Final Fantasy X / Tropes I to O

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I-K

• Ice Magic Is Water: A notable aversion; Ice Magic and Water Magic are completely separate schools that specifically counter Fire Magic and Lightning Magic. Therefore, expecting Water Magic to be effective against Fire opponents is Wrong Genre Savvy.
• I Know Madden Kombat: Considering just how surprisingly brutal a sport Blitzball is, it shouldn't be all too surprising that characters like Tidus, Wakka, and Jecht are physically built for strenuous things like combat against fiends. If the Dissidia spinoffs are anything to go by, Jecht in particular (who in the original Dissidia/12 in-game description even outright lampshaded his fitting bronze god-esque body) was not only strong enough to effortlessly carry and swing around a BFS sized blade with one hand, but also just as easily wreak the same amount of havoc with just his bare fists and feet without needing any sort of finesse. The only other person with this level of strength canonically(?) is Cloud Strife, and even then, he's ironically not quite as built for a Super-Soldier.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight:
  • While fighting against Braska's Final Aeon, Tidus gains a "Talk" command that attempts to reach Jecht and resets the monster's Overdrive gauge. It stops working the third time you use it.
  • Averted with Lady Ginnem. Lulu realizes pretty quickly that anything that made her human was long gone, and decides the only help she can provide is by putting her out of her misery.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: In addition to the usual trope of finding treasure chests full of goodies in dungeons, the underwater section of the Via Purifico has a unique blue treasure chest that's inexplicably a merchant (as in, interacting with it brings up the shop interface). Spiran vending machine, perhaps?
• Immortality Field: During the runup to the final boss inside Sin, you are forced to kill your own Aeons to prevent the boss from possessing them. All your characters get an auto-revive during this battle, making losing the battle a Self-Imposed Challenge. The final boss himself is one of the least challenging fights due in no small part to his subversion of Contractual Boss Immunity.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: One look at all the failed cosplays inspired by this game will tell you how hard this clothing is to reproduce. It's worth noting that Lulu is absent from many of the game's CGI movies, unless it's from the waist up. Her skirt is simply too abstract to hold up under dynamic camera angles or movements. There's a reason she provides the page image for Too Many Belts.
• Improbable Weapon User: Wakka fights fiends by chucking his blitzball at their heads, and Lulu uses dolls as her weapon of choice. In Wakka's case, those blitzballs are clearly pretty hard and heavy, as are his throws (and the fact that his throws look just as powerful even while underwater makes this so much more improbable). As for the dolls, attacking with them deals about as much damage as one would expect from a small puppet, so they're probably meant for focusing Lulu's magic (as seen when Lulu casts high-level spells, which have her doll imitating her arm movements). However, it makes for very hilarious kills if she uses the Fatal Cait Sith (with the Deathstrike ability). And it's probably best not to wonder how they're able to steal items from enemies if they learn Mug.
• Improvised Zipline: The ship fires massive anchor cables into the building the characters need to get to, but since it's under fire, it can't stay long, so the party surfs down the cables onto the building.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • When visiting the Farplane for the first time, Tidus' sword Brotherhood gains a power boost, giving it Sensor, Waterstrike, Strength +10%, and Strength +5%. This far and away makes it his best weapon until you start dipping into the post-game sidequests. It's especially useful in the immediate following area, the Thunder Plains; Waterstrike lets him do extra damage to lightning-elemental enemies, which is most enemies in the area.
  • In Besaid Temple, the Destruction Sphere prize is a Rod of Wisdom for Yuna, which gives her Sensor, Magic +3%, and Magic +5%. Customizing anything better needs some rare end-game items, so she'll probably be using it for most of the game.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Played with. The Celestial Weapons, once upgraded, are extremely powerful and each come with four auto-abilities equipped, but there's nothing stopping the player from grabbing any weapon with four empty slots and customizing it to have those same abilities. The true power of the Celestial Weapons is in two aspects, one positive and one negative: the negative is that they vary in power depending on the character's HP or MP, with this variance usually causing them to do less than normal damage^note Auron's is the only one that can do more damage than normal, but requires him to be at low HP for this to happen. The positive, however, is that they treat the target's Defense stat as being 0, which makes them enormously more powerful than normal weapons even with the penalties in effect.
• Inhuman Eye Concealers: The Al-Bhed are labelled heretics by the luddite Church of Yevon due to their use of technology, as Yevon insists that reliance on advanced technology led to the downfall of humanity and the creation of the Eldritch Abomination Sin, which has been ravaging the land for the last thousand years. While Al-Bhed mostly look human, their eyes have a distinctive spiral shaped iris, and as such often wear goggles to hide their eyes when traveling among Yevonites.
• In Medias Res: The game opening has all of the main heroes assembled around a campfire, preparing to enter Zanarkand. A short narrative voiceover later, and the player is zipped back to the past to see how the whole thing got started. In fact, pretty much the first two-thirds of the game is one massive flashback.
• Instant Runes: And how. Runes are placed throughout the game, many times for no reason other than to accent beautiful backgrounds. The prime example of this are the summoning circles that appear for each Aeon. They play no role in the game other than for accents, leading a lot of fans to wonder what they mean and leaving them with the desire for full, detailed versions of the circles to be released.
• Interservice Rivalry: Both the Crusaders and warrior monks are military arms of Yevon with different functions, (Crusaders seem to have the main job of patrolling highways to fight off fiends and keep them open, as well as keeping Sin away from population centers and protecting the city of Luca, which is home to Spira's only blitzball stadium, while warrior monks protect the temples [mostly the main temple in Bevelle] and the VIPs of the Yevon clergy) but they do not exactly get along perfectly. It seems mostly one-sided, with the warrior monks describing themselves as the true protectors of the faith, and looking down on the Crusaders for things like being willing to work outside the teachings of Yevon and not having a Blind Obedience towards the Yevon clergy.
• I Regret Nothing: Yuna tells Tidus "It would be so easy...to let my fate just carry me away...following this same path my whole life through. But I know...I can't. What I do, I do...with no regrets." Granted, she wasn't dying at the time she said that, but then you realize that her journey is supposed to end with her death.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: The ultimate Big Bad of the game is Yu Yevon, however the clashes that Tidus has with Jecht, or even Seymour, are far more personal and meaningful. As noted elsewhere, the battle with Jecht in his form as Braska's Final Aeon is certainly the emotional climax of the game.
• Just Whistle: Tidus teaches Yuna to whistle in Luca, promising that if she ever does so, he will come running. One of the last scenes of the game is Yuna standing on a pier, whistling for him.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: A few examples. Lady Yunalesca imparts the secret of the Final Aeon which requires sacrificing the life of both Guardian and Summoner. The spirit of Anima Seymour's mother explains the history of the aeon's creation. Also Maester Mika who reveals that he has been Unsent for a long, long time in order to keep the church running.
• Kid with the Leash: Although a bit older than most, the summoning animations put a lot of emphasis on Yuna's role as this, often with her stroking or petting the monstrous Aeon before sending it into battle. The animation for Ixion has her literally using a bolt of lightning as a leash to pull Ixion out of a portal, and she hugs Valefor lovingly around the neck and pets her beak before sending her into battle. Some of the Aeons subvert this — Bahamut is so badass that he doesn't need to be petted (instead only forcing Yuna to stumble as he lands on the ground), and Anima's emergence cuts to Yuna with a "Did I really want to to do this?" look on her face. In Yojimbo's case, she's more the "Kid with the Wallet." With the Magus Sisters, she's kind of a backseat driver. Shiva merely uses her as a coat rack.
• Killer Rabbit: Tonberries, with a lantern in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other. Master Tonberries, found in the Omega Ruins, are dressed in chunky knitwear.
• Kill Steal: Early game boss Geosgaeno enacts this trope against you, also causing Always a Bigger Fish to come into play.
• King Mook: The modus operandi of the Monster Arena guy is to combine the fiends you "Capture" to create tougher enemies. At first he combines fiends based on "Species" and "Area". But eventually, he starts to mix the newer fiends to create ultra-hard versions of past bosses. Neslug is the only boss with a brand-new model; the rest are simply recolored.
• Knight Templar: Maester Mika seems to carry out this trope. At a couple of different points, Auron mentions that Mika and Seymour are "not of one mind", and Mika would not approve of Seymour wanting to destroy the whole world. In his conversation with the party right before he sends himself, Mika states that he doesn't want to see Spira destroyed by Sin, and genuinely thinks that there's no other way to stop it than sending summoners on their pilgrimages to bring about the Calm. The problem, though, is the means he and the rest of the church use to enforce the status quo, such as lies, forced marriages, and murder.

L-M

• Lady and Knight: Yuna and Tidus, also Dona and Barthello. The maiden fair (or not so fair) falls in love with her faithful protector. Both cases end in at least minor forms of Battle Couple.
• Laser Cutter: Valefor's Overdrive, Energy Ray. It hits all enemies with one continuous laser blast that shatters the earth and causes tremendous damage.
• Last Disc Magic: Flare (single target) and Ultima (multiple targets) are unlocked late and very late on the Black Magic path, while Holy is found late on the White Magic path. All do huge damage (about 9999 points). For extra value, combine them with Doublecast (two Black Magic spells in the same turn; Holy is classified White Magic, so that spell cannot be Doublecast) and the "One MP Cost" weapon mod.
• Last Girl Wins: Yuna is the last of the three female leads that Tidus meets, and he ends up kissing her in Macalania and starting a quasi-relationship with her that ends tragically when he disappears at the end, although it is possible to reunite them at the conclusion of X-2.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Some versions of the manual that comes with the game feature advertisements for Final Fantasy X-2, including Yuna. Kinda makes the revelation she's expected to sacrifice herself to destroy Sin a bit hollow.
  • Hell, the HD Remaster comes bundled with X-2, which makes the reveal have that much less impact.
• Lens Flare: A strong lens flare effect is present throughout a portion of the scene in which Tidus and Yuna view the sunset on the Mi'ihen Highroad.
• Let's Mock the Monsters: A legitimate battle tactic. The characters can learn an ability called Provoke, based around aggravating the enemy to draw attention away from weaker characters. Very useful if a character falls behind in experience, or joins late (like Rikku).
• Letter Motif: The original Besaid Aurochs (and Chappu) all have a double consonant in their names, except Keepa (who has a double vowel).
• Level Limiter: Clear Spheres can be used to erase stat nodes from the Sphere Grid, usually to allow you replace them with higher stat spheres. Celestial Weapons have the No AP ability if they are unupgraded with crests or sigils, making them useless since you have to manually activate nodes anyway.
• Level Scaling: Blitzball has a form of this. In addition to your team leveling up after a match, so do the computer controlled teams. Considering The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard during the actual matches, that probably isn't a good thing.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: For the first half of the game, the only two female party members are Yuna and Lulu. As The Ingenue, Yuna is the Light Feminine: she's a White Mage, wears mostly white and purple, is optimistic and somewhat naive due to her sheltered upbringing as a future summoner. She is also a bit reserved and innocent, often speaking in a gentle tone and getting easily flustered by the teasing from the other squadmates. Black Mage Lulu is the Dark Feminine: a Lady of Black Magic, she wears an all black outfit that combines Too Many Belts with a plunging cleavage revealing neckline. While she is often Mr. Exposition, explaining the world of Spira to Tidus, outside of those moments, she walks with an aloof air and expresses quite a bit of cynicism. As Yuna's guardian from long ago, she also has a motherly protectiveness over Yuna that extends to Tidus once she warms up to him. Genki Girl Rikku joining the team later, changes this dynamic into more of a The Three Faces of Eve set-up, with Yuna as the Wife (calm, supportive, inviting), Lulu as the Seductress (mysterious, sexy), and Rikku as the Child (playful, prone to emotional outbursts).
• Like Brother and Sister:
  • Tidus and Rikku form a bond like this across the game. They share many close moments but Tidus is unambiguously in love with Yuna, and their affection is never played romantically. There is one small Ship Tease element early on when Tidus has a dream that involves Rikku and Yuna sort of arguing over which one he likes — but that is before Tidus properly falls for Yuna or gets close to Rikku. Two very telling scenes are their talk on Mt Gagazet (just before fighting Seymour) or the (optional!) ride on the way to Macalania Temple. Particularly when Wakka finds out that Rikku is Al Bhed, Tidus acts very protective of her — much like a brother would.
  • A case can be made for Tidus and Lulu as well. While she's initially cold towards him, Tidus's Blithe Spirit effect is a major catalyst in her Defrosting Ice Queen Character Development. Again the ride to Macalania Temple (if Lulu is chosen) and the conversation at the Farplane stick out.
  • Yuna in her sphere ultimately says that Wakka and Lulu are her brother and sister.
• Limit Break: Overdrives. Even your summons have them, and so do a few bosses.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: inverted trope. You'll probably spend a lot of time with Lulu, the Lady of Black Magic, and White Mage Yuna in your main party: the former's spells and latter's Aeons are best positioned to take advantage of the game's Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors; and Aeons can Meat Shield bosses, are immune to status effects (which this game makes heavy use of), and can Begin with a Finisher if you've charged their Limit Break ahead of time. But towards the end of the game, Auron gets "Armor Break," a Damage-Increasing Debuff that basically breaks the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, and Tidus gets the "Hastega" spell which makes everyone's Speed go up. At this point, a physical-damage party of Tidus, Auron and Wakka can provide much higher Damage Per Turn, and at a significantly lower Mana Point cost, and the ladies never really catch up.
• Lip Lock: Because this game happened to be the first Final Fantasy with spoken dialogue, the English voice acting in particular had several teething problems, such as having certain lines sped up noticeably to fit the Mouth Flaps (which were modeled after the Japanese lines). Some lines also become noticeably disjointed, creating awkward conversations which feel like multiple sound clips randomly placed together.
• Literally Shattered Lives: A character who's petrified can be shattered if they're hit while turned to stone. You won't be able to rotate in another character to replace them, and will have to continue the battle shorthanded. In underwater battles, anyone who's petrified immediately sinks like a stone and shatters without any chance to cure them... which can be highly enjoyable to watch if Rikku uses a Petrify Grenade on underwater fiends. One of Kimahri's Overdrives (Stone Breath), as well as an attack from any weapon with Petrifytouch, both petrifies and shatters affected opponents instantly afterward. Dark Bahamut's Impulse and Dark Yojimbo's Daigoro both might do this on occasion.
• Little Miss Badass: Mindy of the Magus Sisters doesn't look older than a teenager, if not a preteen, but can kick as much ass as her sisters. Her unique attack, "Passado", hits 15 times in quick succession; if Yuna's fully leveled-up, those 15 hits can deal 99999 damage each!
• Locked Out of the Loop: Played with. Seemingly, the biggest spoiler you think you'll encounter, namely that Jecht is Sin is dropped on you very early on, point blank and with no dancing around the fact. However, it's not until you reach Home that you realize Tidus has been locked out from a different loop, the fact that the Pilgrimage ends with the summoner sacrificing him or herself. And finally, you find out at the climax that your entire party, save Auron, has been kept from one final fact: that the Pilgrimage requires a guardian to sacrifice their lives along with the summoner, and more crucially, is nothing more than false hope, and cannot destroy Sin; only placate it for a short period of time.
• Lonely Piano Piece: The opening piece, "To Zanarkand", which reoccurs as a musical motif throughout the story.
  • The HD remake replaces the theme for Via Purifico with the piano arrangement, and it's fittingly creepy.
• Lost in Translation: Sin has a number of problems with this, as its page details. There's some spots where it, and other issues, get even more prominent in dialogue and whatnot, though:
  • When Sin is introduced and first named, Auron says "We called it 'Sin'". Thanks to the multiple homonyms of "Shin" in Japanese, it is entirely possible to interpret the statement in Japanese upwards of four ways: "We called it 'Sin'" (if you assume the loanword meaning), "We called it 'Death'", "We called it 'Truth'", and even "We called it 'God'" (though shin would be a slightly odd choice of form in context). This is why Tidus seems confused by what Auron says - he's not repeating the name to ask "why is it called 'Sin'", he's asking "wait, what exactly do you mean?" The name in text, of course, is in katakana (which slightly leans into the first interpretation, but unspoiled, you can also think that Auron is simply converting an existing Japanese word into a proper noun and emphasizing it, especially given the ambiguity of the rest of the context), but Tidus isn't reading the script. In English, meanwhile, the quadruple interpretation of the statement is simply untranslatable, and so Tidus' reaction comes across much differently (and even the player's reaction will be different, as there is only one meaning to "Sin").
  • There's also a hilarious aversion that needs to be mentioned - the infamous "I'm gonna be a blitzball when I grow up!" kid. The natural reaction would be to assume the translators made a typo or somehow lost that the kid meant "blitzball player". But nope — even in Japanese, the kid says, word for word, "おっきくなったらブリッツボールになるんだ!", which is indeed unquestionbably the line as translated in 2001. The HD remaster made it clear that the typo was in the Japanese script — the line in JP gets "player" added after blitzball — but the English version left the now-spoony-bard-level-famous line in unaltered as a homage.
• Lots of Luggage: Although a less comic version of this trope, Yuna has to be convinced to leave a large suitcase of gifts behind in Besaid. She wanted desperately to give them to the temples she was to visit, but didn't quite grasp the length of their journey or the danger she'd face along the way.
• Love Confession: Avoided for almost the entire game, and even that depends on which version you play. In the North American release Yuna admits her love for Tidus as he fades away. Most heavily implied when Tidus picks up a sphere after Mount Gagazet.
• Love Epiphany: In relation to the above trope, Yuna realizes that she's in love with Tidus before or around the time the group is on the Mi'ihen Highroad, but only gets the chance to express it in any meaningful way in the Macalania Woods with The Big Damn Kiss scene, followed by her last chance (as far as she knows), explicit Love Confession to him in the ending.
• Love Hurts: Very much so. Every major character in the game has lost someone they love at some point, which in Lulu's case was her former fiancé. In the ending, Yuna loses Tidus right after declaring her love for him.
• Love Theme: "Suteki Da Ne" (the title is Japanese for "Isn't it wonderful?") plays as Tidus and Yuna find comfort in each other after several world-shattering revelations. It's played again with a more somber arrangement over the closing credits, which is fitting given the nature of the final scenes.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: A very strange case, whereby the hero discovers that his estranged father has actually been transformed into the recurring monster which threatens to destroy Spira. This is also handled very matter-of-factly and done very early; Auron outright tells Tidus only three/four hours into the game, and he just refuses to believe it until he gets way too close to Sin. The two of them keep it under their hats until The Reveal about the nature of the Final Aeon makes it all too obvious.
• Made of Explodium: After Sin fires his Wave-Motion Gun, the party watch as the valleys formed across the ocean and land begin to refill. As the ocean reforms, an understandable tsunami begins to form. However, as it draws closer to the cast, instead of meeting a giant wave, the earth begins to explode with enough force to knock the leading couple off their feet.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Yuna does start with the ability to summon incredibly powerful creatures. However, she herself is extremely fragile at the start, and summoning in a fight with low-level enemies for the purpose of keeping Yuna's level up to par drastically slows you down. And because the summon replaces the entire party on the field, it complicates getting XP for everyone else. What she does have is access to nearly double the Magic stat increases compared to Lulu, the game's default black mage. That still wouldn't be a huge deal if you could only teach Yuna black magic after completing her standard sphere path. But around the game's halfway point, you can find several items that allow you to turn Yuna into a black mage. If you have actually been leveling Lulu enough to unlock the third tier of black magic and then teach it to Yuna, even if you haven't been using her much, Yuna immediately puts Lulu's magic damage to shame.
  • Keepa starts on the Besaid Aurochs and, beyond his Catch stat (mediocre even among other low-level goalies), he's pretty lousy in all areas. But from level ~70 on, his shooting ability explodes — until he's one of the strongest forwards available. Kind of satisfying. So if you plan on playing Blitzball a lot, it might be worth it to keep him signed. A level 99 Keepa is no one you want playing against you...
    • Several of the Aurochs members see their stats increase dramatically in the very high levels (although not to the same degree as with Keepa), but one member, Jassu, is an inversion of this trope. Jassu starts off as probably the most solid player on the Aurochs other than Tidus and Wakka, as he has good but not remarkable stats in all the categories relevant to his position as a defenseman. Meanwhile the other Aurochs all start with at least one stat that is really bad and prevents them from playing their position as effectively as possible. However, once his level is in the 20s or so, Jassu's stat growth slows to a crawl, while most other blitz players in the league see their stat growth really take off in those levels. This makes Jassu, who was initially the most reliable player on the Aurochs aside from the two stars, become a liability to keep on your team.
  • Wedge is the opposite — a good front-line player who trails off and then suddenly becomes arguably the best goalie in the game.
• Magitek: The machinery wielded by the Al Bhed. Some of Spira's mainstream culture shows signs of it too, like the Blitzball stadium and the various puzzles in the temples. Not surprising, considering Bevelle's true history.
• Male Gaze: The camera loves Rikku's butt and Lulu's chest. Several early scenes seem to have the camera purposely at the height of Rikku's butt, including when she's first introduced and when she changes from her salvaging jumpsuit to her normal shorts. Lulu's victory animation has her bend down, showing her cleavage. This is also enforced by Lulu's design; her outfit was designed to be unusually complex so as to challenge the staff. They cut out the middle man and did their best to script FMV sequences so she's only shown from behind or the waist up.
• Mama Bear: Seymour's mother must have been a very powerful woman, considering that she was his only known guardian during his pilgrimage. And then she sacrificed herself to become the fayth of one of the game's most powerful Aeons.
• Manly Tears: Shed by Tidus at one particular point in the game.
  Tidus: "Dad?... I hate you." (When he finally meets Jekkt inside Sin)
• Marathon Boss: Including all of the unskippable cutscenes, the final boss battle takes about two hours from your last save point until the credits start. In that time you: play a crystal-catching mini game which is required to start the actual battle; fight the Final Boss (in two stages); fight all of your summons (which have been possessed by The Man Behind the Man); fight The Man Behind the Man; and finally some more cutscenes. Phew.
  • Penance, unlocked only after beating the Dark Aeons. Has 12 million HP, and its abilities are a One-Hit KO on one or all of your characters, even with all your stats maxed out. With two arms that have to be taken out even as they keep regenerating in order to prevent its most lethal abilities, whittling it down will take the better part of a half-hour or longer.
• Marrying the Mark: Variant: Yuna marries Seymour as part of a ploy to get him Sent (the only way to kill someone off for good in that 'verse), she figures he'll be too... "distracted" to put a stop to her until it's too late. And Seymour himself is marrying Yuna as part of a ploy to get her to become attached to him, as he knows that only The Power of Love can kill Sin, and thus, once he gets Yuna to love him, he will become her Final Aeon and become Sin, which will kill Yuna in the process. So, in short, both of them are planning to off the other.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: The Monster Arena dispenses some. To receive some of its creations, you have to "catch" (read: defeat with a weapon with a certain ability) a certain amount of enemies per region or of a specific type. The final creation requires you to catch every enemy in the whole game world ten times.
• May It Never Happen Again: This forms the bulk of the endgame: the characters spend the first two thirds or so of the story trying to defeat Eldritch Abomination Sin the traditional way, knowing that it's likely to come back again in ten years like it always does. However at that point they learn the reason why it always comes back, and switch gears into searching for a way to defeat it for good.
• Meaningful Echo: When Tidus and Yuna talk about visiting Zanarkand (the Zanarkand Tidus knows, anyway), Yuna is surprised at the idea of being able to go out at night, and Tidus assures her that Zanarkand is a city that "never sleeps." Later, when explaining to Tidus that he and the Zanarkand he knows are all part of a dream sustained by the fayth, Bahamut describes Zanarkand as a place that "never sleeps" and tells Tidus that the fayth are tired of the dream.
• Meaningful Name:
  • One of the translations of Yuna's name could be "moon", referring to her quiet, calm personality. Not to mention that Tidus is derived from the Okinawan word "tida", which means sun, hence his bright and optimistic character. The game is well aware of this — the items you gather to make both character's Celestial Weapons are called "The Sun Crest" and "The Moon Crest", respectively.
  • The spelling of Tidus is also similar to 'tides'. What is it that affects the tides, and what is Yuna named after?
  • Sin is a real pile-up of meaningful names, and is detailed in its character entry.
  • The Al Bhed where named after the Alphabet. A fitting name, given that their language is a cipher based on the Latin alphabet.
  • The world's name also dings this: Spira. Now add an "L" at the end. This is even lampshaded by Auron when Tidus asks him why Spira revolves around people dying.
• Medieval Stasis: Enforced. There is plenty of Lost Technology lying around, and some such as the Al Bhed and the higher ups of the church itself are willing to use it, but the Yevonite religion preaches that using technology is what brought Sin down on Spira in the first place, and since it reliably shows up to destroy any settlement that grows larger than a medium-sized town or shows any signs of embracing technological advancement, everyone believes this. As it turns out, this is exactly why Sin was created — the ancient city of Zanarkand was on the verge of being wiped out by a more technologically advanced rival, and its leader, Yu Yevon, after calling into being a magical recreation of the city far out in the ocean, fashioned Sin partially to protect it by destroying any rival that became technologically advanced enough to discover or pose a threat to it. His daughter Yunalesca then went on to create the tenets of the Yevon religion based on this goal.
• Messy Hair: Yuna has bedhead following a tiring night of helping the injured and doing the sending at Djose Temple following the massacre on the Mi'ihen Highroad. Your other party members crack jokes and laugh at her for having bedhead, Wakka commenting "A summoner with bedhead? What's the world coming to?" It's only later that your PoV character, Tidus, realizes that he was the only one really laughing, and everyone else was just laughing to keep going.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: The traditional Comet and Meteor spells aren't in this game for use by an ordinary party member. However, Yuna can summon Aeons, and one of her summons, Ifrit, has a Limit Break called "Meteorstrike" which acts as the substitute.
• Min-Maxing: Famous as the Final Fantasy game where this is possible. With enough time grinding at the Monster Arena to earn the spheres for it, the player can convert all normal stat nodes on the Sphere Grid into +4 nodes, while MP nodes become +40 and HP +300. It is fully possible to hit 255, the maximum, in all main stats. However, it isn't possible to do this and max out MP and HP; there's just not enough room on the grid to place all the nodes you need for it.
• The Missus and the Ex: An implied example during a dream sequence. Tidus acknowledges his light-hearted crushes on both Rikku and Yuna.
  Yuna: They'll find us if it doesn't hurry.
  Rikku: Hey! You said you'd go with me!
  [cue Tidus jogging on the spot, facing away from the pair of them]
• Monster Progenitor: Yu Yevon. It is explained in the story that this is how Sin came to be, and how Sin keeps coming back. Sin is the armour in which Yu Yevon is clad, and he creates the beast from the Final Aeons.
• Morton's Fork: Part of Yevon's backstory. Go along with Yu Yevon and perpetuate Sin's existence for thousands of years, but still be alive, or defy Yu Yevon and let him destroy the world and kill everyone.
• Motif: Water. Whether it's Tidus getting swept away by it (which happens several times), Spira's only source of fun being an underwater sport, Yuna performing a sending at Kilika, the oasis at Bikanel island, Anima's temple or the Via Purifico. Water always seems to get a ton of emphasis in this game. Also, pretty much every major revelation happens where water is present.
• Mr. Exposition: Lulu and Auron explain a lot about the world or the pilgrimage in cutscenes. Justified, as the protagonist Tidus really has no clue. And then there is Maechen, but he only provides information if you explicitly ask for it..
• Murder Into Malevolence: Fiends are the souls of humans whose unfinished business kept them on earth until they became bitter, angry monsters with no other purpose than to attack the living. Sin's attacks often leave huge numbers of souls that will quickly become monsters if they aren't sent on by a summoner.
• Mythology Gag:
  • After a series of events that force Yuna on the run, she ends up stating that after what has happened, "nobody will build a statue of me". The Ronso present reply "Then if nobody else will, the Ronso will! With a grand horn on [the] head,", which refers both to the importance of Ronso horns, and to the fact that the summoner job classes in earlier games in the series had horns on their forehead in the same place the Ronsos do. And if you get the Ronso/Guado subquest right in Final Fantasy X-2, you actually get to see the statue built, and it really does have the horn on its head.
  • Not many realize it, thanks to its invokedNo Export for You status, but Valefor first appeared in the early Squaresoft title Bahamut Lagoon. That makes all the summons except Ixion Mythology Gags from one Square game or another.
  • An NPC in Luca will say that a female warrior monk called him a Spoony Bard when he tried to chat her up.
  • When giving Tidus the history of the crusaders, Gatta says they were originally called the Crimson Blades. This is the name of the order of knights in Vagrant Story.

N-O

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Some of the "Original" Monster Arena creations fit the bill. Catastrophe (beefed-up Sinspawn), Earth Eater (Chocobo Eater on crack), and the now-famous Nemesis (Omega Weapon is a guppy next to this guy).
• Necessarily Evil: Yevon is sort of this. If it doesn't follow along with Yu Yevon's master plan, Sin destroys the world. Its actual leaders on the other hand...
• Never Say "Die": Mostly averted considering the setting, but there are at least two instances where it's played straight.
  • When Auron told Tidus that Yunalesca "struck him down". To be fair for Auron, he was Only Mostly Dead at the time.
  • When Yuna told Mika that she and her guardians fought and "defeated" Yunalesca, which shocked Mika. Though considering Yunalesca was an Unsent and already long dead, she might be using the correct word, after all.
• New Meat: Tidus. Completely untrained in any kind of battle, he's given his father's sword (which he can barely carry) and told to fight. He interrupts the sacred traditions of the Summoner's prayers to the Fayth, potentially endangering her mission, but is brought along on the orders of the summoner.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • It takes Maester Mika admitting the truth about the Yevon religion's dependency on the cycle of death for Yuna to finally snap, doing things her way and eventually bringing about the Eternal Calm without using the Final Aeon.
  • Yunalesca also does this. Even knowing the costs, Yuna considers using the Final Aeon to defeat Sin when the option is first presented, with Wakka and Lulu both volunteering to be the one to give their lives to become the Fayth necessary to summon it. It is only after Yuna asks whether Sin will inevitably return should she succeed in defeating it, and Yunalesca not only answers in the affirmative but seems to go out of her way to thoroughly crush any hope the three have of winning a final victory using this method and any faith they have that adherence to Yevon's teachings can prevent Sin from returning, that they all turn definitively against her and join the rest of the party in resolving to fight her instead of going along with her plan.
• Night and Day Duo: Done symbolically with Tidus and Yuna. Both their names are derived from the Okinawan language, with Tidus coming from the word for "Sun" and Yuna is the word for "Night". Tidus is very tanned, has bleached blonde hair, and wears very bright clothing, Yuna is quite pale, has dark hair and wears a dark skirt with a pattern of stars on it. Furthermore to get Tidus' ultimate weapon you need to collect the Sun Crest and Sigil, while Yuna needs the Moon Crest and Sigil. Their powers and abilities don't really follow the theme, although their personalities do. (Tidus is brash and outgoing, Yuna is reserved, quiet, and demure.)
• No Hero Discount: Rin is still charging you for weapons and items despite the fact that the airship they are on is being attacked by a giant monster and again later when attacking Sin. This is actually lampshaded:
  Wakka: We gotta pay?! If we lose, you'll die too, buddy!
  Rin: I have faith in your victory.
  • O'aka makes his business off traveling to areas where there would be no stores or alternatives and charging much higher prices for supplies and weapons
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Though justified by the story, the party essentially travels down one long highway from Besaid all the way to Zanarkand, with only minor bumps and small deviations in the path for treasure.
• Non-Indicative Name: An in-universe example invoked by Jecht with his "Sublimely Magnificent Jecht Shot Mark III." As Tidus explains, "There is no Mark I or Mark II, you know?" continuing that Jecht just made it up to hook the crowd, that they would come back every night, expecting to see Mark I and Mark II.
  Tidus: And, they really did come back. I used to get... so mad.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: The Overdrives have this feel, due to the diverse nature of the party. Tidus learns new Overdrives by using previous ones repeatedly. Lulu's Overdrive depends on the black magic that she knows, while Yuna's Overdrive depends on the Aeons she can summon, and Rikku depends on the party's inventory to mix items. Auron learns Overdrives by collecting movie spheres (certain numbers of which unlock these abilities). Kimahri learns Overdrives from enemies, and you play Blitzball to win new Overdrives for Wakka. One of the most Egregious example of Guide Dang It! would be Valefor's Energy Blast attack. How do you obtain it? By talking to a friggin' dog in the very first village.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Getting defeated in the Monster Arena simply boots you back to the entrance without throwing a Game Over at you.
• No One Gets Left Behind: In Bevelle when Seymor prepares to attack, Kimahri holds him off while the rest of the party flees, but halfway down the hall...
  Yuna: I won't leave Kimahri behind!
  Auron: He is a guardian. Protecting you is everything.
  Yuna: Auron!
  Tidus: That's right! We're all guardians! Yeah, and you know what that means? Yuna... Anywhere you go, I'll follow!
  Yuna: Anywhere I go?
  Tidus: Yeah, anywhere!
  Yuna: Well, then!
  Tidus & Yuna: Let's go! [Yuna and Tidus run back towards Kimahri, forcing the other guardians to come too]
• Not Completely Useless: Kimahri's much more useful than many people give him credit for because of how adaptable he can be. Depending on the abilities you give him, he can function as a valuable backup mage, inflict additional status effects, and so on. On top of that, he's the only other party member besides Auron whose weapons usually have the Piercing trait, which can be pretty useful at the start of the game before Auron actually joins you. In fact, if you get him a Piercing weapon prior to the second Sinspawn fight (at Kilika temple), you can beat him without forcing him to open up, leaving him with only his much more manageable phase 1 abilities for the entire fight. However, if he isn't raised right, he can become a huge liability in the one part of the game he is forced into a solo boss fight. On the other hand, your first opportunity to get Master Thief^note by winning the Remiem Temple Chocobo race with enough treasure chests opened to get 30 Pendulums is right before this fight, and a properly built Kimahri can acquire 12 or so Level 3 Key Spheres from the boss fight.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The second half of the final dungeon. The tense music cranks the paranoia all the way up, and those damn pieces of the floor that suddenly bar your path with a loud noise certainly don't help. It's even creepier when you have the No Encounters ability equipped, preventing random encounters from breaking the tension.
• Not Me This Time: Inverted with the Al Bhed abducting summoners. The Yevon Church blames the Al Bhed for all sorts of things they have no responsibility for, but in this case, they really are responsible.
• NPC Random Encounter Immunity: Played brutally straight. How many random encounters did you get into when you walked down the Mi'ihen Highroad? How many NPC civilians did you pass that were out for a casual stroll? If you talk to them, some of those civilians will decide they have no use for a Hi-Potion and give it to the Summoner and her crew of badasses.
• NPC Roadblock: After Home is destroyed, and once you're able to use the airship to return to Bikanel Island, you're prevented from returning to Home by a couple of Al Bhed, who will automatically engage in conversation with Tidus if he approaches them. In some versions of the game, it is possible to actually re-enter Home through a glitch, ratcheting the story script back to when the party visits Home for the first time and causing some noticable bugs due to Yuna being in the party when she isn't supposed to be there.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Tidus is generally not guilty of this, because he really is new to Spira. But when Wakka shows him the "Yevon prayer", which Tidus knows as the blitzball "victory" sign, he seems to be deliberately doing it much more shakily than he'd know how to do.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Tidus unintentionally does this often. After The Reveal, he has a few minutes of Heroic BSoD when he thinks about how bad saying these things must have hurt Yuna. (Although it turns out that she was okay with it.) If you go and replay the game, it's quite startling to see the situations knowing the truth of what they're all thinking. Particularly the scenes in Djose Temple, the Moonflow, and when Yuna gets out of Luzzu's way right before Operation Mi'ihen. Even Tidus' narration over the cutscenes bears the undertones of it all if you know what to listen for.
• Obviously Evil: Seymour, you're not fooling anyone. And even if he was, his Leitmotif isn't. The Guado in general are pretty sinister looking, with elongated arms, wickedly clawed hands, gnarled faces and hair, and a hunched stance.
• Oh, Crap!: The only way to describe Tidus' look when he faces Penance... Jump to 1:43.
• One-Eyed Bats:One-Eye is a special enemy created in the Species Conquest at Monster Arena. He is a gigantic bat with a yellow eye at the center, and defeating him proves very difficult as he is immune to four of five elements (Fire/Thunder/Water/Ice).
• One Head Taller: Played for the uncomfortable factor with Seymour. In any scenes with Yuna, he's shown standing near her, noticably about a head taller, often intimidating or acting possessive. It serves to show Seymour's darker side and make the player feel more need to protect Yuna.
• One-Hit KO:
  • Using Steal on the Al Bhed robots instantly kills them (but does not count towards gaining the Slayer Overdrive mode, or adding to the gauge on Warrior mode). Weapons with Stonestrike and Deathstrike do this to anything vulnerable to those conditions.
  • In certain cases, a party member hit with a Stone attack will shatter and is lost for the remainder of the battle. This means you cannot revive or soften them; their slot in the party is just gone. In underwater battles, specifically the "rematch" against Geosgaeno (the giant underwater fiend Tidus fought at the beginning of the game), when the character is afflicted with the status, he/she is shattered instantly. And yet, weirdly, after the battle they'll be just fine.
  • Monster Arena has Fenrir, a Species Creation which has an instant death attack that ignores status immunity if it connects. It also has Shinryu, an underwater Original Creation battle that inflicts Stone status that also punches through status immunity, and given it's an underwater battle it means instant shattering.
  • Zanmato is expensive and hard to pull off because of the Random Number God, but it kills every single enemy, including bosses, in one hit. The only exceptions are Yunalesca and Braska's Final Aeon, who enter their next form instead (unless they already are in their final forms, in which case they do die).
  • An enemy example is Sin's Overdrive, Giga-Gravitron. It completely wipes out your party, resulting in an instant Game Over. It also inevitably casts it after sixteen turns or so, making it a Time-Limit Boss.
    • And by wipes out the entire party, we mean blows up the airship they're on. Result: Automatic Game Over even if you have an Aeon out.
  • Dark Yojimbo's and Dark Magus Sisters' overdrives deal higher Damage Cap (six times in the case of the latter) and dispel Auto-Life. The only way to survive them is to use aeon, and in case of Sisters you can only use their counterpart, as Dark Mindy, who calls the overdrive, is the last to go and your other Aeon shield may be killed before that by her sisters, who go immediately before her.
  • Penance's abilities, Obliteration and Immolation, if they don't instantly kill you, will inflict some nasty status effects along with them. And if both its arms are intact by the time it gets to its turn, it might perform Judgment Day, a Total Party Kill, and should you have Auto-Life, the arms will finish you off immediately due to delay associated with revive.
• One-Time Dungeon: Zanarkand under attack in the intro, the ground of Lake Macalania, the Bevelle temple, and the Via Purifico. The temple contains a crucial plot item; to avoid it being permanently missable, it's placed in a way that you absolutely cannot miss it.
• One-Winged Angel: The monstrous boss forms of Seymour, Yunalesca, and Jecht.
• Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Mostly inverted. Auron, the mission that kept him around as an Unsent complete, willingly departs for the Farplane, and Tidus ceases to exist as a result of the disappearance of the Fayth who created him, leaving the rest of the party downhearted (and Yuna heartbroken) while the rest of Spira celebrates their new Eternal Calm.
• Opposing Sports Team: The Goers are painted this way in the beginning, and in the mandatory minigame segment. After that it fades away, because more important issues are taking center stage.
• Opposites Theme Naming: Tidus is a romanization of "Tidaa", which is Okinawan for "sun"; Yuna, on the other hand, is Okinawan for "night".
• Optional Boss: As you progress through the story, there are several skippable boss fights, starting with Lord Ochu and then moving on to Belgemine's aeons (Ifrit on Mi'ihen Highroad, Ixion on the Moonflow, and Shiva in the Calm Lands).
• Orphan's Ordeal: Everyone is said to have experienced this or alluded to. The only ones who don't have any such thing stated in their past, are Auron and Kimahri. This is mostly thanks to Sin; lots of children end up orphans due to surviving the deaths of their parents when Sin attacks. Even Tidus' ordeal turns out ultimately to do with Sin as coming into contact with Sin brought Jecht over to Spira, who then went on to become Sin, and Tidus' mom decided to stop living without Jecht sometime after that.
• Our Elves Are Different: Guado fit the wood elf archetype of this trope fairly well; they are notably agile thanks to their long limbs and claw-like fingers, style their hair in a manner that resembles roots and leaves, and have a reputation for arrogance but are gracious hosts when entertaining guests.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: A few variations. In addition to ghost-type enemies, which are pretty standard, there are pyreflies, which are small, non-sentient balls of life energy that diffuse from a body when somebody dies and which are found in high concentrations in places associated with death (which in Spira is a lot of places), and Unsent, formerly living people who died with some important task yet unfulfilled and remain tied to the world of the living by the strength of their emotions. Worse still, if their purpose and will are eroded over time (as is nearly inevitable), they inevitably turn into fiends, monsters composed of pyreflies. And if an Unsent comes into being with malevolent desires to begin with, you get abominations like Seymour.
• Our Souls Are Different: While the game keeps it mostly ambiguous whether the dead truly exist in the Farplane it does appear that, at least by official Yevon doctrine, human souls are composed of pyreflies, or can use pyreflies to take on the resemblance of the bodies they had in life. This idea has some support in the existence of the Unsent, the walking ghosts of people who refuse to go to the Farplane. Restless souls merging with or absorbing each other is also what seems to give rise to Fiends. Souls can also be extracted while a person is still alive and bound into statues, transforming them into Fayth, this games basis for Summon Magic .
• Our Zombies Are Different: Quite different. They're the resurrected corpses of former Yevon Warrior Monks, and rather than shambling around trying to eat brains they guard the lair of Yunalesca at her behest. They're also unusual in their combat tactics, preferring More Dakka to biting and clawing.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: one of the biggest Achilles Heels for your Aeons is that, aside from resting at Inns and/or touching Save Points, there is no way to heal them: they don't come with Cure spells, you don't get the ability to teach them new spells until later, and you don't get the necessary (quantities of) items to teach them the spells until later still. That being said, three of your Aeons — Ifrit, Ixion and Shiva — are elemental monsters, aligned with Fire, Thunder and Ice respectively. And what's a quality of elemental monsters going back through a decade of Final Fantasy titles? They're healed by their own element. Once you realize this, these three Aeons have a lot more longevity.
• Outrun the Fireball: When Home is destroyed. The explosion actually hits the airship, though.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Lulu, Wakka, and Auron all deserve credit here. All three are former guardians, the first two fighting all the way to the Calm Lands on their last pilgrimage while Auron completed his. Yet they all start out at effectively level one. The monsters in the Calm Lands would squash all three of them without batting an eye at the start of the game. Auron mentions that there were fewer fiends when he travelled with Braska on his pilgrimage, so he might not have needed to fight as many as Yuna and her guardians. Auron is also technically dead and may be having to adjust to his new Unsent form, so that might factor in too.

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