a bonus, Ibaraki also calls it a 'tasty nickname'.
  • Ryoma and Oryo's Easter Egg Noble Phantasm artwork where Oryo and Ryoma directly faced the camera with Oryo doing a peace sign resulted in hundreds of snowclones. One of the tables from the Summer 2018 event's ServaFes has a banner with BB and Astolfo doing that very pose.
  • When sharp-eyed fans noticed the demon pillar in the river of the Case Files world map, it leads to rampant speculation that the demon pillar Barbatos would return ^note There are MANY palette-swapped demon pillars and Barbatos isn't particularly memorable on his own. He reached meme status during the final battle when his drops were so good that the collective playerbase completely ignored the others and slaughtered him 6 million times within two hours, spawning countless fanart of him either getting killed or being terrified for his life. He did. During the following summer event, he once again appeared on the event map in the form of a building. This time it had no relevance beyond being a meme.
  • The SE.RA.PH localization has EMIYA longingly say "I want thaaat...", his younger self Shirou's Catchphrase in the Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] Abridged parody.
• Asset Actor:
  • The Massive Ghost enemy is typically used as a stand-in for established boss characters who have their own expression sheets but do not have in-game sprites created, albeit generally having some color changes and a few of the character's clothes added. Some of these characters like Ereshkigal and Ashiya Doman got Promoted to Playable later on with their own unique sprites, but their earlier content still has a Massive Ghost instead of being updated to use their new original assets.
  • Played for laughs in the "All the Statesmen" event. The event is themed around American Servants, and since the roster of American Servants is rather small with Paul Bunyan as the only newcomer introduced, boss fights against Wyatt Earp, Buffalo Bill, Davy Crockett, and Columbia are represented by Altera assuming their identities and being fought in their place, with the protagonist complaining about how lazy the devs are not to implement any of them. ("Oh, COME ON! Wyatt Earp Servant when?!")
• Atlantis: Featured in the fifth story chapter of Cosmos in the Lostbelt. It's explained that Atlantis was the precursor of Grecian civilization; after the Olympian gods died to the White Titan 14,000 years ago, the surviving Atlanteans fled east and eventually became the Greeks.
• Audience Participation: Holmes invites players during "Murder at the Kogetsukan" to guess who the culprit is which plays out as a voting poll with ten quartz as the prize for getting it right.
• Author Appeal:
  • The Agartha chapter is seemingly written to appeal to the female domination fetish with multiple groups of women capturing men, enslaving them and harvesting them for their seed. In an interview, Penthesilea in particular was noted to be a dead giveaway to the audience as to who wrote the chapter given how full she is of the author's fetishes.
  • Any GUDAGUDA event will have a special Craft Essence with bonus effects for the event while featuring Medusa, who's one of the more recurring Fate/stay night Servants to appear in the Koha-Ace verse as well as the absolute favorite of the author/artist Keikenchi (who tends to lavish praises to Medusa in almost every opportunity he could get during the gag manga of GUDAGUDA).
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The Grand Battle of the "GUDAGUDA Yamataikoku" event is underscored by a rock arrangement of the event's theme song, "Meikyo Shisui", celebrating both Nobukatsu rising to the occasion and Himiko receiving the powers of her still-living self to become Super Himiko to battle Kukochihiko.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In "Chaldea Summer Memory", the player can pick one of three options for each building to develop on the island. Typically, the final one is awesome but impractical (and usually suggested by Mordred), while the first one is Boring, but Practical and the second one is slightly more elaborate or luxurious; mechanically, each one is usually successively more expensive in total despite accomplishing the same thing and progressing the story. For example, the first building is a place for the master to live — either a wood cabin (simple, since the party begin in a forest), a stone building, or an iron cube that they quickly find out gets too hot to live in.
  • In gameplay, the Arctic Region Chaldea Uniform qualifies as this. While it's first and third skills are nothing impressive (a heal that removes defence debuffs for the first, and an evasion that will dodge the first attack that hits the targeted party member in the first three turns) its second skill is where it shines, as at max level it applies a 40% attack buff and 20% noble phantasm damage buff to one party member for one turn. These two buffs multiply together, which means that if you buff a servant who is about to use their noble phantasm, it will deal a massive 68% bonus damage, a massive boost coming from a single buff. Unfortunately this damage potential is only available at the mystic code's max level (with the buff only granting 20% attack and 10% noble phantasm damage at level 1), and in order to get it to that level, you will need to sink an enormous 155 million experience points into it. For reference, the starting mystic code, and most mystic codes given out during events, only require around 8-9 million points to get to max level, with only the Chaldea Combat Uniform, Atlas Academy Uniform, and Mages Association Uniform being anywhere near comparable in terms of exp required (and even then they only require 70 million, less than half what the Artic Uniform requires, and almost all of their skills are barely affected by their level). This means that if a player wants to unlock the burst damage potential of the Arctic Uniform they'll need to use it almost constantly over many months of gameplay in order to level it up, time that could be spent using mystic codes that require far less investment.
  • One of the Class Score upgrades allows you to boost your Servant's Attack and Defense for a single turn through using a Command Spell on them. Considering that Command Spells are Too Awesome to Use and are only used as a free party revive, this is less useful that it sounds. As such, it only sees usage in quests where party revives are disallowed.
• Awesome, but Temporary: An In-Universe example with the Klironomia from the Atlantic Lostbelt. Essentially nanomachines that are harvested from the Greek Gods, if imbued into a strong enough person (like a Heroic Spirit), it gives a general boost to the users combat capabilities, while also giving a unique attribute based on the God that it came from (both in gameplay and story); Ares' makes Musashi more offensively powerful, while Mash gets Athena's, giving her a general boost to her card types and making her tankier. The downside is that while the Klironmia is very powerful (the heroes went from barely being able to beat an out of practice Olympian Citizen to beating more dangerous foes after getting some), it also requires the Kilronomia to be in supply for it to last, with Atlantis in particular having a major plot point be the heroes efforts to find them before Odysseus can. Tellingly, once the Atlantic Lostbelt is destroyed, the abilities fade away, with the only traces being data collected by the heroes.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The Shadow Border, an Imaginary Numbers Space Submersible originally intended by Chaldea for exploration of the Singularities via the Paper Moon, an Imaginary Numbers compass created by Atlas. Da Vinci's backup body functions as the pilot, put into stasis until the day calls for its use. The protagonists end up using it to escape Chaldea after Anastasia takes over, diving into the Imaginary Numbers dimension to escape the Oprichniki, with it becoming their new base.

B

• Back for the Finale: Almost all of the Servants from each of the previous Orders show up in the Final Order to help you take down the Big Bad and save the future. For the fight against Andromalius, most of the Servants who debuted in events show up to help you fight it.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: The game introduced the guaranteed SSR Servant on rate-up within 330 rolls mechanic several years into its runtime, which will let them roll the featured Servant if they are not obtained after 329 rolls. The primary catch is that it does not carry between banners, getting the SSR Servant before then will nullify the guarantee, and certain SSR Servants will only be on rate-up for a very short amount of time, giving players a slim window to cash in on that guarantee.
• Badass Crew:
  • The Argonauts in the Okeanos chapter, a group of the greatest Greek heroes led by Jason show up albeit heavily shrunk to just him, Hektor, Atalante, Medea Lily, and Heracles.
    • The Argonauts of the Atlantis chapter start as more of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits than anything: rather than the greatest heroes of Classical Mythology, they're composed of whatever Heroic Spirits Jason and Chaldea could find alive and willing, resulting in a mishmash of mostly underpowered Servants from all over history. By the end of the chapter, through raw guts they've taken on an army of supermen and monsters led by two of Greece's most cunning heroes, killed two gods, and opened the path to Olympus. Though sadly, they all died in the process.
  • The Knights of the Round Table. All of them have the potential to be summoned as Servants in this game and they're some of the deadliest opponents seen so far.
  • Your party and your support team at Chaldea count, with them defeating several renowned Heroic Spirits, a primordial Goddess, a Hive Mind of demons, and even an embodiment of humanity's lewd desires.
• Badass Family: The Emiyas. All of them (Kiritsugu, Irisviel, Shirou, Illya, and technically Chloe) are Servants in this game. They're fought together (plus Heracles and Young Gil) as the optional final battle of the Prisma Illya event.
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In Okeanos, Drake has a Holy Grail, except it's actually a part of the correct timeline. It's Blackbeard who has the Grail associated with the singularity.
  • Ozymandias has the Holy Grail of the sixth singularity, and it is the one that the heroes are looking for, but he's not the one who's destroying humanity in this singularity. Though he does fight the heroes to test them later, he surrenders his Holy Grail afterwards and helps them in their final attack on Camelot.
  • In Babylonia, Gilgamesh has a grail: it's not the one the heroes are looking for, but it's the reason the Three Goddesses Alliance is attacking. At the end of the order, you get Gilgamesh's grail in addition to Solomon's as a reward for the heroes' efforts.
  • The Fate/EXTRA CCC crossover was seemingly billed as yet another funny gag event, with a goofy title card and all. However, once you start the event, it's revealed that this is a gaiden chapter for the Epic of Remnant storyline, and the goofy title card is switched out for the real one. You even get to fight a Beast!
  • The Fourth Night of the first Christmas Event ("Almost Weekly Santa Alter") ends with a revelation that the next letter is from Gilgamesh, and the Fifth Night's title suggests that the player will have to fight Gilgamesh, who unsurprisingly, just wrote the letter to get Santa Alter to visit him^note since Santa Alter is a Saber-face, and much like in Stay Night, Gilgamesh believes he is entitled to Saber. While Gilgamesh does appear in the Fifth Night, he's The Unfought for this event, and he doesn't even meet the player character and Santa Alter; instead, Santa Alter and the player leave before they have to deal with Gil, and instead, they get confronted by Nursery Rhyme and Jack the Ripper, who summoned Santa Alter due to not being able to properly experience Christmas.
  • In Lancer Altria's interlude, Merlin appeared in the protagonist's dreams and arranged a meeting with a mighty blonde king who wields a spear... who turned out to be Fionn.
  • With "Murder at the Kogetsukan" being a detective story, it is prone to twists. One remarkable twist is regarding the Violet family where Adamska's (Lancelot) wife turns out to be Harriet (Euryale) and not Eva (Raikou), who turns out to be Juliet's (Stheno's) twin sister. Mash mistakenly assumed it when she makes a diagram of the family.^note Although certain clues point out this. Juliet mentioned having a fraternal twin but didn't say it was Harriet. Hawthorne (Moriarty) also stated that Juliet looks a lot like her mother when she was younger. Eva is not stated to be Adamska's wife, nor Juliet's mother is stated to be Eva. The behavior of Adamska and Eva is also odd when Eva tries to hit on Morris, Chris, and even the protagonist, yet Adamska is only embarrassed by what she is doing.
  • For "ServaFes", Chaldea is dispatched to Hawaii after detecting a new Foreigner there. While they indeed encounter new Foreigner Heroine XX, she turns out to be not the one they detected and is also after the threat, who is revealed to be BB who had taken advantage of her Moon Cancer class to conceal her Foreigner status.
• Balance Buff: Servants have generally been fixed or made better in one of four ways.
  • First is to simply change their hidden values or skills outright. For example, Waver was considered very low tier until he was remade into the best all-purpose support character at the time, while during the first summer event swimsuit Mordred and Altria didn't perform at the level DW wanted, so both had their NP gain per hit increased. This is used the least for balance reasons, as some Servants are designed with hidden values/skills being a certain way on purpose such as Assassin Kiritsugu having a purposely lower NP gain rate due to having a multi-hit Arts NP and two Arts cards that if Brave Chained could easily allow NP looping with a higher NP gain rate.
  • Next, some interludes improve the NP damage multiplier^note Usually by 1/3, so the 300% for Buster AOE would be 400% while the 1200% for quick ST would go to 1600%, add or improve upon the NP's secondary effects, add a new skill such as Concept Improvement or improve an existing one to match the games current meta. These are also accompanied by a short story segment that is used to justify the characters increase in power, such as Altria having some of the seals on Excalibur removed. Brynhildr, for example, got both an NP interlude and a skill upgrade interlude, which jumped up her power significantly.
  • Following that, there are storyless Rank Up Quests consisting of 3-5 rounds of combat, generally ending in a fight against Servants related to the Servant being improved. These are always accompanied by skill gain, improvement, or NP buff, but require the character to usually be fully ascended and to have reached a certain Bond level with the player. Most launch Servants below 4 star rarity require one to unlock their third skill.
  • Last and rarest, is story chapter buffs. These are gained when reaching certain moments in the story, allowing the Servant to gain a buff. Due to how this works, Mash is the only character to consistently have this manner of buffing, with only two other characters having a buff in some form that is unblocked via the story.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy:
  • Enemy Picts, besides the full head helmets they wear, are nude all the way down and don't have certain anatomical features in their sprite.
  • Depending on the artist, the artwork for male Servants may not feature nipples.
  • SE.RA.PH's map resembles a gigantic Sakura/Kiara with the naughty bits either not there or covered up by gameplay nodes.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: A given ability of Masters in the Fate universe is that they share dreams with their Servants. The Main Character gets this in spades. Many of the Time to Unlock More True Potential quests involve battling the Enemy Within of various Servants; usually stated to be All Just a Dream but that power-up is still there.
• Beach Episode: The first summer event ("Chaldea Summer Memory / Heat Odyssey") is this. You and several of your Servants have gone to a deserted tropical island and while relaxing there, have started your own tropical resort.
• Begin with a Finisher:
  • There are many equippable "Craft Essences" for your Servants that give them a number of Noble Phantasm charge at the start of each battle; during the beginning of the battle, you can also activate skills that give a certain Servant some NP charge, so that when they enter attack phase, their Noble Phantasm will be available at the first turn. Using this strategy is key to quick farming, as well as dealing a lot of damage on bosses in the first turn.
  • The Final Boss for Part 1 opens the fight with his Noble Phantasm, which is so strong that your frontline Servants are likely to die right away. Before the attack, he uses a buff (among others) that makes his attacks pierce invincibility unless you use a "skill sealing" skill on him beforehand. Even then, you still need an invincibility/evasion buff (or a hefty amount of attack debuffing/defense buff) to survive it.
• Behemoth Battle: Avicebron summons Adam to fight off Ivan the Terrible's giant mammoth in the first Lostbelt, with the two duking it out in a special CG.
• Big Damn Heroes: Every single Heroic Spirit you've encountered thus far summons themselves to the Final Order to help subdue the seventy-two Demon Pillars to clear a path to Solomon.
• Bigger on the Inside: The Shadow Border, Chaldea's Base on Wheels, uses magic to distort its interior to make it a lot larger, roughly the size of two cruisers though there isn't enough personal space for everyone as only the protagonist, Mash, da Vinci, Holmes, and Goldorf get their own rooms while everyone else has to bunk together.
• Bittersweet Ending: As is standard for the franchise. Humanity has been saved from Beast I, and Mash is resurrected and given a normal lifespan. However, Roman/Solomon has erased himself from all points of existence and the Throne of Heroes to weaken Goetia, while Mash's resurrection comes at the cost of Fou's power and intelligence that does neutralize the threat of Fou becoming Beast IV, also means the end of Fou as a sentient being. The world will be in disarray due to the year that the world was incinerated and most of man's extinction - the original threat to humanity - will still happen, and another one of the Beasts is acting on its own, leaving the future uncertain. Finally, the methods the protagonist and their allies used to save the world broke all kinds of laws and regulations in the Mage world, which comes back to haunt them in chapter 2.
• Bizarro Universe: The "Servant Universe" where Servants are often parodied and loosely-based on other franchises and memes. Yet it is canon. Sillier events in the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness are tied to the Servant Universe even if not directly from them; such as GudaGuda and Halloween.
• Black Vikings: The concept of Pseudo-Servants toys with this tropes, as certain Heroic and Divine Spirit who cannot be Servants by themselves fused with unmatched human vessels in terms of nationality or race, like the Chinese Zhuge Liang and Sima Yi uses the English Waver Velvet and Reines respectively as vessels. Averted by Muramasa who have a fellow Japanese as his vessel.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: In the third Halloween event, "Demonic Climb - Himeji Castle War", the Amazones CEO asks Nite-Brite some specifics about the giant Mecha Eli-chan looming behind the castle. Nite-Brite says something in blahs, the Amazones CEO replies in yadda yaddas, and thus the CEO concludes that she wants one for herself in two lines of "dialogue". The protagonist's reply is an incredulous "You do!?"
• Bland-Name Product:
  • Mysterious Heroine X Alter's Valentine CE is a cup of Spacebucks Hot Cocoa.
  • Osakabe-hime orders her otaku stuff from the website Amazones.
  • Osakabe-hime plays Creature Hunting during the summer 2018 event and becomes really addicted to the game.
  • During the Second Summer Event, while Nobunaga is planning her career as a Rock God, she talks about streaming concerts on ChalTube
• "Blind Idiot" Translation:
  • The translation of the female version of King Arthur's name. Despite stating in-story that it's (supposed to be) the feminine version of "Artorius", and that the feminine form "Artoria" already exists, TYPE-MOON has insisted on the Engrish version "Altria", which is what Google Translate spits out when you feed it the Japanese version of her name. The localization team have flat out stated they hate having to use that name, but are forced to and have no control over it.
  • The "Corrupted God" enemy that debuted in "Murasaki Shikibu and the Seven Cursed Books" event was originally translated as "Tarnished Paper". While "kami" can mean both "paper" and "god", the enemy really has nothing to do with books or paper in appearance and behavior. It was finally changed to "Tarnished God" after some time.
• Bloodless Carnage: Played straight for the most part due to engine limitations. That being said, several servants do happen to have blood spatters as part of their attack animations, and on top of that some Noble Phantasms do invoke High-Pressure Blood.
• Book Ends: For Part 1, it both begins and ends with Ritsuka holding Mash's hand while a structure crumbles around them and they are saved by a rayshift. In both cases Mash is reborn through an outside force, her activating her Demi-Servant powers for the first time and Fou returning Mash to life just in time to save Ritsuka.
• Bootstrapped Theme: Altria's Leitmotif, "Sword of Promised Victory", has gone from being her theme specifically to the theme that represents Arthurian legend in general, with it being used for boss music remixes against the Lion King's Knights and Faerie Knight Gawain, partially used to represent Morgan like when she attacks Olympus with Rhongomyniad in the story, and its incorporation into various themes relating to the Knights of the Round in anime adaptations. What's especially notable in how much it's become removed from the context of Altria in Grand Order is the new versions of Altria featured in the main story don't actually use "Sword of Promised Victory" as their theme and have completely new themes to represent just how different they are from the original.
• Books That Bite: The London update introduces Spell Book-type Mooks, though they don't bite and hurl magic balls instead. They drop the Forbidden Page material.
• Boring, but Practical: In "Chaldea Summer Memory", the player can pick one of three options for each building to develop on the island. Typically, the topmost/first option is the serious, somewhat boring option, the following one is slightly more elaborate or luxurious, and the final one is Awesome, but Impractical (and usually suggested by Mordred); mechanically, each one is usually successively more expensive in total despite accomplishing the same thing and progressing the story. For example, eventually the party decides to build an observation post: either a Lighthouse, a Pagoda, or a Rock Tower (that ends up looking like a monstrous castle spire).
• Boss in Mook Clothing: In Lostbelt 1 you have a choice between assisting woodcutters and assisting miners. Pick the woodcutters, and you end up facing down a gold-ranked Assassin-class D'yavol Tron with 500,000 hit points, hard-hitting area-wide attacks, and area-wide skill and Phantasm seals. The miners' battle is a dozen giant demon boars— annoying, but much easier.
• Boss Remix: This happens quite frequently throughout the game for all three storylines, usually taking either map music or someone's Leitmotif.
  • The Demon Pillar battle theme from the fifth Singularity onwards is a remix of the title theme.
  • The Knights of the Round Table have an ominous version of "Sword of Promised Victory" as their boss music.
  • Goddess Rhongomyniad's boss music is a remix of her theme.
  • All eight Demon Pillars in the final Singularity have a remixed version of each Singularity's map music.
  • Goetia's third battle has an orchestral remix of the first opening song.
  • BB usually has a remix of "BB Channel" playing (which was not her primary battle theme in CCC, hence the significance of her non-battle theme getting a remix).
  • "Nine Drive" remixes not one, but five different themes, as it's Tamamo's theme interlaced with the first four Lostbelt map tracks to represent how a derivative of Tamamo no Mae in the form of Tamamo Vitch has been using the Lostbelts to power herself.
  • Zeus' boss music is a remix of his theme.
  • "Astoreth" is fought with a sci-fi synthesizer remix of Ishtar's regular theme as the background music.
  • The fifth Gudaguda event has a rock remix of its vocal theme song for the Climax Boss battle.
• Boss Subtitles: Notably in the sixth Lostbelt, the four Calamity bosses fought at the very end have these as the boss intro instead of the usual Grand Battle title card.
• Boss Warning Siren:
  • When the battle transition for the third round of a battle is labelled Fatal Battle instead of the usual Battle, it usually has some sort of boss with higher HP and attack stat. Quests that outright start with the Fatal Battle label are typically a one-round battle against a Servant.
  • When it's the Climax Boss or Final Boss of a Singularity, the Servant battle is labelled Grand Battle as a sign of its importance to the plot.
  • All Beasts have Advent Beast: A Human Evil ______ and the latter part is Red and Black and Evil All Over text to emphasize their danger. For Goetia and Tiamat, it's "manifests", Kiara "transfigured", Kama "overflows", and Vitch "accumulates" and later "propogates".
  • The Olympians have a unique battle warning as their Greek names are chiseled into a slate of metal by some kind of laser. For a special flourish, Aphrodite and Demeter's names are accompanied with pink petals and Zeus' name isn't engraved by a laser, it's his lightning.
  • Four of the Calamities fought in Avalon le Fae all have a unique boss intro where a mural depicting them is engraved, followed by their Boss Subtitles, before it's all burned away as their unique icon is burned into the screen, a bell rings, and then their name appears also via fire.
• Bowdlerization: Emiya Alter's skin tone is noticeably lighter on the NA server compared to the others, and several jokes alluding to his resemblance to a black man have been changed. The localization team did this because of some potentially racist connotations that were associated with the character.
• Bragging Rights Reward: By getting a Servant's bond level to 10, you unlocked a special CE that only they can use. This requires getting a million bond points or more when an average quest only gives around a thousand at most, meaning it takes months of normal play to unlock one. Once that's done, though, you'll probably never use them for two reasons: First, the Servant is at bond ten now, meaning you're wasting potential bond points unless you've used a very rare item. Second, the vast majority of them aren't even that good, especially since they're locked at 100/100 stats and can't be leveled. This means you're missing out on nearly 2000 HP and attack compared to more easily accessible CEs like Golden Sumo or rare gacha CEs like Black Holy Grail or Formalcraft.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In Salem, Hans' In-Universe, Chaldea in-jokey adaptation of The Three Little Pigs crossed with the burning of Jeanne d'Arc has a script with Jeanne d'Arc and Jeanne Alter breaking the fourth wall with meta-commentary about how bad the script or the acting is. This is also a Play Within a Play for the residents of Salem, making it doubly absurd that these nonsensical characters that exist only in Chaldea are now making observations to the audience of 17th-century British colonists.
    Jeanne Alter: "Dammit! Didn't they teach you idiots to pull your punches at acting school or whatever!?"
  • Often in some of the sillier events like GUDAGUDA. Special note to your intentionally trying to be silly during the Fate/Accel Zero Order event by mistaking Saber for Mysterious Heroine X. All it does is make Mash tell you to cut it out and that this is meant to be a "serious event".
• Breakout Character:
  • From previous Fate works are Ozymandias, Hassan of Serenity, Iskandar, Karna, Heracles and Cú Chulainn^note the fact that four versions of himself are in here actually put him behind Altria in most alternate versions of a single Servant. Some popular human characters also return as pseudo-Servants like Waver, Rin, and Taiga.
  • For debuting characters, there's Marie Antoinette, Scáthach, Kiyohime, Merlin, King Hassan, Musashi, and last but certainly not least, Jeanne Alter. There's also Ereshkigal, who, despite not being playable and not even having a combat sprite, was so popular thanks to the Babylonia chapter that she was Promoted to Playable during the third Christmas event, and this happened purely because of fan demand for her.
• Breakout Villain:
  • Gilgamesh. Having first featured in Fate/stay night as an antagonist with a rather minor role in two of the routes, Gilgamesh has since appeared as a major antagonist in Fate/Zero, as one of the four playable Servants in Fate/EXTRA CCC and as one of the Servants in Fate/strange Fake, as well as other minor features. To date, he has appeared, in some manner, in almost every single entry in the Fate/ series. He's also the main companion of the Babylonia chapter, as a Caster.
  • Saber Alter is this as well. She was only in the Heaven's Feel route, but she's been used in other works as a gag, character analysis or just be an intimidating opponent. There are currently 5 versions of her (Saber, Santa [Rider], Swimsuit [Rider], Lancer, and Mysterious Heroine X [Berserker]) in this game. She's also the main villain of the Fuyuki chapter and a major ally of the Shinjuku chapter.
  • Jeanne Alter was originally conceptualized as a one-off villain for the First Singularity. She was so well-received that she was reincarnated as one of the few Avengers in the game, becomes a main ally in the Shinjuku chapter, got an additional costume, and has made additional appearances in bonus stories and events (such as her Santa Lily Alter [Lancer] and Swimsuit [Berserker] forms).
• Breather Episode:
  • Though no less action-packed than other chapters, America has notably little to do with the overarching plotlines compared to London and Camelot and goes back to the simple "fight Servants, get Grail, solve Singularity" formula of the first several chapters.
  • The sixth Lostbelt probably has the most straightforward example so far: sandwiched between two of the chapter's more intense parts is the "Chocolate Empire Edinburgh" section, which might as well be a mini-Valentine event that somehow wandered into the main story in terms of both tone and subject matter.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • The easiest way to obtain Saint Quartz for the gacha to obtain Servants is to spend real money. Furthermore, for some events, you basically must have gacha-exclusive CEs to farm its currencies effectively. Thankfully you can just borrow a friend's. On the other hand, the game is designed in a way that it's possible to complete the storyline by using lower-tier servants from the Friend Point Summoning system up until the Camelot singularity where the difficulty increases (and even then, certain servants such as the 3-star Euryale will carry the team well thanks to her being an anti-male Archer).
  • There are also one-time x10 Summons where you are guaranteed a 5-star Servant. However, you can only use paid Saint Quartz (those that are bought with real money, and not the free Saint Quartz obtained in the game) to use these x10 Summons.
  • However, it is downplayed in this game compared to others since the game doesn't sell anything else that would give a paying user any shortcuts and advantages like Freemiums and other premium stuff.
• Brick Joke:
  • The fact that Mordred is the main ally in an Industrial Revolution-era London filled with Gentleman and a Scholar types investigating a murder mystery scenario instead of, say, a certain great detective is lampshaded. As it turns out, said great detective ends up in a Singularity filled with Knights of the Round, having been explicitly hired to stay out of London.
  • In the SE.RA.PH chapter, when the heroes finally make it to BB, she initially thinks that it's Robin Hood whom she sent on some errands returning. A bit later, Robin returns from those errands just in time for the battle against Kiara.
  • During April Fool's, Nero has a livestream where she plays KanColle. Cue the second Summer event, where Caster Nero looks AND plays like someone out of Kantai Collection.
  • After the Orleans singularity, Kiyohime shows up in your Present Box, having carried out her promise to follow you home. She appears in the first Halloween event as an ally again... and makes a remark about packing herself into a present box with a pretty ribbon.
  • A joke that spans a year: Stheno and Euryale have Valentine's chocolates that are either made with love or hastily-put together. Where did they base this from? Medusa Lancer's Valentine's chocolate, which implies that her older sisters copied her design poorly.
• Britain Is Only London: Played with. While one Singularity in the first storyline is solely in London, the second storyline has a Lostbelt that encompasses the entirety of Britain and the protagonists traverse all over England, starting in Cornwall and London is merely only one part of their travels.
• Broken Masquerade:
  • This is one of the twists for the F/GO facet of the Nasuverse. Once Goetia is beaten, human history is saved and the world outside Chaldea resumes like normal... except that it's still eighteen months after the beginning of the crisis (July 31, 2015, to December 25, 2016, in the original JP release). All timekeeping devices record this and astronomical observation of the stars confirms it, but the world at large has no idea where their 18 months went. While the Mages' Association and other groups are trying to keep something of a lid on things, people know that Something Happened.
  • Scheherazade's goal in Agartha is to turn the already-shaky Broken Masquerade into full-on The Unmasqued World by dropping a floating continent onto a major modern city, forcing the Mystic into becoming a part of daily life.
  • Later, once Salem rolls around, a singularity appears where modern-day Salem and Danvers, Massachusets should be - except, unlike all other singularities, this one is imposed on the modern day, creating a void area around Salem-Danvers nearly seven kilometers in diameter. This time even the mainstream press gets to record this one, at one point the US Army is ready to charge in, and the Mages' Association, Assembly of the 8th Sacrament, and other organizations have to work in concert to help keep something inside the singularity from escaping. Da Vinci notes that this incident is so extreme it could end Chaldea - though, in the end, Chaldea suffered a different fate.
  • Exacerbated even further with Cosmos in the Lostbelt, as the Foreign God's arrival completely upends the status quo on Earth and crushes every single nation, turning the world into a bizarre white blankness and reveals that aliens and other beings exist out there. The prologue for the first Lostbelt indicates that the few surviving settlements are still trying to figure out what the hell is going on as one Muggle sets out to record everything for posterity.
• But Not Too Bi: While there are plenty of female Servants who openly lust for the protagonist regardless of their gender, most of the male Servants don't do the same, even the confirmed bisexuals like Iskander or Gilgamesh. The few overt examples of male Servants being even implicitly interested in the male version of the protagonist are those like Astolfo, who looks identical to a girl right down to the clothing and Fergus, who makes it clear he is not interested in pursuing a relationship (although his bond 5 line does imply romantic feelings, even though he's ok with the protagonist keeping it platonic).
• But Thou Must!: The player is regularly given options as to what dialogue the Player Character will say. These "choices" may alter the next battle or some following dialogue, but never in a way that actually changes the course of events. This is really just a way to present the protagonist delivering their lines, and in many cases, you are meant to read the two options not as opposing choices but sequentially, as one unified paragraph. This all naturally forces certain behaviors onto the player, sometimes contradictory ones. For example, in Kiyohime's Interlude, she's confronted with a shadow servant that calls her out on the less savory aspects of her personality. The player is given a choice of responses, but both of them object to the accusations and defend Kiyohime. However, in the first Summer event player interactions with Lancer Kiyohime force them to act afraid of her due to the same tendencies they had previously denied existing.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Siegfried has been treated as one by the fandom because of his gameplay prowess being considered pitiful, with the creators encouraging this, making "sorry" his catchphrase as he fails to live up to expectations and him as the butt of several jokes in events.
  • Edward Teach pretty much gets screwed over every time he tries to do some antics in events.
• Bystander Syndrome: The Wandering Sea are willing to let Chaldea into their entrance and use it as a base, so long as you don't disturb their workshops. However, they are unwilling to lend further aid beyond that as they're unconcerned with human civilization.

C

• Call-Back:
  • Every time an Arthurian character appears in the post-Fuyuki chapters or an event, there's usually a dialogue choice to refer back to Saber Alter in Fuyuki, since she's the first Arthurian Servant the protagonist has canonically encountered.
  • A rather depressing one happens in Babylonia. At one point in the story, Gilgamesh's attendant, Siduri, talks about how raising hands usually indicates a sign of surrender. Later on, one of the Lahmus you encounter is heavily implied to be her, since it does nothing but raise its hands at you.
  • Dr. Roman hits upon the theory during the final singularity that Solomon's body is actually being possessed by an outside entity using the abilities of Solomon, comparing it to Kingu's situation with Enkidu.
  • Way back in Orleans, Mozart claims that there is nothing more beautiful than a parting smile. Mash gives the protagonist one in Solomon while she's holding back the full brunt of Ars Almadel Solomonis to protect her senpai, knowing that she's not going to survive it. It's indeed a beautiful smile.
• The Cavalry: In Solomon, the Chaldean Team is saved from the infinitely-regenerating 72 Demon Pillars by nearly every Heroic Spirit the Protagonist and Mash met from past Singularities and special events banding together to fight them off.
• Came from the Sky:
  • The protagonist and Mash rayshift to Babylonia in this manner as the location they are supposed to appear is within a Bounded Field which blocks any outside interference and caused the rayshift to bounce and send them flying mid-air.
  • Happens again in Shinjuku when a Bounded Field expels all non-Evil Servants the protagonist goes with, leaving them falling in the sky alone until they're saved by Archer of Shinjuku.
  • And once again at the beginning of Shimosa when the protagonist finds themselves mid-air and later caught by Musashi when she sees them falling from the sky.
  • Also happens quite frequently in events, to the point where when it happens in the beginning of the Apocrypha crossover the protagonist's reaction is practically boredom.
• The Cameo:
  • Many characters that aren't Servants from the Fate franchise appear as the picture of Craft Essences.
  • Almost all the characters who aren't Ryougi Shiki from The Garden of Sinners show up in Garden of Order's event-exclusive Craft Essences. Two of them (Touko and Azaka) even show up in the trailer.
  • The seven Fujou building ghosts and Kirie Fujou appear as an enemy type in the Garden of Order event.
  • Alice Kuonji's Cock Robin is part of Robin's final costume.
  • Miyu, Luvia, Tanaka, and Angelica make an appearance in Craft Essences for the Prisma Illya crossover.
  • A petrified Matou Shinji appears in First Order whose blood is sucked by Medusa to establish what she'll do to Ritsuka, Mash, and Olga. Then she rips his head off.
  • The very last chocolate sculpture available during the Valentine 2018 event is a chocolate Grail-kun. It even produces chocolate knives for everyone!
  • Some Servants are limited Servants without any line in FGO outside of Valentine's.
• Canon Foreigner: The corrupted Rider Darius III and corrupted Lancer adult Medusa in First Order anime special.
• Card Cycling: A player draws their cards from a deck of 15, 5 for each of a player's three servants, and every turn, a random hand of five is drawn out from it until it's exhausted, whereupon it refills and reshuffles. All effects that force the current hand to be redrawn from the deck, also force it to be discarded first, and the new hand to come from a refilled and reshuffled deck.
  • The Mage's Association Uniform's "Command Shuffle" Mystic Code.
  • Altria Pendragon Ruler's "Royal Card" skills.
• Cast Herd: You're unlikely to see, say, Iskandar interact with Scheherazade or Francis Drake with Oda Nobunaga. Instead, they tend to be given their own little subgroups like the Knights of the Round^note Altria, Mordred, Gawain, Lancelot, Tristan, Bedivere, Agravain, Merlin, and Arthur or the GUDAGUDA Servants^note Okita and Nobunaga, who are later joined by Chacha and Hijikata, though some characters can belong to multiple herds. The red mantled Archer, for example, is EMIYA around the cast from Fate/Stay Night but Nameless around Tamamo or Nero while Gawain can also show up with the Extra cast. Singularities can shake things up, however, and allow things like David showing up in Okeanos and flirting with Atalante. These are generally the exception, however, rather than the rule. In fact, the Singularities themselves often end up creating new herds, such as that of the Orleans crew, or the tendency of Quetzalcoatl to show up around Ishtar.
• Casting Gag:
  • It's not a coincidence that Mash says "senpai" a lot.
  • Merlin's voice actor voiced Arthur for the Fate/Prototype OVA and Drama CD. Some people suspected that since the Merlin of Fate/Prototype is female, she'd be voiced by Altria's VA as part of the gag... and wouldn't you know it, they were right. Proto-Arthur's Seal of the Round Table is undone with Kawasumi's voice during his NP! The gag goes further as Kawasumi does the voice for Fou, while at a presentation, it was mentioned that the Prototype version of Fou is voiced by Sakurai.
  • Kenichi Suzumura and Maaya Sakamoto once again play a couple in a Type-Moon work.
  • For the English dub of the First Order anime and all other adaptations, Erica Mendez once played Yuuki, a young girl who was known as the "Absolute Sword". Now she's playing Mash, a young girl who might as well be called the "Absolute Shield". They're also both Secretly Dying and both do die, though Mash manages to come back.
  • The voice actor of Antonio Salieri, Toshihiko Seki, is occasionally mistaken for Tomokazu Seki due to sharing a surname, yet unrelated. The latter is the voice actor of Mozart.
  • Kenji Akabane is known for his role as the Producer in The Idolmaster and one of the idols he manages is Takane Shijou, a long white haired woman voiced by Yumi Hara, an almost exact parallel to his role as Kadoc and the character's relationship with Anastasia.
  • Sieg gets excited about the idea of ninjas and the presence of Servants in Chaldea. Fuuma Kotaro is also voiced by his voice actor Natsuki Hanae.
  • Jun Fukuyama voicing pretty boy Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di might make you want to yell "ALL HAIL EMPEROR QIN SHI HUANG DI!!" For a bonus, he's also voiced Ying Zheng in Kingdom.
  • Da Vinci and Jeanne are both voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. So for Da Vinci's English debut in the virtual reality game, Jeanne's actress from the Apocrypha dub, Erika Harlacher, also plays Da Vinci.
  • For the Babylonia musical, the casting agency brought in Saki Akai, an actual professional wrestler, to play Quetzalcoatl. After the musical, she named one of her finishing moves after the Luchadora Rider when she went back to wrestling.
  • Nobuo Tobita and Satomi Arai voicing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, referencing their work together in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam as Kamille Bidan and Fa Yuiry^note Only in the compilation movie trilogy, though..
• Celestial Deadline: Even though Chaldea survived the incineration of the world, all systems still point to human history permanently ending two years later, giving the protagonists that small amount of time to save the world before that predicted event happens. They canonically barely make it, beating Goetia and restoring the Earth on the very last day before history permanently ends.
• Central Theme: Humanity. The entire quest of the story focuses on saving human history by correcting singularities, which have a "Humanity Foundation Value" that dictates how much of a distortion they create. However, from Camelot onward, the story focuses on a different definition of "humanity" - namely, the qualities that make a human being human. The Lostbelts then cover a different perspective, namely the idea of exploring what would happen if humanities core values were corrupted or twisted into something else.
  • In Camelot, the Lion King is a brutal Well-Intentioned Extremist due to her Divine Spirit mentality who wishes to preserve a tiny portion of "humanity", picked to her exacting standards, in a fashion that will see the rest of the world burn but will definitely at least save something of mankind, but once Bedivere returns Excalibur to her, allowing her to at last die, the goddess Rhongomyniad which now wears Altria Pendragon's flesh can at least comprehend the humanity that would lead to others opposing her and wanting to take the longer gamble of stopping Solomon outright and saving everyone, even if she still believes she acted for the best.
  • In Babylonia, the focus is on bonding with the citizens of Uruk by just living life with them, all while fighting off the gods whose "higher" perspectives make them antagonistic (but not necessarily evil, in part because the Protagonist can appeal to their own "human" qualities).
  • This theme is at its most apparent in the final battle. In Solomon, Mash rejects Grand Caster's vision of a World of Silence because, while the people are smiling in their immortal state, it's all false because they don't know what it's like to live because of their immortality. Dr. Roman reveals himself to have been the true Solomon, the real King of Magic and not the Ars Goetia in his guise. Because he lived his human life only by the will of the Israeli people and God, Solomon wished on the Holy Grail to be incarnated as a normal human, so that he could live a second life by his own volition. Mash's visceral Heroic Sacrifice motivates Fou to sacrifice all of his power and intelligence to bring her back from the dead, leading him to muse that her humanity was enough to "defeat" him, the Fourth Beast. Even Goetia has an Alas, Poor Villain moment after his demonic power is lost and he is reduced to a human in Solomon's half-melted body, finally understanding mortality first-hand and fighting the Protagonist one last time so that his last moments won't be meaningless, even if he's already lost.
  • All of the Lostbelts have fundamentally changed humanity into favoring one element of life above all others, and the result is that they have become almost universally unbalanced and flawed even more so than usual.
    • The Russian Lostbelt favors Might Makes Right to the point where humanity has essentially mutated into a tribe of wolfmen, and the serious lack of empathy for the "weak" has caused social and technological stagnation for hundreds of years, since those things are creations of the weak to serve the naturally strong.
    • The Scandinavian Lostbelt favors love and sacrifice above everything else, with their Lostbelt King considering humanity to be their children, but due to Condescending Compassion, they've turned humanity into essentially cattle for the gods, having lost all of their determination to survive or fight for themselves.
    • The Chinese Lostbelt has become such a utopia that humanity has not only completely stagnated but become foreign to concepts like heroism, ultimately resulting in a race of naive fools rather than a perfect world.
    • The Indian Lostbelt is centered around the idea of perfectionism and is constantly being reset by Arjuna Over Gods at a rapid pace, making it so that perceived flaws are being erased each time the Lostbelt is reset. Unfortunately these resets are only perceived flaws like family and affection, resulting in a world that is becoming more and more barren every loop.
    • The Atlantic Lostbelt is basically all of the previous Lostbelts turned up to eleven: not only has humanity completely kowtowed to the strength of the Gods like the first two Lostbelts, but they've also become consumed with ideas of perfection and perverse affection towards the Gods and as a result have become nearly mindless like in the previous two Lostbelts. Rather than God Needs Prayer Badly, it has become humanity needs God badly, and humanity has essentially become extensions of the Greek God's will rather than the previous relationship of considering them akin to a force of nature. The second part reveals the causes of this; the humanity that worships them is because the humans who were against it were killed along with the Gods who were against it. What remains, essentially, are beings that have done everything and now all they have left to do is but worship the mighty and superior gods.
    • The British Lostbelt is unique as humans are no longer the dominant species inside it as that would go to the fairies instead. However, it still has a theme to it that revolves around fate and purpose as the fairies were given Purpose-Driven Immortality as long they don't lose sight of that purpose (and if they do, they'll transformed into mors). Not to mention that the reason why the Lostbelt came to be is that six fairies that were fated to forge Excalibur to stop Sefar decided to slack-off instead. This would cause Morgan to become the Avalon Le Fae, and save Britain...only for Morgan to pull a Screw Destiny after being screwed over by the fairies too many times.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Starts from London and keeps escalating from there. In London, the Big Bad reveals himself and casually wipes out almost all your allies and curbstomps you, and then states that this was just a warning for you to stop interfering with his plans. In America, the main villain is a Humanoid Abomination who devastates America and kills millions of people in horrific ways, and the arc ends with the bombshell that Mash's Demi-Servant powers are rapidly killing her. Camelot deals with such lovely themes as mass genocide, mindless obedience to an oppressive government, and horrific war crimes. Finally, Babylon has the main villain be an outright Eldritch Abomination that actually succeeds in destroying 99% percent of the world, all but one of your allies are gruesomely murdered, and the arc ends with the Big Bad finally having enough and invading your home.
  • The Babylon singularity also reveals all of the people that die in a singularity stay dead when the singularity is repaired, despite the player having previously been told that history simply fixes itself to the way it's meant to be. Those millions of civilians? The gate guard that helped you out? The old lady that Medusa helped out? All Dead.
  • Exaggerated during the Lostbelts. Instead of going back in time and correcting human history, you’re essentially invading alternate worlds and destroying them along with their inhabitants to bring back your own world.
  • While Saber Wars was your standard comedy-based event, Saber Wars II goes wild and decides to actually flesh out the Servant Universe. The events and characters are as zany as ever, but the main plotline is actually quite dramatic, and the gag sci-fi themed Alternate Universe receives a legitimate backstory (as a world where humanity discarded flesh and blood for Saint Graphs as they became a spacefaring race).
• Changed My Jumper:
  • Chaldeans (particularly the Master who will be wearing the standard white uniform and Mash who will be wearing armor) wear period-inappropriate attire all the time in historic Singularities and there's little more than a passing Hand Wave as they mention these helpful strangers wearing strange clothing and move on. There's almost always some more pressing and obvious irregularity or danger distracting Muggles from prying further, and Chaldea are not real time travelers since successfully fixing a Singularity erases it and memories of Chaldea's interference from history.
  • Salem plays with the trope a bit as Chaldea is supposed to fit in with the justification that they're a traveling actor troupe of foreign weirdos anyway (as the Master is blatantly East Asian / Japanese but that's not too uncommon in trading port cities), so they still don't bother with outfits. Mata Hari's Stripperiffic outfit actually gets her into significant trouble, but the villagers are still suspicious for other reasons and ultimately they're Not Even Human, so it's hard to tell how well "real" citizens of Salem would've acted outside of this iteration of Raum's screwiness with history.
• Character Alignment: In-Universe, all Servants have an explicit alignment, and it's indicated that Masters do as well, though we don't see any apart from the protagonist's Lawful Neutral. Why certain Servants have one alignment or another is not always clear: Altera, Iskander, Gilgamesh, and Medusa are all Good aligned despite their butchery, for example; while Atalante and all Hassans are Evil despite their noble deeds and intentions. It wasn't till Babylonia's focus on Caster Gilgamesh that a lot of his actions as Archer make some sense as being aligned as "Good". As a side note, instead of the Neutral alignments being written as Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral for example, they're listed as Lawful Balanced or Chaotic Balanced to avoid confusion, while True Neutral Servants are listed as Neutral Balanced.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Many events give bonuses for using specific Servants and Craft Essences, usually in the form of an item drop or damage bonus. Part of the difficulty of events comes from figuring out how to build a party that both maximizes these bonuses and can utilize the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors system along with any other gimmicks the event or enemies might have.
  • Certain Servants' Interludes only allows fixed support and can't use friend supports.
    • The Prison Tower event literally only lets you use one support Servant, Edmond Dantes, due to being cut off from Chaldea during the event's story.
    • The first chapter of SE.RA.PH locks the party only to Meltryllis for solo battles, as the protagonist lacks the support provided by Chaldea's Servants.
    • "Dead Heat Summer Race" story battles only have Servants that participated in the race teams available as supports.
    • Shimosa's Heroic Spirit Swordmaster Duels only have the story support version of Musashi available. In addition, certain battles are locked solely to Musashi.
    • The final parts of Cosmos in the Lostbelt prologue forces you to use only the support Mash and Da Vinci.
  • Applied on a party-wide sense during the Setsubun 2018 event. For the first time in the game: 1) you are not allowed to have any support Servant (either from your friend list or even in-story), 2) all Servants deployed in one round will be out of commission for the next 4 hours and 3) all this while keeping the usual cost limit. If you've been heavily reliant on your friends' support units (particularly Merlin) or been giving too much attention on your gold Servants, the cool-down will basically force you to creatively use your remaining, less-frequently used units (i.e. the less celebrated silvers, bronzes, and even the gold ones who are understandably seen as too much trouble to use).
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Seraphix has a one-off mention as one of Chaldea's financial sources in Marisbury's rant in the first arc. It later becomes a central location for one of the EoR chapters.
  • During the second Lostbelt, the protagonists note that they often see two birds flying above them. They are Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn, which were left behind by Odin before he died to help guide Chaldea.
  • While flaunting how cool his bike is, Rider Kintoki offhandedly mentions a Humongous Mecha called the Golden Huge Bear that he'd like to show off but sadly doesn't have access to at the time. Years later, Kintoki managed to make good on his promise: his mech became pivotal to Chaldea's victories in both Olympus and Heian-kyo.
• Chekhov's Lecture: In the SE.RA.PH chapter, after BB rewinds time to save the party from Kiara, BB explains that if you want to go all the way back to the beginning, when the Protagonist first got here, you'd have to be able to travel faster than the speed of light, and the strain would be too much for a regular Saint Graph. It turns out Meltryllis, with Passionlip's help, did exactly this so that she could replace her past self and save the Protagonist.
• Character Title: Each of the Singularities and Lostbelts has them, and they are;
  • The Holy Maiden Savior, which refers to Jeanne D'Arc's status as one for France and having to once again helm the role as a Servant.
  • Emperor of Roses, which refers to Nero Claudius through her Flower Motif.
  • Voyager of the Storm, which refers to Francis Drake and her ability to sail the ocean in pretty much any circumstance.
  • Londinium Knight, which refers to the Knight of the Round Table Mordred having come to save London in its hour of need.
  • Steel Robes, which refers to Florence Nightingale's absolute dedication to healing, up to and including an entire nation.
  • Shining Airgetlám, which refers to Bedivere's arm, the hidden Excalibur he's returning to the Lion King.
  • The Chain of Heaven, in a twist, does not refer to Enkidu but King Gilgamesh.
  • The Divine Zenith Meteor Shower, a symbolic reference to how all the Servants the protagonist met on their journey through the Singularities arriving like shooting stars to the Grand Temple.
  • The Princess of the Land of Beasts refers to Anastasia, who has twisted herself to fit within this warped human history as well as her relationship with her Master Kadoc Zemlupus, whose last name translates to "Country of Wolves" or with a bit of a stretch, "Land of Beasts".
  • The Jolly Fellow of the Unquenchable Flame refers to Napoleon Bonaparte for his Hot-Blooded traits.
  • The Crimson Beauty Under the Moon is Consort Yu as a vampiric concubine forced to reveal her true nature in moonlight.
  • The Final Ebony God is Arjuna Over Gods who has assimilated an entire pantheon into his being and oversees his local timeline as the only god.
  • The Day God Is Shot Down applies to three people. In Atlantis, it's Superhuman Orion, the archer himself, with the power to fight the gods, as well as shooting down Artemis. In Olympus, it's Mash using the Black Barrel to kill Demeter, Aphrodite, and Zeus and Kirschtaria, who plans on destroying the entire concept of godhood by turning humanity into God-Human hybrids.
  • Flash of Roaring Thunder refers to Sakata Kintoki due to his Shock and Awe abilities.
  • The Moment a Planet is Born refers to Morgan and how she turns the British Lostbelt into a Lostworld, a timeline that ran completely parallel comparable to Proper Human History, and how folks who were born in the Queen Era of this world can exist within Proper Human History if they actually managed to escape there. Avalon le Fae meanwhile refers to both Morgan and Altria Caster, the faeries sent from Avalon to absolve the ancient sins of the faeries.
  • The One Who Rules the Planet refers to two people the first is ORT as due to the way history played out they are a vital component for the Lostbelt's existence on multiple levels (It ended up stealing the energy of the Tree of Emptiness there making it the new Cosmic Keystone and its core became the second sun of the land after Camazotz ripped it out) along with being the strongest being there that nobody outside of Camazotz could stop it from doing what it wants. The second is U-Olga Marie the self-proclaimed Sovereign of Earth who as shown by her amnesic self has a built-in desire to rule the earth and is something that never changes about her even as she wrestles with her conflicting emotions once she regains her memories. This comes to a head when the two face off as Olga proclaims right before she sacrifices herself to kill ORT that she is the one who rules the planet
• Chekhov M.I.A.: The absence of Raikou, Tawara, and Rama from the New Year's 2019 event story is noted by various characters wondering why they didn't come to the inn. The Nue put up a barrier to prevent their arrival as they would've instantly detected his ruse and have anti-demon skills/weapons to use against him.
• Chicken-and-Egg Paradox: In the Oniland event, Sherlock Holmes isn't sure if Chitose's Holy Grail created the Singularity and then summoned Sitonai, or if Sitonai herself materialized in Chitose which then triggered the Holy Grail, using the chicken and egg paradox as a comparison.
• Christmas Episode: The game gets one each time Christmas rolls around, and they tend to be fairly elaborate. Also, while the first one (Altria Santa Alter's) was largely a gag event (and one of the game's earliest), the second event (with Jeanne Alter Santa Lily) is, astoundingly, played arrow straight in the end. It ultimately serves as a discussion of why we give presents during this season, and how it's okay for you yourself to enjoy a gift given as much as the recipient - if you all enjoy it together, then that just makes it an even better gift. Trying to be some kind of detached, wish-granting Santa machine will just result in everyone being less happy. The third one is in the vein of its immediate predecessor by being a fairly serious story about resolving Ereshkigal's problems before Chaldea is unwittingly screwed over by her, and the fourth one goes back to being wacky with Bradamante and Quetzalcoatl making their way through the wrestling tournament to retrieve a stolen Grail.
• Citadel City: Shinjuku is cut off from the rest of Tokyo by a gigantic wall surrounding the entire ward.
• Cliffhanger:
  • The America chapter ends with Mash bleeding out and suddenly collapsing in the hallway. She gets treated offscreen in the next chapter.
  • Babylonia ends with Solomon launching his temple directly at Chaldea, having been fed up with their meddling in his plans.
  • The Cosmos in the Lostbelt Prologue, hoo boy. It ends with our heroes essentially homeless, the old Team A threatening to use the Lostbelt to rewrite world history, and you and the Chaldea crew sailing off into the Lostbelt using the Shadow Border's new drive system. You go soaring off beyond reality... and cut to the intro movie and back to the Terminal screen.
  • Götterdämmerung ends with the Shadow Border successfully rendezvousing with the Wandering Sea after receiving its transmission at the end of Anastasia.
  • The first part of the Atlantis Lostbelt ends with the player eventually making their way to Olympus, but essentially had to sacrifice all of their Servants in the process. Meanwhile, Kirschtaria still has his own Servants as well as the Greek Pantheon on his side, not to mention the Servant-level power Kirschtaria himself wields. To top things off, there are implications that there's a Beast active in the Lostbelt as well. Just how the heck is the player supposed to find a way out of this?
  • Traum concludes with Young Moriarity taking the party to Area 51 and showing them the true master of the singularity, Subject E. The final shot of the chapter is the bizarre site of what appears to be a twig on a table and what can best be described as a bunch of nerves in a human shape slumped right next to the table.
• Classical Chimera: Chimeras are common Berserker-class enemies in the game, depicted in its classical design with breath attacks.
• Climax Boss: Every part has at least one of these pop up.
  • Observer on Timeless Temple has Tiamat AKA: Beast II in the Babylonia chapter. As the first Beast to truly fight the heroes the final third of the chapter becomes a mad dash for the cast to do everything in their power to stop Tiamat from destroying humanity with her defeat only coming after getting two Grand Servants involved along requiringGilgamesh to take her down. It's notable that after her defeat is when Solomon finally begins to take Chaldea seriously.
  • Epic of Remnant has Sesshōin Kiara AKA Beast III/R in SE.RAPH. being the end result of one of the stray Demon Pillars biting off way more then they can chew Kiara comes with the revelations of Chaldea's dark side in Seraphix as well as noticeably outright killing the protagonist if it wasn't for some time travel shenanigans done by Meltryllis.
  • Cosmos in the Lostbelt has two of them, the first being Kirschtaria Wodime at the end of Olympus. His defeat marks the moment the Crypters stop being a leading force in the plot as the survivors go off to do their own things while the Foreign God steps in to take the Big Bad mantle for themselves and begins the second half of the storyline. The second one is ORT in Nahui Mictlan, being the final major antagonist from the final Lostbelt. The fight against it is the longest in the game, functioning like a single-player raid boss with multiple phases as every character left standing puts in everything they have to try to stop it, culminating in U-Olga Marie sacrificing herself to put an end to the Ultimate One. Its defeat marks the end of the illusion that aliens were responsible for the bleaching of Earth as Chaldea now knows of CHALDEAS being the Foreign World.
• Clip Its Wings: At the climax of the Babylonia chapter, King Hassan uses his power as a Grand Assassin to cut one of Tiamat's wings and impose the concept of "death" upon her, causing her to be unable to escape by flying, allowing the other heroes to trap and fight it.
• Clone Army:
  • In Okeanos, it's revealed that reality itself is generating conceptual pirates.
  • Nobunaga's army is actually Nobunaga's Servant essence (her "one-star rarity") given form as an adorable chibi army of herself.
  • Most of Medb's forces are clones she created using a soldier's DNA.
  • The oni from Onigishima" are not true Oni, they are Art Initiates Life drawings created by Ushi Gozen.
  • In Agartha, Dahut's pirates are able to reproduce identical versions of themselves. Columbus aims to take control of them since an obedient clone army would be very useful to a man like him.
• Closed Circle: "Murder at the Kogetsukan" takes place on an isolated island somewhere in the Caribbean, which only the Marble Trading Company and their guests know the location of. No one can leave as they need the company to send out a request for transportation, which in of itself will take a few days to be processed. However, the protagonist accidentally intrudes upon it in their magic dreams, and the information they give to Holmes allows him to deduce its location and charter a boat ahead of time.
• Close-Enough Timeline: Near the end of Babylonia, Gilgamesh reveals that it simply isn't possible to restore Proper Human History to a pure pre-Goetia state. Whenever Chaldea resolves a singularity, the world fixes the most obvious issues, but anyone who died will remain dead, just with the cause changed to something like an earthquake instead of a rampaging Servant. The only known exception to this is the Babylonian Lahmu attack, revealed later to be so unusual that the world erases the event entirely and restores all the victims.
• Clothes Make the Superman: The Mystic Codes are functionally alternate costumes for the player with three battle skills and can only be unlocked after completing a quest or buying them from the Rare Prism shop. Essentially by wearing a different outfit, the player has access to different spells that strengthen certain playstyles.
  • After the London update, there are three permanent quests in Chaldea Gate to get a Mystic Code: the Chaldea Plugsuit, Mages' Association and Atlas Academy uniforms.
  • The 5 million downloads campaign has a quest to unlock Altria's casual clothes for the female protagonist. The male protagonist gets Arthur's Waistcoat of Style instead.
  • For "Fate/Accel Zero Order", the protagonist can use Altria's formal suit from Fate/Zero.
  • For the first Summer event, "Chaldea Summer Memory / Heat Odyssey", the protagonist gets a swimsuit for the season.
  • The Fate/Extella promotional campaign has a quest to get Hakuno's Extra uniform.
  • Fate/Extra CCC's pre-event campaign has a quest for Hakuno's CCC uniform.
  • The Heaven's Feel movie commemoration campaign has the Homurahara school uniform.
  • Anastasia has the Chaldea Arctic Uniform which functions similarly to the starter Mystic Code with slightly different effects.
  • The Summer 2018 event has a new casual summer outfit, complete with suntan which focuses on buffing Arts-centric teams.
  • The New Year 2019 event gives out a yukata Mystic Code that provides party buffs.
  • The third Fate/Grand Order - Absolute Demonic Front: Babylonia campaign gave the "True Ether" outfit. In-universe, it acted as a "filter" for Ritsuka to be able to endure the ether in the air during the Age of the Gods.
• Colony Drop:
  • In Agartha, Scheherazade's endgame is to drop the floating continent of Laputa onto a populated city, exposing magic to the world at large. And due to the rules of the setting, this would weaken Mystery until magic became worthless, thus making Servants impossible to summon so that she'll never have to fight again.
  • In SIN, Qin Shi Huang flings space debris drifting within his Great Wall to discreetly take out any "Confucian" elements.
• Combat Stilettos: A significant number of the female Servant cast wear heels into combat, from knight-classes to assassins to casters. For starters, the various Altria faces even wear plated heels to complement the rest of their heavy armor.
• Competitive Balance: Each of the three card types (Buster, Arts and Quick) engender themselves to certain styles of play. Buster focuses on pure, unrestrained damage at the cost of having poor NP generation and mediocre crit star generation, Arts places emphasis on charging NP gauges and healing/defense in exchange for having okay damage and no crit star generation, and Quick generates a massive amount of crit stars to potentially outdamage Buster and generate more NP than Arts but is heavily reliant on luck. Buster and Arts reigned supreme for many years due to having multiple dedicated supports for each (Merlin, Nightingale, and Shakespeare for Buster and Tamamo, Mozart and Caster Gil for Arts) while Quick was mostly left behind due to only really having Osakabehime who is widely considered to be mediocre. 2018 saw the release of Chiron and more importantly Skadi, both of whom dramatically increased the effectiveness of Quick teams.
• Composite Character: Shinjuku introduces the concept of Phantoms - Spirits that are too weak to become a Heroic Spirit, and thus must fuse with another Phantom to become a fully-fledged Heroic Spirit (which is still weaker than a normal Servant). They are:
  • Avenger of Shinjuku is Hessian Lobo, which is composed of Lobo, the Hessian soldier, and only for the Shinjuku chapter, Jack Griffin.
  • Archer of Shinjuku is James Moriarty combined with Der Freischutz's Phantom. Noticeably as a result of a normal Servant fusing with a Phantom, Moriarty's power has been incredibly amplified as a result.
  • Assassin of Shinjuku is Yan Qing combined with the Phantom Doppelganger.
  • Shakespeare and Andersen combine their Noble Phantasms and write a scenario to combine the power of 200 fictional detectives so the protagonist can defeat Moriarty.
  • The Sakura Five Alter Egos are comprised of several goddesses' data which is reflected in their skills and Noble Phantasms.
  • The legend of Paul Bunyan was fused together with various creation myths about giants to create the playable version of Bunyan.
  • Sitonai is Illyasviel von Einzbern hosting three different Divine Spirits: Sitonai of Ainu mythology, Freya from Norse mythology, and Louhi from Finnish myth, with Illya's personality in control and the three goddesses influencing her actions. Sitonai has the most influence, but Freya and Louhi together were responsible for turning Shirou from Sitonai's dog companion to a polar bear.
  • Sion's Servant "Captain" is Nemo, captain of the Nautilus, combined with Triton, the divine son of Poseidon.
  • Van Gogh is one of the water nymph Clytie from Greek and Roman Mythology, Vincent Van Gogh, who she is hosting the powers and memories of, and a currently unnamed eldritch abomination from Lovecraftian Lore.
  • Ashiya Douman became an Alter Ego by turning himself into a High Servant from incorporating into his Spirit Origin the Aztec goddess Ītzpāpālōtl, the evil god of Slavic mythology Chernobog, and his old accomplice Fujiwara no Akimitsu. He summons the latter for his Noble Phantasm while by his Third Ascension he summons the former two to aid his attacks.
  • Certain Servants are composed of more than one individual sharing one Saint Graph.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • There is no shortage of instances where you will fight Servants with ludicrous amounts of HP— way beyond what even your own max-leveled Servant will have.
  • To kill an enemy with the Guts status (revive with some HP after being killed) in the same turn, one must have two different characters attack them; one to drop their HP to zero, the other to kill them after they revive from that. Because of Overkill, chaining the same character's attack cards won't work; the enemy will just revive after that character finishes attacking them. If you only have one character on the field, you won't be able to kill an enemy with Guts active in one turn. On the other hand, the only way to get the enemy to stop after Guts activates on your side is for the character to either be the only Servant remaining, or be under the Taunt effect as well as Guts. Even then, if the enemies' other remaining action(s) include a skill that buffs them, they'll still use the skill.
  • Some bosses from Camelot onward have special permanent buffs that give them advantages such as extra NP charge, powerful defense buffs, multi-layered HP, or even changing how the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors of their classes work.
  • Enemy Servants tend to have much higher debuff and status effect resistances than their playable counterparts. Instant Death resistance is particularly jacked up, to the point that even instant kill specialists have essentially no chance at all of landing one. People will play for months without getting so much as a single one against a miniboss or Servant.
  • Harder quests like high level story quests and Challenge Quests tend to give enemies a buff that cannot be removed.
  • Enemies have the option of casting ignore evade/invincible first before firing their Noble Phantasms or instantly filling their NP gauge to max.
  • Enemy critical hits are hilariously overpowered compared to your own, not needing to gather critical stars to pull them off and getting more benefits from Critical Up buffs. So naturally, enemies that buff their crits are very common, especially in high-difficulty quests where a good run can be ruined by the enemy getting a critical hit and one-shotting an essential Servant.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Da Vinci Info Dumps about Servant Attributes in London. She claims to have the Man attribute, since she's the Heroic Spirit of a real person who really existed. Nonetheless, she has the Star attribute. Additionally, her exposition about the class affinities was originally wrong before they edited it.
• Confused Question Mark: Commonly employed in the visual novel-esque cutscenes alongside Visible Silence. For example, the end of "The Little Santa Alter" wherein Santa Island Mask "betrays" the party (with Card-Carrying Villain reasoning) has Jack and Nursery Rhyme reply with a single question mark each since they're probably confused why Amakusa is so dramatic, as they're all aware of the plan to guide Jeanne Alter Santa Lily to her wish.
• Conspiracy Redemption:
  • The former director of Chaldea had implemented several experiments that sicken the protagonist, but unfortunately there's not much they can do to fix what he did. Chaldea's restructuring over the course of the game is made to be a lot more humane thanks to the protagonist, Roman, and da Vinci. Chaldea has been noted as an oddity by Servants and the Mage's Association because of this, as they try to protect the strange and ostracized Heroic Spirits instead of condemning them to their fate.
  • This directly gets brought up in the main story as of Nahui Mictlan because everyone associated with or has some knowledge of Marisbury Animusphere makes a distinction between the original organization of Finis Chaldea and what was baptized as Novum Chaldea by the remaining members who fled Antarctica and accumulated new members from then on. The latter is seen as the organization now absolutely dedicated to taking down Marisbury's Grand Order that started in Finis Chaldea because his conspiracy is far too awful to allow its progression.
• Continuity Nod: Many, since chronologically this game takes place after all other games, novels, and anime. The Servants remember, for the most part, the events that happened and retain Character Development gained from those.
  • Altria diplomatically comments on how she has "opinions" about Holy Grail Wars, but will assist in this one however she can. Those "opinions" are likely negative due to the colossal debacles that were the 4th and 5th Holy Grail Wars.
  • Archer EMIYA makes an offhand comment about wanting to finish Shadow Heracles in Fuyuki because he had failed to kill him in his version of the Holy Grail War in the Fate route from Fate/stay night. He also makes various comments on events from Extra though he technically isn't the same character as Nameless.
  • Lord El-Melloi II (Waver) tells you that he will help but there is only one man he will serve, Iskandar, due to their relationship in Fate/Zero. He also helps the young version of Iskandar in the Rome chapter for this reason.
  • Jeanne and Amakusa remember their confrontation from Fate/Apocrypha, and surprisingly, get along quite well on the same side.
  • All Servants from the Extra series remember everything that happened in it; Nero and Tamamo even claim that their heart is already taken by a certain someone, the protagonist of that game.
  • Some Servants (like Karna and Arash) like to discuss their previous Master from another Fate series since they had such a large impact on them.
  • Dr. Jekyll scolds Hyde in his interlude and reminds him of their master, Tatsumi Kitano from Fate/Prototype Fragments.
  • In Salem, Zepar expresses doubt in a flashback at Räum's plan of summoning an alien being to help it dominate humanity, since the last time aliens tried to invade Earth, they were crushed by the holy sword wielder.
  • A pigeon report in the Valentine 2018 event notes that Fergus has been hired as a guard for his excellent dentist skills, a reference to his brief stint as one to terrorize Nursery Rhyme in the first Valentine event, "Chocolate Lady's Commotion."
  • In one of the Gudaguda: Strange Tales of the Imperial Holy Grail War Craft Essences◊, Medusa is in the same getup she was in the Poster Girl Craft Essence◊.
  • Goredolf occasionally talks about Toole, Gordes' Servile Snarker homunculus, from Apocrypha who he credits for making him who he is today by being his Stern Teacher/caretaker.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • In the non-canon Heroic Spirit Food Chronicles, Dr. Roman welcomes the protagonist and Mash back from a demonic boar hunting mission while Holmes is cooking curry in the kitchen. Those who have cleared Epic of Remnant know that Holmes only joins after Solomon, by which point Dr. Roman has already wiped himself from existence with Ars Nova to render Goetia beatable.
  • The "Meihousou" event features Murasaki Shikibu and Archer of Shinjuku, who debuted in the storyline during the Cosmos in the Lostbelt and Epic of Remnant chapters of the story respectively. And yet, Murasaki is shown planning the movie filming with Dr. Roman, who would have wiped himself from existence by that point at the end of the Grand Order. Lampshaded at the end, with Archer of Shinjuku saying that lighthearted events like these are a chance for fantastical crossover plots that would otherwise be impossible.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Most boss-level enemies have a low instant death rate, meaning that the odds of a One-Hit Kill Noble Phantasm actually working on them are low. It is possible to have them work, but the vast majority of the time that particular instant death effect will fail.
  • Especially evident in the Garden of Order event, which introduces Ryougi Shiki, who not only has the highest instant death rate on her Noble Phantasm, but also has a skill that makes instant death more likely to trigger. Even with max levels of the skill and 500% overcharge, it still can't reliably trigger on bosses.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: During the second Halloween event ("Super☆Ghouls 'n Pumpkins"), in order to flush out a hidden servant (Robin Hood using No-Face May King), the Protagonist uses the threat of Elisabeth Bathory's horrible singing (despite dreading it themselves, as they reveal when the plan works).
• Cool Versus Awesome: The game in a nutshell, to some extent, but particularly the Camelot singularity, which features a three-way war between The Hashshashin, the Knights of the Round Table and the forces of Ancient Egypt.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Tamamo-no-Mae's Noble Phantasm has the unique effect of reducing skill cooldowns by one turn and the fact that it can be easily spammed due to her Arts cards and her own NP gauge being filled by her NP makes her incredibly useful to getting skills back up and running. The only other options are the Atlas Uniform's skill and Saber Alter Maid, both of which have incredibly long cooldowns.
• Cosmic Flaw: The game, in general, focuses on finding temporal disturbances in certain locations where one is trying to interfere with human history, the exact nature of these disturbances manifests in different ways in each arc.
  • For Observer on Timeless Temple, the disturbances are initially thought to be contained to just Fuyuki circa 2004 AD but are soon revealed to be seven targeted time periods as part of the Big Bad's plan to incinerate the Earth and all of its histories alongside it.
    • Fuyuki: In the year 2004 AD, the Holy Grail War has gone disastrously wrong and almost all Servants have become corrupted thralls of the Grail, dedicated to guarding it as the city continues to burn to the ground.
    • Orleans: Taking place in France during the 100 Years Wars of 1431 AD, Gilles de Rais summons an Alter version of Jeanne D'Arc, who rises up to massacre the people with the help of several Berserk-Serevnts and the evil dragon Fafnir, as revenge for her burning.
    • Septem: Taking place during the early years of Emperor Nero's reign over the Roman Empire in the year 0060 AD, Professor Lev Lainur Flauros uses the power of the Holy Grail to summon past kings and emperors in order to create the United Roman Empire and topple the original.
    • Okeanos: Taking place during the rise of European seafaring in the sixteenth century, as Francis Drake makes her way around the world with Holy Grail at hand, another Holy Grail is dropped into the world, which has warped the Atlantic into a truly endless ocean in which Blackbeard and the Argonauts seek the various treasures littered about for their own agendas.
    • London: Taking place in London of 1888 AD, Magus Makiri Zolgen, and his Servants Charles Babbage and Paracelsus von Hohenheim are tasked with carrying out the Big Bad's agenda through Project Demonic Fog, a magically charged fog that summons Masterless Servants for reinforcements and drains humans of magical energy to cripple the city.
    • E Pluribus Unum: Taking place in the United States of America of 1783 AD, Queen Medb of Celtic Mythology has used the Grail to summon her ideal king of Cu Chulainn Alter and seeks to carve out a new kingdom of her own in the New World, beginning with the slaughter of American leadership. In response, America's presidents from beyond pick the Servant Thomas Edison to serve as the leader to rally America around. The two sides are stuck in a stalemate, with Edison's faction on the gradual decline.
    • Camelot: Taking place around the territory of Jerusalem during the Ninth Crusade 1273 AD, an expeditionary force was given a Holy Grail in order to reach the said Holy Land, and accidentally summoned Ozymandias who subsequently confiscates the Grail and sets about recreating Egypt of his time. Then, a Servant claiming to be Richard the Lionheart appears with his own Crusaders, who subsequently take over the Holy Land. Egypt and the Crusaders now face off for the Holy Land and Holy Grail... or at least, that's what should have happened. Instead, an alternative version of Altria Pendragon called the Lion King wanders into the singularity, summons the Round Table as Servants, slays the Crusaders, and creates a new Camelot with the express purpose of trapping the Lawful Good of humanity to preserve them after the Big Bad's plan is completed. The three forces of The Hashshashin, the Knights of the Round Table and the forces of Ancient Egypt are now locked in a battle for the Holy Land's people and future. Notably, it's so off the rails that even with the other six Singularities corrected, her succeeding would still disastrously destabilize the timeline.
    • Babylonia: Taking place in Mesopotamia of 2655 BC during the later years of King Gilgamesh's reign, an alliance of three goddesses have formed to destroy Uruk and one of the cradles of civilization in the process. At the end of the war with the Goddess Alliance, an even greater threat in the form of Tiamat, an Evil of Humanity as Beast II, emerges with the aim of wiping out humanity to replace them with her new children, the Lahmus.
  • Some time later in Epic of Remnant, five Pseudo-Singularities pop up and threaten to destabilize human history in their own unique way. Unlike the preceding or succeeding arc, none of these are being sustained by the same antagonist.
    • Shinjuku: Taking place at the turn of the millennium, this part of Tokyo has been walled off and isolated from history by a mysterious criminal conspiracy that combines Servants with Phantoms and Urban Legends called the Phantom Alliance, with the intent of luring the protagonist inside as a component for their Evil Plan. The entire chapter was masterminded by surviving Demon Pillar Baal and James Moriarty, who both sought to destroy the world for different reasons.
    • SE.RA.PH.: Much more anomalously, this takes place about a decade in the future of 2030 AD, where a Chaldea oil rig called Seraphix has been suddenly transported to the Mariana Trench. When they get there, they find it's being slowly digitized as it has been entangled in another Holy Grail War run by the malicious Moon Cancer of the Moon Cell, BB. However, it's later revealed that Kiara Sesshouin seeks to merge with the Earth, thanks to surviving Demon Pillar Zepar, and to do so, she seeks to feed off Chaldea's Master test subjects and Servants to become Beast III/R. What makes it even more strange is the fact that this is in fact altered further by the Alter Ego Meltryllis, who came back in time from her timeline where the protagonist failed to stop Kiara, working with the actual BB, who was sent by the Moon Cell to replace BB/GO, an even worse counterpart that was suppose to run the Seraphix Holy Grail War.
    • Agartha: The legendary underground world has suddenly opened up under Central Asia in the year 2000 AD, but even more concerning is the fact that several Servants from Chaldea simultaneously disappeared when it was detected. In this mythical terra incognita, three matriarchal factions seek dominance over one another while the kidnapped refugees from the surface seek a way back up. It is eventually revealed that Agartha was a facade for the real plan perpetrated by surviving Demon Pillar Phenex and Caster of Nightless City, creating the island of Laputa to definitively prove the existence of magic, weakening modern magecraft by a substantial amount, and put them to rest forever.
    • Shimousa: Actually taking place in an Alternate Universe of AD 1639 where savage demons, restless spirits, and bloodthirsty youkai roam, a alternative version of Amakusa Shirou, as an Avenger, plans to destabilize the Quantum Time Lock on his failed Shimabara Rebellion with the help of seven cursed swordmasters, which in turn threatens all timelines with that event. Rather then being masterminded by a surviving Demon Pillar, it was all in fact an experiment by Caster Limbo, who answers to a mysterious being he calls "God". The protagonist's main ally is a female Miyamoto Musashi, who herself is from another Alternate Timeline that has already been pruned and is a Dimensional Traveler.
    • Salem: In a twist, this technically takes place in the present day when a black expanse suddenly absorbs the Massachusetts towns of Salem and Danvers. When the protagonists go inside, they discover it's a historical reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 AD. The mastermind behind the reenactment, surviving Demon Pillar Raum, intends on transforming minor historical figure Abigail Williams into a host for an Outer God for him to use against the Foreign God and open the way for the other Outer Gods to flood the Earth.
• Cosmic Keystone: In Cosmos in the Lostbelt, the titular Lostbelts are sustained by "Trees of Emptiness", miles-tall constructs implied to be related to the Foreign God driving the plot. These Trees of Emptiness are what prevent the Crypters' seven Lostbelts from being pruned like they normally should be and destroying one will lead the Lostbelt to fade away as it should have. With the exception of the Sixth Lostbelt thanks to its development into a Lostworld it doesn't need a tree and can only be pruned after the majority of it is destroyed physically.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: In Camelot, Ozymandias points out that if the heroes mentioned that they were working with King Hassan, he would have allied with them without a fight.
• Creator Provincialism: It is very apparent in the NA version that the protagonists are still supposed to be Japanese. Expect them to react with instant recognition and deep familiarity of their legend whenever a famous Japanese hero shows up, even one who isn't well-known outside their country. On the other hand, they might react with shock and confusion upon hearing that, say, Odysseus and Circe used to be a couple, which is part of one of the most well-known classical stories in the West. That said, when encountering a new hero in the story, the game often gives you the option to ask for a quick summary of their legend, regardless where they are from.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: Despite Chaldea being a joint venture between the UN and the pan-European Mages' Association, not to mention the varied backgrounds of the Servants, everyone treats Japanese holidays like Golden Week and White Day as commonplace celebrations because the developers and main audience of the game are Japanese.
• Critical Hit Class: No attack has a chance to crit by itself. Instead, certain units will generate the ability to crit for the team and then certain units will absorb those stars for a chance to crit. This takes a few steps and can be manipulated in some ways.
  • First, you have either a unit that can generate stars on demand or per turn or you have a unit that generates them the normal way. To effectively make stars this way, you generally need attacks with high hit counts and preferably quick cards because of their natural boost to star generation. However, there are skills that increase the level of star generation, which can let the likes of Raikou generate an easy 25-30 stars with her multihit AOE Buster NP or even allow the likes of Kuro to generate 30~ stars with a QAA chain if she uses a skill to temporarily boost her star generation.
  • Second, the next turn, these stars will be available for your party to use. Each class has what is known as a natural star weight which can range from about fifteen with Berserkers to over two hundred with Riders. This makes a Rider about thirteen times more likely to get a critical star than a Berserker, so Berserkers generally don't make for good crit units on their own without a lot of help. However, certain skills and Craft Essences can boost star absorption by any way from 100% to 6000%, though numbers like the latter are almost exclusively reserved for Berserkers. This star absorption bonus multiplies the natural absorption rate, so while an Archer or Rider can reliably gather all the stars with a simple 300% boost or so or even go without, a Berserker needs a very high absorption rate to accomplish anything or so many stars generated that every card will reach the maximum, meaning 50~ stars generated in one turn.
  • Third, once the stars have been distributed, your Servants attacks gain the ability to deal bonus damage on a crit. The base amount is double damage, but this can reach up to 120% on a unit's own skills or 100% from a friendly unit's buffs. Because this has such a high multiplier compared to attack or card buffs that rarely reach even as high as 50%, criticals have come to dominate the game. Merlin in particular is considered a gamebreaker for being able to easily provide 10-15 stars per turn by himself as well as provide a massive 100% bonus critical damage to anyone in the party. With his help, units can even crit for more damage than they'd do with their Noble Phantasms.
• Critical Staffing Shortage: The bombing in the Chaldea at the beginning of the game took out 47 of the Master candidates and wiped out the majority of the staff, leaving only a skeleton crew to run things and the new acting director being the head of medical. In fact, the only reason there even is a Master left or the head of medical to become director is because the former was taken off the mission for dozing off and got into a distracting conversation with the latter that prevented him from getting to the control room when the bombing went off. And with the Incineration of Humanity cutting them off from the outside, they have no means of replenishing their lost personnel and have to go understaffed for over a year even with Servants coming in to provide some relief and using trips to singularities to replenish their resources. Cosmos in the Lostbelts is an even more exaggerated example with only the protagonist, Mash, Goredolf, Holmes, young Da Vinci and 8 operators of the original Chaldea making up Chaldea after the prologue.
• Crisis Crossover: Pretty much every single timeline in the Nasuverse is gone after the incineration of human history and Earth. Only Chaldea through summoning and recruiting humanity's Heroic Spirits from the entirety of history (and from every single Fate work) can they stop this extraordinary threat.
• Critical Hit
  • A critical hit does at base double damage and can be increased further with the crit power buff. With 100% critical power, you will be dealing twice as much damage. Archers have passive critical damage buffs which, coupled with their high natural star weight (see below) makes them one of the most critical friendly classes. Incidentally, critical power buffs work under the same mechanic as event power bonuses, meaning critical damage buffs are relatively less powerful than normal during said events.
  • Critical hits are fueled by critical stars with each star equaling a 10% chance to crit per card out of five cards, distributed by star weight. Thus, fifty cards will ensure that every single card will get a critical hit. Critical stars are generated in three ways: First, a craft essence can spawn them when the Servant enters the field or generate a set number per turn. Second, a Servant or Mystic Code skill or Noble Phantasm can carry the same effect. Third, the hidden 'star generation rate' buff applies a certain bonus to the odds of generating a star on attack, but because this increase is minor, the stat is typically ignored in favor of simply having a large number of hits on attack and potentially taking advantage of the star generation buff, which is typically not valued unless it carries a high value. Minamoto no Raikou, for example, increases her star generation for one turn during her multiple hit Noble Phantasm, which fuels critical hits for the next round.
  • Besides, the extra damage critical hits also improve the effectiveness of the card type that landed the critical hit. Art criticals increase the amount of NP gauge created while Quick criticals improve the number of critical stars created.
  • Each class has a hidden star weight, slightly modified by the Luck Stat. For example, the Caster class has a low star weight at 50, Sabers have an average weight of 100, Archers have a weight of around 150 and Berserkers are only around 10. So if you have one Caster and one Archer, the Caster will on average only receive one star for every three stars that go to the Archer. This makes units like Riders and Archers naturally predisposed to relying on critical hits while Berserkers, which have a star weight of about 15, very unlikely to do so. Star weight can be modified by the star attraction buff, which works relative to the star weight. A Saber, for example, with a 500% star weight buff will have their star weight temporarily changed from 100 to 600, but a Berserker with the same buff will only go from 10 to 60. Thus, Berserkers are typically given much stronger star attraction buffs when they are designed to utilize critical hits, such as with the aforementioned Minamoto no Raikou, as they are otherwise unable to fulfill their role without a great deal of support.
• Crossover: Almost always during Golden Week starting April 29th. Some of these were done with the intent of giving characters from other works like BB and Ryougi Shiki a time to shine even after their character arcs and stories have been completed. The game distinguishes between two types of crossover with the Prisma Illya and Kara no Kyoukai events as "collaboration events" and the CCC, Apocrypha, and Zero crossovers as "special events"; the former are more light-hearted and don't really address the plots of the source material beyond light nods while the latter deal directly with the stories being crossed over with.
  • Okita and Nobunaga seem to actually come from the Koha-Ace universe, having arrived in the Grand Order continuity after Nobunaga messing with the Grail broke a hole in space-time (which also caused her Servant essence to get duplicated, hence the event enemies with her likeness). So this is technically the first crossover event.
  • The crossover with The Garden of Sinners. The official reveal.
  • To help promote the ''Heaven's Feel'' films◊ and the ''Fate/Extra Last Encore'' anime◊, the main artwork for each was made into a Craft Essence. There were also two miniquests that helped promote the two projects.
  • The Fate/Zero event, "Fate/Accel Zero Order" with Waver and Iskander as main characters. The writer of this event was Gen Urobuchi himself!
  • A collaboration with Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA, named Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya End Sacrifice, written by the author, Hiroshi Hiroyama.
  • A crossover with Fate/Extra CCC written by Nasu. BB was teased in a silhouette at the AnimeJapan announcement and was later revealed as the free Servant. It also introduces two new Classes, Moon Cancer and Alter Ego and is officially part of the game's story as a chapter of Epic of Remnant.
  • A crossover with Fate/Apocrypha titled "Inheritance of Glory". It seems to actually have a place within the Apocrypha timeline, taking place after the story but before its Distant Finale.
  • A crossover with Lord El-Melloi II Case Files titled "Lady Reines' Case Files" which is filled with Nostalgia Levels.
• Crossover Alternate Universe: Takes place in its own timeline separate from other works. Played with in that the franchise is known for having Alternate Universes being a known fact in-universe, and that the characters from the other Fate works are explicitly pulled from there with the special Summoning Ritual unique to Grand Order's world or via special crossovers.
• Cuckold Horns: Discussed by Shuten-Douji about Raikou during her battle against Sakata Kintoki. Shuten-Douji believes Raikou would grow horns of jealousy if Raikou saw the intense battle between Kintoki and herself.
• Cut and Paste Environments: The game often uses these for its visual novel-esque cutscenes' backgrounds and battle backgrounds. Why yes, that exact same throne room from 15th-century France also existed in the 1st-century Roman Empire and 18th-century America.
• Cute Monster:
  • Ozymandias' sphinxes are revealed to be just as adorable as kittens.
  • The main enemies for all the Guda Guda events are "mini-Nobbu", Super-Deformed clones of Oda Nobunaga who communicate in squeaky Pokémon Speak.
  • Merlin identifies Fou as Cath Palug, a Welsh giant lion monster known for eating warriors and their horses. Fou is the size of a squirrel and can be mistaken for that, a cat, or a fox. Its true nature is the juvenile form of Beast IV, also known as Primate Murder.
• Cutting Off the Branches:
  • No matter the player's track record in summoning Servants over the sprawling course of the game, the story's canon continues as if each and every Servant up to that point has been successfully summoned once.
  • Some main stories and events will slightly change depending on if certain main stories and events have been cleared, but not always. In these cases the story typically proceeds as if everything prior to a certain point has been done.

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