Genshin Impact / Tropes T to Z

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T

• Tactful Translation: During the Summer Fantasia event, Fischl's Translator Buddy Oz frequently gives a more polite translation when Fischl gets snippy. Eventually, this is Lampshaded by Fischl, at which point Oz replies that he's simply trying to keep Fischl from fighting with her friends during her vacation.
• Take That!:
  • The game is absolutely merciless towards isekai stories. One of the equippable catalysts is a book called "Otherworldly Story" which is described as having no value whatsoever. A voice line for Yae Miko, who owns a light novel publishing house, features her all but rolling her eyes at the recent fad of parallel world stories—"Heaven knows what they find so dull about their own world." A daily commission in Inazuma has you accompany an author as he visits various shops for inspiration, with the end result always being him giving his protagonist new abilities seemingly at random to progress the plot faster, which exasperates his publisher. And then finally during the Raiden Shogun's character quest, they come upon a light novel called "The Good Thing About Being Reincarnated as a Hilichurl Is That I Only Need to Eat Sunsettias to Become Stronger", with Ei noting the impractically long title. Later during that same quest, you find another novel about a Loser Protagonist being reincarnated as the Raiden Shogun, which the Traveler internally criticizes for leaving no room for development by immediately making the protagonist an Invincible Hero. Ironically, Genshin Impact itself can be considered an isekai story itself despite not falling into many of the tropes modern examples are notorious for.
  • Hues of the Violet Garden takes a potshot at merchandise collectors. Sara absolutely insists that the statue of the Raiden Shogun is not a "figurine". Her principles for maintenance include making a shrine for the statue that has to be worshipped, it requires meticulous cleaning and its maintenance has to be regularly done by a craftsman... and that was just the first principle. Oh and according to her voicelines, Sara already had a statue... five of them. The entire ordeal portrays Sara's interest in a humorous light with almost everyone involved feeling indifferent.
  • Perhaps the biggest one so far is the one against college-style intellectual elitism, distilled in the form of the Sumeru Akademiya. From the Archon quest to the world and story quests, the game showcases the lack of empathy and arrogance of the Sages and top scholars against artistic professions, along with their cognitive bias and prejudice against knowledge that defies their expectations or people they consider beneath them, ironically showing their utter lack of wisdom in spite of all the knowledge they have at their disposal. It even comes to a head as the main driver of the Sages treachery against their Archon stems from the fact that they dismiss their god's efforts to take care of her people as meaningless and would rather replace her with a fake god that better fits their vision of what wisdom is.
• Take Your Time:
  • In general, quests won't advance until you enter the quest area or talk to a certain character.
  • Players need to grind more Adventure Ranks to continue Archon Quests no matter how urgent the situation is. One of the more noticeable examples is when Venti tells you to hurry to Liyue else you'll miss the Rite of Descension... except you might need to spend a while grinding before you can attend.
• Tag Team: Your party is organized this way - one active character and three reserve characters that you can swap with mid-battle. To take advantage of the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system is to make good use of your characters' elemental skills, so you'd often see yourself swapping between characters mid-combat.
• Talking Animal: Excluding the physical forms of mystical beings, there are Oz the raven and Changsheng the snake.
• Talking Is a Free Action: Zig-zagged when it comes to conversing with NPCs and having enemies around.
  • If you've aggro'd nearby mobs before you can talk to the NPC, if you attempt it (e.g. with the "talk to" prompt), you'll get a message that says that you're not in a situation to talk.
  • If you get to talk to an NPC and then nearby enemies get aggro'd, the conversation will still continue even as the enemies beat your character up.
  • For cutscenes that are triggered by just walking towards the designated NPC/location, the conversation/scene will still continue whether the enemies get aggro'd before or after the scene is triggered, and they'll beat your character up.
• Talk to Everyone: Certain NPCs may give something to you when you talk to them the first time. Some of them may also sell some certain things without having a "shop" icon above their heads.
• A Taste of Power:
  • Accompanying each limited character banner are "Test Runs" where you can use the featured characters to test their strengths.
  • Most Story Quests let you use a "trial" character during certain sections of the quest for exploration and combat, even if it's a high-rarity character you haven't obtained yet.
• Tech-Demo Game: The game's top-notch graphics and Wide-Open Sandbox nature means that, on mobile, high-end devices are recommended to have a smooth and stable experience even at lower graphic settings. To give this some context, at launch the game's minimum recommended specs for Android phones were at least 3GB RAM and Android OS version 7.0. This meant that something equivalent to a Samsung Galaxy S7 - a benchmark many budget phones fell short of, even in 2020 - was the absolute minimum required to play the game at all. Since it's also free-to-play, it quickly became a popular choice for tech reviewers stress-testing new phones.
• Technicolor Blade: Certain weapons have colored blades, such as Skyward Blade and ascended Aquila Favonia (cyan), Blackcliff Longsword (crimson), The Alley Flash (dark blue), Prototype Rancour (golden), etc.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • Events and gacha banners are only available for a limited time unless they have reruns.
  • The Golden Apple Archipelago was a special tropical-themed region set on its own map, with unique features and quests. The location was only available during the 1.6 patch, which was Hand Waved in-universe as being difficult to get to because of changing tides and winds.
• Thermal Dissident:
  • Eula loves to bathe in the cold ponds of the cold Dragonspine Mountains; rather fitting, seeing how she has a Cryo vision.^note  However, this is not displayed gameplay-wise. She is the one person in Mondstadt who prefers her drinks iced and not at room temperature. Amber says that on a hot day she can stay cool just by standing next to Eula.
  • A couple of characters complain if you enter the cold Dragonspine Mountains: Yanfei calls it injurious, and Dehya asks if you are kidding her.
  • While only a few characters mention suddenly being in the desert, Neuvillette actually asks if you are trying to assassinate him.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know:
  • Divine Knowledge Capsules supposedly contain divine knowledge, but such knowledge can only be deciphered by gods and mortals privy to it are invariably driven insane. The Akademiya actually uses these to dispose scholars they deem too dangerous or have outlived their usefulness.
  • In ancient times, King Deshret's folly led to the spread of 'Forbidden Knowledge' through Sumeru, manifesting in dark whispers, Eleazar, and The Withering. Its eventually revealed that Forbidden Knowledge comes from the bottom of the Abyss, and Nahida describes it as a "truth" that no-one, not even the gods, can comprehend.
  • The book "Before Sun and Moon" records ancient history of Teyvat, before gods walk the world, the arrival of the First and Second Descenders, and the war that follows. Celestia does not like people poring into this period of time, and when they found out Orobashi read it, they ordered Orobashi to die.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Generally, this trope is averted, as the protagonist's Fairy Companion is such a Big Eater that food is always the first thing on her mind. It's subverted at the beginning of Chapter III Act VI. The Traveler is speaking to Kaeya at a tavern and Dainsleif stops to interrogate him. He also orders a drink. The player is likely to assume that he did this just to keep up appearances and forget about it. After Dainsleif is done speaking to Kaeya, he determines his next course of action with the Traveler, but says they can't get to it right away. Paimon assumes that Dainsleif has something important to take care of, but Dainsleif says that no, he just has yet to have his drink.
• Third-Person Shooter: Ranged characters have a dedicated button that toggles this control scheme, allowing players to manually aim their weapons.
• Thriving Ghost Town:
  • If the Crowd Density option is set to low, it results in this. The only population present are the one's that can be interacted with, with no sight of background bystanders present whatsoever which makes the cities barely populated despite its size.
  • Regardless of whether the Crowd Density option is enabled or not, Mondstadt will be devoid of background bystanders. While this makes sense during the Stormterror Crisis, this becomes rather strange after the crisis has ended, resulting in a moderately large capital lacking in an appropriate amount of residents.
• Tile-Flipping Puzzle: Or cube hitting puzzle in this case. Several puzzles featuring Electro Cubes can be found across Inazuma, with the goal being to make them all have the same number of lights lit up. Hitting one causes them and adjacent cubes to cycle through a pattern of one to three lights.
• Time Stands Still: At the end of the "The Dirge of Bilqis" quest chain of Sumeru, you will get to visit the Orchard of Pairidaeza, an underground oasis (which somehow has a sky, and a setting sun no less), where everything except you and your compatriots are completely frozen in time; yes, even the birds and waterfalls are completely inanimate.
• Timed Mission:
  • Some open-world challenges, daily commissions or quests require you to accomplish the task within a given time, such as gliding/running to the finish line, destroying specific objects, or killing all enemies in the area. Events aren't exempted either; "Unreconciled Stars" uses the time-limited "kill-em-all" quest type by a huge margin.
  • All repeatable Domains have time limits once they're initiated.
  • The Spiral Abyss floors are time-limited, and they reward the player depending on how fast can they clear the floors.
  • Bounty missions in work this way. In Mondstadt and Liyue, you have 10 minutes to find 3 clues of the target bounty and then to find and fight the target bounty itself. In other regions, the enemy is spawned from the get-go and the time limit is just for defeating them.
• Time Skip: The prologue shows the two Travelers being sealed by the Unknown God. From the playable twin's point-of-view, they no longer know how many years passed after that incident, although they still recall waking up in Teyvat and meeting Paimon two months prior to the main story. The character stories of the Traveler also suggest that the world was changed compared to the time before they met the Unknown God. And then by the end of Prologue Act 2, it's revealed that the missing twin became the leader of the Abyss Order. During the Chapter 1 Act IV prologue, it becomes much more clear that the traveler had been sealed for 500 years during the cataclysm of Khaenri'ah. The rest of the game actually takes place throughout the span of a few years as Lantern Rite in Liyue is held to signify the new year with four having already occurred as of Version 4.4.
• Title Drop:
  • What the English translation calls "allogenes" (people who hold Vision) is called "Genshin" in the Japanese dub and "Yuánshén" (which is the game's original title) in Chinese.
  • A dialogue during the last part of the "Tatara Tales" side quest has Xavier considering making a film recreating its events. When remembering Inazumans like to name their stories "something-something-Tales", the name of that hypothetical film, Tatara Tales, falls into place. After the Mikage Furnace is fully repaired, Xavier intends to make this film a reality and invites the Traveler as his first viewer.
• Toggling Setpiece Puzzle: Enkanomiya is built around this mechanic. Several switches are found across the region which control its artificial day and night cycle via the Dainichi Mikoshi tower, and whether it is day (Whitenight) or night (Evernight) will determine the accessibility of barrier puzzles. For example, some barriers will only be active during the day but disappear during the night, and the same applies vice versa as well, prompting the player to cleverly use the day/night switches to their advantage in order to progress through the puzzles for rewards.
• Toilet Humour: Nahida suggests that the Traveler and Paimon take a "dook-dook" one night, catching them off guard since she was saying profound things just a moment beforehand. When it doesn't appear to have any effect, they call her out on it the next morning. In response, she explains that she suggested it to help them relieve stress. It's vaguely reasonable (in a way Cloudcuckoolanders often are), but very silly nonetheless.
• Token Aquatic Race: The Oceanids are a race of pure Hydro lifeforms that originate from Fontaine; the domain of the Hydro Archon. According to lore, they operate as spies and use vast water networks across all seven nations in order to relay information back the Hydro Archon, and the World Boss, Rhodeia of Loch (which is required for Hydro user ascension materials), used to be one of their spies before she fled to Liyue in exile. You could also get a traveling Oceanid companion named Endora if you participated in the temporary "Wishful Drops" event back in Version 1.4.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Used for the final reveal of the twist in Chapter 3 Act 6, revealing that most of what the Traveler experienced in the quest was a vision of their sibling's memories.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore: The book Before Sun and Moon in Enkanomiya. The book itself and the knowledge it imparts are not harmful by itself... But it describes ancient Teyvat, including the arrival of The First and Second Descenders and the war that follows, and Celestia doesn't like people poring into this period of time. In fact, when Celestia found out that Orobashi read this book, they ordered Orobashi to die.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Fragile Resins. They can only be acquired from Adventure Rank rewards, or from certain limited events. They can be used to refill 60 Original Resin immediately, but they are often saved up for the endgame because higher World Levels and harder Domains drop more loot even if the Resin costs are static.
  • High-rarity consumables such as the stat-boosting food are often saved up for boss battles, especially if their boosts are great, and if the food requires a lot of ingredients to create in the first place. The Adeptus' Temptation is an example of this since it is a 5★ food that temporarily increases all party members' attack and CRIT Rate for 5 minutes.
  • The Crown of Insight (called "Crown of Sagehood" prior to version 1.2) is required—in addition to weekly-boss drops—to max out a talent level. Problem is, it's only available in extremely limited quantities, most of it coming from limited-time game events. Every character has 3 talents, so choosing which one(s) to use this on could be rather difficult, especially since you could get a new character later who needs it more.
• Too Dumb to Live: A number of the City Reputation bounties are incredulously silly. Some people put Bounties on notorious monsters like Geovishap Hatchlings and Ruin Hunters citing reasons such as wanting to keep them as pets.
• Took a Level in Badass: It's implied that anyone who receives a Vision automatically becomes a formidable opponent, regardless of what combat experience they had beforehand. The best example would have to be Barbara, a pure healer with all the damage output of a wet paper towel, who, upon the Traveler expressing concern for her safety during one route of her Hangout Event, simply points out that she's a Vision-wielder and thus can handle herself.
• Tower Defense: Version 1.3 has the "Theater Mechanicus" event, in which you can plant different kinds of "towers" to defeat waves of incoming enemies. The enemies won't attack you or the towers, but will keep walking towards the "exit" which you have to defend. You can attack the enemies, but they'll take no damage from your attacks, nor will your energy get charged; however, you can still exploit elemental effects and reactions to support your towers. This can also be played with another player. Completing a level unlocks materials you can use to upgrade the towers, as well as higher difficulties.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Smaragdus Jadeite is a type of Liyuen ore found near the Chasm that gives off high elemental energy which is toxic to mortal beings, so being in close proximity to it causes them to experience unpleasant effects, ranging from mild sickness at best to chronic health problems and Sanity Slippage at worst. Vision bearers are immune to this because their Visions provide protection from this energy. Because of the toxicity, the ore rarely sees practical use outside of adepti using it for teapot abode construction, and selling it to potential buyers in the marketplace is a tall order. One NPC by the name of "Tang Wuchou" in the Chasm is an example of what Smaragdus Jadeite can do to a normal person, completely warping his mind to make him believe that he is the great "Guhua Hero" despite being an average Treasure Hoarder all because he's wearing a chunk of the ore as an accessory.
  • Arkhium is an ore that is a source of the Arkhe energy that powers much of Fontaine. It is also highly volatile and emits lethal radiation. The Fontaine Research Institute constantly downplays the danger posed by this energy source, as the nation is reliant on it to power devices such as Clockwork Meka. Have we mentioned that it is colored green?
• Trailers Always Spoil: Even before the game launched, the official "We Will Be United" trailer outright warns and shows a twist wherein the twin Travelers are going to be on opposing sides after being separated. The missing sibling would be the one leading the Abyss Order.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Each playable character has "favorite food" listed in their voice-overs. They also have the inverse listed there, as well.
• Trapped in Another World:
  • A particularly interesting variant as your player character is posited as being a veteran other-world traveler, and the world upon which Teyvat rests was just one stop of many you and your sibling were making. You ran afoul of the "unknown god" while transiting, however, and ended up robbed of your powers of world-travel and with your sibling seemingly kidnapped. The nature of the player's homeworld has not yet been addressed; their voice-over entries occasionally hints about what existed in their homeworld.
  • Fischl claims to hail from an otherworld as well; this claim is somewhat more questionable, however.
• Trick Arrow: Some archers' charged shots can provide various additional special effects apart from the usual imbuing of elements in the arrow, such as marking enemies to inflict additonal AoE damage (Tartaglia), perform a follow-up attack if the arrow is charged longer (Ganyu and Tighnari), homing in on targets (Yoimiya), and exploding (Yelan), to name a few.
• The Troublemaker: Arataki Itto, leader of the Arataki Gang, is infamous for this. He isn't malicious or the like, but his ego, silliness, and (almost literal) bull-headedness often lands him and his gang in hot water. His deputy Shinobu often has to rein him in or bail him out of the local jail.
• A Truce While We Gawk: Yoimiya and a Nobushi pause their fight to admire fireworks in her character demo.
• True Sight: The "elemental sight" ability can reveal some hidden objects during specific quests, particularly those of the Pixel Hunt variant.
• Two Girls to a Team: There are some gender-inverted examples.
  • Of the current 7 Archons, Barbatos (Venti) and Morax (Zhongli) are the only males.
  • Of the current playable Electro characters as of the 3.5 update (excluding male Traveler because his element is interchangeable), Razor and Cyno are the only 2 males.
  • Of the standard 5-star characters as of the 3.5 update, Diluc and Tighnari are the only 2 males.

U

• Uncatty Resemblance: While not pets, the designs of certain Wildlife critters coincidentally (or not) call to mind the palettes or designs of certain playable characters, such as Kaveh’s hair being the reminiscent of the Desert Foxes in the Sumeru Desert, or Fontaine’s Leisurely Otters having similar color palettes to Neuvillette, right down to a blue head strip.
• Underground Monkey: Enemies can have alternate versions or palette swaps. For example, there are Slimes for every 7 elements, while Abyss Mages come in Pyro, Cryo and Hydro variants, etc. Hilichurls in Liyue have stone shields instead of wooden ones, and their mages use Geo instead of Anemo. The Dragonspine update added Cryo versions of Lawachurls, Cicin Mages, and Hilichurls, plus a stronger variant of the Ruin Guards.
• Undignified Death: Combined with Yet Another Stupid Death, you will want to pay close attention to your Stamina meter when you are swimming around. Nothing quite as embarrassing as "Here lies The Traveler, Honorary Knight of Favonius, Hero of Mondstadt, drowned in a waist-deep fish pond in Liyue." Thankfully, Death Is a Slap on the Wrist.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: While a subtle detail, a character's height will affect their overall speed in-game and how they interact with the world. For instance, characters with the child body type are among the slowest at running, climbing and swimming and will not be able to fight in most shallow waters due to being the shortest characters in-game; whereas taller adult characters like Kaeya or Jean end up being the fastest overall with no difficulty in shallow waters.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: In Chapter III, Act V, as part of the hero's plot to infiltrate the Akademiya and free Lesser Lord Kusanali, Isak dresses in a Kusanali costume to lure the Akademiya guards into a wild goose chase. The game then shifts to his perspective where the gameplay involves the player selecting his decisions in a short time window to avoid getting caught by the guards, and one wrong decision will result in a Game Over and restart a portion of the mission all over again. The objective is to lure the guards to the Grand Bazaar so Rahman's Eremites can ambush them and keep them from interfering with the hero's goal. This mechanic returns in Nahida's second Story Quest, where Nahida transforms into a Fungus to approach a family of Fungi.
• Unexpected Shmup Level:
  • Both times you face off against Stormterror, you're taken into a Rail Shooter-type sequence where you must follow him on your glider and shoot at his weak point. The second fight also involves some Bullet Hell showdown mixed with passing through rings.
  • The "Outrider Style" quest has a section where regular combat mechanics are temporarily disabled. Instead, it forces you to drop bombs on enemies while flying above them with the Wind Glider.
• Unique Enemy: Two cases of this, to the point that they don't even have an Archive entry. Both cases involve soldiers from governments the Traveler is initially on bad terms with, but eventually befriends so the soldiers have no reason to go after the Traveler anymore.
  • The Millelith soldiers are only fought twice in the Liyue Archon Quests; the first time at Qingyun Peak when they pursued the Traveler over there after being branded a potential suspect in Rex Lapis' assassination, and the second time at the Guizhong Ballista when the Traveler tried to use it to launch themselves to the Jade Chamber, and the soldiers were just doing inspections on it at the moment they arrive.
  • While the Shogunate soldiers are fought more often, like the above, they only appear on Archon Quests and don't appear in the overworld; these are inside the Police detention center, and during quests involving the resistance. They also show up on Yoimiya's story quest and one World Quest from Shizuru.
• Uniqueness Decay:
  • Earlier in the game, it was mentioned that only Vision bearers chosen by the gods can wield Elemental Powers, making them unique among the rest of Teyvat's population. However, barring the Fatui Delusions (which are intended to be Evil Counterpart versions of Visions for plot reasons), the arsenal of the Fatui Skirmishers (replicated with advanced technology), and Treasure Hoarder Potioneers throwing elemental cocktails (which can logically be explained by Muggle with a Degree in Magic), from Inazuma onward, the player will encounter human enemies that use other means to wield the elements in order to achieve similar feats to Vision bearers, such as the Kairagi infusing their swords with elemental talismans and some Eremite mercenaries using elemental spirits to possess their weapons and enter Super Mode states. While this was done for the sake of including more variety in the enemy roster, the fact that there are other ways for humans to wield the elements without receiving a Vision has degraded the uniqueness of Vision bearers quite a bit, and rendered the initial "only Vision bearers can wield the elements" lore point null.
  • In one of the early quests, you and Xiangling find frozen meat from an extinct species of boar, and use it to win a cooking contest. At the time, it seems like that was the only boar-popsicle in the world. But the Dragonspine update added an entire mountain full of them; they even come back to life when thawed, and there's also a gigantic boar boss that drops a whole bunch of the stuff.
• Uniqueness Rule: In co-op, while all players can use the same character in the overworld, each player is required to use a different character from one another when entering domains.
• Unreliable Narrator: The in-game flavor text appears to be limited to an In-Universe perspective. After a couple of Cosmic Retcons, it's modified to fit the new history, even though those retcons only affected what people remembered. There's also at least one case where the Flavor Text is just straight up misinformation being regurgitated to players: the Rifthounds are identified as being the creation of Gold, but Khaenri'ahn records that can be found during the Ann of the Narzissenkreuz series of World Quests identify Rifthounds as having entered Khaenri'ah from Another Dimension, much the way they do now.
• Unskilled, but Strong: The Geo element in general is this; while crystalize is not a damaging reaction, it's compensated for the fact that many Geo characters tend to hit hard and aren't hit by significant resistances.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee:
  • During the Sumeru storyline, the main characters come up with a plan to rescue Lesser Lord Kusanali and stop the Akademiya. Instead of this plan being known to the player from the start, each step is revealed immediately before or after it's taken. The game fakes out the player at one point when Alhaitham feigns treachery, and they ultimately have to reverse Scaramouche's transformation into a god by taking away the Electro Gnosis instead of preventing it like they no doubt intended, but otherwise it goes off without a hitch.
  • In the Fontaine questline, the player gets to know what the main characters are planning for (getting Furina into a trial), but the player doesn't find out the actual plan until it's done.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight:
  • In freeroaming, if a fight breaks out between you and the enemies, any NPCs who happened to be near the battle won't so much as blink or cower at the sight of violence. Obviously not the case for certain NPCs who are being attacked by enemies as part of a quest's story.
  • One egregious case of this is during the quest "Will of Stone", where you have to chase after a little girl named Little Liu, who inadvertently leads you past a group of monsters. When she stops moving, she will simply stand and watch you get thrashed by a Stonehide Lawachurl and some Hilichurls without so much as panicking or cry out in fear.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Huachu, a seemingly innocuous NPC hanging out at the Stone Gate near the Mondstadt/Liyue border, turns out to be a lot more involved with the main plot than the game lets on. Reading into her backstory and some lore reveals that she is the daughter of Gentry De'an; the former manager of the defunct Minghua Company. At the time, Huachu was dating a man named Jianqiu of whom Gentry De'an disapproves of, so in order to elope with him, both her and Jianqiu conspired a plot to fake her suicide by using an already dead body of another person and dress them up as her, throwing the corpse into a well (which poisoned it) and then running away from home. To prove that he's not responsible for his daughter's supposed death, Gentry De'an had to sell his entire Minghua Company to pay for the funeral expenses. However, this allowed the Fatui to come in and take over the Minghua Company's place by establishing the Northland Bank, setting the plot of Chapter 1 into motion. Huachu ended up being indirectly responsible for the Fatui's involvement in Liyue, and by extension, Childe summoning Osial in an attempt to draw Rex Lapis out for his Gnosis.
• Upgrade Artifact: A variant—the third and fifth constellation levels of a character always add three levels to one combat talent (Normal Attack, Elemental Skill, or Elemental Burst) and increases their level cap from 10 to 15. Which talent gets upgraded by a given constellation level is fixed and depends on the character.
• The Usual Adversaries: Most enemy factions from launch have fallen Out of Focus and have been replaced with regional factions that are significantly more dangerous as part of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil. Unsurprisingly, both halves of the Big Bad Ensemble are exceptions to this, but the Abyss Order rarely made appearances beyond the Prologue and are relegated only to Traveler's Tale Archon Quests and some World Quests, which is especially egregious since they're linked to the Driving Question of what happened to the Traveler's sibling and why. The Fatui has established themselves at this point to be THE de facto omnipresent adversary, and the fact that they show up in unexpected places to be the instigators of each chapter's conflicts has been pointed out at least once. The end result is that the main characters have come to expect that they're involved with whatever problem they're trying to solve, even when they're not.
• Utility Party Member:
  • All characters (except for the Traveler, Arlecchino and Tartaglia^note His passive skill increases the normal attack talent level by 1 for the whole party) have passive skills that help with non-combat situations or Fontaine's underwater exploration. For example, Barbara can have a chance to cook twice the amount of health-restoring dishes, Kaeya can reduce the stamina usage of sprinting, etc.
  • All characters (except for Raiden Shogun who can't cook) also have a chance to make a special dish from a standard dish. For example, Amber can make an improved Steak.
  • Mona and Ayaka have an Alternate Sprint, which turns them into a cloud of their respective elements while sprinting. These are faster than continuous regular sprinting, consume less stamina than a regular sprint (before any stamina reduction effects) and most importantly, allow rapid traversal of water.
  • When swimming in Fontaine's waters, the Traveler and Fontainian characters can perform a "dolphin leap" when surfacing at high speed. This is needed for some exploration objectives and puzzles in Fontaine.
• Utility Weapon:
  • Claymores, and thus their users, can smash iron, crystal chunks and breakable walls quicker than other weapons. Some chests are also covered in rocks, which are easily broken by Claymore wielders.
  • Ningguang, Klee, and Yanfei can also break ore veins quickly with their basic attacks^note Yanfei needs to use her charged attack or Elemental Skill; her normal attacks can't make a dent in them. Zhongli, Razor, and Candace can also do this with the held versions of their Elemental Skill.
  • Pyro users can burn brambles or melt ice in order to unlock some paths or treasure chests.
  • Anemo users can activate pinwheels, which often lead up to secret paths, treasure chests, or upward wind currents. Kazuha and Venti have Elemental Skills which provide vertical mobility, Xiao and Sayu's Elemental Skills provide horizontal mobility, and Wanderer's Elemental Skill provides both.
  • Cryo users can freeze water surfaces, which allows them (and the party) to cross bodies of water without having to swim.
  • Some Geo characters' elemental skills create Improvised Platforms which can be climbed up and stood on, mostly for platforming purposes. The Geo-elemental Traveler can crate a small meteor made of rock, Zhongli can create a tall rock pillar, while Albedo can spawn a flower platform that floats after a short delay.
  • Bow users can charge their shots with elements. Aside from combat, this helps in activating Elemental Monuments and torches from a distance without relying on elemental skills (which come with a cooldown).
  • Nahida's held Elemental Skill allows her to collect most harvestable materials simply by looking at them.
  • Kirara's held Elemental Skill turns her into an Urgent Neko Parcel. While in this state, Kirara moves faster, jumps higher and most notably, has a fast and stamina-efficient wall climb.
  • One version of Nilou's Elemental Skill creates a ring of water around the active character which rapidly applies Hydro. This is the fastest way to charge the Parametric Transformer without relying on the environment (e.g. lighting grass on fire) and can be used to cheese some Hydrograna puzzles in Fontaine.
  • Neuvillette's Charged Attack has a lengthy charge-up animation, after which he fires a large Hydro beam for a few seconds. As Neuvillette can move throughout this process, charging "normally" and letting the beam fire gives Neuvillette a few seconds of improved mobility without stamina consumption.
  • Furina can walk on water when her Elemental Skill is active.
  • Charlotte's held Elemental Skill has a special interaction with the "Special Analysis Zoom Lens" gadget, allowing in-game photos to be taken with zoom and free movement and in locations where the Kamera would be unusable (e.g. domains).

V

• Vague Age:
  • In general, they have official birthdays, but not ages. You can't necessarily tell by looking at them, either, since Venti and Ganyu are Really 700 Years Old, and the same is true of Qiqi, who looks like a child but is actually an immortal jiangshi zombie, and we've only been given a somewhat vague timeframe for when that happened ("several hundred" years of being sealed in a crystal, and then an indeterminate amount of time between being unsealed and the Traveler meeting her).
  • Not even body type or animation set help that much. One of the most common body/animation sets in the launch game, the "Medium Female" set^note used by Lumine, Amber, Fischl, Xiangling, Sucrose, Noelle, Barbara, Mona, Keqing, Ganyu, Hu Tao, Xinyan, Yun Jin, Yanfei, Ayaka, Yoimiya, Kokomi and Aloy features characters that run a whole spectrum of possible ages; they range from explicit Chuunibyou teenagers (Fischl) to characters of deliberately vague age for self-insertability (Lumine) to seemingly young adults who are still talented working professionals, albeit in the early days of their careers (Amber, Sucrose and Xiangling) and then all the way up to explicitly adult characters who are experts in their fields and even have major positions in governments (Keqing and Kokomi). It becomes incredibly difficult to put a number on these characters as a result — folks like Keqing and Sucrose feel like they should be adults from their backstories and character traits, but it's not hard to notice they're the same height as Fischl, who must still be in her mid-teens or is a young adult who is not yet of drinking age.
  • All the characters with the "Short Female" set^note used by Klee, Qiqi, Diona, Sayu, Dori, Yaoyao, Sigewinne, and Nahida seem like they should be the exception, but with the exception of Nahida (who is a 500-year-old archon), Yaoyao, and possibly Diona, they all have factors at play that make their true age difficult to tell. Klee is the one of the few characters with elf-like ears and is confirmed via a message from her mother Alice to be part of a long-lived race. Qiqi, as stated above, is untold hundreds of years old and will never age beyond a child. Sayu is a child, but her fixation on growing taller to match all her friends implies she may actually be closer to a teenager than her appearance would suggest. Meanwhile, Dori owns a bunch of money as well as owning an entire palace with the implications being she got all that money from her job as a merchant which would be unlikely if she was just a child. Additionally, the reason Sigewinne has the short female model has less to do with her age, and more because she's a Half-Melusine, and Melusines tend to be very short.
  • Diona is a strange case; as a bartender, real world laws dictate she would have to be able to legally consume alcohol, and the Knights of Favonius Handbook says not to let minors inside taverns, but nothing prevents the Traveler (who everyone believes to not be of legal age) from stopping by the Angel's Share or Cat's Tail whenever they like, and during an event where the Traveler is asked to brew drinks, the reason why they're limited to brewing non-alcoholic drinks isn't that the Traveler doesn't look old enough for the job, but rather that a previous mixer ended up making a Gargle Blaster by mistake. Diona is actively trying to sabotage the alcohol industry, so she definitely doesn't drink wine, and the fact that she looks too young to drink is never dwelled on. This suggests that there's no law that actually prevents a minor from serving alcohol, so given that Diona is otherwise never implied to be an adult, it's probably safe to assume that she's as young as she looks.
  • Not even the male characters escape from this despite only having two body types compared to the female characters' three. While there are no Short Male body types as of 3.4, the medium males come in all age ranges, with characters such as the Traveler, who is 500 years old, and Cyno, who is implied to be a young adult at the youngest despite physically resembling a mid-teenager. There are also long-lived playable units such as Xiao, and Zhongli, who are both thousands of years old but use medium male and tall male models, respectively.
• Variable Mix:
  • The Trounce Domain "End of the Oneiric Euthymia" introduced this to the game. The boss music seamlessly shifts between a version for the boss' normal state and another when the boss is in the "Baleful Shadowlord" state.
  • The deeper parts of The Chasm: Underground Mines has a unique take on the soundtrack. Rather than cycle through context-dependent tracks like the rest of the overworld, it instead has two versions of the same tracks: an ambient version for exploration and an intense version for battle, and they seamlessly switch with each other in-between enemy encounters. For example, "Stories of Remote Antiquity" becomes "Inevitable Conflict" when enemies are encountered and vice versa once out of aggro range.
• Version-Exclusive Content: PS4 players receive exclusive items like the Sword of Descension and Wings of Descension.
• Vicarious Gold Digger: The sidequest series "Leroy" in Fontaine involves Benoit Leroy making his adopted daughter Autumn (technically a blood relative) marry an old rich man; after said man's death, Benoit moves to said man's house. Then he has Autumn marry another man, who was reportedly abusive to her; sometime after she had a daughter with him, she murdered said man, and when she was trialed, Benoit reportedly refused to be the witness for her, leading her to be put into prison. Some characters you meet in the quest believe that Benoit did this just so he can have the house for himself.
• Video Game Caring Potential: In one of the caves on Dragonspine, you'll find a note by a lost adventurer saying that the snow foxes native to the mountain kept him company as he was trapped there, asking anyone who read the note to feed the foxes. From there, you can place berries in a basket near the note. Come back the next day and the basket will be empty with a snow fox hanging around the area, though it will flee if you approach. Feeding the foxes five days in a row without killing them will result in a treasure chest and the achievement "Untellable Tale".
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Played with. There is a daily commission quest where the player is tasked by Timmie to feed the ducks. There is nothing stopping the player from killing them after feeding them, but if you do, Timmie will exclaim that he "saw what you did to those poor ducks!" and that he would tell his mom on you. Come back another day and you will receive another quest where his mother decides to call you out on this and you have to make him his favourite dish to make it up to him. Of course, you can be sarcastic about it too when you hand it to him. Either way, you'll get the achievement "Taking Responsibility for Your Actions" and 5 Primogems.
  • The daily commission quest "Clean Up At Dawn II" requires you to help the Dawn Winery maids in cleaning up the piles of leaves that are mixed in with the haystack. Anemo abilities are the preferred way to do this, and the maids will appreciate your help. However, you can actually burn a haystack using Pyro abilities. While doing so instantly completes the quest and still gives you the rewards, the maids will call you out on it, fearing the possibility that they will be fired by Adelinde.
  • You can also attack, but not kill cats, dogs, and kitsunes by freezing them or sucking them into the whirlwind and sending them flying. Most players tend to do this accidentally while trying to find a way to pet them, an option that doesn't actually exist in the game as of current. If you happen to drop them into the water, however, they'll never respawn again.
  • Some of the dialogue options for the Traveler can be quite cruel. A prime example of this is at the end of Childe's story quest where, after using his Foul Legacy Transformation to effortlessly defeat a horde of Ruin Guards in a Curb-Stomp Battle, is left limp from the strain, and one of the options you can choose the Traveler to say is to off Childe right there simply because he's a Fatui Harbinger. It only takes family talk to convince them out of it, given Childe's own protective feelings towards his younger brother Teucer, but the malice is there for the player to choose at their own discretion.
  • Just north of the Grand Narukami Shrine, you can find a Fatui Agent and Mirror Maiden standing on a cliff looking out to the sea, as if going on a date. You can ruin their date by punting them both off the cliff and into the water to drown.
  • In the aftermath of the Interlude Archon Quest, Inversion of Genesis, you can name the reborn Scaramouche (known as "the Wanderer" at that point) an insulting one (such as Scaradouche, Lowlife, etc.) . This was Invoked In-Universe by Paimon & you may get away with that.
  • Fontaine's aquatic life is mostly harmless - only the large ones aggro normally, while the more common smaller ones only attack you if you attack them first. Some of them don't have attacks at all. You can still slaughter them with reckless abandon, and you likely will need to do so to farm Transoceanic Pearls for building some Fontaine characters and weapons.
• Video Game Dashing: Characters have a quick dashing move akin to Honkai Impact 3rd which they can use to evade the enemies' attacks. The dash move also allows the characters to sprint afterward.
• Video Game Flight: The characters can glide from high places using special capes or Wind Gliders on their backs.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Players can move the camera while gliding and climbing to peek under the skirts of characters. Downplayed since, everyone wearing a skirt either wears Modesty Shorts or tights underneath. The game will also make the characters visually fade out if the camera goes under them, up to being completely transparent if it's directly underneath, averting it entirely.
• Villain of Another Story:
  • In the past, there was a corrupt alchemist named Gold who created mutations or an army of monsters with alien blood. They rampaged over the lands, bringing forth destruction. The black dragon Durin is one of those monsters and is the same dragon who terrorized Mondstadt.
  • Ursa the Drake is a recurring and prominent antagonist in the backstories. As mentioned in the webcomic, Vennessa and her clan were hounded ten years ago by this dragon, starving them for days in the winter. Even the tyrants of Mondstadt fear it for terrorizing the city over the years, to the point where they planned to "offer" their gladiators just to appease it. With the help of Venti, Vennessa managed to defeat Ursa and force it to flee. From another story, it's also responsible for attacking the Ragnvindr caravan, causing the incident that killed Master Crepus.
• Villain World:
  • Inazuma in Chapter 2 of the Archon Quest is under the control of the Raiden Shogun who confiscates Visions and enacts oppressive policies. Played With in that its archon is not a flat-out tyrant but rather a Well-Intentioned Extremist who is horribly depressed from losing a loved one to the Khaenri'ah disaster and seeks to protect her nation from the same fate. It gets better after Ei's Heel–Face Turn.
  • From what little we hear about it, Snezhnaya is implied to be even worse, as its archon, the Tsaritsa, has no love left for her people. Not to mention it's a land of perpetual winter if Childe's voicelines are anything to go by.
• Violation of Common Sense: Some rewards and achievements require you to screw up and/or do something awful. Negative dialog aside, it's worth doing these things for the extra Primogems. Counting ships incorrectly gets an achievement and a book for the archive; there's also an achievement and unique food item for killing Timmie's pigeons. Getting struck by lightning also gives an achievement—this is surprisingly difficult at first since thunderstorms are uncommon, and when they do occur, lightning strikes in random spots that are usually far away. That said, Yashiori Island is initially buffeted by perpetual thunderstorms where lightning strikes more frequently, as you must complete a World Quest in that area to remove them and get an achievement.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: By the time of the Summer Fantasia event in 2.8, Fischl and Mona have graduated from Teeth-Clenched Teamwork in 1.1 to this trope. Fischl identifies Mona as her Court Archmage, and while Mona is still exasperated by Fischl's Chuunibyou antics, she's willing to play along and assist her. Mona also consoles Fischl when she becomes depressed. That said, the animosity is not always limited to snark on Mona's end, as they both have strong egos, which makes it easy for them to get into fights.
• Vortex Barrier: The area to the north of Mondstadt's capital is a complex of an ancient ruined city, surrounded by a barrier of storms; the dragon Stormterror makes it his lair. If you try walking towards it, you'll get knocked back. It's only until you play the prologue's Act III wherein Venti uses his Magic Music to dispel the barrier. Within the city (called Stormterror's Lair), you can find more of those barriers around the tower at the center. The barriers were apparently created by Decarabian, the god-king of Old Mondstadt. Another one of these barriers surrounds the topside area around the ancient treasure cache cave in the mountain north of Qingce Village.

W

• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • After Stormterror, Andrius is the second weekly boss you can fight. Unlike Stormterror, his attacks come out a lot faster, he utilizes Cryo attacks and is immune to Anemo and Cryo. If you have not mastered dodging from fighting Stormterror, you are going to have a very bad time.
  • After the release of Version 4.6, Arlecchino's weekly boss form, "The Knave", serves as one story wise due to the fact that while she has to be defeated in combat, the story will still show that the Traveler, Lyney, Lynette and Freminet couldn't actually win and the Traveler even gets paralyzed by fear when they think The Knave is about to land a killing blow. This shows how much more dangerous the top members of the Harbingers are compared to the ones that the Traveler already defeated, Tartaglia was the weakest Harbinger, La Signora was heavily implied to have lost most of her original power over the last five centuries based on her boss subtitle, and Scaramouche was made a higher rank more for his endurance than his base power. Even though Arlecchino was only the fourth while the top three are as powerful as gods, it's more obvious that she was still holding back her full power during the fight.
• Warmup Boss:
  • Stormterror is the first major boss you fight through the story, and the easiest out of the weekly bosses introduced so far. All his attacks are heavily telegraphed, and it's quite trivial to fight him without taking any damage. Players should take this opportunity to master dodging, as later bosses aren't as merciful.
  • Your first opponent in the Fabulous Fungi Frenzy tournament is Ajilenakh Dash, who has the most poorly constructed team out of all of the opponents. She uses nothing but attackers and Floating Anemo Fungus to vaccuum your team together, with nobody to tank, heal, or provide other kinds of support. She's also incredibly overconfident. Cue Curb-Stomp Battle.
• Warp Whistle: Teleport Waypoints and Statues of the Seven enable instant warping on specific parts of the map after they have been activated.
• Water Is Womanly: As of v4.2 there are ten Hydro users (not counting the Traveler) and six of them are women, most of whom are very beautiful and highly feminine in some way. In no particular order:
  • Nilou is a graceful dancer.
  • Barbara is an Idol Singer and deaconess of the Church of Favonius.
  • Kokomi is the Divine Priestess of Watasumi Island and has a mermaid motif.
  • Candace, as the guardian of Aaru Village, is very kind and caring of the villagers and serves as a Cool Big Sis to the children.
  • Mona is a Lady of Black Magic.
  • Yelan serves as a Femme Fatale Spy for the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
  • Furina, the Hydro Archon is an inverted case, having a tomboyish personality.
  • Inverted again with Xingqiu and Neuvillette; while both are male, the former has a very feminine appearance and is voiced by women in every language, while the latter is a Long-Haired Pretty Boy.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Any application of water, including rain and standing ankle-deep in a puddle, will deteriorate Pyro shields on Abyss Mages or Fatui. And when their shield breaks for any reason, they become stunned for several seconds. Obviously, this makes fighting Pyro-shielded enemies in rain or near water (which they are not smart enough to avoid) kind of a joke—they get stuck in an endless loop of getting stunned, regenerating their shield, and getting stunned again.
• Weapon Specialization:
  • Almost every 5★ has a signature weapon that usually works best for their build as a playable unit and that they're almost always seen wielding in official material. 4★'s don't often have signature weapons, however, there is occasionally some cross-over with preexisting weapons designated for 5★. For example, Candace, a 4★, is always seen wielding the Staff of the Scarlet Sands, which is demonstrated to be Cyno's signature weapon.
  • Certain characters have built-in special weapons that they use in battle alongside their main weapon, such as Candace's shield, Yanfei's scale (though she only uses it for her Elemental Burst), Kaveh's toolbox, and so on. Most often, if a character is depicted holding a unique item in their splash art, it will be featured as a secondary weapon in battle.
• Weather of War:
  • Rain constantly applies the Wet status effect to everyone, making Cryo and Electro significantly more dangerous—the former will freeze and the latter will cause additional damage to both the target and surrounding monsters. Pyro, as you'd expect, is somewhat less useful in rain, since Dendro enemies can't be set on fire, but it can still be used for constant Vaporize reactions.
  • The Dragonspine region has a subzero climate that affects certain gameplay mechanics. There's a Sheer Cold status meter that accumulates unless you're near a source of heat. When the meter is full, your characters will lose 2% HP every second.
• Webcomic of the Game: There’s an official prequel comic that takes place before the events of the game, as well as an Affectionate Parody comic series that's posted on the official Japanese Genshin Impact Twitter. It follows the male protagonist Aether and Paimon and parodies the various events of the game. While the comic was translated from the Chinese to Japanese, it has yet to be officially translated into English.
• Western Samurai: In the Sangonomiya Resistance camp on Yashiori Island, you can find an NPC from Mondstadt who joined the Resistance as a samurai. His unusual foreigner status turns out to be a clue that he's a Fatui plant.
  • Played straight by Thoma, a retainer of the Kamisato clan who was born in Mondstadt.
• Wham Episode:
  • At the end of Prologue Act 3 La Signora is introduced, she curbstomps Venti, which was the first god presented in the game, steals his gnosis, and we learn that the Cryo Archon, the Tsaritsa, is not on good terms with her fellow deities.
  • Chapter 2 Act 3, "Omnipresence Over Mortals". The Traveler manages to expose Fatui interference in Inazuma and force the Raiden Shogun to repeal the Vision Hunt Decree through a duel. The biggest wham though, is how La Signora is the titular Crimson Witch and Pale Flame of the namesake artifact sets, and that she got utterly obliterated by Beelzebul.
  • In Chapter 3 Act 5, Nahida is freed from confinement, regains authority over Sumeru and decides to shut down Akasha. Then, her, Traveler and Paimon enter the Irminsul and meet Greater Lord Rukkhadevata. Nahida is forced to erase Rukkhadevata making it so that she has never existed in Teyvat.
  • The Interlude Act 3 "Inversion of Genesis" leaves very important implications for the future of the story. Due to changing the information contained in Irminsul, Scaramouche/Wanderer made the entirety of Teyvat forget about his existence completely, with the exception of the Traveler, though Paimon and Nahida regain their memories of him later on after interacting with an archived fairy tale that bypassed the Irminsul erasure. Even the lines about him in Childe, Yae and the Shogun dialogues are erased, and most importantly, the Fatui believe that the Sixth Seat that was occupied by Scaramouche has always been empty. Meanwhile, by the end of the chapter, Wanderer remains with all his memories back from when he was a Harbinger (including crucial information about the Fatui), and he is willing to get back at his fellow companions, especially Dottore, for everything they made him go through. For the first time since the beginning of the story, the Fatui have a disadvantage against the Traveler and the Archons, and they don't even know about it. And as if this wasn't enough, a mysterious voice calls on Traveler and Paimon at the end of the chapter, demanding them to only believe what their eyes see and making it clear that it watched the events unfolded with Scaramouche, and was not affected by the changes in Irminsul.
  • The conclusion of Chapter IV Act V. The titular Masquerade of the Guilty is over, and the full truth is revealed. And at the end of it all, not only is the Hydro Archon dead by her own hands, but the very seat of the Hydro Archon itself is also destroyed, and The Seven is now The Six. Also, by killing herself, the Archon transferred her power over the element of Hydro back to its original owner, which is Neuvillette, one of the Seven Sovereigns and sworn enemies of Celestia. Besides The Seven being reduced to six, Celestia lost direct control over Fontaine to the opposing faction they subdued for millennia.
    • And then there's the long-awaited appearance of Childe's master, Skirk. Who herself also has a master (the owner of the Narwhal you just beat), who is possibly on the same level and has the same goals as Rhinedottir. Worse still, she reveals that the Gnoses are actually the remains of the Third Descender, the dimension-traveling being that arrived before the Traveler in Teyvat.
• Wham Line:
  • The "Unreconciled Stars" event has two:
    • In Part III, the heroes run into the mystery man they encountered in Part II only for Mona to suddenly teleport everyone away. It turns out she had a very good reason to.
    ???: The first time the Millelith were present. I had to forgo the chance to strike down Mondstadt's savior. This time was the perfect moment...I was mere seconds away...
    Scaramouche
    Balladeer
    The Sixth of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers
    • In Part IV, the heroes meet Scaramouche again as he's investigating the meteorite core in Musk Reef. He then tells a realization that "the skies are a lie", or as Mona phrases it, "fake skies". This gets revisited at the conclusion of Sumeru arc, where Dottore asks if Nahida ever heard any rumor that the skies above Teyvat are fake.
  • In Chapter II Act III, just to drive the point that the event unfolding moments ago is real, not a hallucination, and won't be undone:
    Signora... is slain.
  • Throughout the game, it is mentioned that no new Electro Visions have been granted since the Raiden Shogun closed off Inazuma to the rest of Teyvat a year before the game began. Before that time, it was believed that the Archons granted people visions. However, if players manage to summon the Raiden Shogun in her wish banner, complete the Inazuma Archon Quest, and raise her friendship level to a certain point, she will drop this revelation about visions:
    "Really? So in all this time no new Electro Visions have appeared in the outside world? Well, what I can say on this topic is subject to certain constraints, but… it is not by my will that Visions are granted or denied. The key is people’s desires and… well there’s another side to it too.
  • In Chapter III Act IV, the cast descends to the ruin of King Deshret, finds the final words of one of his priests, and finds out that the Akademiya might be correct all along that Greater Lord Rukkhadevata is not dead. Subverted, it's a Red Herring. Rukkhadevata definitely died during the Cataclysm, and Nahida is not a depowered Rukkhadevata. But Nahida is a dead ringer to the depowered Rukkhadevata, and this shows that The Akademiya are a bunch of hypocrites who never hold true faith towards their Archon.
    King Deshret's Priest: In helping the Scarlet King to eradicate forbidden knowledge, Greater Lord Rukkhadevata exhausted her strength, and her form became that of a small child.
    Paimon: Was that the former Dendro Archon? She became so tiny in the end...
  • Immediately after, the cast capture two Akademiya goons and The Traveler deduces the Sages' plan for Sumeru, and what a bad idea it is.
    The Traveler: The sages are trying to create a new god, aren't they? ...But the sages' end product won't be Greater Lord Rukkhadevata... It will be The Balladeer.
  • The conclusion of Chapter III Act V has Nahida drop two revelations:
    • The first one is about the Traveler's sibling, as unlike the Traveler who is alien to Teyvat and does not have records in Irminsul, their twin does.
    Nahida: There's only one possible explanation: She/He belongs to this world.
    • She further explains that she has also learnt that the Fatui knows of other external beings that came to Teyvat, but the Traveler's twin is not among any of them.
    Nahida: Traveler, you are Teyvat's Fourth Descender.
  • There are two in the ending of Chapter III Act VI:
    • The Khaenri'ahn survivor that the Traveler had accompanied throughout the quest reveals to them that his name is actually not the one that he initially gave. Instead, it's one that connect hims more closely to Kaeya and the Abyss Order than the Traveler realises:
    "Eide": My real name is Chlothar...Chlothar Alberich.
    • Chlothar Alberich proceeds to express familiarity with the Traveler, which confuses them. The Khaenri'ahn addresses them with the title that his countrymen would have used for their sibling:
    Chlothar Alberich: O Prince/Princess... of Khaenri'ah?
  • Chapter IV Act II provides one that proves that something is very wrong with the Oratrice, as it gives Childe a Miscarriage of Justice for a crime that was actually proven that he didn't commit.
    Neuvillette: According to the judgement of the Oratrice Mecanique d'Analyse Cardinale, Mr. Tartaglia is...[Beat]... guilty.
  • The trial Chapter IV Act V ends with an outcome that shocks everyone present. Furina has been proven guilty of being a fraud, and when reading the contents of the verdict given by the Oratrice, Neuvillette is shocked by the contents. The Wham is twofold: not only is the sentence deemed excessively harsh, but the judgement also specifically mentions 'The Hydro Archon', but the whole point of the trial is to prove that Furina is not the Hydro Archon. Thus it begs the question who and where is the Hydro Archon, a question that gets answered shortly...
    Neuvillette: However, the exact wording of the verdict is thus. "The Hydro Archon, guilty"... "To be punished via the death sentence."
  • At the climax of Chapter IV Act V, Focalors, the real Hydro Archon, explains to Neuvillette the above line and spells out the crux of her plan by explaining the true purpose of the Oratrice.
    Focalors: In truth, it is no enactor of justice... It is, infact, a device created to kill the God of Justice.
• Wham Shot:
  • The end of Prologue: Act II. After the heroes plot their next course of action, the next scene shows the Traveler's sibling with some Abyss Order mooks behind them. It's then revealed that the sibling is leading the Order.
  • As you try to get in touch with the informant during Sumeru Archon Quest, you are greeted by a mob of people who think you are a returning great hero. Then a well-dressed man that Nahida recognizes walks closer, explaining that he's brainwashed them. Il Dottore, Second of the Eleven Fatui Harbingers, has arrived in Sumeru.
  • Close to the end of Chapter III Act VI, the Traveler, confused by what is going on, picks up the broken mirror and looks in it... and their reflection in it is that of their sibling. Everything that happened since the Traveler supposedly woke up was a vision of their sibling's memories from centuries ago.
  • Chapter IV Act V has a lot of them:
    • In Furina's flashbacks, we see what happened during her early days, with each day being labeled as 'scenes'. It starts normally with days 1 to 5, but then we get this:
      "Scene 182375, Opera House, Furina"
    • Even in this scene, when Furina is talking to the unknown citizen, the conversation is normal. Until said citizen noticed that, Furina was shedding tears, that even Furina herself didn't notice. Even she trying to convince the citizen that her tears were "overflowing Hydro power".
• What the Hell, Player?: To complete Timmie's daily quest "Pigeon, Duck, and Child," all you have to do is scatter some wheat to distract the ducks so he could feed the pigeons. However, you can kill a duck, triggering an upset reaction from him. The next day will even have an apology quest for you to complete.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Pretty much any time a quest requires you to track down someone or something, they/it will turn out to have some sort of elemental signature so you can use Elemental Sight to guide you. In some cases, like bounty hunts, it's not clear what element you're supposedly detecting.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Having immortality in Genshin isn't exactly a good thing. On top of outliving companions who either have shorter lifespans, immortals in Genshin are invariably afflicted with an erosion of the soul, which wears away at their sense of self as time goes by. Those who do not lose their lives in combat often gradually lose their hearts and minds to the ravages of time, and may eventually succumb as Azhdaha did and betray all they once stood for.
• Will-o'-the-Wisp: "Mysterious Seelie" are small beings that look like floating blue orbs. Following them to their final destination (called "Seelie Courts") rewards you with hidden loot.
• Windmill Scenery: Mondstadt has four large windmills, befitting a place that's known as the city of wind.
• Wingding Eyes: The picture of Paimon being fished from drowning in the opening section has her with swirls for eyes.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: The aurora borelis can be seen towards the end of the A Winter's Night Lazzo teaser, as camera pans down from the night sky of snowy Snezhnaya to the palace where Signora is laid to rest.
• Wolfpack Boss: The Clear Pool and Mountain Cavern domain pits you against 3 Abyss Mages from each element. At this point you must have killed them by the dozens in the overworld... but rarely will you face three at once, with all different elements. It's recommended to stay far away from their spawn and pull them using an Archer character, as fighting all 3 at once can get... interesting.
• The Worf Effect: Raiden Shogun's immense power is first demonstrated in her Hopeless Boss Fight, but to really make you terrified of her, she mercilessly obliterates Signora, the prime Fatui antagonist up to that point, after Signora loses a duel to the Traveler, of which the penalty was death.
• World Tree: As mentioned in the item description of Ley Line Sprouts, there is a great tree whose roots spread out to every corner of the world. This tree is named Irminsul, and it contains the collective knowledge and memories of the people of Teyvat. The power of Dendro is closely tied to wisdom because of the wealth of information that is retained by Irminsul.
• World of Technicolor Hair: In the world of Teyvat, multiple characters sport many different unnatural hair colours across the color spectrum like red (Diluc), pink (Miko), green (Sucrose and Baizhu), blue (Chongyun and Ayaka) and purple (Raiden Shogun), which are not commented on as unusual in-universe.
• Would Hit a Girl: No matter what gender your Traveler/your party members are, enemy NPCs will attack you. Not to mention that you'll have to fight plenty of female enemies, including Cicin Mages, Mirror Maidens, La Signora, and even the Raiden Shogun herself.
• Wutai: The game has one in Liyue, which is themed around old Chinese towns. There's also Inazuma, inspired by old Japan, where Kamisato Ayaka hails from.
• Wuxia: Not surprisingly, some stories originating from Liyue are all about this. Teyvat being what it is, there's wuxia elements that are completely real - and parodied as well, like the Guhua martial arts clan that currently consists of two martial artists in the Huaguang stone forest. Yes, a Wuxia Club Stub.

Y

• Yellow Earth, Green Earth: The element of Geo is coloured in goldenrod, and its Elemental Nation is the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of China.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The principle behind Fontaine-exclusive Arkhe system, which consists of Pneuma and Ousia energies. A fusion between two such energies is used to power Clockwork Mekas.
• You All Look Familiar: Generic NPCs usually have reused models. This is best exemplified during the Stealth-Based Mission of Prologue Act 2, where all of the knights look the same.
• You Mean X Mas:
  • The "Lantern Rite" festival is an annual celebration event in Liyue that takes place every first full moon of the year, i.e basically Chinese New Year. What Liyueans actually celebrate in Lantern Rite is the passing of old adepti, to pay respects to their deeds for Liyue. Just like in the real world, they release sky lanterns with wishes written on them as part of the festival.
  • The "Weinlesefest" is a festival in Mondstadt focused around wine, effectively making it the setting's equivalent to Oktoberfest.
  • The "Fontinalia Festival" is a Fontanian holiday where one of the traditions is dressing up as the Lochknights of past, going door to door and asking for treats in a fashion similar to Halloween.