Fate Grand Order / Tropes K to P

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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K

• Karmic Death:
  • Pierre Cauchon, the bishop who got Jeanne d' Arc burned at the stake, gets roasted alive by Ruler Alter and during the Christmas event, if he stepped out of line, he gets a roasting. To make sure that he gets the message, Jeanne Alter brought multiple versions of him to her Christmas party (to play monopoly with her) and killed them over and over for any slight against her.
  • Jason suffers for his ungrateful attitude towards Medea Lily much earlier than in myth when she turns him into the Demon God Forneus out of spite.
  • In London, Makiri Zolgen/Matou Zouken is ordered by Solomon to host Demon God Barbatos. He gets better afterward, though.
• Killed Off for Real: As per the 4th anniversary Famitsu interview, Servants summoned from Chaldea during the Lostbelt story line who died during the main story are effectively treated as permanently dead and cannot make any further appearances in the main story. This is largely due to the situation involving the Planet and the Foreign God's actions making it hard to throw Heroic Spirits around. Hwoever, this is fully subject to Gameplay and Story Segregation, as these story events have no effect on whether you can actually summon them. Currently, this applies to:
  • Leonardo da Vinci's adult version, having been impaled by Kotomine at the end of the prologue to Cosmos in the Lostbelt.
  • Spartacus, who sacrificed himself in S.I.N to stop Emperor Qin's giant meteor.
  • Nezha who was taken out by her Berserker counterpart in Yugakshetra.
  • Musashi, who sacrificed herself to stop Chaos in Olympus. Especially notable for her as because of the method of her death her icon in the game changes to "DATA LOST".
  • Nitocris, who offered up her current existence to Anubis to become an Alter in Nahui Mictlan.
• Killed Offscreen:
  • In E Pluribus Unum, the party finds out the reason why several famous figures from the period aren't around is that the Celts killed them while they were taking over the U.S. Fergus also mentioned he had killed three unknown Servants before attempting to kill Nero.
  • Ryuunosuke was killed offscreen by Assassin EMIYA in Fate/Accel Zero Order.
  • The Knights who refused to go along with Altria's plan in the Camelot singularity were killed in a messy battle by those who were.
  • Some of the Servants summoned by Caster Gilgamesh are already dead by the time you arrive in Uruk. They are Amakusa and Kotaro Fuuma (both defeated by Jaguarman) and Tomoe Gozen (who died after defeating Girtabulu).
  • A huge number of Servants summoned by the World to defend Proper Human History in the Atlantic Lostbelt are killed before Chaldea's arrival, including Heracles, Medea Lily, and other members of the Argonauts. Those who survived and made it to Olympus were hit with this as well, with all but Caligula being slaughtered by Demeter and Aphrodite.
• Killer Rabbit: The Chibi Nobu and its variants seem cute and harmless Super-Deformed versions of Oda Nobunaga that have adorable Pokémon Speak, but they pull out guns and shoot, can blast lasers from their mouth and occasionally function as an Action Bomb. They are the standard Mooks in GUDAGUDA events so they have to be killed routinely. During the third Gudaguda event, they routinely shoot regular people in the streets despite their cute appearance and only intervention from Okita Alter and Ryōma manages to save the protagonist from the same fate.
• Kryptonite Factor: Certain Servants have either skills or Noble Phantasms that increase damage against certain enemies. For example, Boudica has a skill that increases her damage against Romans, Siegfried's Balmung does extra damage to dragons, Mordred's Clarent Blood Arthur does extra damage to "Arthur" enemies (every version of Altria), etc.

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • Holmes' trial quest points out the absurdity of physical materials dropping inside a simulated battle situation. The rant also continues to wonder what the hell the EXP cards and skill gems you get even are.
  • Large portions of the character dialogue during seasonal and limited events revels in this as a result of Leaning on the Fourth Wall, often poking fun at video game and anime tropes in the same vein as Carnival Phantasm.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Guts status will at the very least make the Servant with it survive an otherwise fatal blow with one HP. However, some skills can inflict Guts that will also heal the Servant by a small amount.
• Last-Second Joke Problem: Part II of the "GUDAGUDA Final Honnoji" event ends with Mash informing everyone that they accidentally left Nagayoshi behind in the simulation and now there is a Singularity run by Berserkers. As Chaldea had just solved a Singularity run by Alter Servants, Demon King Nobunaga decides that they have had enough of nonsense and ends the story right there.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Because Servants' names and Noble Phantasms are disclosed the moment you get them, the names of spoiler-sensitive Servants in their original works, like Archer EMIYA from Fate/stay night and Berserker Lancelot from Fate/Zero are given away immediately.
    • It is worth taking special note of the EMIYA spoiler being dropped so casually at the launch of F/GO, as this represented a major policy shift regarding the character. F/SN Archer's identity had previously been one of the great sacred cows of the Nasuverse in terms of spoilers, and great pains were taken to ensure it was only revealed at the right time, either in the VN or in Unlimited Blade Works adaptations. It went to such an extent that Fate/hollow ataraxia (F/SN's own fandisc sequel!) and Fate/EXTRA took pains to avoid mentioning it, even though F/HA's story concept should mean it is common knowledge and should influence the plot, and Extra went so far as to partially rewrite the character's backstory just to hide it... and then F/GO comes along and doesn't even bother concealing it from the start, right down to Mash coming to call Chaldea's Archer Emiya-senpai. Of course, the GUDAGUDA pre-release comics made a joke about how by 2015, Archer's identity had practically crossed into non-spoiler territory among fans.
  • Ryougi Shiki's (either one) profile has spoilers on the plot of the Kara no Kyoukai series and the nature of her powers.
  • Amakusa's inclusion spoils his disguise as Shirou Kotomine and his nature as a Ruler, major plot twists for Fate/Apocrypha.
  • Aŋra Mainiiu's profile and role in the Fate/Accel Zero Order event spoil him residing inside the Fuyuki Holy Grail and corrupting it, plot points of the Heaven's Feel route and Fate/Zero.
  • The addition of Illya and Chloe in the Prisma Illya event spoils their true nature and the backstory of the manga up to the 2wei arc.
  • Mash's upgrade to an SR Servant and her true NP are blatantly shown on the support list for any player that hasn't finished Camelot yet.
  • Merely showing what the classes are for BB, Meltryllis, and Passionlip are major spoilers for Fate/Extra CCC. Kiara Sesshouin's inclusion spoils not only her desire to become an Alter Ego at the end of SE.RA.PH, but also what her Noble Phantasm is, the several twists in CCC, and her passive skills reveal her candidacy as one of the Beasts.
  • Suzuka Gozen's profile has several pieces of information that haven't been revealed in another ongoing work, Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail.
  • As the Samurai Remnant event is set after the third and only ending to be exclusive to New Game Plus in the original game, there are many fairly heavy-handed hints at the eventual reveal about its protagonist as well as outright spoilers such as Saber's and Rider's true names being revealed right off the bat when they were hidden for most of Samurai Remnant. The event even all but outright mentions Musashi's Heroic Sacrifice in Olympus.
  • As the Japanese version is far ahead of all the other versions, this trope applies to any discussion regarding this game in other regions. Events and story chapter releases can roughly be predicted by looking at their original release in Japan and Servants already released in the Japanese game spoil future twists in the American, Taiwanese, Korean, and Chinese versions.
• Late to the Tragedy: Seraphix's slow conversion into SE.RA.PH over five months caused the staff to descend into madness from the isolation and monsters, doing things like executing those they blamed for their troubles or overdosing on morphine. By the time the protagonist arrives, everyone has been converted into data and is either dead or trying to survive amongst all the rampaging Servants.
• Layered World: Humanity's existence is a layer "stitched" onto reality. Garden of Avalon and Lancer Altria's profile explain that Altria's lance, Rhongomyniad, is the pillar holding together the Age of Man and preventing magic from overrunning the world.
  • With the Incineration of the Human Order, pretty much all of that has gone kaput with Avalon as the one exception in the backside of the World because it's separate from humanity though Merlin warns that Tiamat snuffing out Babylonia would spell the end for that too.
  • It is the crux of Cosmos in the Lostbelt as the Foreign God's goal is to replace all of this so it can naturally exist on Earth, stitching multiple realities onto Earth called Lostbelts. Barring interference from Chaldea, its seven Crypters would engage in battle royale to determine whose reality becomes the new one. Notably, each Lostbelt is anchored by a Tree of Emptiness, an alien construct whose similarities to Rhongomyniad seem more than coincidental.
  • This forms the central problem of "Inheritance of Glory" because something has been interfering with the Greater Grail Sieg brought to the Far Side of the World and if he completely loses control over it, it could affect the Human Order, subsequently leading to the laws of physics being removed and damaging the current reality of the world, bringing in gods and Phantasmal Beasts back onto present-day Earth.
• Lethal Lava Land: The second round of "Dead Heat Summer Race" is in a volcano. Its stage gimmick is that the party receives 300 damage each turn from volcanic rocks.
• Level Grinding: Sort of. The game itself is pretty grindy, but to obtain the best Servants and Craft Essence and max everything out, the player would need to have a lot of patience and saving up a lot Saint Quartz to get the best Servants and Craft Essence available. This is also a subversion, as leveling up the Servants themselves depends on the rarity of the Servant. A 1-star Servant like Arash will only take a few weeks to max everything out, while a higher rarity servant like Zhuge Liang will take months to max him out (see Low-Level Advantage).
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: Some interludes require Servants at a certain bond level, new voice lines and profile sections are unlocked with bond level, levels six to nine either gives you free Quartz or fruit depending on a Servant's rarity and reaching level ten gives you a CE with exclusive effects that only work when they're equipped to their respective Servant. It also has a special effect for the final Singularity as a passive power-up that increases in power depending on the bond level.
• Lifesaving Misfortune
  • At the beginning of the game, you fall asleep during the orientation lecture at Chaldea, angering the Director and prompting her to kick you out of the mission to Singularity F. The mission departure is sabotaged with explosives, killing or incapacitating all other Masters. This also saves Dr Roman's life, as he gets distracted talking to you after you head back to your room, making him late for the meeting where he would have otherwise been blown up with the rest of Chaldea's leadership.
  • It becomes doubly-lifesaving when it is revealed in SE.RA.PH chapter that prior to Chaldea's organized effort to deploy the Masters into an army to tackle the Singularities, they experimented on Master candidates in Marisbury's private oil rig facility. Experiments which, when we finally see it ourselves, had left the facility a killing ground for almost 200 personnel. According to the backstory, you applied to Chaldea because you were broke and needed the money, at just the right time to be assigned to the Singularity missions instead.
• Lighthearted Rematch: In Yu Miaoyi's Interlude, unable to believe that she lost, she challenged the protagonist in a rematch after a chain of advice from other Servants. This time, Yu reprised her Master role as Akuta Hinako and commanded a mock battle using Mordred, Jing Ke, Spartacus, and even Mash against protagonist's Lanling Wang and later, Xiang Yu. This rematch though exposed her incompetence as a Master and she became some sort of a Butt-Monkey for the rest of the interlude.
• Like a Son to Me: Or daughter. Not all Level-Up at Intimacy 5 are romantic. Many older or married Servants view the MC as this as they become their Most Important Person.
• Limit Break: Noble Phantasms work like this in this game. Each Servant has a gauge that fills up whenever they attack or are attacked (Arts cards fill the meter the most). Filling the gauge to 100% adds a special attack card in addition to the regular 5 that allows the Servant to use their Noble Phantasm. Higher-level Noble Phantasms can be charged beyond 100% for a greater effect.
• Living Is More than Surviving: The flaw which caused the Russian Lostbelt to become a pruned timeline. After having been transformed to survive the new ice age, the Yaga have lost all reason for living beyond simple survival. This makes it all the more poignant when Salieri performs "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" as the Lostbelt fades into oblivion.
• Living Statue: The Spriggan enemies are giant statues that are brought to life by planting their dropped Spirit Root plant into the said statue.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Solomon's Temple is identified by Roman as his Reality Marble, so it is fully expected to collapse once Solomon is defeated, meaning that the final part of the mission is to return to the starting point to Rayshift out. Goetia manages to hang on to life and stall the protagonist while the temple is collapsing so that they die as well, and they only barely manage to make it, having to be rescued by Mash.
• Looking Busy: Fake reading variant. Akuta Hinako seems like a nerdy bookworm who prefers to read alone than talk to her fellow team members/Crypters. But the story notes that she doesn't read her book; she uses it more to detach herself from others and to secretly watch them from a distance from the fear that her true identity will be discovered.
• Loophole Abuse: Chaldea's powerful mana furnace comparable to a nuclear super-reactor, along with the unique bonds the Protagonist makes with everyone, dramatically undersells how difficult it would actually be to summon some of the Servants seen in the game. The obvious reason they're available in-game is for the sake of making money, but within Nasuverse canon, a good number of the Servants here would be difficult or even impossible to summon without Chaldea's extreme circumstances and the Counter Force actively deploying them to Singularities/Lostbelts. To wit:
  • Divine Spirits aren't normally summonable. The reasons aren't adequately explained, but a lack of faith and mana needed to sustain a god in the Age of Man are likely major contributing factors. There's no chance of them being called upon through affinity, and while a catalyst could theoretically work, the aforementioned lack of faith and mana would be a crippling flaw.
  • Beings from the Lostbelts are also normally ineligible. Lostbelts are timelines erased from the world's history, influential figures included, thus they leave little or nothing to pull from the Throne of Heroes. Not even Chaldea is fully immune to this restriction: they can summon the Lostbelt Kings (the strongest being in each Lostbelt), but trying to summon anyone else simply results in their Proper Human History equivalent instead, some cases going so far as to shove the PHH version into a manufactured body of the Lostbelt version. In the event that the Lostbelt Servant doesn't have a PHH version, summoning them is only possible if their Lostbelt King is present in the world.
  • Extra Class Servants are another group of oddballs. As the Holy Grail ritual was designed to only allow the seven Main Classes, the World itself will actively reject most attempts to bring an Extra Class under human control, because No Man Should Have This Power. This in fact becomes a problem for Chaldea later, as their excessive use of Extra Classes is triggering the Counter Force's defensive measures to the detriment of both sides. It's more realistic than the previous options insofar as the Servant being possible to maintain and having history to draw from, but calling them is either done with a very specific catalyst, or not at all.
• Loose Canon: Many events aren't clear where they take place in the timeline; as they will sometimes have contradictory characters present. Some who died before others arrived, for example. The narration implies the writers are aware of the paradox and often encourage confusion.
• Loot Boxes: F/GO primarily uses the gacha system to supply items and Servants, and the currency for it is called "Saint Quartz", of which 3 are spent per summon and can be purchased for real money. While this isn't a nuance for a Mobile Phone Game, F/GO's gacha is notorious for being incredibly strict: the rare 5★ Servants only appear at a rate of 1%, which is divided by how many 5★'s there are in the pool, and "rate-up" 5★ Servants are only rated up compared to the rest of that pool and are still confined to the 1%.
• Lost in Translation:
  • The Near-Future Observation Lens is originally localized as SHIVA until it is revealed in Salem chapter, when Queen of Sheba herself appears, the implication that Dr. Roman named the lens after her. The translation then proceeds to retcon all the in-story mention of SHIVA into SHEBA.
  • The English version of the London chapter's subtitle is simply rendered as "Mist City". It disregards the reason why the full London chapter's name was censored in pre-launch previews, that Zolgen Makiri (the way the Demonic Fog was spelled) is one of the chapter villains, while also disconnecting the title with the entire plot of the chapter that in-story outright calls the mist as 'demonic fog' unlike the usual London's mist.
  • The Lahmu's gibberish in the NA version is ported entirely from the original JP version with no actual changes to the code requiring a hiragana keyboard, meaning the majority of players lose out on what they're initially talking about.
  • The "Does Moon Goddess Dream of Dumplings" event predictably suffers from this in the English translation from the title alone (and as one of the first events ever translated), but it also suffers from a cultural barrier. The "Moon Festival" is never elaborated on and proper names are stripped out. Even the dumplings within the event are dango, a specific type of dumpling associated with the festival, and a recognizable English loanword in its own right. Much of the context of why a moon goddess is obsessed with dumplings is left out completely, in stark contrast to a throwaway line within the event that successfully explains what Mash means by "surrender to the ropes" (an ancient Japanese idiom).
  • In Shimousa, when the Arc Villain Avenger Amakusa reveals his Reality Marble and witnesses his handiwork, he uses a very specific phrase, “The roots of cosmic fantasy will fall”, that gives foreshadowing that the Pseudo-Singularity is actually a prototype Lostbelt. This phrase would later be uttered by Goetia and Wodime when they too 'witness' similar occurrences. In the English translation, he only says a pretty generic utterance of awe "It is greater than I could ever have imagined".
• The Lost Lenore: After erasing himself from the Throne of Heroes, Solomon has become one for the Queen of Sheba as the two can never really meet again, even as Servants. When the protagonists meet her in Salem, she agrees to help them in exchange for learning all about how Solomon lived his life as Dr. Roman, a normal human.
• Lovecraft Lite: The game has elements of this. Several of Chaldea's opponents take the form of tentacle horrors or other highly dangerous, eldritch monsters previously established in Nasuverse lore, and the nature of Servants themselves makes them rather inhuman, despite being born from human history, stories, and wishes. Chaldea ultimately prevails against the things it goes up against, though not always easily. The Salem chapter introduces actual Cthulhu Mythos elements to the setting, and the problems caused by such entities can, like other challenges, mostly be solved by hitting them with swords a bunch, thus taking the game toward a more classic expression of the trope. The in-Universe explanation for this is that the Lovecraft entities aren't native to our universe, so they cannot use a bulk of their power without setup. So far we've stopped each attempted awakening and the Throne has subsumed their attempted avatars into "Foreigner Class" Servants instead.
• Love Makes You Crazy:
  • It's a well-known fact that Jeanne's death made Gilles jumping the slope, but here we can see just how it twists him. He calls upon the Holy Grail to resurrect her; or more specifically, a version of her that would agree with his ideals to take revenge upon France. But as the Grail cannot bring the dead back to life, and Jeanne was so pure that there was no part of her that would become such a person, he had to settle for the next best thing: creating an imperfect copy of her who would be more reflective of his wishes.
  • Kiyohime is a personification of this trope with the belief that her Master is the replacement of her beloved Anchin.
  • Phantom of the Opera and his love for Christine, he even believes that you are similar to Christine and thus won't harm you.
  • Brynhild with her belief that everyone she loves is Sigurd, no matter what gender.
• Love Potion:
  • The Elixir of Love Craft Essence, which has the mechanical effect of increasing Charm success rate by 15%. Not even a Servant can resist its effect^note The Craft Essence is based on the same love potion Nigel Saward gave to Brynhild, making her see Arthur as Sigurd (...for the one turn that Charms last for).
  • Kiyohime (Lancer) gives you chocolates spiked with a love potion for her Valentine's Day gift, and per most Love Potion usage examples it fails. She doesn't hide it at all, either, despite its name of "Just Some Ordinary Chocolates" — the Craft Essence itself shows the same bottle from the Elixir of Love CE open and pouring out, and the long description of this CE has Kiyohime confess what she did since she hates lying, but also continuing to scheme that she'd sneak in during the night to force-feed these chocolates to the Master. Oh, and she's nice enough to attach an antidote to the love potion anyway, making it a moot point.
• Low-Level Advantage: Silver (3-Star) and Bronze (2-to-1-Star) Servants are much weaker than their Gold (4-to-5-Star) counterparts, but they have lower level caps which allow them to Ascend and gain access to more skills faster. The fact that they're more common also increases the chance of the player coming across duplicates of them thereby making it easier for their Noble Phantasms to be upgraded than those of the higher-tier Servants. Lower rarity servants also use up fewer Ascension materials and skill gems to max everything out while higher rarity servants require the player to save a lot of the said materials to max them out. They also take up less party space as well due to their lower-rarity, making it easier to fit into team compositions with higher rarity servants.
• Luck-Based Mission: One of the most hated fights in the game is a challenge quest during Nerofest that pits you against King Hassan and effectively infinite mook Hassan enemies. He starts basically invulnerable, but the more turns pass, the more he wipes out his own mooks and lowers his damage resistance. Fine, great. The problem comes in that his autoattacks carry a chance for instant death and his NP carries a very high chance of instant death, both of which were actually increased for this encounter. As such, the fight was incredibly difficult purely due to chance.^note The eventual workaround most people found was datamining playable Servants and realizing that the freebie BB has an abnormally high resistance to instant kill effects, meaning that if the player stalled for long enough and didn't get unlucky with enemy crits the fight at least could last long enough to let the player deal enough damage to let them actually win.
• Luck Stat: Most of the stats in-game effect nothing, but the rather vaguely defined Luck stat actually does have a direct link to the gameplay. Namely, while star weight is primarily based on class^note ie. Archers have a weight of around 150 while Berserkers are at about 10, within the class itself there's a slight variation based on the luck stat. For example, EX ranked Francis Drake has a star weight of 208 while the E ranked Medusa is only at 194. Interestingly, Edmond Dantes has no Luck stat rank at all, but his star weight is equal to that of Antonio Salieri, who has B rank luck.

M

• Made of Magic: A majority of the entities in the story. Servants, of course, qualify as this. There are also beings created by mages, as well as Phantasmal Beasts, naturally occurring pure magic beings such as Dragons, Wyverns, elementals, and Chimera. Technically they should be super rare in the modern era but the End of the World as We Know It combined with Time Travel, Chaldea's Post Modern Magic, and the Holy Grail has resulted in quite a few changes to the rules.
• Magical Incantation: Most of the Servants in the game have a few short lines they chant while using their Noble Phantasm. The longer ones can get cut off should the in-game combat speed be sped up. Unlike most examples of this trope, most of these incantations aren't necessary nor do they appear in the original works the Servants appear in, as most Noble Phantasms can be activated simply by announcing that Noble Phantasm's name. For example, Altria has a unique chant while she uses Excalibur, even though she only shouts Excalibur in the original Fate/stay night.
  Altria: The breath of the planet gathers, the torrent of life shines... Take this! Excalibur!
• Magikarp Power: Servants can get much stronger than they were normally in three basic ways apart from normal leveling.
  • First, Interludes and Rank Up Quests can improve the effect(s) and power and/or add new effects to a Noble Phantasm and/or skills.
  • Second, in the One Year Anniversary, the game finally allowed the players to make use of the grails it hands out in every story chapter and some events. By using them, you can raise a Servant's level cap. To go from a cap of 60 or 65 to 70 you need one Grail, then one grail for every five levels up to 90 and then one for every two levels past that up to 100. This allows some low rarity Servants to have drastically improved effectiveness, though at an equal level their stats will still be inferior to Servants that can reach that level naturally. However, their skills can make up for it, along with requiring less money and materials to upgrade their skills and low party cost, which makes them very effective indeed.
• Magitek: Like Fate/Extra, magic is used along modern techniques to achieve most of the Projects of the Chaldea Security Organization.
• Make Some Noise: Berserker of El Dorado leads the Amazons in a powerful war cry that greatly increases their fighting strength. It takes Astolfo's La Black Luna to dispel it.
• Man of Kryptonite: This is the main benefit that Grand Servants have in regard to their conflict with the Beasts They aren't as powerful as their opponents their abilities specifically counter those of their opponets with the most noticeable example being Taigong Wang who has Noble Phantasms that are specifically meant to be used against Daji and no one else which ended up being a problem when against Koyanskaya.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: This game features Servants from all corners of the Fate franchise and a few from other parts of the Nasuverse.
  Nasu: "From the start of the planning phase, I thought, 'FGO has to be this grand story where every single character from all the Fate/ series until now would show up or else it would be pointless'.”
• Master of None: Among many experienced players, most of the Extra classes are considered to be badly hampered by their class: They have no useful offensive or defensive advantages. However, unlike Shielder, they also don't have the skill set to be powerful defensive units. This leaves many of them in rather niche roles, mainly getting by on the disproportionately powerful skills that DW eventually started granting them, such as the ability to lock in command cards or boost skill levels. However, this doesn't apply to all Extra classes: Alter Egos are considered quite powerful, Foreigners have the niche role of Berserker counter and individuals like Qin Shi Huang and Jeanne Alter have skill sets powerful enough to see reasonable usage. In the former's case, his class does work to his advantage, making him an excellent solo unit with high damage mitigation and potent damage buffs.
• Meaningful Name: Chaldea was an ancient country absorbed by Babylonia circa 9th to 7th century BC. Its citizens were famously known as astrologers and foretellers, to the point "Chaldeans" became a synonym for astrologers during the Antiquity, as exemplified notably in The Bible. Chaldea thus works perfectly as the name of a supposed astronomical observatory, while being dedicated to scanning the past, present, and future. Additionally it was a Chaldean King, Nebuchadnezzar II, who historically destroyed the Temple of Solomon.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • When chapter seven transitions into the second half when Tiamat is truly awake, the Singularity's name in the soundtrack changes from Babylonia to Mesopotamia, one of the many signs the fight has gone from defending only Gilgamesh's kingdom to protecting the entire region, one of the cradles of civilization.
  • For the second Lostbelt, its subtitle in the soundtrack changes from Götterdämmerung (Skadi's stagnant decline as her powers slowly withered by trying to keep all sides balanced) to Ragnarok (the final end for the Norse pantheon in this timeline) when Surtr awakens.
• Mêlée à Trois: During chapter eleven of Agartha, the party has been fighting Megaros on top of a ship for several fights in a row when suddenly recurring boss Penthesilea shows up. The party panics for a moment, but upon seeing what appears to be Heracles she goes berserk and begins a three-way fight. The ensuing fight occurs in three rounds first against generic amazons, then against Megaros and finally Penthesilea. During the first and third rounds, Megaros is attacking the Amazons and you indiscriminately while during the second Penthesilea will attack Megaros just as often as she hits you, though given the health total difference between you and a boss it's more harmful than helpful. Still cool to see, though.
• Mercy Kill: According to Jeanne Alter, whenever you see an Avenger you should probably kill them immediately. Not because they're destructive and dangerous, but for their own good. As they are, there is no chance of redemption and no hope of peace, salvation, or even the satisfaction of righting wrongs against them. Jeanne Alter is an Avenger...
• Memorial Photo: Every Lostbelt ends with the player being given a photograph CE of an ally native to the Lostbelt who was killed when the Lostbelt was erased. These photographs remind Chaldea and the player that they owe it to all the lives lost from the Lostbelts' destruction to never forget them and to carry on the mission so their deaths are not in vain, and because they are the only ones who will remember they existed at all.
  • Lostbelt 5 is split into two parts, but you are given a photograph CE of the Argonauts of the Lostbelt instead of a specific native to the Lostbelt. They are all Servants but each of them gave their lives throughout the Lostbelt to get the Protagonist to Olympus, honoring their sacrifice.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: There're several instances where it's suggested that Servants tend to think and act in different ways, depending on the age of the body they've been summoned in. For example, Andersen and da Vinci (Young) both have all their memories of life (and from her previous body for da Vinci), yet the former tends to act like a brat while the latter acts and speaks in a more childish manner. In the English version, Marie Antoinette even states that love and romance are always on her mind, since her body is how it was during puberty.
• Mind Screw: Jekyll's interlude is weird in a way that makes you question which one is the real Jekyll. Unlike other Interludes where they fight shadow Servants who embody their mistakes, there's no Shadow Servant in Jekyll's interlude. There are three different Jekylls, only one is real but it doesn't mean the other two are fake, one Jekyll is Hyde and planning to kill everyone. Which one is the Jekyll we need to kick his teeth in? ^{The answer}Your playable Jekyll is Hyde after fooling you about already sealing Hyde. He plans to kill the Jekyll Servant created by Babbage's Reality Marble before killing the real person Jekyll out of sociopathy.
• Mirror Character:
  • Morgan and Altria Alter are both tyrannical but surprisingly agreeable rulers of Britain. They are both dedicated to the task of being King, and both wield dark variants of holy weapons.
  • Altria Alter and Vertigern are noted to be similar as tyrannical kings. Vertigern is the personification of the White Dragon, the Saxons while Altria Alter is the personification of the Red Dragon, and the Anglo-British people. Jeanne Alter herself even lampshades it to Altria Alter pointing out that Altria Alter is just like her uncle Vertigern.
• Mission Control: The protagonist always has someone from Chaldea guide them as they make their way through the various periods of history.
  • For a majority of the first storyline, it's Dr. Roman and da Vinci. The latter goes onto the field for Camelot since she believes they would better benefit from her on the field and Dr. Roman has no choice but to leave Chaldea to use his magic ring to counter Goetia for the final battle.
  • Since Dr. Roman died, da Vinci becomes the main navigator for the protagonist in Epic of Remnant. Also, Mash suddenly lost her Demi-Servant powers, confining her to Chaldea as her current state makes it too dangerous for her to go out in the field with Salem as the one exception as she volunteers to come along as the party's secretary. After completion of Shinjuku, Sherlock Holmes joins them. The only time they aren't available is in SE.RA.PH as BB cut off all communication channels, and Seraphix employee Arnold Beckman serves as a temporary one to navigate the digitized oil rig.
  • For Cosmos in the Lostbelt, Goldorf Musik, Sherlock Holmes, and the young da Vinci guide the protagonist from the Shadow Border. Depending on whether she needs to heal or not, Mash will also serve as this.
• Mistaken Ethnicity: In the original Japanese version, a character confuses the dark-skinned Emiya Alter, who is ethnically Japanese, for African American, and asks him if he's from Detroit. He is less than amused. The translation changed this line to avoid offending the actual African American players.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • In Salem, the Chaldeans (who by now are experienced heroes who have defeated most of the Demon God Pillars) are pretty unfazed about the setting despite the prospect of death by hanging resulting in a Death of Personality, let alone the other creepy happenings in the story. Meanwhile, the very human villagers witness horror upon horror, as innocent people are hanged in unfair witch trials and children are traumatized by loved ones dying in front of them. Section 7, near the climax of the story, shows this trope in full force: The party awakens to a completely black day without sunlight. The well's water has turned to tar, the milk has soured, and the village is practically under siege by various ominous animals and insects. Silly music is playing as Circe complains about being unable to make her signature porridge while the other Servants lampshade how there are other things to worry about but proceed with the mission per usual. Then the party attends Sanson's trial as the story returns to seriousness, as Sanson is ultimately hanged, Abigail Williams lashes out as a Servant-like witch, and the protagonist and Circe are thrown in jail with a very real threat of following Sanson's footsteps. Silly music returns as Circe comically slip in jail, flirts with the protagonist, reminds them that she could easily spring them from jail if they wanted to break the masquerade, and complains about the protagonist's immunity to the poison she tried to slip them. Ultimately, the reassurance of your still-powerful Servants keeps the story Lovecraft Lite even as they endure some adult fears to blend into the town.
  • Between the release of the story are frequent events with the release of new Servants, all of them somehow canon and fitting the timeline perfectly. These have a habit of verging into downright Crack Fic territory, which painfully contrasts with the often serious and grim nature of the main story. Most players don't care about this trope because the events are as funny as hell.
    • The Garden of Order event is the typical zany event with Ryougi as a landlord of the building evicting Servants for not paying their rent, but then it's revealed that some of them are going berserk because of a sinister force, and the story slowly becomes more serious, culminating in fighting off the mysterious entity lurking in the apartment, a gigantic ghost made out of hate. Then no one acknowledges this ever again and it immediately goes back to evicting Servants from the apartment. Then on the rooftop, it resumes the serious story without acknowledging any of the silly stuff, with the giant ghost making a reappearance. And after that battle is over, the mysterious shadow person appearing throughout the event is Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, and his goal is to save Servants from confronting Solomon.
    • The second story of Fate/Accel Zero Order, which was written by Nasu, is humorous like other events and a lot lighter compared to the one written by Urobuchi. Defeating Dark Irisviel at the Greater Grail Cave scattered her essence, and you must collect them to make your Servant Iri whole. The first enemy you fight is Aŋra Mainiiu and he proceeds to grope Mash and Lampshades Iri's revealing dress. Each of the Iri clones all has their own unique personality and lines, all of them comedic.
    • In the first Summer event, "Chaldea Heat Odyssey" is very different from the tropical, relaxed tone of "Chaldea Summer Memory", the first half of the event, since your island is destroyed and turned into an utterly bleak wasteland, and you have to rebuild the boars' civilization.
    • The Prisma Illya event starts the fun with Illya, Miyu, and Kuro getting trapped in a magical world and fighting silly monsters like cookie golems, but then it turns out you're actually in the afterlife for magical girls, full of souls of dead magical girls.
    • The third GUDAGUDA event had a rather dark and depressing turn compared to the previous events due to the actions of Akechi Mitsuhide who wanted to create a new world for Nobunaga and the disappearance of Okita Alter to the Puff of Logic. Then comes the second part where Okita Alter comes back as if nothing happened and gets involved in a parody of Fate/stay night's Holy Grail War with the usual GUDAGUDA comedic antics.
  • The descent of the Foreign God, aka Beast VII near then end of the Olympus Lostbelt is meant to be a very serious event (even Holmes falls to despair despite they faced Chaos moments before and lost Musashi as a result), but when it's revealed that the Foreign God somehow resembles Olga Marie and uses her demeanor many players just can't take it seriously. This event even becomes a meme itself among the Japanese fandom.
• Money Spider: Chaldea Gate's Daily Quests have two different types; The daily Ember Gathering quests have Hand-type enemies which drop EXP Cards, and the daily Enter the Treasure Vault quests have Door-type enemies which exclusively drop QP.
• Mordor:
  • One section of Camelot is the incinerated Earth of 20XX bleeding over into the singularity, a scorched wasteland that's still burning, inhabited by the unfortunate inhabitants of the period who are trying to survive and ghouls.
  • On the final three days of the Yuga cycle in the Indian Lostbelt, the land becomes a hellscape filled with beasts like the Kali, and those unfortunate to be killed will be erased from reality.
• More than Mind Control: Played for Laughs in the third Halloween event. While the first half of "Halloween Strike! Demonic Climb - Himeji Castle War" explicitly has Mecha Eli-chan Mk. I use a Brainwashing ray against Elisabeth's knights that also reduces their combat power and intelligence, the second half swaps the Big Bad and Mecha Eli-Chan Mk. I joins you. But the knights are still against you — this time, as revealed in Section 10, they've been "brainwashed" by promises of paid leave for the rest of the year and other employee benefits. Assassin of Shinjuku lampshades this even as the knights claim their bodies are moving on their own against their will.
• Motivational Lie: During the "GUDAGUDA Yamataikoku" event, Himiko tells a distraught Nobukatsu that she can hear his sister's voice and that she's telling him to stop pitying himself and stand on his own two feet already. After all, she told him "It's all up to you now." This snaps Nobukatsu out of his funk and gets him to take command. After Nobukatsu leaves, Himiko's brother asks when she could hear the voices of the dead, to which Himiko replies that she can't, revealing that she was lying and was just trying to motivate Nobukatsu.
• Multiple Endings:
  • The ending unlocked for the second Summer event ("Dead Heat Summer Race / Death Jail Summer Escape") is dependent on which team was supported the most throughout the event by the player. All endings can be seen in the Material section of the My Room menu.
  • The Valentine's Day gift scenes for Kiara and BB can end up very gruesome if you pick the wrong dialogue choices when discussing their chocolates. Gameplay and Story Segregation is in effect, since outside of the cut scenes, nothing else is changed.
• Multiple Life Bars: Epic of Remnant introduces the Break mechanic on certain bosses. Damage doesn't carry over after you deplete one HP bar and the enemy will cast a special skill once it lost one HP bar.
  • Content before "Epic of Remnant" replicates this effect by giving the enemy a permanent guts buff that restores their health to full when it triggers. This is most aparent with the Post-Final Boss against Goetia.
• Multi-Slot Character: There are multiple versions of the same character are summonable in different classes with different parameters and skills. For example, Altria has a version of herself for nearly every playable class in the game. In addition to her original Saber incarnation, an Evil Counterpart Alter version, she has a summonable Archer swimsuit version, an Alter swimsuit Rider version, two Alternate Self Lancer versions, and so on.
• Musical Nod: Given that Fate/Grand Order has Keita Haga, a Fate Series music veteran and one of the original composers for Fate/stay night handling 95% of all game music, this crops up quite frequently.
  • Fuyuki's map theme is a remix of "Into the Night" from Fate/stay night, as an indication that the protagonist, like Shirou, has just stepped into something much bigger when rayshifted to Fuyuki. It gets a Dark Reprise as Andromalius' battle theme, since that Demon Pillar represents Fuyuki for the final battle.
  • "Spinal Swan Coaster" is a Triumphant Reprise of "spinal coaster" from Fate/Extra CCC as a an accompaniment to Meltryllis defeating Kiara once and for all in SE.RA.PH.
  • "The Sun in the Abyss" is a gentler version of Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star's main theme, which appropriately plays in a story featuring Altera lending out a helping hand to Ereshkigal.
  • "Lost Piece" is a melancholic rearrangement of "last piece" from Fate/Hollow Ataraxia.
  • The Olympus map music is an intense remix of the music for Mare Carcer from Extella as a subtle nod to the Olympians' connection to the Extra continuity.
  • The Beast of Affection has four different boss themes, each being a Boss Remix of a Lostbelt map theme with a common bassline; and fittingly, said bassline is the one from "Caster ~ An Extra Life With Anyone She Wants".
• Mutual Disadvantage: Almost all classes are weak to Berserkers but everything is strong against them.
• My Name Is ???: Camelot introduces this mechanic for story supports, obscuring all information for them to hide plot twists or surprise appearances.
  • In the Epic of Remnant singularities, a variant of this trope is applied to some of the servants introduced in said singularity, both for the versions you fight and for the playable versions (whose name will appear as "(Class name) of ___"), and they'll have different dialogue (which if you know about the historical/literary figure they're based on, can give you some clues as to who they are). After clearing certain quests as a part of the singularity, their real name, however, is revealed, and their dialogue will be updated accordingly. Strangely, while the name will only be revealed after clearing said quests, most of these servants are not story locked^note of the ones that have this version of the trope applied to them, only 2 are story locked, meaning that if you start a new game and roll them after they've been added, it's entirely possible to get them to bond level 10, yet they still won't trust you with their identity.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Although a lot of the game consists of Servant vs Servant fights between the player and the AI (and often, the AI seemingly uses the same Servants a player could own), in reality, the game is asymmetrically balanced.
  • Overall, enemies have much higher HP pools but do less damage. Even Daily Quest Servants that resemble the player's have ten to twenty times as much HP. The "less damage" they do is also relative; enemy Noble Phantasms deployed by Servants will almost always one-shot a player's Servants without defensive tools deployed, but while players can expect to do damage in the range of 50,000 for a generic single-target NP (high, but not a one-shot against a typical 200,000 or higher HP boss), the same NP used by the enemy would do half as much, but still easily destroy the typical playable Servant who has 10,000 HP on average and a high end of 16,000.
  • Enemies with more than one attack in a row can change their target between attacks (though they don't get Brave Chains thankfully enough).
  • Since the AI can't get stars, critical attacks depend completely on RNG, and any effect that involves stars instead gives a flat crit rate increase.
  • Enemies can spam skills without cooldown at the cost of having to use it in place of one of their attacks that round (whereas the player can activate as many skills as they like before selecting their attacks). Have fun if the enemy has an invincibility/evade/Guts skill.
  • Instead of an NP bar, enemies have a "Charge" bar that fills by one segment at the end of every turn. When the Charge bar is filled, the enemy's next action will be their Noble Phantasm (or a powerful special attack if not a Servant). While a player must have their NP bar filled at the start of the turn and then queue the attack, the enemy is under no such restriction; so, an enemy who fills their Charge bar during their turn (for example, through a skill that charges NP) can immediately use their Noble Phantasm as long as they have at least one action remaining.
  • Enemies with skills that increase card-based NP generation, such as Gilgamesh's Golden Rule skill before its Rank-Up Quest buff, outright charge the NP bar by one segment. While the playable Gilgamesh was buffed to this standard later with a 30% charge, at the very beginning of the game an enemy Gilgamesh replaced a minor, gradual buff with a flat 33% charge, which as mentioned could be spammed. On the other hand, players should be grateful that their own NP charge Servants aren't replicated by enemies: Medea, for example, charges 80% of her NP with a level one Rapid Words of the Divine, but as an enemy, she only charges one segment (20%).
  • Some events have enemy Servants with new skills that they don't normally have such as the ability to instantly fill their NP bar or have Invincibility and Battle Continuation used at the same time. "Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits" also introduces Servants with passive skills, like a permanent attack buff.
  • There is an inversion regarding turn order - the player's attacks will always go before the enemy's in a given turn. This makes Berserkers far more effective in a player's hands, able to strike first (whereas an enemy Berserker would strike second, and thus become a giant target before becoming an offensive threat).
  • With Shinjuku, enemies now have a multi-layered health bar that playable Servants do not get.
• Mysterious Antarctica: Chaldea is located in a remote mountain range in Antarctica, accessible only via helicopter.

N

• Naked Nutter: Roland of the Twelve Paladins of Charlemagne is said to have tried proposing to a queen named Angelica, but was rejected for being merely a knight. This caused Roland to go mad and he stripped naked before rampaging through France. In Astolfo's Interlude, Astolfo drags the player through France to try to see if Roland has materialized as a Servant, and it turns out that Roland (well, a remnant of him) has gone on another naked rampage, leaving the citizens traumatized.
• Narrating the Obvious: Done in a similar style to Radio Drama — cutscenes mostly consist of characters emoting, occasionally with sound effects, sudden appearances or disappearances, attack effects, etc. If something happens that can't be conveyed in this manner, a character usually describes it — "Ow! She just kicked me!" and that sort of thing.
• Negative Continuity: For the most part, the writing will only refer to a previous chapter if you were required to clear it before the segment currently being played. As such, you may be forced to endure a redundant introduction for a character or concept you already encountered in the main story, an event, or the gacha. For example, even if you did the Fate/Zero event and had Waver explain who the Einzberns are, the subject will come up again as completely new in the Prisma Illya event. There's also the exact opposite problem in events, many of which only require completion of Fuyuki but feature loads of characters you receive no formal introduction for and canonically haven't met yet.
• Nerf: Servants aren't directly nerfed since it's legally questionable to do so, but mechanics are sometimes changed when certain strategies are deemed too powerful
  • Not long after Merlin was released, the game introduced multiple health bars to prevent the player from overpowering bosses in a single round and trivializing the encounter. Merlin is still overpowered, but now in more manageable ways.
  • After the introduction of Skadi, the designers seemed to realize they'd messed up and eliminated a large source of grind from the game due to the way her skills can support certain Servants to allow them to NP through all three rounds of combat, increasing their power more than intended. But this strategy typically only worked by a very narrow margin, meaning that if, say, there were fewer enemies available during a particular round then the player would not be able to get enough NP refund after an attack to continue using this strategy.
• Never Found the Body: If you don't see or at least hear the gold sparks of a Servant disappearing, they probably survived. This can extend as far as Megaros stomping on a mortally wounded Wu Zetian and causing her to disappear, only for it to turn out she simply activated her Presence Concealment to escape.
• Never Trust a Trailer:
  • Played with. Occasionally the animated trailer for an event will have a character who doesn't show up in the plot at all. The game plays with this by having a textless fight with that character after you've beaten the plot. For example, Altria being on the roof of the Garden of Order event, or Darius being on the Bridge in the "Fate/Accel Zero Order."
  • The first Cosmos in the Lostbelt trailer announced that the sixth Lostbelt's date of divergence would be 500 AD, but the actual scenario has it as 14000 BC. It was confirmed in the 6th anniversary interview with Nasu that this chapter received significant rewrites when Obeorn was implemented, explaining the discrepancy between trailer and final product.
• New Skill as Reward:
  • Several Servants from the game's early lifespan have quests that unlock their third skill upon completion, as opposed to most of the newer Servants that have their third skill automatically unlocked by their third or final ascension.
  • Many Servants have Interludes or Rank Up Quests that reward them by strengthening their Noble Phantasm or one of their skills.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The stun and NP block debuff skill icons are two CGs from Witch on the Holy Night, the only difference is the icons have a black silhouette in place of the characters.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: According to Galahad in Moonlight/Lostroom, stopping Goetia only changed the future of Earth so that there's nothing but sand remaining.
• Ninja Zombie Pirate Robot:
  • Several of the more ridiculous Servants have this aesthetic, elaborated on their character pages: Tamamo Cat is a foxy shrine maiden who is also a cat maid who barks like a dog, Elisabeth Báthory is the young form of the famous vampire-adjacent serial killer noblewoman and is now an idol singer with draconic blood, and so on. It gets called out and lampshaded by other characters in events.
  • By the third Halloween event, the dour European Csejte Castle that hosted the first Halloween event (featuring Elisabeth and Tamamo Cat, characters that also exhibit this mismatched aesthetic) has been "renovated" beyond recognition as "Csejte Pyramid Himeji Castle". The second event had dropped an inverted ancient Egyptian pyramid on top of it, and now the Japanese Himeji Castle has been dropped on top of that; it has become a giant tower of three structures on top of each other.
    Carmilla: "Ridiculous name or not, I shall guard this Csejte Pyramid Himeji Castle with my life."
• No Equal-Opportunity Time Travel:
  • Usually averted and not even mentioned. Similar to how Chaldea's unchanged outfits are mostly ignored with nothing more than a passing comment, historic Singularities are too busy dealing with whatever obvious danger they're facing as a Singularity to question why a young Japanese man or woman in a white uniform is helping them. Chaldeans are almost always distrusted (at first) just because they're strangers in a dangerous time, rather than foreigners.
  • Salem plays this trope straight as Chaldea is actively trying to blend into the 17th-century village and face scrutiny from the Puritans. Most of the women of the Gender-Equal Ensemble of supposed actors are forced into passive roles escorted by men to fit in (much to a few Servants' outrage). There's additional suspicion heaped on these foreigners (not just the Asian members, but also the French Charles-Henri Sanson) who wear strange clothing, but the villagers are suspicious of all strangers who may not share their Puritan beliefs. 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 Räum's screwiness with history.
• No Fourth Wall: The more comedic quests starting from "GUDAGUDA Honnouji" practically run on this trope. Some Servants like BB and Nobunaga also ignore the fourth wall frequently, whether it be in My Room or during serious event stories.
• No Hero Discount:
  • Even though Da Vinci is the protagonist's friend and allegedly is trying to help them save the world, she charges a serious chunk of change for some items. The Mona Lisa CE's original price was so high (and increased for each one you bought) that the price was decreased and players who'd bought it at the original price got a refund. Nonetheless, it's still a massive 1000 Mana Prisms per copy, for a very valuable CE indeed (up to a 10% boost to QP). Lampshaded multiple times; Da Vinci even suggests she might be making a bit of a profit, mentioning that she'd like to buy herself a villa in one of her lines in the shop. In the Da Vinci Event, someone was so angry about the price that they stole one and started making counterfeits.
  • Most of the event shops are run by your allies who even comment that they are running a shop, yet you are expected to exchange items for different materials. Some characters end up lampshading this, such as Ryouma in the third Gudaguda event apologizing that he can't offer you any discounts since the reason he and Oryou are running the shop is that their detective agency isn't bringing them any money.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • The subtitles of the Singularities in the Observer on Timeless Temple storyline are a Character Title referring to the main ally of that chapter (e.g. Okeanos' "Voyager of Storms" for Francis Drake). The Babylonia chapter has the "Chains of Heaven" subtitle which refers to Enkidu. However, Enkidu is not the main ally here and isn't actually Enkidu. The main ally in this chapter is Gilgamesh.
  • In a bit of Spotting the Thread, one should note that the date of the sixth singularity, Camelot, makes no sense- Camelot existed long before the early 1200s, so something's gotta be up. This is a big hint that there's something wrong with this singularity, which is confirmed when you drop in and find out you're in the Middle East instead of Britain.
• Non-Residential Residence: Servants associated with GUDAGUDA events have ended up living in Chaldea's boiler room instead of getting an actual room like the other Servants regardless of storyline, which is Played for Laughs. With every new event related to that cast, they have to stick more and more people in a place that was never meant for living quarters. However, there is one GUDAGUDA Servant shown who does not have to live in the boiler room and gets his own room in various events and Interludes: Okada Izo.
• Non-Standard Character Design:
  • Like most gacha games, Grand Order relies on a huge variety of guest artists, so there isn't a standard character design, really. This can range from the original franchise artist himself, Takashi Takeuchi◊ and the reasonably similar Mineji Sakamoto◊, to complete outliers like Shimadrill◊ and Moto Murabito◊. At the same time, most of the principle characters originating from Chaldea are illustrated by Takeuchi, causing most Singularity-local Servants to immediately seem more outlandish than the regulars.
  • In animated commercials, character designs are typically kept close to their in-game illustrations to make them more easily identifiable. This is especially obvious with Hokusai, who is rendered in Thick-Line Animation to match the artist's woodblock prints while standing next to characters with equally weighted outlines. This practice in the commercials is in contrast to the animated feature films and TV series, which "flatten" every character to a Takeuchi-like design.
  • In Cosmos in the Lostbelt, the Olympian gods, Cernunnos, and ORT are depicted with 3D models in battle in contrast to the game's usual 2D sprite artstyle, which helps emphasize their titanic power that hasn't withered away for millennia when fought by Chaldea.
• Not Even Human: At the end of Salem, it turns out that almost all the villagers — excluding Hopkins, Abigail, Carter, and the Whateleys but including ones that the party helped and were sympathetic to their cause — have been disguised Ghouls since before the Chaldeans entered the Pseudo-Singularity, rather than humans-turned-Ghouls. It's especially ironic since the party took great pains to fit in, increase public support, and suppress their blatant power as Servants to obliterate the village, which is basically what happens at the end (as the villagers' disguises run out and some Ghouls blatantly stand side-by-side supposed humans in the crowd).
• No Time to Explain: In the Fate/Accel Zero Order event, El-Melloi II rushes the protagonist and Mash into several fights with little more than an "I'll explain later." It's mostly because they're working on the timetable of the Fourth Fuyuki Grail War and can't afford to let events happen without them while he's trying to explain the particulars, but it's also a convenient way for El-Melloi II to put off admitting his very personal connection to the events that they're meddling in.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The prologue of part 2 goes to great lengths to establish the new status quo as in the first half, Chaldea is bought off by Goldorf Musik and by protocol, shuts down all Rayshifts and forcibly discharge all Servants except for Da Vinci and Holmes for the time being. The second half goes From Bad to Worse as Chaldea is seized by the antagonists with Chaldeas itself frozen by a mysterious Servant, the party is forced to flee in a mobile base with only the protagonist, da Vinci, Holmes, Goldorf, Mash, Fou, and eight Chaldea employees left, da Vinci gets offed by Kotomine Kirei and acquires a new body, Team A of Chaldea declares their intentions to erase the history of "old humanity" and bring back the Age of Gods, and a mysterious Tree of Emptiness starts taking root in the world. The new menu for the second storyline emphasizes this even more as almost every single part of the UI is given a significant visual overhaul.
• Not Quite Dead: Epic of Remnant strongly implies that Solomon did not fully succeed with his use of Ars Nova. The fact someone appeared to take one of the remaining rings indicates possibly that some part of Solomon is around. Some of the Demon Pillars are also revealed to have survived and are hiding in four pseudo-singularities.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch
  • Due to Euryale's effectiveness against male Saber and Berserker enemies, male Saber and Berserker bosses since Epic of Remnant have at least Charm Immunity even without in-story explanation, just to make her a bit less effective, raising difficulty against them.
  • Break bars were added to prevent one turn victories by frontloading all effects and buffs into a single turn so as not to trivialize the content of the entire game. Before this, with enough effort, you could beat nearly any boss in a single turn and thus basically cruise through the game effortlessly. Now trying this will only deplete one health bar as well as causing the enemy to automatically get a bonus turn where they use one of numerous set abilities, such as charging their NP gauge to full or giving themselves powerful buffs.
  • One particular boss fight in Olympus is designed to be an unavoidable loss, but it's normally at least possible to either offensively cripple an enemy or make yourself completely invincible for one turn through various means or both, though each has its own counter plays such as ignore invincibility effects beating evasion or invincibility or giving such high attack and power buffs that they trivialize any defense actions on your part. However, one mechanic the player eventually received access to was a special type of full party invincibility that could not be pierced by the normal ignore invincibility buff. The response? The enemy you're designed to lose to turns your buffs and their own debuffs off before the full party wipe attack. It's not a dispel because it's possible to block buff removal, but simply pretending that these buffs simply do not exist. This mechanic does not exist anywhere else in the game.
• Oculothorax: The Gazer-type monsters are huge levitating eyeballs with tentacles. They can fire Frickin' Laser Beams.
• Odd Friendship
  • Frankenstein and Mordred get along oddly well given that their first meeting in Apocrypha involved attempting to brutally murder each other, including Mordred cutting off her limbs and Fran trying to suicide bomb her in response. When they meet again (sorta) in the London chapter, Mordred is pretty protective of her and they seem to like each other. During the trailer for the Apocrypha collab, they even have a battleground fistbump together. The event itself strongly implies that Mordred feels unusually close to her as both are artificial lifeforms.
  • Nursery Rhyme is the personification of childhood stories and looks and behaves like a clueless little rich girl while Jack the Ripper is a serial killer that personifies child prostitution, abandonment and homeless and is somewhere between a vengeful ghost and a demon, but since both have the minds of (warped) children they're still seen together in many events.
  • Later additions to Nursery and Jack's group include Jeanne Santa Alter Lily, a de-aged, holiday themed version of the Saint of Orleans's Evil Knockoff, and Paul Bunyan, a gender-flipped, size-shifting lumberjack originating from a parody comic strip.
  • Gorgon and Quetzalcoatl are also close friends in Babylonia despite one wanting to Kill All Humans and the other being the most unambiguously heroic deity in the setting, one that loves and nurtures humans with all her heart.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Several Servants are off doing their own thing during the Valentine 2018 event, but it's only communicated via Semiramis' pigeons in a scrolling bar. Rider of the Resistance deserves special mention as he has a running subplot that eventually results in him ending up in space and fighting off aliens.
  • When you run into Musashi in the first Lostbelt, she mentions that she met the goddess Pele in Hawaii and teamed up with Yagyu Jubei in Russia.
• Olympus Mons: The player can summon up various divine figures from various mythological pantheons, who all vary in as far as Rarity and actual in-universe and mechanical power goes. There's also the Grand Servants and the Lostbelt Kings, who (as far as playable ones go) are all limited 5* Servants considered exceptionally powerful both in-universe and as playable units.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The Grand Time Temple of Solomon is a temple and other structures connected through a network of Demon God Pillars floating within the Imaginary Number Space.
• Only Six Faces: Altria has so many different characters who all have the same face, and sometimes hair style and/or colour, the most notable being Nero Claudius, there's a literal trait within the game lampshading the fact she's literally the face of the franchise.
• On the Next: As part of its extended Pretty Cure parody, the Halloween 2018 event has short preview skits at the end of every story quest, consisting mainly of Shuten bemusedly commenting on the situation and Ibaraki freaking out at whatever new amusement park attraction she has to endeavor next.
• One Degree of Separation: The Servants of either the same periods, the same country of origins, or the same background specialties knew each other personally. It gets pretty ridiculous with the Greeks; the Argonauts are a gathering of heroes by Jason, even heroes that weren't an Argonaut like Hektor are acquaintances with several of them. So, most Greek Servants personally know each other because of Jason's ridiculously good charisma.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Certain Servants have the same name for their Noble Phantasms.
    • Saber Altria and Arthur Prototype has their Noble Phantasms similarly named "Excalibur: Sword of Promised Victory" since both of them are based on King Arthur.
    • Brynhild and Passionlip's Noble Phantasms are both named "Brynhild Romantia" while completely different from each other. Justified because Brynhild's essence is one of Passionlip's components.
    • In Japan, EMIYA and his Alter's NP have similar kanji subtitles, though Alter's version has one character crossed out^note Both have subtitles "Mugen no Kensei" but translates differently with UBW's "Infinite Sword Creation" and ULW's "Void Sword Creation"..
  • Orochi. It is the mythical serpent in Japanese folklore that appears as a recurring Hydra-variant in Shimosa as well as the one that Assassin Paraiso summons in her Noble Phantasm. It is also the name of the Tree of Emptiness that holds the first Lostbelt, but doesn't appear to be related to the Japanese serpent in any way.
  • Anastasia. It may refer to Anastasia Nikolaevana Romanova the Caster Servant or the title of the first Lostbelt chapter where she debuted in.
  • The name Wu pops up twice in the game with two different people, Wu Zetian and Wu from the "Murder at the Kogetsukan" event. It should be noted that this is only apparent in English as it's merely a phonetic similarity, "武" and "伍" are very different Japanese/Chinese characters, with the latter being transliterated into Wǔ.
• One-Winged Angel: Subverted in E Pluribus Unum. After he's defeated, Edison pulls out a "superhuman elixir" and says he'll cast away his current humanoid form and transform into "Thomas Mazda Edison". However, Karna knocks it out of his hand and tells him that sort of thing is too unhealthy.
• Oni: Previously discussed in Tsukihime, Grand Order depicts the oni of mythical yore with Shuten-douji, Ibaraki-douji, Ushi-Gozen, and Half Human Hybrids Tomoe Gozen and Fuuma Kotaro. It also explains there are three specific types of Oni.
  • "Uncivilized": A disobedient and unruly kind who rampage and attack humans.
  • "Paranormal": A supernaturally powerful kind with far more strength than normal humans to the point that they are far more monstrous and removed from humanity. The Tohnos are stated to descend from this lineage.
  • "Fairytale": A natural occurrence that cannot truly be suppressed, they are either created from grudges against the world or an existence created by the narrative that they exist.
• Only the Pure of Heart: Camelot's gates can only be harmed by good. Xuanzang breaks them down with the Buddha's palm at the cost of her life.
• Orchestral Version: Select tracks from the game's soundtrack received an orchestral performance for a concert held in 2019.
• Orwellian Retcon: Because of the continuing updates, several things got fixed in future releases.
  • Some mundane typos like (REGEND).
  • Lore like EMIYA explaining Heroic Spirits' attributes, he originally stated that Mozart had the Man attribute. This is false, as datamining has proved Mozart has the Star attribute. Now the example EMIYA gives is Robin Hood.
  • Profiles for Servants like Lancer Altria Alter, which originally made no mention of her being altered. It's been rewritten to acknowledge this and her constant riding of Llamrei.
  • Gameplay data such as the attribute triangle which was reversed in what was strong against what and contradicted Da Vinci's explanation.
  • Servant data like Kintoki's attribute, having originally been Sky and is now Man.
• Our Demons Are Different: Mephistopheles was an Artificial Human created by Faust who nevertheless still played a role as The Corrupter. The Demon God Pillars are magical creations created by Solomon himself using the power of God.
• Our Gods Are Different: Due to the All Myths Are True setting, the game has introduced various pantheons.
  • Babylonia goes into more detail about how gods work. Gods with singular roles like a god of death or god of war are indifferent to humanity, while gods with multiple roles do care about humanity even if it's bizarre in how they show it. This is compared to their programming getting messed up by having multiple roles. It is also explained "logic errors" can result from a god's multiple roles intersecting with each other. Ishtar, for example, has all her lovers die because she is a war goddess as well as a love goddess.
  • The Babylonian/Mesopotamian gods are given focus in Babylonia with Ishtar, Ereshkigal, and Tiamat appearing as major characters with Enki being mentioned by Gilgamesh as well. Tiamat is described as the mother of all life which includes the Babylonian gods and humanity. The 2017 Christmas event "Merry Christmas from the Underworld" focuses more on them explain how Kur, their underworld works, as well as introducing two more gods, Dumuzid and Nergal.
  • Babylonia also introduces some of the Mesoamerican gods, Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca's nagular, Jaguar Warrior though Tezcatlipoca is alluded to. The singularity explains they were originally bacteria that came from the meteorite that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and evolved from that. They would transfer from host to host thus explaining why they appear differently to different regions.
  • While the Abrahamaic God has not directly appeared in any way and is the most mysterious of any deity mentioned thus far, He has made an impact on the plot through two specific actions that ultimately allow Chaldea to even have a fighting chance, specifically instructing Solomon to send his tenth ring into the future where it could be recovered by Marisbury and kept by Solomon/Romani, and gave Romani a final vision of Goetia's plan in order for Romani to decide that he needed to join Chaldea to stop it. So He definitely is on humanity's side, and His actions are basically responsible for Chaldea existing at all, nevermind allowing them the chance to even win against Goetia.
  • The Hindu gods are first given spotlight when Pārvatī becomes a Psuedo-servant. They are given more focus when Mara escapes, causing the "Tokugawa's World Changing Labyrinth" event with Pārvatī saying something must have happened to the gods. The fourth Lostbelt Yuga Kshetra introduces the Hindu gods as Arjuna Over God, an alternative Arjuna who fused with every god minus Mara, and Ganesha who fused with Jinako Carigiri, it was due to the gods fusing that Mara was able to escape.
  • Salem was Lovecraft Country which opened the door to the Outer Gods and Old Ones from Lovecraft's writing. The entire Foreigner class minus Mysterious Heroine XX are servants that had contact with one either the Outer Gods or Old Ones but remained sane. Summer BB despite not being part of the Foreigner class borrows Nyarlathotep's powers in her last ascension.
  • The second Lostbelt Gotterdammerung introduces the alternate Norse gods. Due to Ragnarok, only the goddess Skaði survived as Scáthach-Skaði. Odin's influence can still be felt since his ravens are helping Chaldea.
  • The fifth Lostbelt Atlantis and Olympus introduces the Greco-Roman gods with Atlantis introducing an alternative Artemis and the corpse of Poseidon while Olympus introduces Demeter, Aphrodite and Zeus. It's revealed the Olympians were originally machines created by another set of machines, the Titans sent by Chaos to revive an extinct alien civilization. Through human contact, the Titans and Olympians grew egos of their own. In Proper Human History, Sefar destroyed the Olympians' robotic bodies which lead to them growing even more human at the cost of becoming Divine Spirits but in the Lostbelt they beat Sefar thus they remained their colder robotic selves only vastly more powerful due to continually upgrading their technology. Olympus also introduces Romulus-Quirinus, the deified version of Romulus who is also the Top God of the Roman pantheon.
• Our Souls Are Different: During the Age of Gods human souls could return to life if the body was preserved. This is a one time deal though, with the second death being permanent. Divinely created beings like Enkidu, however, die and leave no soul behind after their first death.
• Our Sphinxes Are Different: The male Sphinx is a winged, muscular lion man with a golden mask covering his maned face. The female Malikah Sphinx has a more slender build, black fur instead of brown, and a completely human head.
• Our Time Machine Is Different: Rayshifting has the protagonist and various Servants enter Chaldea's coffins, into which they are converted into pseudo-spiritrons and transported to a Singularity. This is the less dangerous version as your body will be fine for the most part and the Paper Moon was deemed too unstable and risky for physically time travelling.
• Our Wyverns Are Different: Wyverns are common Demonic Spiders in the game, and depicted as bipedal draconic beings who either attack with their claws or with wind attacks. They have a rather high chance of Critical Hits and often appear in swarms. Most of them are Rider-class enemies, and so are weak to Assassin-class Servants. While wyverns do have the Dragon trait, they're much smaller and less dangerous than actual dragons in the game.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Carter freaks out at the sight of a cat in Salem which is a hint that he isn't Randolph Carter as he adores cats. When the real Carter shows up, he takes the same cat with him for his travels.
• Out of Focus:
  • Due to a huge cast, it is inevitable for some characters to not get many roles in the main story. Certain non-event-bound Servants including some of the ones introduced during launch have minor to zero appearances in the main plot. Some like Emiya compensate for this by appearing in events. Even the likes of Eric Bloodaxe have a role in the main plot, but Lancer Cu Chulainn and his Prototype version haven't got theirs yet.
  • Event-bound Servants, as well as limited ones, tend to disappear in focus once their respective events end. Although some do get a role in the main story later on (e.g. Minamoto no Raikou in Shimosa and Heian-kyo, Nezha in Salem)
  • Servants introduced merely to become playable have zero impact on the main story as well, though some do get roles later on too (like Scathach and Astolfo).
  • An especially notable example is Asagami Fujino, who didn't have a role in any story content until the "Chaldea Thriller Night" event two-and-a-half years after her debut, and still hasn't appeared in the main storyline.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • The plot of Salem involves Räum trying to get the Outer Gods involved in the world of Fate leading to the creation of the Foreigner class for those associated with them.
  • From Cosmos in the Lostbelt we have the Fae of the sixth Lostbelt who become a bigger problem then anyone could of expected when it came to the Mêlée à Trois between Chaldea, the Crypters, and the Foreign God when their Lostbelt King proves to be capable of attacking other Lostbelts while still inside their own with Rhongomyniad Eventually it’s found out that the Lostbelt has evolved into a Lostworld thanks to the meddling of PHH Morgan allowing the originally doomed timeline to evolve into something completely different that poses a danger to everyone on the planet.
• Overshadowed by Awesome:
  • Subverted in the base game. Some of the lower-rarity servants will be outclassed by higher-rarity servants in terms of their supposed role. For example, Arash and Hans Christian Anderson are outclassed by EMIYA and Medea Lily for AoE nuke damage and party healing support respectfully. The subversion is that many of the lower-rarity servants are still powerful with the right setup. The lower-rarity 1-3 star servants are much easier to obtain via Friend Point summoning while the higher tier servants are exclusive to Saint Quartz summoning, which requires a LOT of investment to obtain.
  • Several updates and patches introduced newer Servants that completely outclass the servants that were introduced in this game in terms of utility and their abilities. Fortunately, many of the older servants are often given Rank Up Quests to put them in equal level with the newer servants.
• Overused Copycat Character: Altria has an insane number of alternative versions and characters that resemble her to the point it's an actual trait called Saberface and various events have mocked how many versions she has.
• Overused Running Gag: During the Riyo gag event, Altera shows up first pretending to be Wyatt Earp, then Buffalo Bill and finally Davey Crockett. However, when she next shows up, it's the goddess Colombia, the patron deity of America. After that, it's back to Altera, but this time she's acknowledging who she is (it's Titan Altera!), and bails out your party by providing some much needed momentary firepower.

P

• Pain & Gain: Hijikata Toshizou's Noble Phantasm, Shinsengumi - Immortal Sincerity, scales in power based on how much HP he's missing. If he's at 1 HP, his Noble Phantasm will deal an additional 600% damage at minimum. Luckily, his Strengthening quest upgrades his Disengage skill to grant a Last Chance Hit Point effect that leaves him at 1 HP should he take otherwise lethal damage, letting him unleash his full damage potential.
• "Pan Up to the Sky" Ending
  • The first main story arc ends with a pan from the protagonist and Mash to the blue sky above Chaldea with a significant lack of Solomon's Noble Phantasm in the sky. The blue sky also ties back into Mash's desire to see a blue sky at Chaldea being fulfilled for her.
  • The ending of "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld" pans from Ereshkigal saying goodbye to the protagonist and Altera the (Sun)ta as they fly out of the Netherworld via Photon Ray.
• Patchwork Map:
  • The map of Camelot has a wasteland, rocky mountains, and a desert adjacent to one another with drastic transitions in-between.
  • As part of its JRPG throwback, the second Halloween event's map inexplicably has a volcano in between a castle surrounded by lush woodlands on the one side and the other a forest in the middle of winter. It's lampshaded each time the player's party has to traverse it.
  • The map for the Prisma Ilya event has a grassland, a candy-themed town, a blight town, a sea-side port, and a frozen castle.
• Patron God:
  • Medea and Caster of Okeanos derive their magecraft from the teachings and worship of Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic. It's through her favor that they gained their incredible magical prowess, ranging from assailing their opponents with rays of light akin to a bombing raid, transforming people into pigs, and even freezing space in place.
  • Paris is accompanied by Apollo, Greek god of archery, who grants Paris his prowess as an archer. Most notably, their Noble Phantasm is Paris reenacting his feat of striking Achilles' heel with Apollo's guidance.
  • Superhuman Orion is Orion at his full strength with the blessings of Artemis to make him the greatest archer in all of human history. This results in his roided out stats and his Pressure of the Moon Goddess EX and Bowman of Three Stars A+ skills. Notably, he didn't actually worship her, but their relationship leads to Artemis showering her blessings upon him, as shown by his Noble Phantasm, which raises those blessings to the limit to make him a One-Man Army.
  • Tawara Touta derives the strength of his Noble Phantasm from the protection of a dragon god that lives in a lake as well as the blessings of Hachiman, the god of war and culture, whom he invokes while using it.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The meteor that crashed in the Yucatán peninsula carried the microscopic lifeforms that eventually transformed into the Mesoamerican pantheon of the region.
• Physical God: In true Nasuverse tradition, pureblood gods shouldn't be Servants. In true Nasuverse tradition, they cheat a lot. Usually, these end up as a God in Human Form^note Formally known as a bunrei, which is like an avatar or splinter of the full god and are significantly nerfed. However!
  • In the Camelot singularity, the final boss is the Lion King, also known as the goddess Rhongomyniad. She is a true divine spirit and much stronger than the playable Lancer Altria, who shares her same form, but hasn't become the goddess yet.
  • In the next chapter, Babylonia, we see the potentially even stronger goddess Quetzalcoatl, who toys with the city of Uruk and the party because she doesn't want to kill anyone. She's convinced to change sides through the protagonist's stupidly dramatic lucha libre attack from the sky but is prevented from killing the drama in the story by refusing to break her pact by attacking the other members of the Goddess Alliance directly and she loses a good bit of her power when Merlin tricks her into doing so as punishment. She also freely admits even at full power she wouldn't stand a chance of winning against Tiamat. The playable version of her doesn't have access to her full power but is still probably the strongest Rider we've seen.
• Physical Heaven: Since Babylonia's period is in the Age of Gods, different mechanics are in play which is why the Babylonian underworld is literally under the world.
• Pink Is Erotic: Medb, the Celtic Queen known for her high sex drive, has pink hair. She frequently flaunts her beauty whenever she can, and many of her abilities center around sex; Her 'Noble Phantasm' is basically her raping her enemies.
• Place Beyond Time: The Throne of Heroes exists outside of time, and the only limit on who you can summon is whether they are currently alive from your perspective, although lack of knowledge and catalysts will still naturally hamper your ability to summon servants from the future. The disconnect from the timestream also causes some minor confusion with several playable Servants; Ishtar, for example, will have already experienced Babylonia if you summon her before playing the chapter yourself, but if you summon her after playing, she will be a version who is meeting you for the first time. For a few examples in the main story:
  • Lack of knowledge and catalysts are no problem for Caster Gilgamesh, who with the help of his Clairvoyance summons a wide variety of "future" Servants to Babylonia, including Merlin, who never died but counts as "dead" and in the Throne to a summoner from before Merlin's birth.
  • A key point in Babylonia is that Ereshkigal can only physically manifest outside the underworld by possessing Ishtar's Pseudo-Servant vessel, so it's a shock when Ishtar and Ereshkigal later appear side-by-side in the Temple of Time. As it turns out, this Ereshkigal is from after the following year's Christmas event, where she gains her own vessel.
• Planet of Hats:
  • To a small extent: nine of the eleven individual Servants who came from Irish legends all prefer carrying pole-arms^note Five of them are explicitly Lancers: the 2 versions of Cu Chulainn (one being the Fate/stay night Lancer and his Fate/Prototype iteration), Scathach, Diarmuid, and Fionn. The only outliers are the Saber Servant Fergus, Diarmuid's Saber iteration, Cu Chulainn's Caster and Berserker versions, Rider Medb, and Scathach's Assassin version (from the Swimsuit event). Berserker!Cu carries a more menacing Gae Bolg, while Caster!Cu's staff can be considered a pole-arm too. Scathach as an Assassin is spamming even more Gae Bolgs. Finally, Fergus's weapon is less a sword and more of a jousting lance. It's only Medb's riding crop (and Saber!Diarmuid) serving as outliers..
  • Most historical and legendary Japanese Servants are swordsmen or at least carry a sword or any samurai weapon^note Namely Sasaki Kojiro, Ushiwakamaru, Benkei (though he uses a spear, he carries swords as well), Okita Souji, Oda Nobunaga, Amakusa Shirou, Shuten-douji, Ibaraki-douji, Minamoto no Raiko, Tawara Touta, Miyamoto Musashi, Hijikata Toshizou, Chacha, Suzuka Gozen, Tomoe Gozen, Mochizuki Chiyome, Yagyuu Munenori, Sakamoto Ryouma, Okada Izou and Okita Souji (Alter). The exceptions are Kiyohime, Sakata Kintoki, Tamamo-no-Mae, Fuuma Kotaro, Hozoin Inshun, Kato Danzou, Ashiya Douman, and Osakabe-hime..
• Play Every Day:
  • You get seven login bonuses for seven days of consecutive logging in before the cycle resets and every fiftieth day of consecutive logging in, you get 30 Quartz for free.
  • The free quests in Chaldea Gate correspond to a certain Servant class for each day of the week.
  • During the first Halloween event, there were initially time-limited quests available for four hours of each day of the event. This was scrapped due to the servers overloading from all the players trying to log in at the same time and was replaced by stacking one-time quests.
  • Some events had daily free quests that were unlocked each day of the event, all for farming event currencies.
  • The Rashomon event has her two Giant Hands of Doom cycling through each of the main seven Servant Classes for each segment of her health bar (which was required to be depleted by the end of each day of the event), starting with Archer and ending with Berserker. There are also daily missions to be done before the day ends, requiring players to fulfill a certain number of battles or damage done to Ibaraki.
  • Anniversary campaigns typically give out a week's worth of log-in rewards and players need to log-in every day to get them all.
  • There's a free daily 10x Friend Point summon.
• Player Headquarters:
  • The Chaldea Observatory serves as this for the protagonist in Observer on Timeless Temple and Epic of Remnant as a haven far away from the various Singularities and villains; the protagonist can hang out with their various Servants in My Room and use da Vinci's workshop for upgrades and other services. Other sections of Chaldea are seen being used by Servants in story cutscenes during their free time.
  • However, in Cosmos in the Lostbelt, the antagonists manage to successfully infiltrate and subvert Chaldea, forcing the protagonists to flee in the Shadow Border. The carrier serves as the new headquarters for the first two Lostbelts, where the same gameplay functions are still fulfilled but in far more cramped quarters.
  • For the third Lostbelt and onwards, a section of the Wandering Sea has been partitioned for Chaldea's use with almost-identical facilities courtesy of Sion.
  • After completing "Tunguska Sanctuary", U-Olga Marie shows up to destroy Chaldea's current headquarters with a black hole, forcing them to retreat into their upgraded ship Storm Border as their current headquarters for the time being.
• Playing Card Motifs: A touched-upon trope that is referenced but not in-depth:
  • Archer of Shinjuku explicitly says Jack / Queen / King / Joker when you select his in-game cards to attack with.
  • Archer of Shinjuku has another playing card motif in the limited-time Summer Craft Essence "King, Joker, Jack", where he's featured with Shakespeare and Vlad III lounging around some playing cards. In this case, it's a visual reference, as the three resemble the typical playing card art with minor thematic elements (Archer of Shinjuku being the king of plotting, Shakespeare being a bit of a joker/wildcard with his theatrical schemes, and then there's Vlad as Jack).
  • In the Prologue to Part 2, Goredolf's security personnel (known as the Four Flush) are organized by playing card suites such as Club and Heart.
• Plotline Death: There's a justification for this, somewhat: the Chaldea system basically keeps your summoned Servants safe from permadeath, but deaths outside this system count. However, Servants who aren't protected by this system for various reasons can still get killed in every damn battle and pop back up just fine unless the plot decides it's time for them to get killed or maimed. Also, Servants can sometimes get killed off when they could have protected themselves with a skill.
• Plot Parallel:
  • The Observer on Timeless Temple and Cosmos in the Lostbelt storylines both involve the Big Bad (Solomon/Goetia and the Crypters/the Foreign God) anchoring seven spacetime anomalies (Singularities and Lostbelts) onto the World by planting bizarre pillar-like objects (Demon Pillars and Trees of Emptiness) on the surface. Also, Goetia kickstarted his plot primarily to stop the Foreign God from attacking. The similarities between the pillar-like objects and points in time that need to be fixed are even explicitly shown in a recap movie to contrast the two plots.
  • The Sixth Singularity and Sixth Lostbelt both feature the main Beast villain unintentionally letting powerful British Mysteries return to the world, who then suddenly interrupt the main plot by presenting a new, very imminent apocalyptic threat.
• Pocket Dimension:
  • Some events and most Interludes take place in these.
  • After Jeanne Alter's defeat, several dragons and wyverns fled the Orleans singularity and created a mini-singularity sustained by their existence. Georgios's interlude deals with removing this as it still causes damage to the timeline.
• Point-and-Click Map:
  • Each singularity has its map to navigate. The most notable is America's which shows which area each faction is currently in control of during the story and where other characters not in your party are battling.
  • All crossover events and the Halloween, Summer, Onigashima, and GUDAGUDA Strange Tales of the Imperial Holy Grail events have these. Unlike the story maps where everything is slowly unlocked, certain nodes were time-locked and would only open after a certain day or would only be unlocked after obtaining event items. The first Halloween event's map stands out since it had several hidden details on it that hinted at what times new quests would be available for each day.
• Point of Divergence:
  • Pretty much the entire game is a result of this; part of the Grand Order was basically a cover for Goetia's Demon Pillars to survive into the present day in the form of 72 Magic Crests. One of those Crests happens to belong to Lev, who in most timelines figures this out in time to kill himself, thus depriving Goetia the opportunity to enact his plan. This doesn't happen in F/GO, of course.
  • "Fate/Accel Zero Order" diverges from Fate/Zero because of Irisviel being Saber's Master instead of Kiritsugu, causing it to become a singularity detected by Chaldea and the Counter Force being sent in to prevent the Einzberns from obtaining the Grail and releasing Aŋra Mainiiu. Chaldea's interference, using the knowledge from El-Melloi II, creates further divergences, including:
    • Altria and Diarmuid never fight each other since your party fights Altria first, forcing Irisviel to retreat from the area.
    • Kayneth helps the party after some persuasion from adult Waver and with further persuasion, eventually leaves Fuyuki with Sola-Ui to go back to the Clock Tower. He forces Diarmuid to stay behind so Sola-Ui doesn't try to do anything about her attraction to him.
    • Ryuunosuke and Gilles being the first ones to die after being taken out by EMIYA (Assassin) and your party. Gilles doesn't get a chance to summon the giant monster and so most of the fights caused by that don't happen.
    • The protagonists persuade Kariya to help defeat Gilgamesh during the King's Banquet and he subsequently loses to Lancelot, Diarmuid, and the protagonist's team.
    • Since Gilgamesh is dead, he doesn't get to corrupt Kirei. Tokiomi forces Kirei to give control over Assassin to him, removing Kirei from the conflict. Assassin dies soon after, forcing Tokiomi into defeat.
    • After Iskandar hears Kariya's story and motivations, he decides that Kariya's desire to kill Tokiomi is pointless since Sakura will still be part of the Matous and storms the mansion. He frees her in exchange for Kariya giving up his right arm and kills most of the worms. After that, he sends the two to a hospital to recover.
    • Because Irisviel had the same modifications as Illya and thus became Saber's master, the Einzberns would have won. Kiritsugu, who never found companionship in any form, was then picked by the Counter Force to eliminate her to stop this. This is the one factor that surprises El-Melloi II since everything else had been going the same before Chaldea came.
    • Irisviel, being the source of the singularity, comes with Chaldea since she's got nowhere to go now that she knows the Einzbern ritual is busted and recovering Grails is what they do.
  • The majority of the sixth singularity happened because Bedivere did not throw Excalibur back into the lake.
  • Each Lostbelt is a major divergence from the main timeline, with some catastrophic event occurring at the date given and showing the possibility of what the world would be like at the present-day. These timelines were considered unable to progress and were banished to non-existence by the World. Or at least, that's how it seems. There's evidence to suggest that these worlds aren't resurrected, but in fact created by the Trees of Emptiness.
    • Anastasia takes place in a Russia where a meteor crashed in 1570, causing a permanent Ice Age. The only reason there are still people left is that Ivan the Terrible and his magi used their last resort, fusing everyone with magical beasts to survive.
    • Götterdämmerung's Lostbelt diverged from around 1000 BC during Ragnarok when Surtr decided to devour Fenrir after the wolf ate the sun and became powerful enough to kill most of Norse Gods and possibly burn down the entire world instead of just Scandinavia, but the absence of Fenrir left Odin surviving who then sacrificed his life to seal Surtr into a new sun. This caused the Ragnarok to be incomplete and leaving the world in a half-dead state still burning from Surtr's flames and only survivable thanks to Scathach-Skadi using her powers over ice and snow to push back against them and creating survivable areas only sufficient to support 10,000 humans on top of needing to cull the population regularly by feeding them to the surviving Jotunn at certain ages, preventing the advancement of mankind in this timeline.
    • SIN diverges from 210 BC when the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, succeeds in his quest for immortality after finding ancient Chinese sage arts/super technology to enhance himself, specifically the body of Nezha. He subsequently establishes an iron grip on China and conquers the entire world, creating a peaceful empire under his reign. The people are content as they have self-growing crops and medicine that cures all ailments. However, the empire is stuck in Medieval Stasis with technology limited to the capital for the emperor's use, illiteracy as the status quo, and people living very brief lives. It's also noted the Counter Force doesn't exist in this timeline because there is no danger that humanity needs to protect themselves from.
    • Yuga Kshetra diverges from the end of Dwapara Yuga^note The exact diversion point in BC/AD years is unknown due to the nature of Yugas. In the Mahabharata where Arjuna was broken by the horror he saw in the world and allowed Krishna, Arjuna's "dark self" (mentioned in his Interlude), to take over, strike down Karna, and then assimilated with the Hindu gods, starting with Krishna. Arjuna ascends to become the single Top God of India who accelerates the Yuga cycle to the point that each Yuga takes only a few days, and delivers absolute judgement against his perceived evil from humanity, rendering mankind in a constant struggle to survive each cycle.
    • The official story for Atlantis and Olympus is that it diverged in 12000 BC when the Greek Olympian gods defeated Sefar and survived, so they had time and resources to continue building Olympus. A civil war erupted in the pantheon when Zeus chose to further the reign of the gods. Hephaestus, Hades, Athena, Apollo, Hestia, and Ares were all killed in the war, while Zeus, Artemis, Poseidon, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hera survived. The winning side took over and continued to rule the world, changing the very concept of gods themselves, eventually creating the nanomachines 4000 years later that functions similar to Authorities. In truth, Zeus forcibly combined with the Olympians during the fight against Sefar against the Pantheon's protests, which gave him such a power boost that when the Gods were told of the nature of their world is a Lostbelt later on, every other God rebelled against him, which he defeated. The survivors were reprogramed and their utopian world continued as stated above, but the creator of the Gods, Chaos, gives Zeus a direct order to convert all life-energy into Olympus and have it leave the Earth.
    • Heian-kyō has Caster of Limbo assimilate with his living self Ashiya Douman back in Heian era Japan, convincing the emperor's right hand to host his own version of the Holy Grail War, and turns the world to hell, filled with monsters, spirits, and corrupted heroes hunting down other Heroic Spirits. This is to fuel his own Tree of Emptiness, Hell Realm Mandala, and turn the Singularity into a Lostbelt to use the power to challenge and defeat his hated rival Abe-no-Seimei.
    • Avalon le Fae diverges when the six fairies meant to forge Excalibur so that Sefar can be defeated decided to slack off instead, Sefar rampaged unimpeded and fully scoured the earth. The whole reason anything exists at all is because Cernunnos took pity on the six instead of punishing them for their dereliction of duty, providing them with a safe haven. They repaid him by poisoning him and tearing apart his priestess to get extra land and make a new humanity to use as a food supply.
    • Nahui Mictlān diverges when Malla (a.k.a. a space moss-bearing meteorite who ended creating Aztec mythology in Proper Human History) arrives at Earth before ORT could destroy the dinosaurs. Because of that, the dinosaurs evolve to Deinos and Malla changes its name to Maia. Maia would then foresee ORT's descent, and sent the Deimos underground into safety so that they could survive ORT's attack.
• Pokémon Speak:
  • Fou usually only speaks his name. It's never actually shown what he's saying unless the writers transcribe it or he drops it and talks normally. Explicit text and subtext reveal he's quite the Deadpan Snarker and also a pervert.
  • Chibi Nobu and all its variants introduced in GUDAGUDA events do this as well. It's very endearing.
    Chibi Nobu: "Nobu! Nobububu!"
  • In Chloe von Einzbern's Interlude, Chacha randomly starts saying her name during her tea party with Jack the Ripper, Nursery Rhyme, and Medea Lily. The others infectiously copy her despite Chacha later telling them off.
  • In the third Halloween event^note Chronologically, Chloe's Interlude is unlocked on all servers a few months before this event, so the writing might have rubbed off., the party eventually faces the Assassin trio of Nite-Brite (Assassin of Nightless City), Cleopatra, and Carmilla. Nite-Brite, the child of the group, drops Pokemon Speak as she gets defeated... and the others follow suit.
    Nite-Brite: "Brite!"
    Cleopatra: "Patra!"
    Carmilla: "Er, um... Milla?"
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis: The game was so phenomenally popular that when you Google Image Search a certain figure, you might end up getting flooded with the Fate versions of the figure, usually the more popular ones like Okita Souji or Medb.
• Post-Final Boss: A heavily wounded King Goetia confronts the Protagonist as they're escaping the collapsing temple in a last-ditch attempt at Taking You with Me. The fight, while not exactly easy, is still much easier than the preceding fight.
• Power at a Price: Some very powerful Craft Essences, Skills or Noble Phantasms come with a demerit that lets them reach numbers they otherwise would not. These often end up very powerful and desirable as a result.
  • The Craft Essence with the highest normal damage bonus is the Black Holy Grail, which boosts the attack stat by up to 2400 compared to the 2000 that's normal for its rarity as well as increasing Noble Phantasm damage by an amazing 80%. It comes with a demerit that discourages non burst gameplay, however, because it drains 500 HP per turn.
  • Knight's Pride increases critical damage by 50%, which is impressive for an SR CE. However, it also drops the user's defense by 20%. Gem Magecraft / Antumbra, another SR CE based on improving critical damage but lacking a demerit, only reaches 30%.
  • Arash and Chen Gong both have AOE NPs that deal much damage that would normally be expected, especially for Servants of their rarity, putting them on par with ST NPs. The tradeoff is that each of them kills one of your own Servants. For Arash, this means himself. For Chen Gong, it's the party member furthest to the left that is not himself because Chen Gong is a bastard and uses them as a living bomb. However, this demerit is actually embraced by players as possibly the best thing about them! For Arash, this means he immediately leaves the field for a different unit, allowing you to get more Servants out for use after Arash has served his purpose. For Chen Gong, the same also applies, but this also lets the player shuffle out support units who have already used their buffs and have no further use. And with Altria Caster, this means he can keep acquiring buffs for himself only to immediately murder the unit that just came out to buff him.
  • Meltryllis's Alter Ego form can buff her own NP damage while lowering that of the enemy by 50%. The side effect is that your own party also takes that NP debuff. This is easily worked around, however. Her Lancer form, meanwhile, can drain NP from her party members to increase her own gauge. This is also easily worked around depending on strategy.
  • Archer of Shinjuku and Semiramis both have a skill that can only be used if a sufficient number of Critical Stars have been gathered (10 and 8 respectively), but in exchange, the skill carries very useful effects. The former is a 30~50% NP battery that also provides a three-turn 20% NP Strength buff, while the latter inflicts party-wide 500~1000 HP Poison damage and 30~50% Buster Resistance debuff for three turns.
• Power Creep:
  • Newer Servants being released tend to outpace the older ones, only to be outshone themselves. Early game Servants like Altria were often mediocre, poorly balanced and with kits that were very unfocused. By the time the story got to around Camelot, the game began releasing much better designed Servants like Raikou, Merlin or Ishtar. While these Servants are still good, some of these have also been power crept: Raikou is generally considered inferior to Arjuna Alter in all aspects unless you're fighting very particular enemies. Merlin, while still the best Servant for most Challenge Quests, is often much less useful for normal questing than the dedicated Quick and Arts supports Skadi and Altria Caster. To counteract this to some extent, the game often releases Rank Up Quests or Interludes to improve power: Raikou received an NP interlude to put her damage more on par with Arjuna while Ishtar received an NP interlude that keeps her as an excellent AOE Archer. And Altria herself was buffed with an NP interlude and two separate Rank Up Quests to her skills that rocketed her up to a contender for best AOE Saber.
  • The result of this trope can be seen in the Nero Fest Exhibition Matches as they were all based around the current meta of that time and required team compositions specifically required to counter each match. Servants added later like Merlin, Musashi, Meltryllis, and Holmes easily counter them with their buffs or damage output.
  • Played a bit more straight with Mystic Codes like Arctic Region Chaldea Uniform, which has the same effects as the Chaldea Uniform the player starts with but has buffed effects. The heal does the same amount, but now has a debuff removal, the attack buff does do ten percent less damage increasing, but also buffs the NP damage done by the target, and the evade avoid one attack, but now works for three turns instead of avoiding one turn and ending after, in addition to having a shorter cooldown. However, the MC that is generally considered the most useful is still the Chaldea Combat Uniform because only one of two Mystic Codes that let you bring Servants from backline to frontline. (The other being the Chaldea Decisive Battle Uniform, which only released six years after the Combat Uniform was released.)
• Power Equals Rarity: Downplayed overall. The game's philosophy one year since its launch has shifted (and has remained) to encouraging each Servant, no matter their rarity, to have their niche. The cost to bring high rarity Servants and Craft Essences to fights tends to limit the viability of bringing the shiniest and rarest party to every fight, and humble common Servants are valued for Boring, but Practical (or Simple, yet Awesome) skillsets such as Arash and Hans Christian Andersen for farming and supporting, respectively. Still, some Servants used for raw damage are victims of this trope, as even Palingenesis cannot completely bridge the stat gap (HP and ATK) between a lower rarity Servant and a higher rarity one.
  • Welfare 4-star Rarity Servants such as Chloe von Einzbern and Sakata Kintoki (Rider) punch above their rarity thanks to a farmable max-level Noble Phantasm and are considered some of the best units in their entire class.
  • Played straight with Palingenesis, which increases the rarity of Common and Uncommon Servants to have their shining gold border, with a small linear stat boost.
  • Played straight with Craft Essences. Besides the aforementioned party cost factor, it's pretty clear that a player would rather have a (rarer, limited time) Craft Essence that may boost two separate stats rather than just one at a lower rarity. CEs of the same rarity do tend to be roughly equivalent in power even if some are limited time, however.
  • Events love to play this straight to encourage players to summon limited-time Servants or Craft Essences. Even if the actual cards may have wildly varied power, the event itself may have bonus item drops to speed up farming if the player has the highest rarity cards — for example, a +3 drop bonus with Jack the Ripper (SSR) versus +2 drop bonuses with 4-star, SR rarity Servants during "Almost Weekly Santa Alter".
• Power Floats: Certain Servants are constantly levitating while some others only do so when attacking.
• The Power of Love: While the game already operates on Level-Up at Intimacy 5, this trope is exaggerated and Played for Laughs in "Super☆Ghouls 'n Pumpkin." The Yandere trio of Kiyohime, Minamoto-no-Raikou, and Hassan of the Serenity (all of them the "playable" version who explicitly live in Chaldea) ambush the protagonist's party to steal the Master away from their job of cleaning up the singularity. Not only are they apparently impervious to attacks (surviving in a cutscene after being "beaten" in a fight), they can outright survive jumping into boiling lava that otherwise spooks the Servants and swim after the Master, and the power of love is the only explanation for their sudden strength.
• Primordial Chaos: The Abyss, also known as the Ocean of Void and the Sea of Dawn, from which the primordial gods Apsu and Tiamat originated, lies beneath the Underworld. As there is no administrator to ensure people can leave, any who enter the Abyss are eternally lost with no return. Gilgamesh traveled to the primordial sea to get the herb of immortality when Enki was its administrator. During "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld", the protagonist and Altera the Sun(ta) reach this place as they try to find a cure for the disease sent from the Underworld.
• Product Placement:
  • Miyamoto Musashi specifically mentions that she visited a Marugame Udon restaurant and really liked it.
  • Siegfried mentally informs the player during the Learning with Manga crossover that they should go on Netflix and watch Fate/Apocrypha if they want to check out his exploits.
• Pronoun Trouble:
  • Dr. Roman refers to Da Vinci with male pronouns during Septem, but female pronouns during London.
  • The English localization refers to Mordred and several other female characters with male pronouns in their character profiles even though, most noticeable in Mordred's, they label their genders as "Female".
• The Prophecy: The Knights of the Round Table saw the stars foretelling the arrival of a rebel in a prophecy before the start of Chapter 6.
  "When the foreign star shines bright, the coalition of chalk fractures, the king's authority wanes, and the tower of divine revelation falls."
• Public Domain Canon Welding:
  • The very existence of the Foreigner Class. Foreigners are people who became heroic spirits by making deals or being somehow connected to the entities from the Cthulhu Mythos. Interestingly, the characters In-Universe thought that this was a fictional story and not true events, and the discovery takes them by surprise. In addition, Lovecraft wrote about them the way he understood them, since as a regular human being, he could not grasp their true nature.
  • Many of the summonable Servants originate from works of fiction; for example, you meet Frankenstein's Monster, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, and more. It's acknowledged In-Universe that they're featured in books, and the explanation is that they're based on their actual lives, and don't differ too much from reality — in some cases. Jekyll is established to have known Moriarty while they were alive in short stories and backstory.
• Puff of Logic: This is basically what happens to a Lostbelt and its inhabitants once the Cosmos Tree that holds it together is destroyed. It's rammed in by the fact that the completion text for all Lostbelts is "Cosmos Denial". After all, the entire possibility of these timelines should not have existed.
• Purposely Overpowered: As a reward for how long it takes to get a Servant to Bond Level 10 (on average they need 1.5 million points but most battles only provide less than a thousand), some of their Max Bond Craft Essences are incredibly useful, though most are unimpressive.
  • Heracles' gives him self-resurrection three times. This combined with his high survivability as a Berserker makes him a very solid SR Servant.
  • King Hassan's gives him permanent immunity to any debuff.
  • Arjuna's has a 30% NP attack boost and more importantly, gives him a 1000% boost to his star absorption, ensuring that at least one attack will be critical.
  • Limited 5* Servants tend to be quite a bit stronger than Servants available in the Permanent or Story Gacha, but there are certain categories that are considered the cream of the crop. Specifically, the Anniversary Servants as well as the Lostbelt Kings tend to be some of the strongest units of the game and have altered the game's meta.

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