Fire Emblem Three Houses / Tropes S to Z

Tropes A to D | Tropes E to M | Tropes N to R | Tropes S to Z | YMMV | Trivia

---

Fire Emblem: Three Houses provides examples of:

S

• Sad Battle Music: The appropriately titled "A Funeral of Flowers" is a depressing piece. Unusually for the Fire Emblem series, it's a song used in a final battle, namely when Rhea goes out of control on the Silver Snow route and you're forced to put her down.
• Sand Worm: You can encounter huge worm-like monsters called Giant Crawlers in the desert.
• Sapient Fur Trade: Those who slither in the dark are proficient at this. The Crests and Heroes' Relics? All of them are the result of taking the blood of the Children of the Goddess (Crests), their hearts (Crest Stone), and bones (Heroes' Relics) to produce them. None of them were gifted by the Goddess as the Church proclaimed in order to hide the dark truth of their origins.
• Save Scumming: Zig-zagged regarding Certification exams. The RNG rolls for every character and their possible classes are done at the start of the week and no amount of save scumming will change the result. For example, if a character has a 69% chance to pass the certification for a new class and they fail, they'll fail every time unless they improve their skills enough to reach a 100% pass rate. The reason it is zig-zagged is because saving before the initial attempt that month will allow you to see who passes, then reload and only have those who pass take the test in order to save the exam seals, meaning that scumming still provides a benefit.
• Scaled Up: A recurring theme within the game. There are generally two distinct methods. First, Crest Stones transform wielders without crests into "Demonic Beasts", large reptilian monsters. While it has happened on rare occasions since ancient times, in the game it is first seen with Miklan early in the game, and later weaponized by those who slither in the dark on all routes and also by Dedue and various other desperate soldiers in Crimson Flower. Second, Children of the Goddess are dragons with human forms. We never see Seteth and Flayn transform, but Rhea takes her Immaculate One form during the siege of Garreg Mach that caps off the first half of the game, and for different reasons as the Final Boss of Crimson Flower and Silver Snow route. Notably, the game has special rules for fighting Monster-type enemies, so this allows a character who has human pathos to have more challenging and robust enemy gameplay.
• Scary Amoral Religion: Downplayed with the Church of Seiros's faith. While for the most part the religion is fairly benevolent, one of the Five Eternal Commandments explicitly mentions that the faithful shouldn't kill, harm, lie, or steal "unless such acts are committed by the will of the goddess".
• Schizo Tech: Those who slither in the dark have incredibly advanced technology stashed away in their hidden bases, which are just as advanced, having the likes of mechas and orbital bombardment to use against their foes if needed. Fittingly, their map and battle theme is dubstep. And yet, despite all the high-tech gizmos in their hideout, their troops still use the same old medieval era weapons your side does, leading to the jarring sight of men in plate armor with swords, spears, axes, and bows standing by laser cannons and robots.
• Schrödinger's Gun: The high-ranked supports with Byleth tweak the story to fit what the player wants and what S supports are available.
  • Even if you can S-support with multiple characters, the one you choose prior to the final confrontation in the story will happen to be the only character who seeks you out once the war is over, hoping to propose to you^note or in Alois and Gilbert/Gustave's case, swear loyalty to you. In many cases, they're the ones who ask you to meet with them in the Goddess Tower.
  • When it comes to characters who can only S-support a female or male Byleth, their A-support interactions are much the same whichever gender you play, and their actions typically feature hints that they are falling for Byleth. If there's an S-support option and you choose it, the character will allude to their earlier interaction and admit they were already thinking of Byleth as their romantic partner. If no S-support option is available, any "hints" dropped are actually purely platonic. For example, in the A-support with Lorenz, Lorenz lets slip that he finds Byleth "charismatic," then backpedals to say that was phrased incorrectly. If Byleth is female, in their S-support, Lorenz will tell her that he truly thinks of her as such and wishes to marry her. If Byleth is male, Lorenz really didn't mean anything more than that.
• Screw Destiny:
  • Sothis discusses this in regards to Jeralt's death. If someone's fate is truly set in stone, nothing will change their fate, and thus Jeralt's death was unavoidable. Ultimately, the goddess' view of fate says it is far more fluid and determined by free will, making it the people's choices that usually decide that fate is set in stone, something Edelgard and both Rhea tend to do.
  • Discussed at the end of the Silver Snow route in Rhea's S-support. She initially believes it was destiny that they sided with her, only to ultimately dismiss it, saying Byleth's own choices are what lead them to choose said path of their own volition.
  • Discussed near the end of the Crimson Flower route. Right before the Final Battle, Edelgard recalls with Byleth the events that led to their current circumstances, commenting how she feels destiny was broken when Byleth took a path they “weren’t meant to take”. She then elaborates how ever since Byleth got blessed by Sothis and got their green hair, she figured out they had to be related to Rhea and her kin by blood somehow, which is why she initially saw Byleth siding with the church as an inevitability, as siding with her would be akin to turning their back on their family.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • When an enemy unit is defeated in battle, their mook backup flees and disappears into the distance.
  • The player’s battalions flee if their lead unit takes enough damage to reduce the battalion health to zero, removing bonuses gained from them and making Gambit attacks unusable.
• Sentimental Shabbiness: Leonie has a necklace that Jeralt carved for her when she was a child. Though she admits it's "well-loved", Hilda scoffs at how worn and raggedy it looks, recommending Leonie wash it and coat it in resin to preserve it. Leonie thanks her for the suggestion, but says she'd much rather keep it as is because of how much Jeralt means to her.
• Sentry Gun: On some routes, enemy units include Viskams, ring shaped turrets that attack any foe near it with lightning, which feel out of place in the medieval setting. While they can't be destroyed per se, it's possible to render them useless by turning off a switch or by killing whoever's controlling them. They belong to "those who slither in the dark," the remnants of the Agarthan Empire, and they're encountered in Shambhala, their base, and in Faerghus, deployed by Cornelia.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Downplayed, but on Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, the fate of Dimitri and the unrecruited Blue Lions definitely has shades of this post-timeskip. Their homeland crumbles in a matter of weeks and is devastated by a bitter civil war while their king is declared dead, and then said king unexpectedly resurfaces five years later and begins rallying soldiers to his cause, including any Blue Lion you didn't recruit. Alas, he's become an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight during his exile, and he leads his soldiers in a suicidal attack against the combined forces of the Empire and the Alliance. All his allies either die in battle or vanish from the story entirely and Dimitri himself loses his life after charging retreating imperial troops alone, leaving Dedue as the Sole Survivor. Dedue then participates in the battle of Enbarr, and should he survive also disappears without a trace. The Kingdom ceases to exist, with the deaths of Dimitri and his allies having been pretty much in vain.
• She Is the King: Noble titles across Fódlan take this approach when it comes to females ruling over a House/territory. The most standout example is Edelgard, who is explicitly dubbed Adrestia's Emperor; her Support with Ferdinand has him mentioning that a previous female ruler of the Empire also had the Emperor title. Other examples include Judith (called "Count Daphnel" in one of Byleth's dialogue trees on the Azure Moon route), Bernadetta (styled "Count Varley" in several of her endings). Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes expands on this with more examples from Hilda^*(mentions that she'd be called "Duke Goneril" if she were chosen as heir instead of Holst) and Ingrid^*(mentions her inheriting the Count title when exploring camp on Azure Gleam).
• Shoot the Medic First: One of the game's more minor new features is that it will alert you to which of your units enemies will attack on their turn. And they will almost always gun for any unit with White Magic as soon as they get within attack range. The party's mages are also high-priority targets for the AI. The AI will usually also target units that it can kill reliably, or those who cannot retaliate. Casters with healing magic equipped are both squishy and cannot fight back.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The Cindered Shadows DLC story. In the end, Aelfric succeeds in initiating The Rite of Rising using the blood of the Four Apostles' successors. You manage to stop the ritual before it's completed and can kill the Ashen Wolves, but Aelfric pushes on with the ritual, resulting in him and Sitri's body fusing into the nightmarish Umbral Beast, which you have to put down. And at the end of it, Rhea herself states that the ritual never worked in the first place, meaning Aelfric sacrificed everything for something that was ultimately futile.
• Shoot the Bullet: In Verdant Wind, Claude goes to meet Almyran reinforcements to take out Fort Merceus, and he and Nader greet each other by firing arrows that hit each other in mid-air, implicitly as a way for both of them to prove their strength to their new allies.
• Shout-Out:
  • The fable Seteth wrote and read to Hilda in their B Support, about a lazy fox and an industrious squirrel, follow the same plot and moral as The Grasshopper and the Ants from Aesop's Fables.
  • One Shout-Out to Shakespeare has most of the noble houses of the Leicester Alliance are named after characters from King Lear, with small spelling modifications.
• Significant Birth Date: Rhea, Seteth, and Flayn's birthdays all fall on the in-universe holidays of Saint Seiros Day, Saint Cichol Day, and Saint Cethleann Day respectively. This is because they are one and the same.
• Skippable Boss: Many of the students you don't recruit will end up as boss fights in the second part. While some are mandatory, you actually can skip some; outside Crimson Flower, you don't have to fight Ashe at Ailell, anyone other than the house leaders at Gronder, Caspar and Lindhart at Merceus, or Petra and Dorothea in Enbarr, while on Crimson Flower you can skip Leonie and Ignatz at Myrddin, Hilda and Lysithea in Derdriu, and Annette, Ashe, Gilbert, Cyril, and Catherine in Fhirdiad.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • For each factions respective Axe Wielder/Brawler^note  Caspar, Dedue, Raphael, Alois and Balthus, chances are that whatever direction you decide to take them in their class progression, you're probably gonna end up turning them into a War Master due to how it easy it is for them to achieve it, a decision that will pay off extremely well. The War Master boasts amazing growths in strength and speed, its possession of Axefaire and Fistfaire will increase the units' already high damage, Crit +20 increases their already amazing damage potential when combined with a Killer Axe or Gauntlets, and its mastery skill, Quick Riposte, will guarantee that they'll make a second attack if their HP is over half, which highly defensive characters like Dedue will definitely benefit from.
  • Dedue might be the only character one would seriously consider putting through the rarely used Armored Knight classline, for no other reason than helping him reach his true potential as a tank. Along with his high Defense growth of 50%, which the Armored Knight and Fortress Knight will increase to 60% and 65% respectively, his Personal Skill always provides a flat +4 to his Defense when he waits, making him useful for baiting enemy units with little risk to himself, as his Defense will be likely be so high that his foes likely do nothing to him, assuming they aren't a mage or have a hammer. His high defensive potential will even carry over to War Master, since the buff to his 60% Growth combined with the War Master's 40% buff to HP Growths means that every level will guarantee that his HP goes up and eventually hit its max of 108, with the greater movement range allowing him to go protect other Units much quicker.
  • For any physical attacker, it isn't uncommon to see players working to raise their Axe skill early on, regardless of the weapon types they are proficient in or will ultimately utilize, in order to class them as Brigand and get the ever-useful Death Blow ability once mastered. It is simply a passive ability that adds +6 to Strength when the character initiates attack and benefits every non-magical attacker in the game for the extra punch it provides. It isn't very difficult to get to the required "C" level in Axe to take the class (even a D+ gives at least 62% chance of passing the exam) and the result is an awesome ability your character will use for the rest of the game.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • A few paralogues cannot be played on Crimson Flower because they wouldn't make much sense in the context of that route.
    • Caspar and Mercedes' paralogue, "The Face Beneath", is inaccessible because it heavily involves the Death Knight, which works on the other routes, but not when allied with the Flame Emperor, because Jeritza is a playable character there; Ferdinand and Lysithea's paralogue, "Retribution", cannot be played here due to it involving Ferdinand trying to track down and rescue his father near Lysithea's family's territory, which would be tricky on CF due to Ferdinand siding with the Empire and being fully aware; and Rhea's paralogue is unavailable even if Byleth achieved a C support with her, as it involves Byleth trying to find a treasure that Rhea left for them right before the war began, which she wouldn't do on CF due to Byleth siding with Edelgard, thus becoming Rhea's enemy.
    • Linhardt and Leonie's paralogue, "Legend of the Lake", can be played on the Crimson Flower route, but it comes with a catch. Due to their hostility towards the Children of the Goddess, Edelgard and Hubert cannot be deployed on this map, as the legend in question is heavily implied to be Saint Indech, one of said Children. And if Seteth and Flayn are not spared in Chapter 15, it will no longer be available, primarily due to the fact that Saint Indech would probably not take kindly to those who slayed his kin.
  • If allied against Edelgard, Constance expresses her surprise at the Empire's violent actions in the monastery dialog after the Holy Tomb mission. Normally she will also state that she wishes to talk to Edelgard directly before judging her actions completely. However, if you used Constance in the Holy Tomb battle against Edelgard and thus got the special dialog of her confronting her, Constance instead declares that Edelgard is beyond being reasoned with and fighting her is unavoidable.
  • If you assign a group task to Annette and Gilbert before viewing their C support, they use basic voice lines typically used by casual acquaintances. In their C support, she confronts him about treating her like a stranger. After seeing it, they immediately begin acting like father and daughter during group tasks.
  • In the Silver Snow route, after the timeskip, the player is still able to hire battalions affiliated with the Adrestian Empire, despite them being the primary enemy faction for most of the game. While it seems like the opposite trope at first, the non-Crimson Flower routes, particularly Silver Snow, will have multiple NPCs express that there are many within the Empire who never wanted Edelgard's war, thus making allowance of Byleth still being able to buy Empire-aligned battalions more plausible^note The only potential exception to this is the battalion Imperial Guard, whose description states it's comprised of soldiers "that serves as the Emperor's personal guard". By contrast, this situation is averted on the Crimson Flower route, as you do lose the ability to hire battalions affiliated with the Church for mutliple reasons stated both in and out of Flower: Rhea's extreme disgust with the Empire's actions, the Empire's cool relationship with the Church even before the war, and the manifesto pushed by the Empire in all routes that accusses the institution of being the root of Fódlan's problems.
  • Many missions sharing locations between routes (and even a general idea) can present minor to major changes due to the context they take place in. Cases in point; Chapter 12's story mission switches your starting point and even the enemy composition depending on whether you're in Crimson Flower or not, as it's the natural result of siding with either the Imperial army invading Garreg Mach, or the Church trying to repel the Imperial forces. Byleth's invasion of the Imperial Palace also changes between Azure Moon and the Verdant Wind & Silver Snow routes, as without a map of Edelgard's stronghold, the party enters the palace from the bottom of the map rather than its middle. Lastly, Fhirdiad's landscape in Crimson Flower differs a lot from Azure Moon's version due to Rhea's fire, to the extent that many walls have been destroyed, paths have been blocked off, and its overall terrain is very hazardous to grounded units.
  • Personal skills return a la Fire Emblem Fates and they are all related to the personality, skills, or backstory of the character they belong to.
  • The various teachers of the Officers Academy teach specific skills to their students. Their in-game stats and proficiencies reflect their teachings, with them being good at what they teach their students.
  • Dimitri is stated during many interactions to be very strong, having broken weapons by swinging them too hard, ruined two pairs of scissors by handling them, and lifted a cart all by himself. He has the highest maximum potential strength stat (87) and the highest personal strength growth (60%) among all units. His Crest may also double the durability cost of Combat Arts, making him prone to break weapons.
  • Claude distrusts the gods. Naturally, he has a lower Faith skill level than the other characters.
  • Lysithea has a shorter lifespan due to the Crest experimentation she experienced. This is reflected in her lower HP.
  • Ashe reveals in his supports that, before he was adopted, he was a thief and stole from people, shops, and even mansions to support his younger siblings. He comes with the Lockpick skill, which allows him to open doors and chests without keys.
  • In some of her supports, Annette reveals that she excelled in the school of sorcery because of hard work, not talent. She's one of the characters who lack a budding talent.
  • Post-timeskip, for the first four chapters of the Azure Moon route, Dimitri is Ax-Crazy and scorns anything except getting revenge. During this time, he's unable to deepen supports with people, doesn't attend war meetings and thus can't be instructed, and cannot be invited to bonding activities like teatime or meals. This is also reflected in his combat lines, where in the first four chapters, he sounds much more murderous towards opponents and angry at his teammates; once he calms down, his lines are noticeably less bloodthirsty, he goes back to thanking his teammates for healing him, and so on. He even loses his Creepy Shadowed Undereyes (present on both his portrait and his model) once he comes around.
  • Characters who deeply are devoted to the worship of Seiros, like Mercedes and Marianne, tend to have Faith magic as one of their talents or proficiencies.
  • One of the dislikes listed in Hubert's profile is heights. He also has a bane in Flying.
  • Several regarding Sylvain:
    • In Sylvain's supports, it's shown that despite appearing to just be a careless skirt chaser, he is actually rather intelligent and booksmart, being able to easily figure out a magical diagram that Annette, a black mage by default, is struggling with. Fittingly, he has a budding talent for Reason.
    • Sylvain is rather notorious for hitting on ladies. As such, he will join you automatically if you attempt to recruit him as female Byleth if either the Black Eagles or Golden Deer houses were chosen at the beginning of the game.
    • For a skirt chaser, Sylvain doesn't have very many A-supports with female characters, and that's because he holds the girls he flirts with in contempt because he knows a lot of them are interested in his Crest and nothing else. The few women that can reach A rank with him are those who see through his flirting and know him as a person: Mercedes bonds with him due to both having experienced misery for having a Crest, Dorothea is sympathetic as she also understands how it feels to have suitors only interested in surface-level traits and not the real person underneath, Ingrid has known him since childhood, and Byleth is willing to prod him about his behavior and eventually gets an explanation.
  • Cyril mentions he does a lot of wood chopping as part of his daily chores. His highest starting skill is in Axes. He's originally from Almyra, a country with a strong wyvern culture. As an enemy unit, he is a Wyvern Rider pre-timeskip and Wyvern Lord post-timeskip, both being classes that are proficient with Axes.
  • Any unit can use any of the Heroes' Relics or Sacred Weapons (other than the Sword of the Creator, which is more limited). However, if those wielding Heroes' Relics do not possess the proper Crest, they will suffer stat reductions or HP loss like Miklan did while wielding the Lance of Ruin.
  • In Chapter 10, when Sothis, the Goddess of the Church of Seiros, merges her soul with Byleth’s and blesses Byleth with her powers, the latter unlocks the Sublime Creator Sword and the Enlightened One class.
  • When Flayn is kidnapped, Seteth is so distraught he will not be available to train Byleth's skills.
  • Taming wyverns is considered a rite of passage in Almyra. Cyril and Claude will mention this if they request to fine-tune skills to be Wyvern Riders. Claude's exclusive promotions also have him riding one.
  • Early on, it is revealed that Byleth and Marianne and Edelgard carry Crests that are not identified. Until it is, whenever they activate, it will say "Unknown Crest."
  • Characters you recruit, including faculty members, will actually remain with you in your chosen route, complete with reasons to do so... with one exception: if you join forces with the Flame Emperor, you will lose out on several Church loyalists. Seteth, Catherine, and Cyril will become unrecruitable, and Flayn will leave regardless of support level.
  • Thanks to cross-house recruitment, you can make characters get put at odds with their former comrades and even their family members after the timeskip. But unlike Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, they will not refuse to attack one another just because they were once friends or family — meaning that it's fully possible to have Felix attack and kill his father, for example.
  • Dedue and Hubert, who have Undying Loyalty to their house masters, cannot be recruited into another house.
  • While Hilda can be recruited out of the Golden Deer team, (1) the process is rather tricky, and (2) she won't agree to join the Black Eagles until after you've passed the point where you can join forces with the Flame Emperor. This reflects her rather strong devotion to Claude, if not to the extent seen in the cases of the other two retainers.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, Edelgard's ambition is to revolutionize Fódlan regardless of whoever is in the way. Not only is it the path with the least amount of recruitable characters where some can even leave^note Hilda, Gilbert, Seteth, Catherine, and Cyril cannot be recruited at all, while Flayn will leave you upon siding with Edelgard — although unused S-Support pictures with all of the aforementioned save Gilbert imply that the original plan might've been different, it is also the only one where, as of version 1.1.0, Jeritza can join you. There's even a month less to recruit from other factions to boot.
  • On the default routes, the story is more typical Fire Emblem fare of facing an evil Empire. True to form, you can recruit the most amount of characters in those routes as the Church of Seiros and Hilda will support your cause. The only special recruitment case is Gilbert, who only joins you during Part II of the Azure Moon route due to his allegiance to the Kingdom of Faerghus.
  • Before the second battle at Gronder Field, your allies will remark that fog is rolling in, as a way to justify why the army of the Kingdom and Faerghus and the army of the Leicester Alliance (who both want to defeat Edelgard and the Adrestian Empire) would fight each other. However, the map itself is not a Fog of War.
  • In Dedue’s support with Annette, he ends up spooking a horse with his presence alone, and Dedue explains that animals don’t take kindly to him due to his intimidating appearance. In game, he’s got penalties to his chance of leveling his riding and flying skills.
  • Rhea, the kindly and delicate-looking archbishop, can train Byleth in brawling, of all things. Of course she can; after all, that's how she beat Nemesis after disarming him in the opening cutscene.
  • In practice battles, any units you lose won't die on Classic Mode. However, you will still lose if Byleth or your Lord is defeated.
  • The only source of Dark Seals, which are required to promote units into Dark Mages and Bishops, come from beating the Death Knight. As of the third wave of DLC, when Jeritza joins you post-timeskip on Crimson Flower, he will provide a single, free Dark Seal in his inventory.
  • Edelgard and Hubert are the only playable characters who are antagonistic towards the Children of the Goddess. As such, neither of them can be deployed in the paralogue "Legend of the Lake", as it involves the party meeting The Immovable, a giant draconic turtle who is in fact Saint Indech and one of the Children of the Goddess.
  • The last DLC wave is about discovering and exploring a secret civilization underneath Garreg Mach, which would go far in explaining why they have classes and characters not available beforehand.
• Skewed Priorities: During the introduction to Beast enemies, Byleth consults Sothis on what to do, and she provides information about the way they fight and how to defeat them. Each concept is selectable from a menu, and the last item is "How'd You Learn All This, Anyway?" Selecting it will make Sothis chide Byleth for dallying, and she orders them to go out and fight.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Edelgard and Claude get into this before the mock battle on the Black Eagles route.
  Claude: Hey there! Did we miss our invite to this strategy meeting? Oh, no worries—we'll just join in now.
  Edelgard: Simply tell me your weaknesses, and you're welcome to stay. But is there enough time to cover them all?
  Claude: Ah, so you can't win unless you know my weakness? Poor princess. You really should believe in yourself more.
  Edelgard: I spare no effort when pursuing victory. As a master of schemes, I should think you would understand.
  Claude: Schemes? Me? I have no idea what you're talking about! I plan to fight fair and square, as ever.
• Snot Bubble: The little stream of snooze bubbles beside the faces of sleeping/drowsy characters during interactions evokes sleepy snot bubbles.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear:
  • Played straight after the prologue, as any item and equipment the house leaders not chosen had during that chapter will be lost.
  • Dedue in the Blue Lions route will leave the party after Chapter 12 with everything he previously had on his inventory but his battalion. If the paralogue War for the Weak was completed back in Part I of Blue Lions, he'll return in Chapter 16's main story mission with the exact same equipment.
  • More mercifully, both Lorenz and Ashe on the Silver Snow and Azure Moon/Verdant Wind routes respectively will take with them whatever equipment they might've had at the time after Chapter 12. Unlike most cases of this trope however, it's possible to recover it should they be re-recruited once again.
  • Take anything you still need off Edelgard and Hubert during the Black Eagles version of Chapter 11 if you don't intend to join them, as they take their stuff with them after they turn heel on that route. Conversely, if you do side with Edelgard, Flayn will leave your army and not come back. Hope you didn't make her your dancer like she requested.
• Sound Test: From the extras menu, you can see a list of the music you've unlocked in the game and listen to each track. Those unavailable are marked with "???".
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • "Those Who Sow Darkness" and "Shambala", two soundtracks related to those who slither in the dark, have a dubstep feel, making them very out of place in the medieval fantasy setting. This makes a disturbing amount of sense considering they're remnants of Abusive Precursors with terrifyingly advanced technologies, including ballistic missiles and mechs.
  • "Paths That Will Never Cross" is an upbeat music that's supposed to pump you for battle, but the context should make it a Tear Jerker. It's the music that plays when you face a student that you don't recruit post-timeskip with someone close to them, so expect a lot of angst of them regretting how We Used to Be Friends before trying to kill each other.
• Space-Filling Empire:
  • The entire continent of Fodlan is controlled by just three nations: the Adrestian Empire, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and the Leicester Alliance. The story ends with that number being reduced to one, with the entirety of Fodlan being unified under the banner of the Adrestian Empire (on the Crimson Flower route), the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus (on the Azure Moon route) or the United Kingdom of Fódlan (on the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes). If a Female Byleth marries Claude on the Verdant Wind route their paired ending strongly implies that Fódlan and Almyra end up uniting into a single nation.
  • Dagda is also implied to be this in the lore as it is described as a separate continent but characters also refer to it as a country.
• Spanner in the Works: A group of bandits were hired by the Flame Emperor to kill the house leaders sans Edelgard, to make her ambition of conquering Fódlan much easier later. That plot is foiled when Claude simply flees, causing Dimitri and Edelgard to follow. They meet a mercenary group led by Jeralt, who handily defeat the bandits.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: Hubert's support with Edelgard has him insist that she leave the combat and dirty work to him rather than stain her hands with blood in pursuit of her goals. Edelgard gently refuses, as she is resolute in her convictions and refuses to let other people kill others and die for her meritocratic ideals unless she is living up to them by fighting alongside her own men.
• Spectacular Spinning:
  • One of the critical hit animations for both the Assassin and War Master class features the unit spinning their bodies in a whirling fury to strike the opponent with their weapon repeatedly.
  • The critical hit animation for most^note Does not include the Warlock, Trickster, War Monk/Cleric, Mortal Savant, and Gremory class, due to said classes using unique animations when using magic. non-mounted/flying magic users while wielding certain spells (such as Thoron) involves them striking a pose, then spinning around before unleashing their spell at their enemies.
• Spoiler Title: The game's Japanese title, which translates to "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon", subtly hints at there being four routes. Wind refers to the Verdant Wind route, Flower refers to the Crimson Flower route, Snow refers to the Silver Snow route, and the Moon refers to the Azure Moon route.
• Starter Villain: The Western Church is the first real faction the player opposes; unlike the other major players, they have no bearing on background lore, and none of the routes or playable characters offer them any real sympathy. They're functionally dealt with after their first mission, although the player can go on side missions to finish them off and execute their leader.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Some of the characters on the various routes have similar character arcs and situations between them, and similar evolution to their plots.
  • Ferdinand and Lorenz are both heirs to prominent noble families of their respective lands, who take extreme pride in their status as noble but also see a huge responsibility in living up to the ideals. In both cases, their view on nobility can rub other students the wrong way. Both of them see themselves are rivals to their house leader, and come to learn and respect the house leader in question in their respective supports. In both cases, the house leader is rather dismissive of the rivalry, treating it more as an annoyance. Both of them have fathers who are much less honorable than them, and who undermine their faction heads^note Duke Aegir all but took the throne from under Edelgard's father. Duke Gloucester stages attacks on merchants trading with House Riegan and supports the empire against the pro-Alliance faction of Duke Riegan and Claude. Both sons, while proud of their lineage, view their fathers' actions poorly and seek to do better. Lastly, both are tea aficionados. Interestingly, the game does indirectly acknowledge their similarities; while most students' support conversations with each other have them slowly come to learn, respect and understand each other, Ferdinand and Lorenz' involves them immediately hitting it off and getting along perfectly due to their shared views and interests and thus just enjoying each other's company. They also serve as a "rival" to their respective house leaders, often openly challenging Edelgard and Claude.
  • Bernadetta and Marianne both fill the role of the asocial, neurotic shut-in for their respective houses. Both have father issues, with Bernadetta having been abused by her father, while Marianne is adopted and not close to her adoptive father. In both cases, Byleth's support lets them come out of their shells.
  • Once Part II rolls around, Judith and Rodrigue both fill the role of a non-playable character who reinforces you at Ailell. If you're not with the Black Eagles, Rodrigue (Azure Moon) and Judith (Verdant Wind) also join the party in an advisory capacity.
• Storming the Castle:
  • In all routes other than Crimson Flower, your forces invade the Empire's capital, Enbarr, and you fight your way through the city and the castle before confronting Edelgard herself. On the Azure Moon route, she's the Final Boss.
  • On Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, your forces invade the Agarthan home base, Shambhala, in order to kill Thales and bring an end to the threat of those who slither in the dark.
  • On the Crimson Flower route, your forces invade Fhirdiad to bring down Rhea and put an end to the Church of Seiros once and for all.
• Story Branching: Along with choosing one of the Three Houses, prior to the incident at the Holy Tomb, there is an opportunity after choosing the Black Eagles house to accompany Edelgard to her homeland to witness her father passing the crown to her. Thus, after she and the Empire invades the Holy Tomb, the protagonist can make a choice of siding with the Empire or the Church. Otherwise, the protagonist will automatically side with the Church.
• Strange Salute: A gesture commonly used by people in Fódlan involves placing the left hand, balled into a fist, behind one's back and putting the right hand on one's chest, and bowing. The salute is done as a gesture of respect and can be seen used for greetings, goodbyes, thanks and apologies.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: Played With during the second battle at Gronder Field on the Azure Moon route. It is noted that fog is rolling in and making it hard to distinguish individual armies, explaining why the Kingdom of Faerghus army might accidentally attack the Leicester Alliance army and vice versa. However, this wouldn't even be a problem if Claude hadn't made his army charge in anyway, forcing you to kill his units along with Edelgard's, when he could have just retreated. It's frustrating, not helped by the fact that he doesn't even mention the whole mess when you next meet him as an ally.
• Succession Crisis: House Riegan was left without an heir when Godfrey von Riegan was killed. The other lords were maneouvring amongst themselves to determine who would be the next leader of the Leicester Alliance when Claude came out of nowhere to be named the heir to House Riegan and the leadership of the Alliance. Lorenz resents him because of this, though Hilda says that her brother Holst was the favourite for the position.
• Supernatural Sensitivity: It's indicated that people who are especially skilled with magic can sense magic of at least some types in others and in the air or objects nearby. It seems to work most strongly if the magic is related to their own such as in Cindered Shadows where Constance is implied to be able to sense the binding magic on the Chalice of Beginnings because her Crest is one of the magics used in the binding, or how in the main game Rhea is able to sense to some degree that her mother Sothis is awake within Byleth thanks to her familiarity with Sothis' power.
• Surpassed the Teacher: In the first half of the game, the teachers and knights can offer seminars to the students and help Byleth train their skills. In the second half of the game, those same students are now capable of hosting said seminars and training alongside Byleth (though they can individually tutor Byleth only if their skill rank in a given area is higher than Byleth's).
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: The Silver Snow ending involves Rhea seemingly dying of her wounds in Byleth's arms, after both Edelgard and Dimitri died earlier, Claude disappeared, the Alliance, Kingdom and Empire all fell and the Church remnants were just gutted of dozens of their best fighters and high-ranking members in the final battle, leaving Fodlan in a state of devastation unmatched in any other route and making it look like a straight-up Downer Ending. This then gets immediately subverted as not only does the ending narration reveal that Byleth was able to rebuild Fodlan from its ashes as a prosperous, unified kingdom under their rule, it's possible for Rhea to survive (if A-ranked before the end of Part 1) and even to marry Byleth (if S-ranked), finally moving on from her past and helping Byleth reform Fodlan, with their paired ending describing their work as "miraculous".
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Edelgard's purge of the nobility that she initiates once she claims the Adrestian throne has shades of this. While she does get rid of the more corrupt nobility like Duke Aegir, Count Varley, and Marquis Vestra, she's unable to remove Counts Bergliez and Hevring from their positions (the Ministers of Military and Domestic Affairs, respectively). It's implied that Edelgard's successful ascension and preparations for Fódlan's conquest were able to take off smoothly because she had struck a deal with them beforehand.^note After Chapter 7, Caspar comments in the monastery how he saw his father and Edelgard talking about something after the mock battle, which he finds odd as Edelgard didn't get along with his dad before. After Chapter 12, Linhardt notes how after the purge, Edelgard still had both Counts at her side, which essentially meant she had control of the Empire's military and finances, thus giving her full control of Adrestia. Lastly, one NPC from the monastery found in Part II of most routes drives attention to how after the purge, despite Count Bergliez having been involved with the Insurrection of the Seven, he never received any punishment and was even allowed to remain in his position. While Edelgard was able to take Duke Aegir by surprise and arrest him, she would still need some degree of help to control a nation whose Counts had centralized power to themselves. Bergliez and Hevring were the most essential to starting and maintaining a power grab, as military power and control of the economy would ensure the other Counts fell in line.
  • The game makes the point that the nobility are better than commoners in many ways. Not inherently, but because they are wealthy and powerful and use that wealth and power to give their children excellent training and education. Lorenz insists that Catherine's incredible skill with a sword is proof she's of noble birth. Not, as she assumes, because he thinks commoners are inferior to nobles but because commoners are usually too busy working for a living to spend much time honing their bladework, a restriction the nobility doesn't share. One reason Edelgard doesn't immediately dissolve the nobility system is she doesn't have commoners trained in governance and statecraft to replace them. Her support scenes with Ferdinand have him discuss with her that nobles are raised to lead and rule and if she wants to replace the system of hereditary nobility, she'll need to find another way of preparing young people to assume those roles.
  • The Leicester Alliance and Holy Kingdom of Faerghus both represent more traditionally "heroic" fantasy nations compared with the Adrestian Empire, and in classic Fire Emblem fashion, they both get invaded by the latter. This doesn't necessarily make them allies, however, even during the war. The Alliance broke off of the Kingdom, not the Empire, and quite a few of their lords see the latter as a preferable ally once the war breaks out. Claude actually exploits this in some routes by deliberately setting up conflict in the Alliance between various lords to prevent them from forming cohesive political factions and allow him to remain neutral for a time. In addition, there's only so much they can do for each other regardless since they both have to contend with defending their own borders.
  • While every ending treats the events of the game from a historical context as ushering in grand positive changes for Fódlan as a whole, various character endings detail that actually implementing the changes took a number of years and much fighting and work for the characters. In a sense, winning the war for control of the continent is only the start of Fódlan's reformation.
  • In previous entries, the losers of the Great Offscreen War would often receive a Historical Villain Upgrade by the winning side and end up being either Good All Along or at least more morally complex than the official narrative suggests. Nemesis was even worse than the official narrative claims he was. The Church claimed he was originally The Chosen One whom the Goddess chose to assemble a grand army to free the Fodlan from foreign invaders. In reality, he was a ruthless bandit king who learned the secret to gaining his power himself (via his secret backers, Those Who Slither In The Dark), then managed to convince the people he was The Chosen One. Despite the influence she wielded in Fódlan and the hatred she had for her enemies, Seiros and her allies could not simply rewrite history however they wished. As explained in this interview, Nemesis and the 10 Elites were already regarded by many people as heroes (after all, only a few knew what Nemesis had done to the Children of the Goddess to gain the power he wielded), and even as the victor in the war with them, Seiros had to accommodate that impression if her version of history was to gain acceptance.
  • Given that the War of Heroes happened in the distant past, many questions are left unanswered about the exact nature of the conflict. The only survivors of that time deliberately obfuscated many of the details, and Rhea herself is, in most endings, either dead or otherwise in no state to elaborate on the time period for the time being, and she's hardly an unbiassed source. The only other source, the Agarthans, are perhaps even less trustworthy. Few records other than those of the Church itself and the version passed down the Imperial family through the generations that Edelgard backs have survived and neither tell the complete story. While you do encounter Nemesis and the Ten Elites in the Golden Deer route, they've deteriorated mentally into semi-intelligent zombies with little remaining personality and are too busy trying to kill you to be questioned. As such, there are numerous conflicting accounts of what Nemesis was actually like, how he was able to win over the people to his cause, or how much the Ten Elites actually knew about the nature of the Heroes' Relics they wielded or their leader's true nature.
  • The war in the Crimson Flower route is noticeably shorter compared to the other paths, ending only after the 18th chapter rather than ~22. The reason for this is because in the other routes, you play as either the Kingdom, Alliance or Imperial rebels, and have to contend with the other factions while desperately trying to turn the odds in your favor. The Empire in particular is the largest threat, as they are Fódlan's main military power. SIDING with The Empire means that the other factions are far more easily overcome without you to turn the tide. Notably, the Empire does not need to reclaim Garreg Mach or obtain reinforcements in Ailell, and dealing with the Alliance prevents the second battle of Gronder Field, thus resulting in the route being three chapters shorter than the others.
  • Unlike the series's previous installment, the reveal of a greater evil that's been pulling the strings behind the various other villains throughout the game does not act as a Conflict Killer for the war, nor does it lead to a Golden Ending that resolves the conflict peacefully. Not only did Edelgard have her own motivations for starting the war in the first place that are independent of that of the Agarthans, but it's been raging for several years by the time they're discovered. In addition, no one has any way of knowing how much they're behind or why, and in some cases don't find out until after they're done fighting the war.
  • Edelgard openly states on the Crimson Flower route that her alliance with the Agarthans is one of convenience, and once she no longer needs their help, she'll enact a plan to get rid of them too. Most of the Agarthan Leadership, including Thales, their leader, has been disguised as Imperial nobility for quite some time, manipulating Imperial politics for ages. Once the time has finally come to do something about them, she deals with them the same way she did most of the non-Agarthan members of the Empire's Deadly Decadent Court, by detaining them and/or having them assassinated, rather than in open combat.
• Swamps Are Evil: Played with. The final battle of the Verdant Wind route path is fought in a swamp where the Leicester Alliance intercepts Nemesis’ Liberation Army before they can reach Garreg Mach. The bogs there are so toxic it can hurt every non-flier units in the map and every enemy lacking a poison-immunity skill. However, it turns out the swamp's poison is not natural, having been created by magic cast by one of Nemesis' ten elites. Once they are defeated the poison, and indeed the movement-hindering swamp itself, dries up/disappears.
• Sweet Tooth:
  • Many of the girls love sweets, particularly Edelgard, Lysithea, and Bernadetta. The former admits that she'd do nothing but stuff her face with cake if she weren't so busy, and the latter two take great pains to hide their cake-loving habits to avoid being judged by others around them.
  • Inverted with Felix. He hates sweets and refuses to eat the cake Lysithea gave to him as a bribe to keep quiet about stumbling upon her snack time. Outraged, Lysithea bakes him a cake and tells him to eat it to understand how wonderful cake is. Felix does eat it and is blown away by how good it was, to the point of wanting to try other sweets.
  • Jeritza adores sweets. Byleth reacts with disbelief in their C-support upon discovering the Death Knight loves dessert.
  • According to Hanneman in a support conversation there is a theory in-universe that most Crest-bearers have a predilection toward having a taste for sweets.
• Symbolic Distance: The montage of characters enjoying the Garreg Mach Ball includes a shot of Dimitri and Edelgard dancing with other people, their backs to each other. The feeling of "so close, and yet so far" is borne out by the narrative, in which one of them kills the other several years later because Poor Communication Kills.
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: Utilized to great effect. Chances are, no matter which route you pick first, it's going to heavily color your impression of the rest, and events as a whole.
  • Players who started with the Crimson Flower route are likely to see Lady Rhea as a stereotypical Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Big Bad who leads a Corrupt Church, while other routes reveal that the events of Crimson Flower are basically just her personal darkest moment, brought on by very specific circumstances, and she and the Church are otherwise much more affable and reasonable.
  • Edelgard's actions in all routes are about 75% identical, but because she is very aloof and undiplomatic and you can't look into her head, she comes across as a power-hungry dictator on routes other than her own, rather than the the guilt-ridden tragic revolutionary who just can't see any other option that she does on her own route.
  • On Verdant Wind, there isn't much said about the Tragedy of Duscur, about Edelgard's and Dimitri's past, etc. As a result, Dimitri appears to have gone completely off the rails for no reason, as he appears only at the Battle at Gronder, where he explicitly says he also wants to destroy the Alliance, despite both fighting against the Empire.

T

• Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: The Weapons Triangle (sword beats axes, axes beat lances, lances beat swords) doesn't exist naturally as part of Three Houses gameplay, much like the games preceding Genealogy of the Holy War. Instead, a character becoming more proficient in one of those three weapons can learn an ability that enables that advantage for that weapon.^note The advantage is basically an increased chance of your attack hitting and the opponent's attack missing.
• Take a Third Option: A fourth option, technically. Outside of the titular three houses' default routes, there's a fourth story route you can pursue — Crimson Flower, in which you join forces with the Flame Emperor/Edelgard to aid her campaign to take over the continent and defeat the Church of Seiros. It can only be unlocked as an option by fulfilling several conditions before a certain point of the Black Eagles route, otherwise the default Silver Snow route where Byleth sides with the Church against Edelgard plays out without a choice. Unlike many examples of this trope, it does NOT lead to a Golden Ending or better overall outcome, it merely changes allegiance.
• Take Our Word for It: In two of the game's paralogues, Hilda's brother Holst requests help after Almyran forces invade Fódlan's Locket. He is unable to defend it himself is because he's beset by a bad case of food poisoning. As Hubert relays, he's "emaciated and pale, and his skin exudes a mysterious vapor". Edelgard fears she'll catch the illness herself if she visits him to see what the ailment looks like, but she's also morbidly curious. The audience and characters can only believe what Holst reports, since he never makes a physical appearance.
• Take Over the World:
  • No matter what route you choose, one of the factions will end up taking over Fódlan from the others thanks to Byleth's help. If you pick the Silver Snow route, Byleth themself ends up ruling over a unified Fódlan since all the other leaders are dead or missing; likewise for the Verdant Wind route, except this is because Claude leaves to rule Almyra.
  • Defied by Edelgard on the Crimson Flower route as she quickly shuts down Lord Arundel when he suggests expanding her campaign of conquest to other territories beyond Fodlan and states that she is only interested in uniting Fodlan.
• Take Your Time:
  • In Chapter 6, Flayn goes missing, and Seteth is inconsolable. You must find some leads and figure out where she's gone. However, nothing is stopping you from first spending your time having tea, eating meals with people, and doing other mundane things. Doing so, however, causes Flayn to not have a White Dragon Scarf in her inventory when she joins your party.
  • Downplayed in the case of the Paralogues. While these can be done in any available free day after being unlocked, each one of them also a set deadline for completion (usually a specific month) related to the developments of the main story.
• Taking You with Me: On the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, when you destroy/kill the enemies at Shambhala, Thales calls an orbital bombardment upon the base. Rhea's interference saves you and your allies, and Thales is killed by the collapsing architecture.
• Tarot Motifs: There are 22 crests based on the Major Arcana. The crest designs are vaguely based on them, and some draconic (be it demonic or divine) beasts may show the exact Arcana that aligns with the crests on their foreheads^note Crest of Gautier, the most commonly seen crest in the game, is accompanied by "DEATH XIII" and resembles the Grim Reaper's scythes. Others may have a vague appearance to astrology-based symbols that are connected to their specific arcana. Their order of placements can be identified by seeing the list of buyable Dragon Signs during New Game Plus.
• Tea Is Classy: The game features the Tea Party social activity, which allows the player character to invite others to a tea party to increase their Relationship Values. To enable the Tea Party, the player needs to complete a side-quest given by Ferdinand von Aegir to find a fellow tea connoisseur worthy of the rare tea set he's giving away, with that person being Lorenz Hellman Glouecester. Both are aristocratic characters who take the most pride in their noble status, and have tea as their particular likes.
• Technologically Advanced Foe: Those who slither in the dark are nothing like any other FE antagonist you've seen. Specifically, they're descendants of the ancient Agarthan civilization, who developed highly advanced tech, most likely fueled with magic. To name a few, giant mechs, kinetic bombardment, Tron lines and automatic sliding doors.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: While usually averted, there are a couple of exceptions:
  • As an enemy, Shamir (or her generic enemy general replacement) will be a Sniper, and have their usual Bowrange+1 skill. However, they will also have Bowrange+2, a skill usually locked to Bow Knight, that cannot be stacked with Bowrange +1 due to being class-locked abilities, essentially giving them Bowrange+3.
  • Ingrid as an enemy in later maps will be in an unobtainable "Advanced" variant of Pegasus Knight (usually an Intermediate class with no equivalent Advanced class) that gives Lancefaire as a default ability, and higher MV.
  • Lastly, many students as enemies can feature skills which they can't normally access as a result of being locked behind gender-exclusive classes. The most noteworthy examples are: Hubert + Defiant Magic (unlocked by mastering Gremory, a female-only class), Felix + Darting Blow (unlocked by mastering Pegasus Knight, which is female-exclusive), and Leonie with Defiant Strength (unlocked by mastering Hero, a male-only class).
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Per Word of God, the events that take place in the Cindered Shadows DLC also canonically happened in the main story, but without Byleth's involvement and prior to their arrival to the monastery. The reason the trope applies is because an NPC from Abyss mentions at one point during the story that Aelfric, Abyss' founder, was kicked out of the church due to a non-disclosed scandal of sorts, suggesting the Church of Seiros quickly handled the situation before things escalated further in the game's main universe.
• The Queen Will Be Watching: Edelgard and Dorothea's paired ending states that the former goes to the opera whenever she can to watch Dorothea's performances.
• This Is Gonna Suck: After Byleth and Jeralt help Claude, Dimitri, and Edelgard fight off bandits, when Alois and the Knights of Seiros show up, Jeralt's disposition turns to resignation as he realizes that he is going to be pulled back to Garreg Mach after having successfully avoided it for more than 20 years.
• The Three Faces of Adam: On the Azure Moon route, Dimitri is driven by his goals, but also impulsive and prone to taking risks, making him the Hunter, while Gilbert is very experienced as a knight but doubts his own abilities, making him the Lord, while Byleth stabilizes and guides Dimitri and Gilbert, making male Byleth fit as the Prophet.
• Time Management Game: What gameplay at the Academy comes down to. During class, you only have so much time to give one-on-one instruction to your students. During free time, you have to choose between advancing Byleth's skills and bonding with students, and within that whether to butter up members of other houses you want to headhunt or improve your own pupils' motivation so they get more out of class time. Fortunately, time is measured in discreet per-action units, and walking around chatting, doing sidequests, shopping and inventory management, and other busywork is all free. Furthermore, higher Professor Levels means more actions can be done.
• Time Skip:
  • After the first part of the story, Byleth falls into a coma and wakes up five years later. Meanwhile, a war has been raging while they were asleep, thus setting up the stage for Part II.
  • A downplayed case happens during the Silver Snow route between Chapter 16 and 17. Both in-universe and in gameplay, Great Tree Moon (April) is skipped due to the player's army being unable to take part on the battle that happens in said month (War at Gronder).
• Time to Step Up, Commander: On the Silver Snow route, Seteth appoints Byleth as the leader of the newly-formed Resistance Army, a duty they're initially relunctant to fulfill as they see themselves as unqualified and would rather search for Rhea. They grow into the role as the story progresses, and by the time the final chapter rolls around are fully prepared to rule Fodlan.
• Title Drop:
  • Subverted, the "Three Houses" are often referred to as such. However, although the words "Fire Emblem" never show up in dialogue, the main character bears the "Crest of Flames" which is pretty much a synonym. Crests in general are even referred to as "Emblemas" in the Spanish translation.
  • Marianne of all people is the person to title drop Verdant Wind.
    If we're the birds, then those two are like the trees and the wind. The professor is a great tree that kindly embraces us and watches over us as we perch on its branches... And Claude is like the wind, pushing us forward as we soar across the open sky...
• Together in Death:
  • On the Azure Moon route, if Felix and Sylvain have a paired ending, the epilogue states that they died on the same day, "as if conceding that one could not live without the other".
  • On the Crimson Flower route, if you manage to defeat Dedue before he becomes a Demonic Beast, you will unlock alternate dialog after defeating Dimitri. A critically-wounded Dedue will have held on long enough to share a few last lines of dialog with dying Dimitri, after which they die together.
• Trademark Favorite Food: A gameplay mechanic. Similar to how characters have favorite gifts, they also have favorite tea blends during the Tea Party activity. Using their favorite will make gaining support points with them easier.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • This Nintendo UK Facebook post spoiled the fact that the Church of Seiros would become an antagonistic faction at some point. What it didn't say that it would be dependent on the choices the player makes.
  • The E3 2019 trailer reveals a major plot detail: a five-year Time Skip occurs at some point in the story and that the three houses become enemies.
• Transhuman: According to Fódlan’s mythology, Crests are the result of the goddess of the Church of Seiros blessing the 10 Elites and Four Saints with special powers in the distant past. In reality, the leader of the Elites, Nemesis, murdered Sothis, the goddess, and he and the 10 Elites magically infused themselves with her blood. The Four Saints, by contrast, were among the last of her children who survived the genocide of their kind. Humans descended from the heroes who inherit Crests or have Crests forcibly implanted into them gain special abilities those without don’t have, from life draining enemies, to dealing extra damage with attacks, to increasing healing done with healing spells, to negating an enemy’s counterattack.
• Trap Is the Only Option: When the fake Monica is cornered by the Knights of Seiros after killing Jeralt, Rhea tries to take Byleth out of chasing after them, as everyone fears they're being Lured into a Trap. Your house's lord argues that Rhea has sent most of the Knights of Seiros out after the killer, leaving the monastery defenseless, and it would make more sense to send a smaller army led by Byleth after them in case the monastery gets attacked again. You eventually catch up to the fake Monica (real name: Kronya) and defeat her, and even though Rhea was right about the enemy setting up a trap, it's Kronya who was ultimately the bait, as Solon (the sorcerer responsible for the Remire massacre) kills her to set up his own gambit to use against Byleth, which doesn't stick thanks to Sothis' Divine Intervention.
• Tron Lines: The architecture of Shambhala is smooth and geometric, with glowing cyan lines running along the walls, platforms, and ground.
• Try Everything: The hints on lost items pointing to their owners often apply to more than one person. For example, one item is said to belong to someone who went to the Kingdom's school of sorcery, a school that Mercedes, Annette and Lorenz attended. Thankfully, there is no penalty for guessing incorrectly: the item remains in your inventory, and you don't lose support points with the other person. Hence, one can simply go through the entire list and present items to someone one-by-one. A DLC quest given by Constance allows you to procure a list that in practice, assigns a faction to every Lost Item in the menu (ie, Church, Black Eagles, etc), which helps narrow down the list considerably.
• Turns Red:
  • Monsters have Latent Abilities that activate when a certain number of their Multiple Life Bars are depleted.
  • The Vantage, Desperation, Wrath and Defiant skills can provide multiple boons to the units bearing them once their health has been reduced up to a certain amount.
  • The final boss of Silver Snow initially appears to be far weaker than it actually is. If an unit stands on the tile spawning the White Beasts or if the dragon is attacked at least twice, the Immaculate One will undergo a transformation and will adopt a new form with far better stats and attack range.
• Two-Teacher School: Hanneman explicitly states in his and Manuela's paralogue that they and Byleth are the only teachers. Jeritza is said to be a combat professor, but is actually the Death Knight, and disappears after Flayn and Monica are rescued.

U

• Unable to Cry: Jeralt mentions that Byleth never cried as a baby, which furthered his suspicions of the Church in that they did something to Byleth. Ironically, Byleth cries for the first time when Jeralt dies.
• Uncatty Resemblance: Online stat screens reveal that the dogs and cats of the monastery come from breeds named after the game's noble houses and territories, and more than a few have similarities to the student from their namesake family. For example, the Gloucester cat has a pattern on its head the same shape as Lorenz's pre-timeskip hairdo, and the Ordelion cat is as white as Lysithea's hair.
• Uncertain Doom: In the "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue, any student who is taken out of play in Classic Mode by falling in battle is given a brief epilogue that briefly explains why they were unable to return to the monastery after the Time Skip. While most list the reason as having died, usually in combat or from illness after the battle of Garreg Mach, some are listed as reasons that don't necessarily end in death (Dorothea went into hiding with her opera troupe, Mercedes is married off, Petra returned to Brigid, etc.), and others still are stated to have simply gone missing. Marianne is stated to have disappeared with her favourite horse.
• Undignified Death:
  • Jeralt's death at the hands of Kronya happens with little fanfare. He's killed by a cheap shot from behind rather than in any way worthy of his reputation as the greatest knight in Fódlan.
  • On the Azure Moon route, when Randolph is captured by the Kingdom's forces, Dimitri threatens to subject the Imperial general to Cold-Blooded Torture, causing him to beg for mercy. Thankfully, Randolph is given a quick death by Byleth before Dimitri can torture him.
  • On the Verdant Wind route, after the battle at Gronder Field, Dimitri attempts to pursue a retreating Edelgard and collapses from exhaustion. He dies by being impaled with her soldiers' spears.
  • Thales tries to take you down with him, gets crushed to death by his lair's rubble, and is left in a rather hilarious death pose.
• Undying Loyalty: Students and professors who transfer houses express this towards Byleth to the point they'll even cut ties with their nations and their church to follow whatever faction Byleth chooses to side with.
• The Unfought:
  • On the Crimson Flower route, the remaining members of those who slither in the dark (aside from Cornelia, who died at Arianrhod as a preemptive strike against the group) are never fought during the main story. Instead, the ending states that the Empire later fought against them after the war was over.
  • Zigzagged on the Azure Moon route in the case of Thales, who is never explicitly fought onscreen. Unbeknownst to Dimitri and the Kingdom forces, he is defeated under his Lord Arundel guise during his invasion of Derdriu.
  • On the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, Cornelia is never confronted during the story, and NPC dialogue in the monastery mentions that she mysteriously vanished from Faerghus after Edelgard’s defeat. Meanwhile, this is zigzagged in the case of Lord Arundel, as he's defeated under his true identity as Thales after the party invades Shambhala.
  • No matter what, you can never fight Marianne in any route after the timeskip, with her being the only character in the game to have this distinction.
  • Anna, who's available by purchasing the DLC pass, cannot be fought under any circumstances as well.
• Unholy Holy Sword: The Heroes' Relics are initially claimed to be holy weapons divinely gifted to humanity by the Goddess. Verdant Wind reveals they're actually the bones of her children, and Nemesis genocided them to claim their power for himself. The Sword of the Creator in particular is the Goddess' own spine.
• Unique Enemy:
  • If you picked the Black Eagles and chose to join Edelgard in the Holy Tomb, golems will spawn as enemy reinforcements at some point during Chapter 12, which is the only possible instance in the main story where this particular type of monster shows up. Unlike the Altered Golems covered in golden armor that pop up in most routes, these ones have a statue-like appearance and can be damaged with magic attacks from afar without the need of breaking their barriers first.
  • The final chapter of the Silver Snow route route is the only place in the entire game where White Beasts, monsters with the appearance of a ghostly flying white dragon, can be fought.
  • The second chapter from Cindered Shadows features enemy Valkyries, which is the only instance where it can be possible to see generic enemies using this particular DLC class.
• Unknown Rival: On the Azure Moon route, those who slither in the dark lose many of their agents and their leaders without anyone even realizing that they're a faction who had been scheming for years. Their existence is hinted at during the mission in the Sealed Forest, but after the timeskip, the focus on this route is to end the war, and Thales is killed in his Arundel persona during the campaign without the main characters learning who he really was.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Dimitri and Edelgard to each other, regardless of route.
• Unreliable Expositor: Depending on the route chosen, the characters that act as expositors differ. In many cases, the game presents what they say as true (or doesn't indicate that it isn't true), but choosing different routes allows the player to see that some of their information is a half-truth or they were misinformed.
  • In all versions of Chapter 12 other than the Black Eagles version where you defect to Edelgard's side, Seteth claims that Edelgard took the Adrestian throne from her father in a bloodless coup. However, attending Edelgard's coronation if you're a Black Eagle shows that she politely asks her very old and feeble father, and he readily agrees.
  • After the Blue Lions version of Chapter 8, Dimitri recounts his father's last words during the Tragedy of Duscur, begging Dimitri to "avenge us, those who killed us... tear them apart! Destroy them all!" Knowing what's revealed about Dimitri's mental state after the timeskip (namely, that Dimitri constantly hears the voices of the dead crying out for vengeance), it's likely these weren't really Lambert's last words.
  • In the Crimson Flower route, Edelgard states the war between Nemesis and Seiros was caused by "little more than a simple dispute" (or "quarrel" in the Japanese version). She then explains how the confidential records left by Wilhelm I of the War of Heroes state the whole ordeal happened over whether humanity deserved to be ruled by humans or by creatures masquerading as them (a.k.a. the Children of the Goddess). In reality, the war was immensely personal from Seiros' part, as she was seeking vengeance against Nemesis for the genocide against her people. According the description of Nemesis's personal class, he rallied his people to war under the "pretense of liberating Fódlan from a reign of deception", which in itself gives away this wasn't the true motivation, and given that he seemingly didn't even know Seiros was non-human until the moment of his death (given the shock he displays at Seiros mentioning the Red Canyon), it's unlikely human supremacy was his actual goal. This misinformation can be explained due to Seiros deliberately covering up the existence of the Children of the Goddess, the "Tragedy of the Red Canyon" and the truth of the Crests and Heroes' Relics to her human allies in fear of having history repeat itself, meaning the knowledge Edelgard has is actually incomplete and based on incorrect conclusions.
• Unreliable Narrator: Discussed in the case of the Abyss' library. While the place contains many books confiscated by Seteth and the Church, Linhardt does consider the possibility some of the books could be forgeries, so he suggests taking their contents with a grain of salt. It's also possible that some of the information may simply be outdated, such as the prohibition against autopsies (as during the main story, we are told that Manuela freely carried out an at least semi-scientific examination on a body).
• Unskilled, but Strong: If a student is recruited out of their house after they obtain their intermediate class, their stats will be higher than their averages as a playable unit, due to using the enemy growth rates for auto-leveling. ^note This is most notable with Ingrid, as the enemy Pegasus Knight class is considered an Advanced class with the growth rates to match. In exchange for their higher stats, however, they will not gain skill experience in anything beyond their default study plan, notably Authority for everyone except Lysithea and Annette.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: There are some specific items^note (Circe Staff and Asclepius, and the Seiros Shield and Ochain Shield in Crimson Flower), weapons^note (Athame, Seiros's Sword, and the Dark Heroes' Relics) and spells^note (Bohr X and Quake Σ) wielded by NPC and enemy units that can't be normally obtained, learned, dropped nor stolen by playable characters.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Many characters have Personal Skills that fall into this, either due to being Awesome, but Impractical, or being too hard to activate. Raphael's Goody Basket for example has a chance to heal him for 10% of his HP each turn, but it only activates based on his luck stat, which is very below average for him growth wise. Others start off useful but drop in usefulness as the game goes on, such as Felix and Catherine's skills, which give them bonuses if they are not using a Battalion.
  • The Commander skill bosses get as the game goes on invokes this trope. Skills and spells like Silence, Assassinate, and Poison Strike outright stop working on them. Since those bosses are ones ideal for using them on, this makes skills like them useless as the game goes on, especially as more and more enemies start using them.
  • Most of the utility Faith spells fall into this category: Restore has little uses due to how rare enemies wielding poison weapons are, Ward and Silence are superfluous due to how easy it is to either stay out of enemy mages' range (who have 4 move) or to one-shot them and Rescue is impractical due to mages suffering from low movement that prevents them from keeping up with the other units.

V

• Vancian Magic: Unlike previous titles, magic in Three Houses works this way. You get a limited amount of uses of each spell every battle, and uses replenish themselves at the end of each battle.
• Variable Mix: Battle music comes in two styles, one heard during most of combat and one with louder instrumentation and more percussion heard when any unit makes a move (called "Rain" and "Thunder", respectively, in the music menu).
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
  • Silver Snow and Verdant Wind have you besiege Shambhala, the primary base of operations for those who slither in the dark. However, both routes have one last battle afterwards.
  • Azure Moon has Enbarr, capital city of the Adrestian Empire.
  • Crimson Flower has Fhirdiad, capital city of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus.
• Victory Pose: Whenever a unit kills another, they strike a victory pose and make a Bond One-Liner. What the pose looks like depends on the last attack the unit used and their class. Byleth and the three house leaders also have unique poses for their primary weapons.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Since you can recruit students from other houses and even various professors/teachers, it's possible to recruit every single non-route-exclusive character in order to have them join your side and prevent their unnecessary deaths.
  • It's also possible to spare certain characters on various routes, such as Lysithea, Claude (must be defeated with Byleth or Edelgard), Flayn and Seteth (must be defeated with Byleth) on Crimson Flower, Lorenz on Azure Moon and Silver Snow route, and Ashe on Verdant Wind and Silver Snow route. Some of them can even be re-recruited if they were previously a part of your army (Lorenz and Ashe), or join up even if they were never successfully recruited (Lysithea).
  • Even if you didn't recruit them, you can avoid fighting or at least killing many of the other students. The only ones you must kill are Hubert and Edelgard in all routes aside from Crimson Flower; Dimitri in Verdant Wind (though he technically dies off-screen afterwards) and Crimson Flower; Dedue, Felix, Ingrid, Sylvain, and Mercedes in Crimson Flower; Lorenz in Silver Snow and Azure Moon; and Ferdinand in Azure Moon and Verdant Wind. Claude must be fought in Azure Moon and Crimson Flower, but doesn't have to die. Not that the game keeps track of who you let live.
  • In a Support Conversation, Linhardt asks Byleth to not force him to kill. Since he's a very decent healer and can win the White Heron Cup to become a Dancer, he's fairly usable even if he never fights.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Since you can recruit students from other houses, after the timeskip, it's perfectly plausible to have them fight and kill their friends from their former houses (like having Caspar kill Linhardt, Annette kill Mercedes, or Raphael killing Ignatz and vice versa) or their family members (such as Caspar killing his uncle) or Annette and Felix killing their fathers. You Bastard!
  • Recruiting any of the Blue Lions from the Childhood Friend quartet ^note Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid. Dimitri rounds out the 4; however, he is a Blue Lions exclusive unit due to being a Lord onto other routes is this because they’re absolutely miserable to varying degrees about turning against Dimitri, their families, and their former homes, regardless of their ideals and reasons for joining the other side.
  • Felix's situation on one route in particular has potential for this regardless of if you recruited him or not. On Crimson Flower, if Felix is recruited, he can potentially kill his own father. If he isn't recruited, you can kill Felix right in front of his father (who already lost a son to war in the past).
  • Recruiting Annette to the Black Eagles will end with her father dying or being implied dead. What's worse is that if you go into the Crimson Flower route, you can make Annette kill Gilbert herself.
  • Four characters (Lysithea and Claude on CF, Ashe on VW and SS, Lorenz on AM and SS) will surrender to you depending on circumstances. When you get the option to spare them... you also have the option to kill them.
  • After the DLC which added Jeritza as a playable character, you can not recruit Mercedes in the sole route he's available on. This means that Mercedes will be fought as an enemy, and since they are actually a mandatory boss, you have to go out of your way to kill them. Even worse, you can actually force Jeritza to commit sororicide. You Bastard! — this is literally the only route in which Mercedes and Jeritza can both survive and have any kind of happy ending.
  • You can make Seteth or Flayn wield the Heroes' Relics, which are made from their slain relatives.
  • It's also possible to make Cyril attack Rhea on the Silver Snow route. Granted, this is a little different than most.
• Video Game Delegation Penalty: Downplayed. Almost all of the social sim, time management, and character customization can be opted out of. Skipping ahead on the calendar will automate these aspects, and will spit out reasonably usable unit builds in the process provided you set your characters' goals at some point. However, this automation won't be as specific or thorough as the player doing it themselves.
• Video Game Stealing: The Steal skill (learned by mastering the Thief class) allows anyone with higher speed than the enemy to steal any potential available items in their inventory, ranging from weapons, staffs, rings, seals, and even stat boosters.
• Villainous Rescue: At Fort Merceus on Verdant Wind and Silver Snow, after his defeat, the Death Knight, on a whim, issues a warning to the forces that just took over the fort to leave immediately if they want to live. They follow him outside, after which "javelins of light" strike and obliterate the fort.
• Villain Ball: At the end of the Crimson Flower route, Rhea's final stand against the Imperial Army is to set fire to Fhirdiad so they will all burn inside. But for some reason, she orders the city to be lit before the Imperial Army is inside. So by doing that, Rhea's enemies have an easier time traversing through the city since they have the chance to prepare themselves, not to mention that by doing this, Rhea just makes herself look even more true to how Edelgard describes her.
• Villain Teleportation: Taken to absurd levels: anyone can teleport in and out of maps as long as they aren't player-controlled. While it makes sense for the high-ranking enemy mages to possess this power, it's rather surprising to see Acheron, a mediocre fighter and mage all-around, suddenly warp in, and even more so when Nader of all people does it. It's also rather infuriating, since both the Flame Emperor aka Edelgard and Hubert demonstrate the ability, and yet both seem to completely forget they can teleport while they're under the player's control.
• Violation of Common Sense: The game allows various students and staff members to go into any class if they have the right ranks to pass their certification exams. This can have the humorous result of having nothing but an whole class of Wyvern Lords or even getting students into classes they have poor proficiency in.
• Violence is the Only Option: The Flame Emperor is a firm believer of this. She wants to eradicate the Crest system that enables corrupt Crest-bearing nobles to perform utterly vile actions in impunity, but that is not possible as long as the Church of Seiros fronts a religious hierarchy where Crests are considered gifts from the Goddess. And since she believes Rhea is never going to budge and also sees herself as the one who must make the changes (among other contentious motivations), she thinks she has no choice but to take the fight to the Church... which, in practice, means declaring war on the other nations of Fódlan.
• Vocal Dissonance: In the English version, the Dark Merchant, dressed in a body-concealing cloak and a black plague doctor mask (which is also the character model for generic Dark Mages)... has a very cheery voice and his overall demeanor is overly pleasant, hardly befitting of someone known as the "Dark Merchant".
• The Von Trope Family: All nobles of the Adrestian Empire, as well as some of the Leicester Alliance, have a "von" between their given and family names. Among them are two of the three house lords: Edelgard von Hresvelg and Claude von Riegan.

W

• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Black Beast Miklan transforms into in Chapter 5. It’s the first monster unit fought during the main story, meaning that unlike previous bosses, it has multiple health bars and can perform Area of Effect attacks, potentially damaging and even killing more than one unit at once.
• Walking Spoiler: Zigzagged example with the Silver Snow route, which is a non-character example. While it's possible to discuss it like the other routes, it's impossible to mention how you can access it without revealing the Black Eagles route splits in two, that you can turn on Edelgard, and that it is set as the default branch of choice unless the player goes out of their way to unlock the Crimson Flower route branch.
• War Is Hell: Is it ever. Even from the opening cinematic's depiction of the battle between Seiros and Nemesis, the game does not shy away from depicting how horrifying and emotionally draining war is. Later in the game, your party members lament the constant fighting and possibly having to kill their former friends, NPCs talk about atrocities they've seen or people they've lost, and there are some more very dark cutscenes.
• Was Once a Man:
  • The demonic beasts are humans transformed by the Heroes' Relics into giant beasts. Those who slither in the dark have been performing experiments to bolster the forces of the empire for their plans against the Church of Seiros.
  • When Rhea goes berserk as her dark side takes control on the Silver Snow route, those who had the strongest levels of Rhea's blood in them transform into White Beasts, effectively becoming proper white scaled dragons.
• Weapon-Based Characterization:
  • Byleth uses swords primarily, as to be expected of the game's main character.
  • Edelgard, a strong-willed Lady of War with an agenda and a will to see it through no matter the cost, uses axes. The fact that the Flame Emperor also uses an axe to fight is a small clue to their real identity.
  • Dimitri, introduced as an honourable and knightly figure, favours spears and lances.
  • Claude, a trickster figure who uses on underhanded tactics and combat pragmatism, uses a bow.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: While most units can suffer Permadeath and the game will continue as normal, if Byleth or the main lord of the route falls in battle in Classic mode, it results in a Game Over; paralogues extend this to any character or characters heavily involved in the plot of the chapter.
• We Used to Be Friends: During the first half of the game, all of the students and faculty at the academy get along swimmingly for the most part: while there are rivalries and some rough patches, everyone is friends (and in some cases, even family). Come the Time Skip, however, that all changes: as lines are drawn in the sand between the three nations of Fódlan and the Church, many of these friends are forced to turn their blades on one another. This is exemplified in the FMV cutscene preceding the battle in "Blood of the Eagle and Lion", where Claude and Edelgard lament the circumstances that brought them together while Dimitri threatens to murder anyone who stands in his way.
  Dimitri: Know that I will tear your heads from your shoulders...the dead must have their tribute.
  Claude: As big class reunions go...this one's gotta be the worst in history.
  Edelgard: Years ago, we fought here as classmates... but not today.
• Wham Episode:
  • Chapter 5 starts off as a simple fight against Miklan, Sylvain's older brother who resented not having a Crest. You defeat him and the mission seems to be over. Then a cutscene plays, and Miklan is consumed by the Lance of Ruin, turned into a monster, starts killing his own men, and you have to fight your first Beast enemy. It's at that point that things take a major change, as the darker undertones begin and the nature of Crests begins to be called into question.
  • Chapter 9 features Jeralt's sudden death at the hands of Kronya. Byleth rewinds time to try and save him, only for Thales to show up and block their attack, causing Jeralt to die anyway. Jeralt's death also causes Byleth to cry, something Jeralt takes note of in his final moments. Afterwards, Byleth finds his journal and learns that their mother was a nun of the church who died giving birth to them, and that Jeralt faked their death so they could leave the monastery.
  • In the Blue Lions' version of Chapter 10, the scene of the Flame Emperor conversing with their allies gets eavesdropped on by Dimitri and Byleth. The two make enough noise to cause the Flame Emperor to throw a weapon in their direction and leave, after which Dimitri examines the weapon and realizes it's the exact same dagger he gave to Edelgard years ago.
  • Chapter 11 goes to hell quite quickly no matter the route. Edelgard and Hubert pull a Face–Heel Turn after the reveal that the former is the Flame Emperor, and they proceed to order an attack on the Church. If you chose to witness Edelgard's coronation this chapter in the Black Eagles, this can be an even bigger one, as you are given the option to follow their lead.
  • The Battle at Gronder in Part II on some routes. Your faction meets the other two for a Mêlée à Trois, and it quickly devolves into a chaotic, bloody massacre. You are forced to face several members of your rival Houses (if you didn't or couldn't recruit them beforehand), and with a handful of exceptions based on the route, those members will die when you defeat them.
  • Fleche's assassination attempt on Dimitri on the Azure Moon route in the aftermath of the Battle at Gronder. Not only does it result in the death of Lord Rodrigue, one of Dimitri's main allies and his last remaining parental figure, but the entire event and its fallout finally makes Dimitri realize how far he's fallen in the name of his revenge against Edelgard, finally prompting him to cast aside the Ax-Crazy rage that had defined him since the Time Skip.
• Wham Line:
  • In the aftermath of chapter 8 after choosing the Blue Lions, Dimitri apologizes to Byleth for his earlier behavior during the attack on Remire Village, in which he began calling for the immediate, bloody, and violent death of the attacking Solon's forces. He seems regretful of his actions as he explains the depths of his traumatic past, only to turn and end the conversation on this line:
    Dimitri: There's a reason that I came to the Officers Academy. Just one reason. I came here for revenge. And one day, I will have it.
  • After Chapter 8, Rhea gives you a normal early-month briefing. However, this time, she dismisses you with a simple line that turns your knowledge of Byleth's unique situation on its head. It also applies in-universe, as Byleth and Sothis herself are shocked, with the music even briefly cutting out after Rhea's words:
    Rhea: May the goddess Sothis protect you.
  • If you go talk to Edelgard after choosing the Black Eagles in Chapter 11, she will ask you to come to the capital. The game gives you a warning that only appears in one other place (the option to join her after Chapter 11's mission).
    "This decision will drastically change the story."
  • Chapter 11's monthly battle in the Black Eagles and Golden Deer routes upends the entire plot with five simple words from the last person you'd ever expect.
    Edelgard: I am the Flame Emperor. (Black Eagles)
    Edelgard: So the end has come... (Golden Deer)
  • If you explore the monastery in Chapter 12 on the Silver Snow and Verdant Wind routes after the reveal that Edelgard is the Flame Emperor, you can find Dimitri, alone for once, standing solemnly in the cathedral. So far, the player's interactions with the prince have shown him to be a kind and honorable (if somewhat awkward) young man. Now he forgoes all pleasantries in his dialogue, choosing to silently glare at Byleth and say this to you (it's not a wham on his own route since his character arc has clearly been leading to this point):
    Dimitri: I'll have that girl's head. Just you wait.
  • In Seteth and Flayn's A Support, this exchange reveals a significant detail about them, with this being the only time that secret is explicitly spoken of.
    Flayn: I shall allow you to worry about me enough for yourself and mother both. But only that much and no more, my dear father, Cichol.
    Seteth: Thank you, Cethleann.
  • Just before the final battle of Crimson Flower, Rhea gives an order that surprises and horrifies even Catherine.
    Rhea: Now, Catherine. Set fire to the city. The Imperial army will burn in the flames of eternal torment!
• Wham Shot:
  • After fighting the Flame Emperor if the Blue Lions house was chosen, their mask falls off. Dimitri laughs madly in response, because the Flame Emperor is none other than Edelgard. If the Golden Deer house was chosen, the masked battle model is instead replaced with the unmasked one, which achieves the same effect.
  • On the Verdant Wind and Silver Snow routes, after you capture Fort Merceus, the Death Knight will tell you to run if you want to live and points to the sky, where ballistic missiles start to rain down, and proceed to blow up most of the fort and leave it in a ruined state.
  • Post-timeskip, the first time you defeat a unit that used to be an academy student. They get the same camera treatment, music, and tragic last words as losing one of your units in Classic mode, driving home how real the conflict it. Particularly sobering if you've been playing in Casual mode.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: On the Golden Deer route, Claude says something like this right before you go to the Holy Tomb where the Flame Emperor is revealed to be Edelgard, who tries to steal the crest stones hidden in the Holy Tomb, and then declares war against the Church.
  Claude: We should be fine as long as nothing goes terribly wrong. Yep... Just as long as nothing goes wrong.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • After the time skip, Byleth will get called out by several students from opposing houses if engaged in battle with them. Particularly if they side with Edelgard, they will get a vicious rebuke when facing Leonie, who points out that Byleth has sided with people who were involved with those who murdered Jeralt, and how it makes no sense to her. Annette will outright mournfully ask why Byleth would choose a path that involves invading her homeland.
  • Transferred students will be also scolded by non-recruited students or leaders after the time skip for deserting when engaging in battle. For instance, during the Crimson Flower route campaign, Felix will tell an ally Ingrid that she has no right to call herself a knight, and if Felix joins your army and attacks Dimitri, Dimitri will call him out on killing his own father, Rodrigue.
  • After reading Jeralt's diary after his death, Seteth angrily confronts Rhea about what she did to infant Byleth. This is made even more significant as it's later revealed that Seteth is Rhea's brother and has followed her loyally for over a thousand years.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: A number of examples can occur after the Time Skip.
  • An un-recruited Marianne will make no appearances whatsoever during Part II.
  • Raphael and Lorenz, if not recruited onto the Crimson Flower route, will not appear as enemies during the campaign.
  • Annette will be left unaccounted for in Silver Snow and Verdant Wind unless she was recruited before the timeskip.
  • If one doesn't invite Catherine, Shamir or Cyril into the Blue Lions or Golden Deer, they will not appear in Azure Moon or Verdant Wind. Alois has it even worse as he will vanish from the story altogether after the timeskip unless he's been recruited or the player is on the Crimson Flower route, where he appears as an enemy during the Church's attack on the monastery.
  • If one doesn't recruit Hanneman or Manuela before the timeskip, then they will vanish during Part II in most routes sans Azure Moon, where they'll reappear as enemies in Dimitri's paralogue.
  • Silver Snow is easily the worst offender, as if you don't recruit anyone, none of the Golden Deer or Blue Lions will make an appearance sans Ashe, Lorenz, Dimitri, and Dedue. And in Dimitri's case, their one scene is a Dead Person Conversation (possibly). Claude, meanwhile, writes a letter to Byleth saying he will aid their forces, but goes missing after the devastation his forces suffer in the Battle of Gronder Field and is never heard from again (though in dialog characters speculate that he likely survived and left the region).
• What Year Is It?: Soon after Byleth wakes up after the Time Skip, a villager references the war that began five years ago. Byleth, having missed it all, can either ask him about it or ask what year it is, prompting the villager to wonder if they bumped their head or something.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: As is Fire Emblem tradition, at the end of each route the fates of all characters that are a part of Byleth's house are described in ending cards.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Discussed. Claude wonders why those who slither in the dark haven't just dropped the javelins of light on the monastery. Rhea explains that area is protected by the shielding of Sothis's tomb.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: The look isn't used on character models, but the movies employ it. Two notable occurrences are Jeralt when he's stabbed in the back by Kronya, and Dimitri when he attacks Edelgard after the revelation that she's the Flame Emperor.
• Winged Unicorn: The Falcon Knight pegasi have this sort of design. It's unclear if the horn is part of their armor rather than part of their body, but a character mentions a "pegasus horn," which implies that pegasi can indeed grow a horn when they reach their full strength, or that certain breeds have them. The horn has a similar golden color to the golden hue the mane and feathers of the Falcon Knight have. The horn's shape is not the typical spiral horn of a unicorn, but a large, smooth, almost lance-like spine.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: The player can do this on a few maps:
  • Ashe and Catherine's Paralogue. Because the players are positioned completely surrounding the map, it's possible to win this map by simply selecting "End turn" every time it's the players' turn and simply waiting it out.
  • Felix's paralogue. Because the player has a lot of NPC allies that're surprisingly competent (including Rodrigue, who is a Tier 4 Holy Knight at a time when players might only be just barely reaching the Tier 3 classes), they can just sit back and let him take care of everything. However, unlike the above, doing this will cause the player to miss out on some very good rewards, most notably Felix's Infinity +1 Sword, the Aegis Shield. This however gets painfully subverted on Maddening difficulty, where not only is Rodrigue hopelessly outmatched by the enemies with inflated stats (to the point he can't survive the first turn without the player's help), the villagers' tendency to run straight into groups of enemies that can effortlessly cut them down make the map a nightmarish Escort Mission. Most players opt to just warp their strongest fighter to the boss and circumvent the map completely.
• Wizarding School: Fódlan has a school of sorcery in Fhirdiad, the capital of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus. The school itself is unseen, though a few characters, like Annette and Mercedes, once attended it and have talents in the Reason skill as a result.
• Worldbuilding: The game develops its setting extensively, with many NPCs and bits of dialogue, especially during the monastery exploration segments, that give details about important places, figures, and happenings in the world. At the beginning of each chapter in Part I, there is narration detailing the usual events of the month and changes the world and its occupants go through for no other reason other than setting flavor.
• Written by the Winners:
  • On the Verdant Wind route (and to some extent the Silver Snow route), you discover that this is exactly correct when it comes to the real histories of the Crests, the Ten Elites, and Nemesis. Seiros defeated Nemesis in the War of Heroes and rewrote the stories of him, the Elites, and the Crests to serve her own purposes in restoring order to Fódlan and protecting the surviving Children of the Goddess from being killed for more "divine" power. That said, there was only so much she could do since Nemesis was already well-regarded among the populace as a hero by the time he died.
  • Post-timeskip on the Crimson Flower route, a monk in the Garreg Mach library notes that this is very much true and wonders just how much of the history in the library has been edited by those victors. Something similar happens on both the Crimson Flower route and Azure Moons, where Sylvain muses that whichever side wins is the one which will go down in history as "right".
  • The Cindered Shadows DLC has a library in Abyss with many documents that were banned by Seteth from the church's library. Abyss' library contains, amongst other things, writings that reveal and suggest the true origins of the Crests, Relics, even clues to what influence those who slither in the dark had on past events such as King Loog's rebellion, although Linhardt cautions the player that not all pieces in Abyss may be authentic (implying that some of the documents are lies and falsehoods), muddying the waters.

X

• Xanatos Gambit: Claude's plan to defend the Alliance in the Crimson Flower route. He has his army retreat towards Derdriu so he can ambush the Empire's army there with the Almyran army, and other areas are spared from the fighting. Whether he wins or loses and regardless of whether he lives or dies, most of the Alliance remains unscathed.

Y

• Year Zero: The Fódlan calendar uses the foundation of the Adrestian Empire as its origin point, although the earliest recorded date is 41 years before that, when Seiros made her first appearance in the future Imperial capital of Enbarr.
• Yes-Man: Zig-zagged with Hubert and Dedue, who are unwaveringly loyal to their respective house lords but aren't above going behind their leaders' backs and taking matters into their own hands if they deem it necessary. Played completely straight with Catherine and Cyril who stick with Rhea come hell or high water, with Cyril in particular being completely unfazed by Rhea setting Fhirdiad ablaze in Crimson Flower, the capital of the Kingdom that had granted the Church sanctuary in the war.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Despite using their time-rewinding powers, Byleth fails to save Jeralt from dying to Kronya's surprise attack. Sothis explains that, should Divine Pulse be unable to change the outcome of an event, said event is fate, and unable to be altered.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: This will always happen at the end of Chapter 12 regardless of your allegiance. No matter how well you do the chapter, if you side with Dimitri, Claude, or the church, the Adrestian Empire will always take down Garreg Mach and capture Rhea, while if you side with Edelgard, Rhea and the church will always be able to evacuate to Faerghus and plan their next course of action.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Despite being allied with them, Edelgard always intended to eliminate those who slither in the dark once she achieved her aim of abolishing the Church of Seiros, viewing them as far too dangerous and evil to let run free in her planned peaceful realm. Indeed, Crimson Flower's epilogue states the two sides would battle each other after the unification of Fódlan in the years to come. On Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, Hubert passes on the task to Byleth and their allies after his and Edelgard's deaths.
• You Lose at Zero Trust:
  • During the Academy Arc, the rewards you get after beating a paralogue involving 2 characters heavily depends on whether or not the other one was recruited beforehand. For example, in the paralogue "Ruptured Nuptials", you won't get the Galatea Pegasus Co. and the Hero's Relic Luin if Ingrid wasn't recruited, as both are her personal rewards. Conversely, you won't get the Goddess Ring if Dorothea's the one who is yet to be recruited. The only exception is Seteth and Flayn's paralogue, as it's only available during a point in the story Seteth can't be recruited.
  • Two cases regarding Edelgard:
    • Unlike with Dimitri and (to some extent) Claude, whose past is explored at some point as part of the plot, Edelgard's backstory is revealed only through her first supports with Byleth. On the same vein, she will reveal and make use of her second crest in battle only if the player has seen her C+ support with them beforehand.
    • During Part I of the Black Eagles route, if you fail to get Edelgard's C+ support before talking to her in the monastery during Chapter 11, you won't be able to go with her to Enbarr and attend to her coronation, thus unlocking the chance to choose the Crimson Flower route during the moment of fate, which is the only one of the two story branches of the Black Eagles route that lets you keep Edelgard and Hubert for Part II.
  • Two cases involving Rhea:
    • In non-Crimson Flower routes, if you fail to get her C-support during Part I, her paralogue (Eternal Guardian) won't be unlocked during Part II.
    • Downplayed example on Silver Snow. While it doesn't affect the ending drastically, it's possible to have her survive the aftermath of the final chapter as long you managed to unlock her A support before the timeskip (which requires getting her B support before Byleth fuses with Sothis in Chapter 10).
  • Seteth features an interesting example in both the Azure Moon and Verdant Wind routes. While he normally joins the party automatically near the end of Part I on these routes like in Silver Snow, if by any chance, Flayn had fallen in battle while playing in Classic Mode previously, he will refuse to join Byleth and will remain unplayable for the rest of the story.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: On Silver Snow and Verdant Wind, everyone assumes that the war is over once the Flame Emperor is killed. Then you find out about those who slither in the dark and have to go fight them. Then you have to fight either the resurrected Nemesis on Verdant Wind or a berserk Rhea on the Silver Snow route.

Z

• Zip Mode: During the exploration phase, once you've visited an area in Garreg Mach, you can "fast travel" straight to that area after unlocking that ability.

---