Final Fantasy X / Tropes T to Z

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T-U

• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: This is woven into the fabric of Random Encounters. There are five basic types of foes you'll face: armored foes, elementals, agile beasts, flying types and robots. Each one is weak to one of Yuna's Praetorian Guard: Auron specializes in the Armor-Piercing Attack (as does Kimhari, to a lesser extent), Lulu is a Black Mage with access to all four Elemental Powers and thus can use the appropriate counter magic against Elementals, Tidus is the Fragile Speedster with high accuracy who can keep up with nimble enemies, Wakka is a Long-Range Fighter who attacks by throwing his blitzball and thus can take down flying monsters, and Rikku can inflict fatal malfunctions on mechanical enemies via Video Game Stealing. If you have (or switch in) the right party members, you can One-Hit KO a lot of fiends. (There can also be some minor blending of roles even before grinding on the Sphere Grid, for example Wakka's highly accurate throws mean he can usually hit the agile enemies with high evasion that Tidus normally specializes in.) Also doubles as Gameplay and Story Integration, since the whole point of the Guardians is to fight so that Yuna doesn't have to.
• Taken for Granite: The Fayth are statues that house the souls of people who provide the power for the summoned creature. In the ending, all of the fayth throughout Spira turn to stone. Many fiends can also petrify you... but you can also petrify them as well, with the right spells and items.
• Take Your Time: As is standard for an RPG, this happens all over the place. Perhaps the most glaring example occurs near the end of the game, when the party ostensibly only has a small window of time in which to infiltrate the temporarily wounded and pacified Sin to confront Yu Yevon, but the player can spend as much time as they like playing blitzball, racing chocobos, or catching butterflies without consequences.
• Taking Up the Mantle: Yunalesca in the backstory. Yu Yevon (her father) meant to protect Zanarkand and destroy all machina using Sin, but he quickly lost his mind and was unable to do so. When Bevelle said that they would do anything to appease Yevon and get rid of Sin, Yunalesca told them to make a religion that did exactly what Yu Yevon wanted to, namely banning all machina and stopping anyone from looking for Zanarkand.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Indirectly. Tidus gets two chances to talk to the Final Boss. If taken, these empty the boss's Overdrive meter, which greatly improves the party's chances of living long enough to finish off the boss in the traditional manner.
• Talk to Everyone: Due to Yuna being on her pilgrimage and being the daughter of a summoner who brought the last Calm, many NPCs you talk to are more than willing give you items, and rarely info, if you talk to them enough times.
• Technicolor Death: This is integrated into the plot: When monsters are killed, the pyreflies they're made of emanate from their remains.
• Technophobia: The religion of Yevon teaches that technology (Machina, as they call it) resulted in the destruction of their once-great civilization and the emergence of the creature known as Sin as their penance for their pride, which puts them at odds with the highly-mechanized Al Bhed. Of course, this is a case of "do as we say, not as we do", as the party finds the Yevon headquarters to be quite technologically advanced, which causes major issues for devout Yevonites, like Wakka. Even more so when Maester Seymour responds to Wakka's outrage with, "Pretend you don't see them".
• Tech Points: FFX takes the unusual step of basically replacing Experience Points with these, renaming them "Sphere Levels" and providing a "Sphere Grid" for a Point Build System... except for how progression through it is essentially linear (at least, until you unlock special spheres which unlock other characters' paths, allow you to activate a sphere already used by another character, or even let you teleport to a different part of the grid). X-2 went back to standard levels.
• Thematic Sequel Logo Change: The logo shows Yuna doing a sending ritual so the souls of the deceased can move to the afterlife in shades from blue all the way to orange, the typical color of said souls.
• Theme Naming: It's somewhat Lost in Translation, but a more literal translation of the Al Bhed and Yevonites' names is "Albedo" (white) and "Ebon" (black) respectively, to further emphasize the contrast between the two groups.
• This Way to Certain Death: The secret dungeon of the Omega Ruins certainly gives this feel — pyreflies continously float around the passageways, which are lit by curious, purple torches. The fact that pyreflies are common enough in there to be constantly corporeal says a great deal about the number of deaths that place has seen. And the whole dungeon only has one save sphere, so if you're not powerful enough yet, you'd better pray you don't get Ambushed by a Great Malboro unprepared.
• Those Two Guys: Luzzu and Gatta. Possibly a subversion, as no matter what you do, one of them will wind up dead. Also, stadium guards Biggs and Wedge and Lucile and Elma.
• The Three Faces of Adam: The male protagonists, leaving Kimahri out. Tidus is the Hunter — he's the youngest and most desperate to get home, often prone to doing risky things without thinking them through. Wakka is the Lord — who's trying to maintain his strong beliefs in Yevon in an unforgiving world. Auron is the Prophet — as he serves to guide the protagonists towards the truth about Yevon.
  • Three of the four Maesters, again leaving the Ronso (Kelk) out. Kinoc is the Hunter — the clear youngest and part of the Crusaders. Seymour is the Lord, in true Big Bad fashion. Mika is the Prophet — as the oldest and wisest.
• The Three Faces of Eve:
  • Rikku is the Child — she is the youngest, a playful Genki Girl, expresses a childlike fear of lightning and thunder, and is prone to emotional outbursts. Yuna is the Wife — she is calm, supportive both in personality and as a White Mage, and is the only member of the party to be part of the Official Couple^note Rikku and Lulu's love interests aren't confirmed until the sequel. Lulu is the Seductress — an Aloof Dark-Haired Girl with a mysterious air and cleavage revealing plunging neckline.
  • The three female Aeons are this as well (barring the Magus Sisters; see The Hecate Sisters for them) — judging by their Fayth. Valefor is the Child, as her Fayth is that of a young girl and she is the first Aeon that Yuna gets; Anima the Wife, and she is the only one of those who is confirmed to become a wife and mother; Shiva is the Seductress — while her Fayth is a priestess, the Aeon herself is the most humanoid out of them all and is fully nude, making her a Cute Monster Girl.
• Third-Option Love Interest:
  • Final Fantasy X: Played with. At the start of the game, Tidus meets Rikku (Veronica), and then Yuna (Betty); an early cutscene implies he is conflicted about his feelings for the two of them (he invites Yuna to see Zanarkand with him, only for Rikku to jog up and claim he invited her first), but about midway through the game he has the option to tell Lulu he'd rather be with her instead, invoking this. It's all subverted from about Macalania onward when Tidus and Yuna get a definite Relationship Upgrade, however.
  • And it should be noted that the Lulu dialogue option is Played for Laughs:
  Lulu: Interesting. I suppose I could add you to my list.
• Tiebreaker Round: Blitzball uses the same golden goal rule as Association Football — if the score is tied at the end of normmal play, first to score in overtime is the winner.
• Time-Limit Boss: Sin's head. Fail to kill it before it uses its Overdrive, and watch him obliterate your entire party, resulting in an instant Game Over.
• Tired of Running: Having escaped the Via Purifico, Tidus and the group are set upon by crazed riflemen, long-legged battle mechs and Seymour himself. Kimahri attempts a Heroic Sacrifice, but Tidus and Yuna decide they've had enough.

• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Rikku is the Tomboy, Yuna is the Girly Girl — while Lulu is in-between; she dresses in feminine clothes but has a very tomboyish attitude.
• Too Dumb to Live: Maester Kinoc makes a point to tell Seymour (an undead Evil Sorcerer who is capable of summoning powerful aeons to wipe out his enemies) that he will never trust Seymour due to Seymour killing his own father, and Kinoc will be watching every move Seymour makes as a result. Rather than, say, keeping this judgement of Seymour to himself and monitoring Seymour secretly from afar, he says this directly to Seymour's face, and then he goes on a mission with Seymour without having any backup around to help Kinoc if Seymour does decide to betray him. Seymour's response to this development is extremely predictable.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • In a broad sense, this is the purpose of the pilgrimage — summoners must travel Spira mastering the various Aeons and combating the fiends that stand in their way to become strong enough to be able to perform the Final Summoning.
  • Yuna starts out as a peaceful, quietly devout girl, but as the game continues, she gets increasingly powerful Aeons, busts out of a kidnapping attempt, breaks out of an attempted forced marriage, was the first person to Screw Destiny when she learns that what she had been taught her entire life was a hideous lie, and then proceeded to beat that lie into pieces.
    • She gains several more levels in X-2. "I don't like your plan. It sucks."
    • The game does this for the entire summoner class. The bread and butter of the summoner's ability is summoning powerful monsters to attack enemies, but they don't really have much power on their own. Summoners in past games augmented their abilities by being proficient with other magic (Rydia and Dagger, for example). But in Final Fantasy X, a summoner created Sin and terrorized the world for a thousand years solely through the art of summoning. The summoner's identity? Yu Yevon.
  • Tidus also merits a mention. In the beginning of the story, he's a spoiled teenage jock with little battle experience who is also rather self-centered. By the end, he's not only much more powerful in gameplay terms, but also has matured to the point that he is willing to give his life to save Spira and the woman he loves.
• Too Many Belts: Lulu wears a dress made of belts. It was meant to try to challenge the graphics designers. It worked too well, leading to her being underrepresented in FMVs. She even provides the page image for the trope.
• Tragic Intangibility: Tidus starts to fade away and Yuna desperately runs to him to embrace him, only to go straight through him and fall down. After she tells him she loves him, Tidus puts his arms around her to hug her as best he can given they can't physically touch anymore.
• Tragic Monster:
  • Braska's Final Aeon, a.k.a Jecht.
  • Anima, who was Seymour's mother.
  • In a sense, Yu Yevon too. He started out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who created the dream Zanarkand as a way to save his homeland and then created Sin so that he could be safe while he summoned the dream world. But as the years passed, the act of maintaining the dream world and re-summoning Sin destroyed his mind. Now, after a thousand years, he's essentially just the living equivalent of a looping computer program, able to do nothing but maintain the false Zanarkand and recreate Sin when it gets destroyed by the Final Aeon. Let's face it, getting killed by the party was probably the best thing that could have happened to him; which probably explains why you're practically railroaded into doing so: you're no so much killing a god as putting a broken, mindless creature out of it's misery and letting it finally die. He's even described as not being good or evil by the current day because of all that.
• Translation Convention: A rare exception, in that the game doesn't translate the language spoken by the Al Bhed. It does, however, allow the player to collect primers which will interpret their spoken and written language. It's practically a basic substitution cipher. (In-universe, it appears to be a proper language.)
• Trapped in Another World: Tidus thinks this is his problem, although his relationship to this new world turns out to be something other than what he initially thinks it is.
• Trauma Inn: They exist in this game, and serve the usual purpose of restoring all party members' HP and MP, but given that save spheres do the same thing and are found in every inn, the inns are functionally redundant and only serve as backdrops to cutscenes.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Yunalesca is a classic case of this. See That One Boss on the YMMV page for more info.
• Tropical Island Adventure: The tropical islands of Besaid and Kilika are two of the locations Tidus and the gang go through.
• Trouble from the Past: The game works on this principle. The inhabitants of Spira all consider Sin to be their punishment for not following Yevon's teachings. A summoner must give their life in order to vanquish Sin temporarily. Then, it comes back again. The player attempts to find a way around this clause.
• True Blue Femininity: Yuna's kimono has a navy-blue skirt. She is definitely the most feminine of the girls in the party — as she's also a White Magician Girl.
• True Companions: A summoner and his or her guardians inevitably become this over the course of the long and difficult journey to Zanarkand. Actually a plot point, as when the party gets there Yunalesca reveals that only someone with this kind of deep and intense emotional bond to a summoner can become a fayth powerful enough to be capable of summoning the Final Aeon.
• Tsundere: Lulu is a Type A towards Wakka. She snarks constantly and derides him, often comparing him to his brother, her past lover. But they show a few moments of tenderness, and by the sequel, where they are properly together, she has become almost fully deredere.
• Twinking: The game gives full XP to any character that takes part in a battle, even if they only swap in, defend once, and swap out again. It's not terribly common for a character to get significantly underleveled, but if it does happen, it's easy enough to twink them back up by using stronger characters to "carry" them through tough battles.
• Unblockable Attack: In the Monster Arena, Fenrir's Fangs of Hell attack is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill attack that Deathproof armor will not protect against.
• Unbuilt Trope: The game superficially has the trappings of the isekai genre as popularized in The New '10s, but many scenes come off as mocking the Wish-Fulfillment aspect of the "loser otaku becomes overpowered, beloved JRPG hero" storyline, such as Auron making a fool out of Tidus by taking out an armored enemy he struggled with. It also inverts the isekai premise, since Zanarkand is real, but Tidus isn't.
• Uncommon Time: "A Contest of Aeons" is in 5/4, and the epic final boss theme switches meters virtually every measure.
• Undeath Always Ends: Yuna ends up sending Auron at the end of the game after he insists that he's "been here long enough... This is your world now."
• Underdogs Never Lose:
  • Subverted. The game seems to set up this trope for the plot-mandatory blitzball game, with Tidus standing in the face of a booing crowd and proclaiming that his team will take the cup. However, the Aurochs really are as bad as their reputation, and you're likely to suffer a humiliating defeat. It is possible to play this straight and win the match, but it requires very careful gaming of the system, and even then be prepared to reload many times.
  • However, once you shake up their roster and get a bunch of levels on them, the Aurochs can be the best team in Spira. Similarly, the Kilika Beasts start out one of the weakest teams to face at low levels, but display frightening Magikarp Power later, while the fan-favorite Goers are the opposite.
• Underground Monkey: Many, and if you capture all of a family of them, you'll unlock a powerful Arena monster King Mook.
• Underrated and Overleveled: Tidus is a professional athlete with no combat training at all. He joins a team that consists of three experienced guardians, two of which managed to fight all the way to the Calm Lands, one completing his pilgrimage entirely, a member of the Proud Warrior Race who has been presumably training to be a guardian for years, and a White Magician Girl who can summon a flying monster at will. Despite this Tidus is equal in strength to the rest of the team.
• Underwater City: The sunken ruins where the airship is found as well as the ruins under the Moonflow.
• Underwater Kiss: Between Yuna and Tidus. An iconic moment for the game.
• Uptight Loves Wild: A Gender-Inverted case in which the uptight female (Yuna) falls for a rough-around-the-edges, screw-the-rules type of guy (Tidus).
• Useless Useful Spell: The instant death spell; by the time you get it, anything worth using it on is immune to it.

V-Z

• Vacuum Hurricane Kick: The Jecht shot seems to involve doing twenty-some revolutions while hovering at the apex of your jump for five seconds. What's interesting is how the shot is used both underwater and on land, and is just as implausible in either scenario.
• Verbal Salt in the Wound: The Ronso Tribe are a Proud Warrior Race of Cat Folk with a unicorn-like horn on their forehead, but Kimahri's horn was snapped in half by Biran Ronso after Kimahri lost a fight with him. Whenever Biran and his friend Yenke encounter the party, they always behave antagonistically towards Kimahri and are fond of taunting him with the insult "hornless".
• Verbal Tic:
  • Wakka ends a lot of his sentences with "ya?" and, while Rikku is the worst offender, quite a few characters like to end sentences with a question, you know? Both are characteristically Hawaiian, although only John DiMaggio, as Wakka, really attempts the accent.
  • Maechen ends every lecture (some of which border of Daravon-caliber boringness) with "And that, as they say, is that."
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Sin itself ends up being this.
• Vicious Cycle: Sin's death and rebirth. Every time Sin died before, it just came back. And as far as the higher-ups of the Corrupt Church are concerned, that's fine. They trick people into thinking there's a way to stop it to give people some hope, until the main characters find a way to actually stop it.
• Video Wills: Yuna's sphere. Eventually, once he realizes he's never going back to his own Zanarkand, Jecht's Spheres become this too.
• Villain Ball: In a minor example, Seymour gets to hold it in one scene. It's pretty funny to see a Luddite preacher so easily pwned by technology he doesn't have a clue about.
  Rikku: Cover your eyes! [throws flash grenade]
  Seymour: [glances down directly at the grenade]
• Villainous Rescue: After a military manouver goes horribly wrong, Yuna and Auron find themselves seperated from the party. A large Sinspawn is bearing down on them, held back only by Seymour who proceeds to protect them from harm. It's all part of a larger plan, of course. You can't marry the Summoner and use her to become Sin if she's dead (and refuses to come back).
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • There's two ways to kill Evrae Altana: either by killing it normally and making straegic use of an alternate passage guarded by locked doors, or by using two Phoenix Downs. You'd expect the easier method to be less rewarding, but you actually miss out on some one-time equipment if you take the harder route. Most likely, the game is rewarding you for efficiency and thinking outside the box.
  • Leaving your party zombified for Lady Yunalesca's third and final form is pretty much mandatory, as they will use a party-wide instant kill attack that doesn't work on zombies.
• Visionary Villain:
  • Seymour and his plan to purify Spira.
  • Also Yu Yevon creating Sin to punish Spira for trashing Zanarkand.
• Visual Initiative Queue: First game in the main series to use one.
• Wake-Up Call: Every member of the party who believed in the Final Summoning got one at Zanarkand. The Final Summoning has no chance of defeating Sin permanently. It was all a lie. This revelation put the final nail in the coffin of whatever faith they had in Yevon left. After defeating Yunalesca, they set about finding a way to truly defeat Sin permanently.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • Sinspawn Gui. It's the first boss that can genuinely wipe the floor with your party, as it can't simply be hit like other bosses due to shielding itself, and you have to kill the arms and head to stop it from using strong attacks. It also hits hard for an early game boss, meaning you also can't just rely on Yuna's summons to win the fight. It makes Seymour seem all the more powerful when he's in your party against said boss, where he can take it out in just a few turns when you fight it after a few cutscenes.
  • Evrae can swoop in and one shot kill your party in 2 turns with swooping scythe and poison breath, even if you know the strategy. Evrae is immune to elemental attacks and effects except for darkness and to top it off, Yuna still isn't available at this time so you must rely on Al Bhed Potions to survive to even get to the point the boss starts using Swooping Scythe and must go without her powerful Aeon attacks. Grinding at this point also takes some time since you're stuck on the ship until you beat the boss and few enemy types are available
• The Wandering You: The Mi'ihen Highroad and the Calm Lands fit this trope being rather large areas with nothing of interest within them. The trope is mitigated since you can rent chocobos and avoid any encounters.
• Warring Natures: Seymour. Half-human, half-Guado prince that was supposed to unite the two races, but winds up being ostracized by both because of his mixed race.
• Warrior Monk: Yevon has a whole sect of them, who serve as the church's muscle. Auron also formerly was one.
• Was Once a Man: Fiends. The game describes that dead humans who were not sent by a summoner ends as this. Because they are not sent to the farplane, they are jealous of the living and dwell in their hatred until they are not recognizable as anything human anymore.
• Watching the Sunset: Tidus and Yuna at the travel agency in Mi'ihen.
• Weaponized Ball: Wakka is a professional Blitzball (a.k.a. water-polo-on-speed) player who attacks using the ball he kept from before he Jumped at the Call.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist:
  • Seymour Guado. "Extremist" being a huge understatement. His plan is basically to deal a Mercy Kill to the entire world since he considers it preferable to living in a world with Sin.
  • The church, too. They genuinely believe that Sin cannot be destroyed. Would you rather create a ritual that brings peace temporarily, or just tell the population that they will be plagued by a giant monster forever and there's nothing they can do?
  • Yu Yevon and Yunalesca are mild versions of this. Yu Yevon wanted to make sure Zanarkand was safe (even if that meant forcing his people to dream forever and killing anyone who used machina) and Yunalesca wanted to give hope to the people of Spira and preserve her father's objectives (even if that meant forming a church that encourages summoners to throw away her lives and everyone else to be complacent).
• Wham Line: The game is brimming with them. A few notable examples:
  • An early one: "There is no Zanarkand anymore. Sin destroyed it a thousand years ago."
  • "Sin... is Jecht."
  • "The pilgrimages have to stop! If they don't, and they get to Zanarkand... They might defeat Sin. Yunie could...but then she... Yunie will die, you know?"
  • "You must choose the one whom I will change…to become the fayth of the Final Summoning."
• What Did I Do Last Night?: Jecht ended up on the wrong end of this trope during his pilgrimage with Braska. He wakes up, reeking of booze from the night before, only to discover his allies are very, very unhappy with him. Turns out he drunkenly slashed the hind leg of a shoopuf, their only mode of transport across the Moonflow river, and the party had to pay the cost of the damages from their own pocket. The shoopuf survived, and transports Tidus and the gang ten years on.
• What Does She See in Him?: Asked by Tidus in regards to Yuna's acceptance of Seymour's marriage proposal. The answer is that it's a political match only.
• Where It All Began: The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is the interior of Sin, which is also one of the first locations visited in the game (and the first in Spira).
• White Magician Girl: Yuna hits this trope on nearly every point: feminine and sweet, primarily a White Mage, and The Heart of the party.
• With a Friend and a Stranger:
  • With the protagonist as stranger variation, and a trio of friends instead of a duo.
  • Braska, with Auron as the friend and Jecht as the stranger. How well Braska and Auron might have known each other before their pilgrimage is never elaborated upon, but they are both from Spira, which gives them a stronger connection to each other than either one has to Jecht initially.
• Widely-Spaced Jail Bars: When the party is imprisoned in Bevelle, the bars for their cages are spaced widely enough that they could simply jump out of their cages onto the platform below.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Seymour is at least intended to come across as this: he was born to a human mother and Guado father, he and his mother were banished by his father to maintain the peace in Guadosalam, his mother gave her life to become a Fayth (his Final Aeon) right before his very eyes (to his horror), and he grew up lonely. As a result, he develops an ideology that life is suffering, and intends to become Sin so that he may kill everyone on Spira and end the cycle of death and pain. This all is supposed to contrast with Yuna heavily.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: Seymour indulges in this just before the fight against him on Mt. Gagazet, gloating to Kimahri about how he slaughtered the Ronso that tried to stop him climbing the mountain.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: While Auron and Jecht's plan has been in the works for ten years, by the time Tidus makes it to Spira Auron has to improvise. Initially focusing on preparing Tidus to defeat Sin, seeing his growing bond with Yuna prompts him to shift to filling her head with doubt about Yevon while simultaneously positioning Tidus as both an alternative viewpoint and a reason to want to live, culminating in their moment in the Macalania Woods. Many of the trials Yuna and her Guardians face, especially Operation Mi'ihen, Bevelle, and Mount Gagazet, further Auron's plan even though upon arrival in Spira no one had any idea they were going to happen.
• You Can't Fight Fate: This is the attitude of the Yevonite religion towards both the coming of Sin and the ritual of the Final Summoning used to fight it, and at first Yuna and her guardians feel similarly. Partially due to the influence of Tidus, they end up deciding differently in the end.
• You Got Guts: Cid likes Tidus's style when it comes to his resolve in protecting Yuna.
  Tidus: Gramps, let’s move!
  Cid: Easy, kiddo. Bevelle’s defenses are top-notch.
  Tidus: What’s the matter, gramps? You scared? Yuna’s there, so we go and get her! And that’s all!
  Cid: Heh! You got guts. Set course to Bevelle! Full speed ahead!
• You Talk Too Much!: If you use the Trigger Command "Talk" during the Seymour Natus battle during Tidus's turn, you get this...
  Seymour: So, you too seek freedom from this painful life?
  Tidus: You talk too much, Seymour. (Tidus's Strength increases!)
• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • Yu Yevon. After spending years upon years recreating Sin and summoning Dream Zanarkand, he's been reduced to a black tick thing with a symbol on it. Granted, it was because there's practically nothing human left of him. The party easily kicks his ass, due to having infinite Auto-Life cast on everyone. The only way to lose the fight is to petrify your frontline allies.
  • The Evrae Altana battle: because it's undead, you can kill it with two Phoenix Downs before it can ever even get a turn. In fact, it's actually not recommended to defeat it without using this tactic, as fighting it the "normal" way will isolate your party from two treasure chests.

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