Granblue Fantasy / Tropes A to C

This page covers tropes in Granblue Fantasy.

Tropes A To C | Tropes D to H | Tropes I to L | Tropes M To Q | Tropes R to Z |

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A

• A Day in the Limelight: Event plots usually focus on the adventures of various recruitable characters, with the main cast dragged along for the ride.
• Aborted Arc: After the disastrous launch of the original version of "Arcarum: The World Beyond", it was revamped to make it a single-player experience about the crew exploring Sephira after the Inchoate World attacks them in Amalthea, leaving very little of the story from the original version of the event which was about the mysterious Apostles recruiting the crew to fight a proxy war in Sephira.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The maximum Player Rank (the main character's equivalent of Character Levels) is 300, yet Rank 101 is enough to unlock the ability to host and join most Impossible Raids, which serve as endgame content for high-level players.
• Abusive Precursors: The Astrals, a race of beings that at one point ruled the world, subjugated all other races, and created the Primal Beasts, many of which are now seen as gods. The various machines and monsters the Astrals left behind are an ever-present threat throughout the entire world.
• AcCENT upon the Wrong SylLABle: The songs with English vocals contain bits of this trope, which aside from the stress placed on wrong syllables, are also due to wrong pauses in between words.
  Black Silver Wings: Chiaroscuro chao-SA.. wakens me!
• Achievement System: There's a trophy system in the game. Players earn them through things like completing an event storyline or beating a raid a certain amount of times. They give consumable rewards for the player to use, usually in the form of crystals. You can also set them as your player profile's title. Notable is the trophy for recruiting all ten of the Eternals which when set as the player's title, gives all of them a small attack and HP boost in gameplay. This trophy was later changed to give a Wonder that has the same effect without requiring it to be the title all the time.
• Action Prologue: The 6th Anniversary Story Event, "Seeds of Redemption" starts immediately with a fight between the Enforcers versus the Eternals.
• Actor Allusion:
  • In all her variants, Mary's "preparing to use a skill/charge attack" animation has her rifling through her bag, causing items to fly out at random. One of said items is an onigiri, the Trademark Favorite Food of Mary's voice actress Akiko Hasegawa. This is even true of her otherwise Christmas-themed SSR!
  • Magisa's involvement in the Cardcaptor Sakura event and her playful teasing of Sakura and Li can mostly be attributed to her being voiced by Sayaka Ohara, who also did the voice of Yuko from another CLAMP manga, Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-.
  • Yuka Inokuchi voices a red-haired witch named Anna.
  • Aside from Dark Angel Olivia, Maaya Sakamoto also voices another Cygames angel character (one who did not fall from grace) named Sofiel from Rage of Bahamut: Genesis.
  • The spinning blade-obsessed Spinnah shares the same voice actor as Yosuke Hanamura from Persona 4, whose idle and attack animations involve spinning blades and kunai with the tip of his fingers.
  • "Reflections for a White Clover" introduces Sevilbarra's brother-in-law. Krelkulkil who is just as driven for revenge as Sevilbarra is because his soon to be wife, Sevilbarra's sister, was killed by the perpetrator on the day of their wedding. Noriaki Sugiyama is known for voicing a certain revenge driven character.
  • Noriko Shitaya voiced Arcarum exclusive character, Nier, who is introduced as a Shrinking Violet and is later revealed to have a darker side to her. Noriko Shitaya is known to have voiced a Shrinking Violet with similar traits.
  • Albert's FLB artwork has him do a mirrored salute of Heero Yuy, which even his voice actor, Hikaru Midorikawa (who voices both characters) noticed in his Granblue Channel episode.
  • In her voice line added for 2023's Valentine's Day, Aliah (i.e. the Golden Knight) offers chocolate to the main character. She fully admits that they may not taste very good, and asks that the main character be honest with the taste. Alas, she gets a bit too insistent that she be showered in insults, bringing to mind another armour-clad noble lady voiced by Ai Kayano who gets off on being abused...
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Extended Mastery Perks for individual characters become more expensive the more perks you have purchased before.
• Adaptational Badass: Applies to most of the Crossover event characters, especially from the THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls collaborations. How come would a normal J-Pop idol girl group manage to become proficient in medieval weapons, let alone magic? Ranko Kanzaki is also notable for immediately becoming a Demon Queen (with functioning wings) in the world of Granblue, while her fellow idols merely wear cosplay outfits.
• Adaptation Expansion: The second volume of Granblue Fantasy: Souken no Kizuna, the manga adaption of the Dragon Knight side-stories, expands on Siegfried, Lancelot, and Vane's relationship during their days in the Order of the Black Dragon.
• Adventurous Irish Violins: Two battle themes, Neigh to the Whole Sky and Defend Order -Offensive Defense-, are full of Irish violins to invoke an adventurous tone in battle.
• Advertised Extra: A Subversion to the A Day in the Limelight trope that applies to every event. From 2018 onwards, Cygames has been featuring some characters as the freebie unit or skin despite actually relegating them into minor role status in the event's actual plot, where the featured character would only have limited lines or screentime, while others take the real spotlight.
• Aerith and Bob: Naming conventions are all over the place. You can generally class them in five categories: normal (Jessica, Stan, Eugen), unusual but technically realistic (Apollonia, Arriet, Yngwie), famous names, real or fictional (Jeanne d'Arc, Cagliostro, Rackham), standard fantasy style (Sarunan, Metera, Danua), and "clearly trying to cheat at Scrabble" (like Zahlhamelina or Yodarha).
• An Aesop:
  • The central theme of the "Fall of the Dragon" event revolves around breaking rules for the sake of saving the community... especially if the rules have been destroying the community from the inside, such as Medvecia distrusting outsiders even when they are actually the ones in need of help. Another message that is subtly portrayed near the event's ending is that rules with loopholes can be abused to bring chaos. Specifically, the rule where vampires believe that harming another vampire can certain lead to a death penalty. There are members who outright try to kill one of their kind because they suspect them to have brought harm. Of course, the suspect tries to defend themselves by fighting back, to the point where both parties are actively trying to impost the death penalty on (a.k.a. "kill") others... Or to cut the story short "Because you harmed someone, you should also be harmed". It is only when Vania's speech made them realize that if everyone killed each other, then there will be no more community left for them.
  • In "Kappa Summer Chronicles", a theme surrounding the story is about tradition and knowing that it's alright to adapt with current times and still keep the tradition alive at the same time. The Miyasato chef who wanted to continue the tradition that his ancestors kept with the Kappa's ended up having his son discouraged from being a chef due to his belief that his son can replace him, making him believe that his skills won't catch up to his father even if he did replace him to let him rest, and overwork himself to near exhaustion due to Sushi, a food that is held in tradition of his ancestors and the Kappa's, becoming so popular in time that they have to keep up, the fellow Kappa's overworking themselves as well seeing how dedicated the chef is to keep the tradition alive. It's only through Kyuuta saying that while tradition is important, there is also another thing just as important as tradition, that the chef, his son, and the Kappa's accepted the idea of adapting to current times, try something different, and also keep the tradition alive at the same time.
  • Narmaya's and Vira's stories show that even when you're facing problems in a healthy manner, it will take some time to get better. This contrasts most fictional works relying on the Angst? What Angst? trope.
• Affectionate Parody:
  • The June 2017 crossover with The iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls is a parody of Resident Evil, being titled "Piña Hazard" as people are being piñafied into what are basically zombies. Its preview even had its own version of the infamous Keeper's Diary ("Itchy itchy skyfarer came... Mm, hungry and eat piña food...").
  • "The Maydays" series of summer events for late June 2019 are parodies for B-Movie shark horror flicks such as Jaws, Sharknado'' and others, while also incorporating many tropes and plot points from said films.
  • "Dancing Avengers" uses a lot of tropes and culture employed in Bollywood rom-com, drama films such as lovestruck couples fighting Parental Marriage Veto, inserted sing-and-dance musical portions, female cast wearing a Pimped-Out Dress, villains and heroes fighting for their familial love, and sudden Rule of Cool moments from the protagonists. There's also an Arabian fantasy flavor mixed in, such as the existence of desert spirits.
  • Robomi's events are one for the Super Robot genre, complete with theme songs by Ichiro Mizuki. Later events throw in a bit of Super Sentai, with the heroes working together to pilot a giant robot.
• A.K.A.-47:
  • The AK-4A Grand Weapon appears to be a fictionalized weapon nearly having the same model as the real-life AK-47, but has circular magazines instead, and the name only differs by replacing the 7 with A.
  • The Detective Conan: Gears of Conspiracy crossover event introduces the Compact Automatic Pistol which is a plain Heckler & Koch P7M8 carried by Tōru Amuro as an event weapon.
  • The Clarion is a straight-up FAMAS with its French troops nickname for it (which is Le Clairon - The Bulge).
• The Alcatraz: Pandemonium, a tower created by the Astrals to contain the Origin Beasts that would otherwise destroy the world if they were unleashed. It is located in between the Sky Realm and the Crimson Horizon.
• Alien Sky: As of the third arc, the sky in Nalhegrande is discolored into green and the winds move abnormality as a result of the Otherworldly beings trying to invade.
• All Just a Dream:
  • L.E.T.S. H.A.N.G. and Table for Six both end on this, with the last chapter turning out to be some sort of shared dream between Lowain and friends, who are all revealed to have fallen asleep.
  • The 2022 Summer event story, Sincerely, Your Dearest Friend, is revealed to be a heat-stroke induced dream that the Captain experienced based on the fear of what if they are to part with Lyria in the future.
• All Men Are Perverts: Or "All hostile male thug and hooligan NPCs are perverts". It has become a common plot point in many female-focused Fate episodes and stories (especially the seasonal variants) to have them being hit on by other generic male thugs.
• All Myths Are True:
  • Played for Laughs in one particular Summon's description. The Gorilla is defined as "A denizen of the dense and mysterious jungle, once thought to exist solely in folklore."
  • In the "Winter Nights, Stardust Memories" event, Rackam is skeptical whether or not the Santa Claus they met and helped is the real deal or just an impersonator. By the Ending chapter, he is convinced that Santa is real when his red sleigh magically lifts and flies off.
    Rackam: It's just like in the stories! So that old man really was...
  • Chapter 118 reveals that all Primal Beasts in some way are actually just the legends and heroes of yore residing in a higher plane of belief and forcibly incarnated into the world by the Astrals.
  • Ordinary skydwellers think that vampires only exist in fairy tales. But when a crowd of them saw Vania's Head Wings, cue this reaction coming from the townspeople.
  • Auguste folktales also include myths about kappas, but they were thought to be extinct long ago. Kaz is startled when he meets a kappa face-to-face in the "Kappa Summer Chronicle" event.
• All There in the Manual: Or the official website, specifically the Character Theater which lists some of the characters' Age, Height, Hobbies, Likes and Dislikes. Aside from the Theater, the News section of a newly-released character will also have these details shown on the site, along with their canon age.
• Alternate Timeline: While the main story quest is one timeline; the game's various events and sidestories all take place across various other timelines of which the Captain is the Singularity. At the end of the Wayfaring Astral arc, the Captain explicitly glimpses various other timelines and draws across their power to complete the Sky Map and find the way to Estalucia.
• Alternate Universe: Both of the Q-pot collaborative drama tracks released thus appear to take place in one in which the angels and the fallen angel faction plus some extras (namely Lyria and Vyrn and the Dragon Knights for the first round) work in a Patisserie and a Chocolate store for the angels and fallen angel faction respectively.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Mirror Image buff allows enemies to dodge normal attacks, spells, and charge attacks. But the player's Summon Calls will always remove this effect (negating the enemies' 100% evasion) and deal damage to them.
• Always Night: The atmosphere inside the Mist-Shrouded Isle. Justified, as it is covered in black fog.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: When fighting the chibified versions of some playable characters as bosses, their sprite is mirrored to face the right side of the screen. This becomes easily noticeable for characters with distinguishing features, such as Eugen and his eyepatch.
• Amnesia Episode: During the Dydroit belt arc, the Primal Beast Kikuri severs the fated connections of nearly everyone on the Dydroit Belt, including most of the crew (save for the Protagonist, Lyria, Vyrn and Rosetta), causing everyone to forget about their close friends and acquaintances. Fights begin to break out over the confusion caused by the lost memories, while the same confusion causes most of the affected crew to wander off on their own. Eventually, the missing crew members are rounded up and Kikuri is suppressed, restoring all the lost memories.
• Anachronic Order: Depending on which characters you draw and how far along you are in the game, some Fate Episodes can count as this. For example, some episodes will reference events that have not happened yet or characters you have not gotten yet.
  • It becomes even more apparent with characters' alternate forms. For reference, some characters have an initial form whose Fate Episode details how they first met the player, and another, higher rarity form whose Fate Episode serves as a continuation of their story. However, you can get the higher rarity form first, which can be quite confusing when watching the Fate Episode.
  • However this is subverted with some Grand Series characters, as the game locks even their introductory Fate Episodes to certain chapters in the story to make sure none of them break continuity. For a few of the newer Grands, this can happen annoyingly late if you luck into them while you are still new to the game. For example, Drang's Fate Episode requires clearing chapter 73 of the main quest. This is, a good ten chapters after things like the 20 million HP fight with Akasha.
  • You can upgrade any of the 6 Seraphic weapons and unlock cutscenes for their respective primarchs at your own leisure, but the cutscenes would also drop spoilers for the "What Makes the Sky Blue" trilogy. The four tetra-elemental Seraphics are introduced in the 3rd anniversary and their intros properly take place after the first "What Makes the Sky Blue". However, the outliers are the Light and Dark Seraphics. Introduced during the 5th Anniversary, yet their cutscenes take place after "Paradise Lost", the story event for the 4th Anniversary.
• Anachronism Stew: The game has a Medieval feel to it in general, but the Robomi events incorporate Robots, Kamen Riders, Kaijus, and Alien Abominations as a homage to the trending Tokusatsu genre of 20th Century Japan. Not to mention that there are also guns, cannons, alchemy, and Magitek mixed in.
• Anchored Ship: This applies to nearly every pairing in the game where the characters are explicitly in love or romantic with each other rather than just being Ship Tease, with one of the only exceptions being Romeo and Juliet who overcome their troubles and get married in the end. The most probable reason for this is because the writers likely want every character to stay open for potential shipping material with the main character, for self-inserting Fanservice purposes. That said, as time went on several characters actually do manage to pair up.
  • Stan and Aliza had plans to get married at the beginning of the "Boots & Blades" event. However, by the end of the event both of them realize they still have some growing up to do before they can think about marriage and decide to put their relationship on hold. However, as of the "Dancing Avengers" event, they're an Official Couple.
  • Lucifer and Sandalphon finally come to understand each other toward the end of "000" but for now cannot physically be together or progress their relationship due to Lucifer being trapped in the afterlife awaiting his return, or to be revived.
  • You and Kou were initially treated as Like Brother and Sister, but as of "Falsetto of the Autumn Gray" they both admitted they like each other. Due to their age, they fully accept they're probably not mature enough to go any further, but nevertheless it's made explicitly clear that both consider the other the most important person in their lives.
• And the Adventure Continues: This is how Sturm and Drang's event ends as they go off to fulfill another contract in their day-to-day living as mercenaries.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Played with, Recruitable characters will receive a new uncap art and an in-game sprite once they have become "Skybound" (i.e. reached their penultimate uncap) or at their 5★ upgrade. These changes may vary from major wardrobe shifts (i.e. Magisa), new in-game poses and effects (i.e. Lady Grey), to changes in weaponry (i.e. a majority of weapon-wielding characters such as the ten Eternals).
  • Though there are cases where specific characters would lose parts of their initial outfit after being Skybound or after a 5★ Uncap, such as Black Knight and Baotorda removing their helmets, and nine out of the ten Eternals removing their long coats.
  • If the player obtains multiple variations of the same character, an "Outfit and Pose" setting will become available, allowing the player to freely switch between the unlocked alternative appearances of that character from the artwork, in-game sprite and Charge Attack Portrait.
  • Some events and Side Stories play this trope straight by giving you a character-specific Skin/Outfit after completing a challenge, or by trading with event materials.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: The "Make Up and Go" event features a room decorating mechanic wherein chibi sprites of the Gun Sisters wander around, and part of the quest requirements involve gathering materials to collect room decorations.
• Animation Bump:
  • Some newly-released characters from 2017 onwards have their unique charge attack animations which are more flashy or elaborate than most of the previously-released characters. Examples include Summer Diantha who comes with a Background Music Override, Yggdrasil in which she floats in the skies (also the only Charge Attack Animation not heavily shortened by the Ougi Animation Skip mechanic), Mikasa and Levi who have their cut-ins zooming in as they strike, event Zeta's Charge Attack animation being similar to a Summon Call, and the Charge Attack of Zooey's permanent version, like Yggdrasil, involves jumping out and changing the background while attacking.
  • The 5★ uncap of some Story characters also changes their Charge Attack Animations to include the Primals they have bonded with. And it is similar to that of the Summon Call Animations.
  • The "Quest Clear" screen of almost all battles has an updated equivalent made exclusively for Arcarum, a "Victory" text which is also more saturated and has more frames.
  • The voiced event trailer for L.E.T.S. H.A.N.G.◊ is the first event trailer made with a GIF animation, while all other event trailers are simply static images. The only other event that follows this is aptly yet another Lowain Bros event, "A Walk on the Wild Side".
  • The visual novel-esque story segments of events released from 2018 onwards make use of more animations than the older ones. For example, "Persona 5: Thievery in Blue" uses moving NPC silhouettes to represent crowds, this style is re-used since "The Other Side of the Sky" but with Granblue's NPC sprites instead. There are also more instances where the speaking character's face covers the entire upper part of the screen to indicate that they are screaming. And starting in "Bzzt! Amped-Up Summer", any depiction of combat in the story are accompanied by unique special effects or visual artifacts resembling in-game skills if a character uses magic or spells.
  • There is a part in "A Walk on the Wild Side" where Tyre and Jeanne catch cookies with their mouths - a flying cookie piece is animated atop the Visual Novel storytelling, the characters' mouths open and closing at the exact time the cookie reaches their mouth and disappears, making it a detailed animation for a story chapter relying mostly on static images.
  • Outside of the game, there are promotional music videos for some of the character songs, but the earliest examples only consist of simple panning over static images with minimal animation on the mouth, eyes and simple body movements. Starting from 2019, Cygames has been using fully-animated music videos. Compare Diantha and her group's "Never Ending Fantasy" (2017) to "Happy New Genesis" (2019).
• Anti-Debuff:
  • The Debuff Resistance stat helps in mitigating the chances of status ailments landing on a character. The "Debuff Res. Up" buff boosts it further in battles.
  • Immune is a status buff that grants immunity from all debuffs but it is duration-based. It's instance-based counterpart (which doesn't have a fixed duration) is the Veil status buff.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • This gacha game offers a "pity" or a "safety net" mechanic in the form of Sparking which ensures that the players can get what they want even if the Random Number God only throws them unwanted items from the banners, whether said players are F2P or cash spenders who want something out of value from their spent money. Although it requires a bit of patience and self-control as one must be able to Draw at least 300 times from a single banner, and the 300 Cerulean Sparks can be traded for any of the banner's featured items. The addition of the Roulette Draws on special occasions starting from 2017 provide up to hundreds of free draws, making Sparking possible even for beginners.
  • If you retreat from a quest that you've never finished, then you're refunded the AP that you've spent. Additionally, if it's a story quest, you get a stat bonus if you retry the quest in the next hour that stacks up to five times.
  • Similarly, if you join a raid but was unable to land hits, nor deploy raid-wide buffs (Consequently gaining no Honors nor post-victory rewards), then you're refunded the EP that you've spent. In this way, EP will not go to waste even if you receive nothing from the raid.
  • During the raid, if you manage to land a single hit and call for backup but your entire party is wiped out, you'll still get rewards if you don't retreat until other players deal a final blow to the enemy.
  • If a character is on their 5★ uncap, then they'll be able to gain Extended Mastery Points even if they aren't at their level cap. Levels past 80 can be very grindy, so it helps that the uncap doesn't have to be delayed just to grind Extended Mastery.
  • Some specific weapon types obtained through a lengthy process of grinding and forging (i.e. Awakened Revenant Weapons, Seraphic Weapons) cannot be sold, reduced, or used as fodder.
  • A weapon cannot be used as an EXP fodder for its duplicate (i.e. Celeste Claws cannot be used as EXP fodders of other Celeste Claws), since the ideal use of a duplicate, especially SSR weapons, is to uncap another copy and not upgrade it.
  • The ability to tag weapons and summons as your "Favorites". Not only it acts as a filter for your inventory, it will (by default) prevent your weapon or summon from being accidentally sold, reduced, or fed to other weapons or summons when using the Auto-Select button of the upgrade menu.
  • For the game's 4th anniversary 10-draw special event, you'd get a roulette once a day where you could get 10 (highest chance), 20 (almost as high of a chance), 30 (decent chance) or 100 (very low chance) draws, completely free of charge. If, on the last day, you hadn't gotten the 100-draw prize over the course of the event, the roulette would just guarantee you 100 draws.
  • The puzzles featured in the "Detective Barawa: The Jewel Resort Incident" can be solved by clicking on the "Show Solution" button, as it gives the direct answer instead of providing clues or hints to the puzzles.
  • The "Globe of the Stairways" gives you the freedom to choose which among the Arcarum Summons of a certain group would you like to fight in the 9th stage of the expedition. This allows players to save time when farming for a specific Summon's materials if they do not want to rely their chances on RNG. On the other hand, a "Fast Expedition" mechanic was introduced, wherein one can choose to entirely skip the Arcarum battles except for the 3rd, 6th, and 9th stages.
  • Played "Rise of the Beast" and story events but missed out on some of the respective Gold Nuggets and Damascus Crystals that they provide? An update on 2019 onwards retroactively adds the amount of these missed items to their event shop, allowing players to re-acquire them in later RoTB iterations or story events.
  • There's a way to skip Nightmare battles entirely and proceed straight to the rewards screen. But as a pre-requisite for activating this QoL, the battle must be cleared 3 times with specific conditions. At least afterwards, this does save some time when grinding the fight over and over again.
• Anti-Grinding: Certain free quests that provide some of the rare materials in the game can only be attempted twice a day.
  • Zig-zagged for a majority of the raid boss battles; there is a daily limit on the number of times that you can host specific multi-player Raid Bosses (i.e. a maximum of 3 tries for the six elemental Normal, Hard, and Omega Raids, and once a day on the Primarch raids) but there is no limit on the maximum amount of battles that you can join, which are started by other players. Plus, if you do run out of AP/EP refilling reserves, you must wait until you can have the appropriate amount before starting or joining a quest.
  • The player can only attempt two Solo Primarch Raid battles in a day, regardless of the element or difficulty of the boss. An update in the July 2018 re-run of Rise of the Beasts also introduced Extreme difficulties for the four solo quests, but are still capped to two Extreme battles per day, like the aforementioned Solo Primarch Raids.
  • The Arcarum is gated on an item called "Arcarum Badges" which are equivalent to the number of times that the player can start expeditions. However, there is no other method to obtain these than waiting for a ticket on the next day.
  • The Replicard Sandbox uses AAP, which refills to 100 each day but can be restored with exlirs and half-elixirs like with regular AP. However, the Defenders and Bosses get more powerful the more times they are defeated in a day, encouraging weaker players to wait for the next day for their stats to reset.
• Anti-Hoarding: Even if the Crate doesn't have a cap on how many items can be stored there, items stored in its Time-Limited tab have an expiration date and will disappear once the limit is up.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Zig-Zagged. The game has an AP bar that depletes whenever you start a quest or battle, and an EP counter that depletes whenever you join a raid someone else started. However, the game gives out so many recovery items (both from free giveaways and as in-game rewards) for both that most players will rarely be unable to play due to a lack of either.
• Anyone Can Die: Downplayed Trope. Anyone can die ... except the playable characters that make up a majority of the cast that appear in stories. And if a playable character does die, they'll be brought back almost immediately as shown in Lennah's Fate Episode. NPC characters on the other hand are all free game, whether they're villainous or not, story-relevant, have unique designs, sympathetic, doesn't matter.
• April Fools' Day: The game has had some fun jokes over the course of its run.
  • 2015: The idol group of Vira, Mary, Lyria and Djeeta officially forms with them releasing their first song, "Kimi to Boku no Mirai/Our Future".
  • 2016: Theatrhythm: Granblue Fantasy, a parody of the Final Fantasy rhythm game was available for a day as a minigame.
  • 2017: The one-day only "Big Bad Shadow" event launched with the Grand Blues! version of Vyrn serving as the raid boss. Oh and the Bahamut battle song is sung by Rie Kugimiya with the lyrics written from Vyrn's perspective.
  • 2018: "Big Bad Shadow" has a re-run with new costumes and an exclusive weapon that boosts drop rates. The Oira minigame went up on the App Store and Google Play, a Taiko no Tatsujin parody with fifteen of the game's vocal songs available to play through.
  • 2019: "Big Bad Shadow" once again returns with three new costumes, a new "Proud" difficulty, and an even harder "Black Hole" difficulty (to keep up with Power Creep). Also, a puzzle event, "Enigma Fantasy", was held where the players were challenged to solve riddles for achievements and prizes, with the fastest one hundred skyfarers getting 10,000 crystals. In a pleasant April Fool's surprise, everyone got the 10,000 crystals for completing all the puzzles.
  • 2020: "Big Bad Shadow" returns, this time introduced with a special animated Grand Blues! comic, where Gran and Djeeta actually show up and are voiced for the first time. Macho Vyrn gets an Animation Bump and a ranking is introduced for the "Black Hole" difficulty for players who can clear the battle, one for maximum damage done in a turn, and one for fastest turn count. The ending cutscene after the event ends leaves a URL that leads to a website that announces an anime adaptation of Grand Blues! (the English version just leaves the URL for the regular game's anime).
  • 2021: Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo shows up to fight Macho Vyrn. We kid you not. It's basically the usual "Big Bad Shadow" event, but with Bobobo as a free character. Bobobo also gets several costumes...which are all exactly the same, but with different Home screen lines. Finally, instead of lasting 24-hours on April 1st, the event ran for a few days.
  • 2022: Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo returns for another crossover to fill a Brick Joke. Then it immediately gets tossed aside for Vyrn? being forced to go on an adventure with Pecorine, Light, and Rowen to fix the anomaly that brought those three into the Sky Realm.
• Arbitrary Augmentation Limit:
  • For the recruitable characters, Extended Mastery Perks are capped at 18 stars by default or up to 28 with Perpetuity Rings, and alternate versions of characters don't share their upgrades with other versions.
  • The captain's Extended Mastery Perks also work this way, but they have a higher cap and are tied to the individual classes instead.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Aside from the main character, the player can only choose up to 5 more party members in battle. However, as the game can only accommodate four character sprites in the right side of the battle, the rest of the party will be at the "back line" and will only be swapped out when one of the "front line" members are defeated, or by using certain Switch-Out Move skills.
• Arc Symbol: The icon featured in the loading screen is also embedded as a background of the Draw menu's buttons. Lore-wise, this is also the same mark that appears in the chest of Yggdrasil Malice. This is evident in her close-up Polaroid◊ merchandise which was released on 2018.
• Arc Welding: Grace connects Yodarha's hunt to take down his corrupted disciples with the Foe arc as she is the top apprentice who was crippled by him.
• Arc Words:
  • "The sins of Nalhegrande" and "Divine retribution" are frequently brought up in the Dawning Sky arc as the cast slowly tries to figure out what happened fifteen years ago to cause the collapse of Torhid Kingdom. The former refers to the myriad crimes committed to cause its destruction whether internal or external and the latter refers to the destructive power of the Great Wall unleashed on Starke Island which none of the inhabitants realized came from there, so they ascribed it to some greater power.
  • "Lucilius' legacy" and "grand finale" are repeated throughout the "What Makes The Sky Blue" trilogy, both of which refer to Lucilius' ultimate plan of having himself resurrected just to watch all of creation burn.
• Area of Effect: Some characters are able to hit all three enemies on the right side of the screen for every attack, the in-game descriptions label them as "all-foe attacks".
• Armor Is Useless: Tends to play this trope regarding the characters, since the game's inventory system does not include armors and is limited only to weapons, rings, and summons:
  • Some characters who wear a full set of armor and a helmet are designated as Defense types (i.e. Baotorda, Deliford, Naoise, Vira's Grand version), fully averting this trope.
  • Yet, there are other armor-clad characters who are not Defense-oriented (Black Knight, Lancelot, Percival, Rackam), applying this trope.
  • A large number of the playable characters are wearing some types of armor, including those stated above, yet they can still receive the same amounts of damage as any other character without Defensive buffs.
  • It is possible for the player to directly play around this trope with the ability to change a character's appearance and outfit, such as Grand Vira still capable of tanking a huge amount of damage while wearing a swimsuit.
  • Vaseraga is probably one of the worst offenders. He wears an armor and a helmet in his Dark version, but his kit is focused on attack (though his passive allows him to stack defense). He loses all that protection in his Earth version, but he has a skill that provides him 50% damage reduction and an immunity to debuffs. In other words, Vaseraga becomes much more durable in-game despite discarding his full armor in his Earth version.
• Armor Points: An update provided an HUD indicator for the Shield buffs - a character with this effect will have their HP numbers occasionally fading to display the Shield's value, but with a blue tint and accompanied with a blue hexagon.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Overlaps with Damage-Increasing Debuff as a majority of skills that decrease the enemy's defense will damage them before applying the debuff.
  • Also applies to attacks categorized under the Plain Damage property, as they completely ignore the target's defense attribute, making any and all defense / damage mitigation buffs useless.
• Art Evolution: Over the years, the art styles of some characters improved in such a way that they have become more vibrantly-colored or more detailed in their new gacha versions or 5★ uncaps. Compare Sara's initial artwork◊ to her Summer version's uncap◊, or Lady Grey's initial artwork◊ to her 5★ uncap◊ for examples.
  • The Story characters received updated artworks on the later chapters of the story, as well as 5★ uncap artworks which are of higher resolutions (due to the additional Primal Beasts bonding with them).
  • The 4th Anniversary introduced a 4★ uncap for the six main Omega Summons, alongside updated artworks (making them the first summons with two-in-one artworks).
  • Even older grind-able Free/Regular SSR summons such as Anat, Poseidon and Sylph get newer Premium versions from the gacha, along with gorgeous updated art. For example, here is a comparison of the regular Anat◊ to her "Anat, For Love and War◊" gacha version.
• The Artifact: Every player's account has a group, lettered from A to H, in addition to an 8-digit ID number. Your group determined when during the day you had access to Angel Halo and Defense Order, but Angel Halo is now available permanently and Defense Order stopped in 2016 after negative player reception. As such, player groups no longer mean anything, but are still assigned to new players.
• Artifact of Doom: The Dark Essence – Crystals used by the high-ranking officials of the Erste Empire to drastically increase their combat abilities, and to corrupt Primal Beasts into their more violent Malice forms.
• Artificial Stupidity: A "Full Auto" feature was later added to supplement Auto Mode, by allowing the characters to use their abilities first before attacking. But it is subject to this trope since the A.I. follows a strict set of rules, and has limitations on some skills:
  • Buff-type skills (yellow border) are used first, followed by Debuffing skills (blue border), then Attack-type skills (red border).
  • If two skills have the same type (or border color), they are cast from left to right, so if you have a character who relies on having their third skill cast before the first or second skills, you're screwed. This is noticeable in Threo (whose first skill would heal herself first before her Ground Zero self-inflicts damage, the first skill's additional healing effect would also be laughable if she is already at full health, which is obviously the case on the first turn), and Halluel and Malluel (whose third skill grants them a Super Mode that also enhances their second skill, with Full Auto, the second skill may not benefit from the additional effect).
  • Full Auto mode cannot use certain skills, which are mostly categorized by the color of their icon's borders - Healing skills (green) and Field effects (purple).
  • It cannot use skills that have 0 cooldowns, and those that require additional user input, such as targetted buffs.
    • Updates to the system now allow 0 cooldown skills to be used once per turn in Full Auto, and the player can manually set skills that will not be used.
  • This limited A.I. of Full Auto becomes obvious for certain characters. Nier, for example, cannot use any skills in this mode, since both of her buffs are targetted and require user input, while her other skill is a Field effect.
• Art Shift: Playable characters are depicted in a Super-Deformed style in battle. When facing other playable characters, they stick to this style or the game takes advantage of having more space to depict opponents in an art style closer to the one the game uses regularly.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Few minor characters (who also have the generic artwork of their other NPC counterparts) from the Grand version Fate Episodes of the main cast are given names, defining traits, and have lengthy dialogues during "What Makes The Sky Blue II: Paradise Lost". These are Reformed Ralph, Second-Chance Sam, and Magic Miki.
  • Grimnir, Shiva, Europa, Alexiel, and Satan were originally Summons who had no raids associated with them. On March 2018, the 4th Anniversary event permanently included them (and Metatron ^note who was not a summon unlike the five and only made his debut in the same anniversary event.) as the "Omega 2"-tier raid bosses. Additionally, the Omega 2 Dark-elemental boss is named "Avatar" (instead of the original summon's "Satan"), based on his name as the Final Boss of "What Makes The Sky Blue II: Paradise Lost".
  • A number of characters that were originally in the game Rage of Bahamut play bigger roles in this game than they did in their home game. For example, Europa and Yuel didn't become proper characters until their appearances Granblue Fantasy.
• Ascended Meme: These are either concepts pulled straight into and out of the Grand Blues! comics, or inspired by the community's memes and fan nicknames:
  • The Chat Stickers contain plenty of these, such as Rackam being known for his infamous Duration skill has earned him a bunch of in-game Stickers (and an outfit!) to commemorate both his "legend" and his Duration. In fact, all Chat Stickers are colored versions of specific panels taken from the comic series.
  • Macho Vyrn is first seen in the comics, but the 2017 April Fools event features him as the raid boss. He even makes mentions of the "Over 9000" of Dragon Ball Z in his event, and appears in a limited-time Twitter raid sticker.
  • Charlotta being called a "tanned potato" in her Summer version's narration, in which "potato" was originally a nickname coined by the fans to the Harvin race.
  • Thanks to Lunalu's event summon in "Handsome Gorilla", the internet/fandom slang "Husbando" can be used as a word in the Summon Call Combinations... which results to quirky combination names like this one.
  • While "Luciface" is a fan nickname used to refer to the look-alikes of Lucifer from Rage of Bahamut, the Granblue fandom has also taken into making "sandal" puns out of Sandalphon's name, with "Sandal Phone" being the most prominent. Plus there is also the memetic "____face" used by those who photoshop Belial's and Siete's faces on top of other characters'. In "The Maydays" summer event, Vyrn combines the two, with Sandalphon even putting a lampshade on it.
    Vyrn: It just makes you seem really stiff. With a name like yours, you oughta at least put on some sandals!
    Sandalphon: Heh... Is that an attempt at a pun?
    Vyrn: (After Sandalphon makes a pun of Vyrn's name): You jerk! You sandal, sandal, sandal-face!
• Asset Actor: There are several generic models that sometimes get repurposed as story characters during events. Of note is the "middle aged gentleman" model, with light brown hair, a moustache and a goatee. That model is often modified with new clothes to represent various people. Among other things, he's been used to represent a referee in combat tournaments, a commentator during a race, a judge during a cooking contest and even the opposing heads of two factions (which included a running gag about how they were twins because they looked alike).
• As the Good Book Says...: Cagliostro's Image Song is titled "It would be better to create a cute girl than create the world over 7 days". The latter half of the title refers to the seven-day Genesis Creation narrative of Christianity covered within the first two chapters of The Book of Genesis in The Bible.
• Auto-Revive: Kaguya's Summon Aura grants this effect once at the start of a battle.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Some of the Mechanic's golem parts fall under this, but the most noteworthy is one that removes ailments and debuffs each turn. Not only is there already a skill that does that, you'd be hard pressed to fight something that pressures you enough to warrant using that part over having the skill yourself and/or having a character that gives Veil to prevent the status from landing to begin with.

B

• Background Music Override: This usually activates with a Charge Attack and there is a toggle to turn it off for each individual character if it's unwanted.
  • The Drum Master class can cause this by applying a full-power Fever buff to the party via a full Chain Burst, switching the music to "Song of the Three Men" for the duration of the buff. Due to Drum Master's focus on meter building, it's capable of keeping the song going for quite a while.
  • The Summer version of Diantha has the music change to an instrumental version of "Never-Ending Fantasy" when the buff granted by her Charge Attack is active.
  • Sakura Kinomoto causes the background music to change to her iconic theme when the debuff from her Charge Attack is active.
  • All three of the Aqours trios will change the BGM to an instrumental version of "Aozora Jumping Heart" when they use their ougi.
  • Using the JEHUTY summon will change the BGM to "Beyond the Bounds."
• Bad Future: In the main story, "Ruby Pop Irotis" and the revived Violet Knight come from a doomed timeline. In this timeline, the entire Blue Liberation Front was killed in an Otherworld invasion that also destroyed Istavion, with the captain dying and Lyria perishing due to their life link. Lyria used the last of her strength to bring Shitori to the current timeline, while the Violet Knight was saved by Tau'luk.
• Badass Creed: The Lumiel Order of Holy Knights and its various members that can be recruited are dedicated to the words of "Forever pure, forever righteous!"
• Badass Crew:
  • The crew of the Grandcypher recruits people from all over the Phantagrande Skydom who all have their own kinds of power and talent to contribute to their adventures.
  • The roster even extends to the Eternals; a group of skyfarers who have mastered their own weapons / fighting styles and individually owns the strength to be feared by those who know of their existence.
• Balance Buff:
  • The early-released characters tend to get rebalance updates later on, in order to provide more utility to their plain kits (such as Aletheia or Sophia, etc...), or to fix their downsides (such as Dark Sarunan or Hallessena, etc...), making older characters more relevant to the latest meta or up-to-date with what newly-released units can do. For characters with multiple versions, Power Creep is usually resolved when an "outdated" version is buffed by adding mechanics pre-existing in their other versions. For example, Sophia's and Vania's SSR versions were buffed by adding mechanics and utility that their SR versions have.
  • From 2019 onwards, several niche characters have their skillsets and passives reworked to incorporate new elemental "Crest" mechanics akin to a non-dispellable stacking Mana Meter that enhances some of their skills or passives to also benefit the entire party. These changes also give them synergy with the Charge Attacks of Dark Opus weapons that increase elemental-specific Crest buffs.
  • Characters and Summons that receive their Final uncaps up to 5★ also count, as these upgrades either introduce an additional skill (or aura), along with increasing the stats of their previous skills and their maximum base ATK and HP.
  • Even older Power at a Price weapon skills like the Haunt get re-balanced in order to lessen their penalties.
  • When the Chaos Ruler class was introduced, it was considered to be inferior to its Tier 3 counterpart, Dark Fencer, largely due to the fact that its Unpredictable skill was actually worse than Miserable Mist and it wasn't worth spending two of your three free skill slots on both of them together (with the other two unique skills at the time being situational at best). This was rectified in an update that gave Unpredictable the ATK and DEF debuff of Miserable Mist in addition to its original random debuff, making the class a proper upgrade over Dark Fencer.
• Bag of Sharing: The Extended Mastery Levels and remaining Extended Mastery Points are shared between all of a character's versions, no matter when you've obtained them. However, the Extended Mastery Perks themselves are tied to each individual character version.
• Barrier Change Boss: Some raid bosses incorporate this tactic in their skills:
  • The Twin Elements can switch their element between Water and Fire.
  • The boss of the Wyvern Reverie quest of "What Makes The Sky Blue" cycles through all of the six elements, depending on its remaining HP.
  • Like Wyvern Reverie, the Impossible difficulty of Proto Bahamut also allows the boss to cycle elements (except for Light) depending on its HP.
  • Rose Queen starts as Wind, switches to Dark when she's down to 60% HP, and then back to Wind at 40% HP.
  • The Four Primarchs raid functions as this, given that it's a Boss Rush of the four Primarchs. The element order goes Earth (Uriel) -> Wind (Raphael) -> Water (Gabriel) -> Fire (Michael).
• Battle Aura:
  • Tends to be coupled with Glowing Eyes of Doom for bosses in Overdrive.
  • Your playable characters also gain a slight yellow aura every time you select their character portrait when choosing a skill, or when their Charge Attack Bar is full. Though some of them have their unique aura effects and colors.
• Beach Episode: Scenario events released during late summer are usually about the cast relaxing on the beach (mostly on Auguste Isles) when trouble knocks on the door. The same applies to any Fate Episode for a summer version of a character.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The first Sushi chef of the Miyasato restaurant provided an underground shelter for the wandering Kappas who went into hiding during The War. For the next generations, the kappas returned the favor by aiding the chefs in preparing ingredients for, and making sushi until it became a well-kept secret and tradition for the restaurant.
• Begin with a Finisher:
  • Characters with "C.A. Instant Standby" skills can have a full Charge Bar right at Turn 1, ready to unleash a Charged Attack.
  • Some raid bosses can do this to your party as well even before you attack, such as Lucilius' Paradise Lost.
• Behemoth Battle:
  • By the game's opening, Lyria summons Proto Bahamut to defeat Pommern's corrupted Hydra. Though the latter doesn't even stand a chance against a giant laser beam from the bound dragon.
  • Tiamat keeps her Malice counterpart busy in the skies while Rackam fights his darker persona on the ground. However, the battle the two Primal Beasts happens off-screen, and it is implied that Tiamat did manage to delay Tiamat Malice.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The Mist-Shrouded Isle is home to only a single village, with many of its inhabitants in a zombified state thanks to Celeste robbing them of the ability to die. Thankfully, most of the zombies are quite friendly.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In the sixth chapter of "Bzzt! Amped Up Summer", Seofon, Tweyen, and Threo arrive just in time to save the captain and Lyria from the wave of electric eels rushing towards them. He even lampshades their act afterwards.
    Well, you know what they say about heroes coming in at the last minute!
  • In Chapter 117, Drang's group saves Lyria from almost being captured by a titan suit thanks to a blinding flash of light.
  • "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000" is rife with this, with members from each faction eventually assisting each other out of nowhere when faced with a more serious threat.
  • Part 3 of "Home Sweet Moon" has Yatima, having undergone a fusion with Raybury, suddenly appear to help stop Diaspora by blowing up its means of escape.
• Big Damn Kiss: Granblue has only had one on-screen kiss in its tenure; Cupitan and Tristette in "Unbound Asterism", occurring after a climactic battle between the two that gets all their feelings out in the open
• Binomium ridiculus: The in-game description of the Gorilla summon mentions its scientific classification as "Gorilla gorilla phantagrandus".
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • The ending of "The Inner Light" event. Avarita has been defeated, and the commotion caused by her rampage has bought attention of Epice officials to Sidheros Island, hopefully meaning that conditions on the island will be better. However, Galthazar is still going to be sent to a prison hospital, and while his precious children will be in good hands, he'll still be separated from them for potentially a very long time, with only Altos remaining behind so that he doesn't break down completely from loneliness.
  • The Titanic Yeager event. The Female Titan is dealt with and Eren is saved. But titans still roam about around the island of Estioss. However, the citizens within the walls are given hope of freedom now that they knew of the existence of the sky realm.
  • "Reflections for a White Clover" ends with Sevilbarra finally getting his revenge at the perpetrator that killed his sister... but his family's demon blade is now under the hands of his grieving brother-in-law who was already off the deep end in his grief and took it away from him in an attempt to revive Keralbarra before Sevilbarra can finally destroy the blade for good.
  • “What Makes The Sky Blue: 000” the end of the Primarch trilogy has one of the most bittersweet endings. On the bitter side, Lucifer is still dead and it's left up in the air whether he will be able to return from this due to Lucilius still being in possession of his body and, more importantly, his core. On sweet side, the Primarchs have successfully followed through with his plan to cede their roles to nature and allow them to live normal lives away from their predetermined duties. Lucilius’ legacy is foiled and he and Belial are trapped between dimensions. Sandalphon is able to make amends with Lucifer and decides he can finally live for himself, even planning to open a coffee shop on the Grandcypher. There may be a Hope Spot left for Lucifer as well due to Word of God stating there are more stories with the Primarchs to tell as they will appear in different settings. However, what that entails is unknown currently.
  • The ending of "Alchemist's Desire" event. While Risette is revived as a mortal and accepted by Mireille as family, it doesn't undo the death of half of the populace of their home. Mireille is still stuck with her weak body, her and Risette will have to spend much time getting rid of the pseudo-homunculus' Risette created and apologizing to the remaining half of the population to atone for what's happened. Not only that, but Paracelsus managed to complete the Philosopher's Stone and disappeared with a piece of it to for further his goals.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Downplayed example. Female and Male Draphs both share visually similar characteristics with their horns and pointed ears. But while average male Draphs are large, hulking brutes at around 220cm tall, physically larger than the rest of the other races, Female Draphs are positively tiny◊ in comparison, averaging at only 130cm, the only race shorter than them being the Dwarfish Harvins. But what makes them stand out compared to the other races is how the cup size of female Draphs ranges from G all the way to L, shown here◊.
  • Exaggerated with goblins - the ugly, hunchedback creatures you usually see are all male goblins. Female goblins look like the Goblin Mage - basically, short elves, and much more generally attractive. This discrepency is never explained, other than the fact that goblins were created artificially and thus don't need to follow biological norms.
• Black Swords Are Better:
  • One of the first Infinity Plus One Swords that the player can forge mid-game are Bahamut Weapons that provide a strong boost to the ATK and/or HP of one or two races. All of them are Dark-Elemental and their Nova upgrade gives them a dark-red hue resembling Bahamut's color theme. However, the Coda upgrade would turn their color scheme into gray-purple instead.
  • The dark-colored, weaponized chaos wielded by the fallen angels during Lucilius's grand finale are capable of killing the primarchs, by negating their Healing Factor.
• Bond Creatures: The role of some Primal Beasts.
  • Luminiera has the power to bond with knights of Albion, lending them its powers. Unfortunately this means they're doomed to stay at Albion forever. Katalina's fear of this happening to her is what causes her to fake defeat to Vira, making the latter bonded with Luminiera.
  • According to their in-game description, the Arcarum Summons are "Celestially bound" to their respective Evokers (i.e. Justice to Empress, Death to Lovers, and Tower to Magician).
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Miserable Mist is visually unimpressive and reduces every enemy's Attack and Defense, simply shifting the numbers to your favor. It's also the best subskill for your main character, as it stacks with most other sources of Attack and Defense Down, thus greatly increasing your damage and survivability. It's a must when soloing.
  • Trick Stick, despite being a mediocre 3★ SSR Dark Staff with an unimpressive ATK and HP stats, and a simple Oblivion's Might weapon skill, it makes up for its useful "Trick or Treat" secondary weapon skill. As long as this weapon is placed in your team's weapon grid and even though it is not equipped as a mainhand weapon, there is a chance to obtain macaroons after cleared quests. These items provide 745 EXP each to a character. As such, placing the Trick Stick in any Angel Halo farming or Slimeblasting quest allows one to stockpile macaroons that would eventually expedite the leveling process for characters.
• Boss Bonanza: The 11th layer of the Tower of Babyl consists entirely of beefed-up bosses from the main story. The first floor has all of the Malice bosses; the second floor has Ganesha; the third floor has Zeyen and Kikuri; and the final floor has Gilbert.
• Boss Rush:
  • Chapters 61 to 63 of the main story are one long boss rush:
    • Chapter 61 has Lecia and Katalina fighting Gandharva; Io and Rosetta fighting Fenrir; the main character, Eugen and Rackam fighting Leviathan Malice; and then the party comes back together to fight Leviathan Malice again followed by Mithra Malice.
    • Chapter 62 has the whole party fighting Freesia, a reactor powered by Deus Ex Machina, Freesia again, and finally Akasha.
    • Finally, Chapter 63 pits the whole party against the Black Knight.
  • There's also the three "Rising Stars" quest lines that allow you to raise your maximum rank; all of them are six-part boss rushes against Omega bosses (rank 100 -> 150), the Showdown bosses (150 -> 175), and the bosses from the last chapters of the first arc (starting from Leviathan Malice and ending with the Black Knight).
  • In order to unlock an Eternal's fourth skill, you need to go through a solo run against all nine of the other Eternals with the Eternal you want to uncap, and then fight against your Eternal with your own character solo.
  • The Maniac and Nightmare boss battles of the "Robomi: Generations" event, where you need to fight the Four Kings before Lord Daemon.
  • For those dedicated enough to 5* uncap every Eternal and to fulfill the outrageous item requirements to unlock the "Guider to the Eternal Edge" outfit, the final part of the quest involves a boss rush against the Eternals: Sarasa, Six, Song & Nio, Okto & Funf and finally Uno & Siete. And unlike the gauntlet to unlock an Eternal's fourth skill, there are no checkpoints and HP and cooldowns don't reset between each fight.
  • The Impossible "Four Primarchs" raid is functionally this. Mechanically, it's a single raid battle, but each "phase change" cycles between each of the Four Primarchs: Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel and finally Michael.
• Boss Subtitles: All Raids and Major Story boss fights splash the name of the boss at the screen (along with their artwork) every time the quest begins. Some bosses of story events and collaborations even have their own customized font style, depending on the theme of that event.
• Bowdlerise:
  • Oddly enough, considering the game isn't exactly easily accessible to western children (and the Japanese voice track is still there untouched), the English translation tries to excise some of the pervier jokes in both the game and Grand Blues!, with less than credible results. Notable examples involve Soriz trying to cope a feel on Katalina getting replaced by him attempting to steal her wallet (which is pretty violently out of character), or Eugen getting distracted in a sniping contest with Silva because the sun was shining off her knee guards and most definitely not because the wind was blowing up her miniskirt (but they left in Apollo trying to whack him for it, now for no real reason).
  • And then there's Belial, a perverted fallen angel whose dialogue consists mostly of innuendos. The Japanese audio has him sometimes mention "sodomy" and other related words, but these get toned down in the English translation to make them vague and "safe" so to speak, even in the Grand Blues! comics. The official lyric video for his Image Song "Parade's Lust" also replaces the Japanese captions of "Call me anal retentive!" to "x x x x".
• Boxing Kangaroo: One of the unique enemies in specific quests, is a muscular kangaroo with bandaged fists that fights in this style. In Arcarum, it is named "Barbaros".
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • The "Guider to the Eternal Edge" costume, as it requires materials that would take years, or for the incredibly hardcore grinders, at least months to obtain, from Gold Bricks to Sunstones to Revenant Weapon Fragments on top of the long, arduous process of fully uncapping all the Eternals. After compiling all of these together, the player then has to beat an Eternal Boss Rush, which is one of the toughest quests in the entire game. It would not be an exaggeration to say that one has essentially beaten the game by managing to complete all of this.
  • For the even more determined completionists, the Eternal weapon skins require unlocking the aforementioned costume and then doing the exact same grind again with even more materials required to get ten weapon skins. At least the costume is displayable in the profile, chat, co-op rooms, and raids for other players to establish their status. The weapon skins will only be displayable to you and and you alone, once unlocked, with zero gameplay effect beyond changing up how attacks look, cementing them as the ultimate Bragging Rights Reward of Granblue.
• Break Meter: Most bosses have a bar that when filled up from taking enough damage activates Overdrive mode. Bosses in Overdrive Mode become more aggressive, usually gaining new Charge Attacks. However, when the gauge is emptied again with sufficient damage or other means, bosses will enter Break Mode, which make attacks against them deal more damage, as well as preventing them from gaining any charge for their Charge Attacks.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the "Robomi Z" event, the Abomination forces Nicholas into attacking Robomi and Hallesena by sticking out its finger from the corner of the screen, and clicking the Attack button in the game's interface, which is the same button used by the player to attack and finish a turn.
  • If the player tries to skip the epilogue cutscene of the 2018 Big Bad Shadow event, they are treated with this message:
    "We've got a new, epic epilogue in store for ya... You sure you wanna skip this?"
  • All of the characters' individual Fate Episodes end with the narrator describing what they have learned, or wondering about their future in at least two paragraphs. But in Walder's Summer version, the narration gets cut mid-sentence, with Vyrn shouting "Hey! You're narrating yourself again!" It turns out Walder is doing his own version of it, only before the actual narration appears. But this time, it's only a single paragraph.
  • In "Primal Resonance", Vyrn thinks that the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors game mechanic is in play when Medusa realizes that Geo has her "weakness" (Medusa is an Earth-elemental whose in-game weakness is Wind). What Geo actually meant was that Medusa's remaining sister is with him.
    Medusa: Enough lies! I can't believe I let you take advantage of my weakness!
    Vyrn: Weakness? Oh no, he's got wind powers!
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • The Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu event broke a few, with the weapons not being able to be reduced, sold or used to upgrade other weapons due to the characters from the events being Anthropomorphic Personification of the weapons, the event 4 star weapons being the first to come uncapped at 3 stars and the first to have a 4 star uncap and Mikazuki Munechika being the first event SSR character and first free character SSR, kicking off the trend of free SSR collab characters.
  • Seasonal versions (Valentine's, Summer, Halloween, Christmas) of characters used to be available only on the dates of that specific holiday/season. However, there have been complaints among the Eastern fandom about having to wait a whole year just to get the chance of obtaining seasonal versions (most of which are known for the Fanservice) of their favorite characters. This has led to the change in pattern where Seasonal versions may also be available in the gacha on certain dates aside from the exact season times. An example of which is the Summer version of Jeanne d'Arc being released on March 16, 2018 (when Summer Season is actually June to September in Japan).
  • On a similar note, the 6% SSR draw banners titled Premium Gala/Legend Festival used to run on a monthly basis. Now, it is on an almost bi-weekly schedule with the 6% SSR banners occurring mid-month, labeled as Flash Gala/Grande Fest.
  • 2018 was the first year to not have an event focused around the Four Knights in November, it was bumped up to October due to event scheduling. It was acknowledged as an anomaly when they released that month's event schedule and that it may or may not stick for their future events.
  • The Grand Series of characters were originally reserved for those who have relevance to the main story or anniversary events. But on November 2019, Jeanne d'Arc received a Grand version, despite her not having any significant plot relevance beforehand.
  • Before 2021, the April 1st events have been "Big Bad Shadow," the plot being a fight against Vyrn?, that lasts for 24-hours. The 2021 version mixes it up a lot by being a crossover with Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, the main cast of the series fighting Vyrn? being the plot, is titled "Wiggin' War in the Sky World," and lasted for a few days, with the start of each day having a new cutscene.
• Breather Episode:
  • Chapter 64 of the main quest. There are no battles to be done asides reading the scenario, and plotwise, the only thing that happens is the crew celebrating and talking about continuing the search for the sky map now that the Erste Empire has fallen.
  • Chapter 98 counts as well since there are no battles. The scenario covers the cast and their allies from both the Bestia and Groz Islands.
  • Event wise, "Welcome To Bistro Feendrache" is this to the rest of the Dragon Knights events due to it being strange but Lighter and Softer compared to the previous Dragon Knights events story-wise. It's even Lampshaded by the participating characters to be a good change of pace compared to the events that happened before in the Dragon Knights event stories.
  • The entire Christmas-themed "Winter Nights, Stardust Memories" event contains no battles, only pure reading of chapters and cutscenes. While Loki and Fenrir did appear, they pose no actual threats aside from stealing Santa's gifts, which they promptly return.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Granblue Fantasy operates a gacha lottery system for acquiring new characters and items, which you can purchase using either an in-game currency (Crystals) or real money.
  • If you have enough cash to draw 300 times from the same pool, the game throws you a bone and allows you to choose what item you get, albeit from a limited selection. And if you really have money to burn, you can exchange 150 Gold Moons (which can be obtained by drawing 150 duplicate SSR characters or buying them at a rate of one Gold Moon per month) for any item or summon in the entire game.
  • More direct samples include special tickets that can only be purchased with real money: such as the "Start Dash" that gives you a ticket to instantly obtain any character or summon you could pull at account creation; and the "Surprise Ticket", which lets you pull from almost any currently available character or summon. However, many of the top summons in the game (such as Lucifer, Bahamut, Shiva or Grand Order) explicitly cannot be obtained using these special tickets.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Most dialogue options have little or no impact to the plot. As such, the player may be given two contradicting options, but in the instance when the player picks the "wrong" choice, either Vyrn or Lyria will correct the player so that the dialogue will continue to a single predefined outcome. Some dialogue options also play this trope straight, with the choices being synonymous or similar in thought and meaning.
  • In the "Detective Barawa: The Jewel Resort Incident", the detectives, Lyria, Vyrn, and the captain had to put together evidences and deduce possible outcomes when finding Vas. Should you pick the wrong answer, Sarya will simply mention that you have to try again while presenting the same choices. The dialogue tree will only continue if the correct answer is selected.

C

• Call-Back:
  • After the crew subdues Leviathan early in the story, a portion of its power gets absorbed by Orchid. Later in Silverwind Stretch (around 50+ more chapters later), Orchid uses Leviathan's power to save some members of the crew who were separated by the avalanche.
  • The main cast's all-encompassing quest involves collecting all pieces of the Sky Map to plot their journey's course to Estalucia, with said pieces glowing and resonating to the place where they should go next. But as the main task is put on hold for several times due to sidelines and other external conflicts, the Sky Map pieces lost significant plot relevance... Until they are brought up and glow once more in Chapter 123 when Rackam makes plans to take a shortcut to the Great Oarlyegrande Skydom in order to race against the Violet Knight. Loki and Mikaboshi explain in the succeeding chapter that the pieces have the power to allow anyone to travel safely between larger Skydoms.
• Calling Your Attacks: A lot of characters shout their Charge Attack's names out loud. If it is a unique skill or a Signature Move, expect that it will also be called out as well.
• Canis Latinicus: Played for Laughs. The in-game description of the Gorilla summon mentions its scientific classification as "Gorilla gorilla phantagrandus".
• Can't Drop the Hero: In fact (s)he gets a separate section in the party screen compared to regular characters. Interestingly, while human, the protagonist is counted in the Other race for gameplay purposes, since it would otherwise cripple any non-human party receiving the benefits of race-specific Bahamut Weapons. However, there are a few scripted battles during events or Fate episodes where the protagonist is not included. These include some of the Challenge Quests that reward Blue Sky Crystals where the party is made up of the "spotlight" characters of that event.
• Cap:
  • With regards to characters, weapons, and summons, the Level Cap is represented by the number of stars. If the said character or item has reached its cap, it will no longer gain additional levels until it is uncapped one more time (unless of course, the last uncap is reached). Though characters can still improve by means of accumulating Extended Mastery Levels , Extended Mastery Perks, Plus Mark Bonuses, and Over The Mastery Rings.
  • As a part of gameplay balancing, there is also a Damage Cap to a majority of the skills and abilities of characters. However, this can be increased by "DMG Cap Up" buffs and perks that will amplify the damage dealt only if the character is perfectly capable of reaching the damage cap.
  • Certain Buffs and Debuffs also have a cap on the maximum amount of stat increments or decrements that can be applied to the party or to the enemy.
  • The player can only have a maximum of 999 AP and 99 EP at once. Trying to increase the AP/EP overflow using specific items will simply display a message stating that it cannot go past beyond the maximum limit.
  • Unused Extended Mastery Points cap out at 999.
  • Weapons and Summons can only have +99 Plus Mark bonuses, while characters have a limit of +300.
  • During "Rise of the Beast" events, you can only hold up to 100,000 Four-Star Symbols (prior to June 2019, the previous cap was 30,000). If they overflow, the counter will be marked purple and you essentially have to buy something from the shop before you can start your own RoTB raid. Worse case is that if you join or complete other players' raids when the counter overflows, you won't gain any Four-Star Symbols for that raid battle.
• Cast Herd: Considering the large roster this game has, Cygames eventually organized playable characters into these, with the story characters as the main one, Society members in another, the Holy Knights of Lumiel as one, Dragon Knights, Knights of Irestill, the Ten Eternals, Divine Generals, the Evokers, The Angels and characters associated with that storyline ^note This includes any non-Angels introduced in the storyline such as Astrals like Lucilius and Beelzebub, Fallen Angels like Belial (who still qualify as a different type of Primarch) and the unknown species characters like the two Helels. It tends to exclude non-recurring characters like Cagliostro etc.
• Casting Gag:
  • Double for Tomokazu Seki as Nicholas, not only does he become a Kamen Rider-esque character for his playable debut, complete with Diving Kick as his charge attack, he gets an allusion to his role on Mobile Fighter G Gundam with the Humongous Mecha that he created, which in Japanese is called God Gigantes.^note The allusion isn't there in the english translation because it was changed to Super Robo Gigantes.
  • Chris Wells, the official announcer of Tokyo Tower, plays the Tower summon.
  • Kaz's voice actor (Akihiko Ishizumi) already voiced another character with the same name in the Japanese dub of that series.
  • The same goes with Chloe's voice actress (Miyu Tomita), who already voiced another girl named Chloe.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Takahiro Sakurai voices Cloud Strife who admires his friend Zack Fair (voiced by Kenichi Suzumura) who dies in a battle protecting him. In Granblue Fantasy, they portray reversed but similar roles. Sandalphon (Kenichi Suzumura) starts off as an insecure Primarch who looked up to Lucifer (Takahiro Sakurai) and sought out his love and approval, though this desire turns into hatred upon overhearing that he was merely a back up for Lucifer should the latter have failed and destined to be discarded due to his lack of a purpose. After later realizing that Lucifer truly did care for him, he goes back to returning that sentiment but is too late to act on his feelings as Lucifer dies protecting him, passing on his power to leave Sandalphon as his living legacy.
  • Romi Park once voiced a prince from Fate/EXTRA who is an heir to the throne and protected by the White Knight Gawain. These details are reversed in Granblue where she voices the Black Knight, who protects a young girl having a similar appearance to the late Queen.
  • And on that tack, Minori Chihara voices a pale-blue-haired girl who is very quiet and emotionally muted, and who is, even early on, implied to not be entirely human. This is not precisely unknown territory for Chihara. Later on, however, while she continues playing Orchid even after Orchid becomes a golem, she also continues to portray the real Orchis... who is actually friendly, bubbly and has occasional moments of ditziness, which is actually much closer to what Chihara is like naturally.
  • The voice actors for Ellen and Martin introduced in the shark-themed "The Maydays" event were also cast for the Japanese dub of Sharknado.
• Central Theme:
  • For Narmaya's plot, self-pity can cause you to forget your own strengths and accomplishments. She has a massive inferiority complex because Eahta of the Eternals refused to acknowledge her despite growing up a life dedicated to training. She's incredibly powerful, yet her low self-esteem has her put on a mask of being the perfect big sister. Once she meets Fif (who is being raised by Eahta), Narmaya gradually begins to realize her strength, and it shows that she can best Fif in a fight. It takes her directly confronting and fighting Eahta to a draw for her to get past her low self-esteem.
  • For Vira's plot, her obsession with Katalina is her biggest characterization. But as her true intentions are shown in the main story, it's clear that Vira is suffering a lot of problems and needs help. Throughout the continuity of her fate episodes (SR > Dark SSR > Grand), she gradually becomes more unhinged until the strain of fusing with Luminiera knocks her out. Luminiera then shows her a dream of its previous master who headed down the same path as Vira and met a tragic end. Vira then tries to cope with her obsession in unhealthy ways that just cause everyone else to worry about her. It's only when Luminera forces its power on Vira to stop her killing herself that she realizes the reason behind her problem, and notices that everyone was supporting her all along, inspiring her to move forward. Her Wind version shows the effects of her Character Development; while she's still in love with Katalina and has fits of jealousy like before, she tries to prevent it from negatively affecting anyone else. Overall, Vira's story shows that while some problems don't completely go away and are still painful to deal with, you're still able to move forward.
• Character Roster Global Warming: In 2016, Bakura was the last R character to be released (and he is still the portrait for the R Trial Character – a placeholder for any upcoming / character). The R character roster remained stagnant for two whole years until Spinnah was released in June 2018.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • All Skill Unlock Fate Episodes contain short battles, and you are required to slot in the character featured in their own episode. Fortunately, any version of the same character will do. This no longer applies to new characters released from 2017 onwards, as their Fate Episode battles are more or less easy scripted battles that save the player from the burden of changing party members every time.
  • During certain story or event chapters, some characters will be locked out of selection for plot consistency, such as not allowing you to use Black Knight on a certain boss battle. Players may have to change their party compositions if said characters are not applicable.
  • Played straight on certain Hard / Extreme Arcarum stages where the player is forced to use only R or SR characters for the duration of the stage.
  • A new limited-time game mode implemented late 2018 called "Proving Grounds" runs on this trope as a requirement. You get to fight two or three waves of enemies per quest, called crew sorties. You have the freedom to choose whoever to put in your team, but if a character has already been used against the previous waves, they can no longer be allowed in the succeeding waves, requiring you to change your entire character roster. Fortunately, the mode has its own set of Party Slots, so that the changes made to the team composition for "Proving Grounds" won't interfere with the rest of your Party Slots.
  • Many High Level raids have element resistance, meaning that any damage dealt that's not their weak element is greatly reduced. This doesn't outright stop bringing characters that don't match the required element (and some characters have support skills that more than make up for the damage that they don't deal), but it's generally recomended to stick with the matching element. Revans raids takes this requirement even further and outright kill any party member that doesn't match their weak element (even backline members) and inflicts Death Ineluctable, preventing them from being revived.
• Chekhov's Gag: Almost every single quirk exhibited by Grace turns out to be very plot-relevant. Her habit of eating glass is revealed to be an actual requirement for moondwellers lest their silica intake fall too low. Her feeding Isaac Otherworldly meat is a censor to disguise her Chaos Matter scalpel when he's on the Moon. Her rambling about the various ongoings in Phantagrande is a hint about how she's invested in sowing chaos as part of the Foe. Her teasing and flirting towards Isaac about romance and kids are in fact alluding to how moondwellers exiled on the Moon have committed themselves to extended families in order to keep their memory alive in the Sky World.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The plume, revealed to be Lucifer’s feather, obtained by Lyria at the Wyvern Reverie quest in the "What Makes the Sky Blue" event turns out to be the item that allows the crew to reach Sandalphon inside the cocoon in the event's sequel "Paradise Lost". It serves an importance once again when Lyria brings it all the way in the penultimate chapter of the third event "000", unlocking Sandalphon's true potential as the Supreme Primarch.
  • During "Spaghetti Syndrome", Grace meets up with Issac, tricks him into eating meat from Otherworldly Beings and then leaves him the scalpel she used to cut it with, which had its blade converted into chaos matter. In the "bonus episode", the later allows Issac to bypass the moondweller's computer systems since they can't properly analyze chaos matter, while the former allowed him to smuggle it in the first place by giving him a plausible excuse for why it trips their sensors for such things.
• Chess Motifs: As their plans have already been set in motion at the start of "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000", Belial and Beelzebub standby on top of Pandemonium to literally play a game of chess. The event cycles through the actual war happening on the background, with the chess game only serving as an allusion. Each development of the plot cuts back to the two's chess game, representing the progression of their plans. During their match, they converse on small bits of their strategies and tricks to turn the war on their favor. However, the narration doesn't make it clear which side is favored to whom since they are technically allies at that point. Until near the end of the event's first half, which reveals that they have differing agendas and are only using each other for their individual game.
  • "000" itself is the notation for Queenside castling by using the rook on the queen's side to swap with the king to avoid danger, a move Belial pulls on the board if one looks close enough at the CG.
  • Prior to this, the trilogy also makes several allusions to Sandalphon being a pawn, being a spare or a sacrificial one.
  • After noticing the arrival of the military squads of the Skydom who came to assist the Primarchs against the fallen angels, they mention that all pieces are now in play.
  • The arrival of the Grandcypher along with Sandalphon, Halluel and Malluel were compared to unexpected pieces. Beelzebub mentions using tricks to counter the move, by bringing in a corrupted Azrael/Israfel and a brainwashed Sariel into the field.
  • Finally, when their motives are clear and they realize that they have been using each other for their own goals, referencing the opposing sides of the chess board. Belial spots a flaw in Beelzebub's plan, to which the latter replies "Checkmate" as he appears to have incapacitated Belial before trying to proceed with his goal of entering Etemenanki alone.
  • Belial doesn't buy the "Checkmate", stating that his own King is still in play. Then we get to see Beelzebub being impaled from behind by a now-awakened Lucilius, whom Belial physically revived prior to the start of the event. Sandalphon also says the same after finally defeating Lucilius at the end of the trilogy.
• Chest Monster: Features two types of chest / loot monsters as listed in the trope's description:
  • The players can encounter enemies known as "Mimics" in the first wave of Maniac-difficulty Showdowns and in random nodes of the Arcarum. They appear as the typical "monstrous chest" type and reward the player with 8 chests of a specific rarity from bronze, silver, or gold depending on the mimic's color.
  • In Arcarum, other enemies can hide from chests and will ambush the player when opened, resulting in a "Do or Die" battle. Some text descriptions of chests discovered in the map often provide a hint if a certain chest is suspicious.
• Christmas Episode: Every year, new Christmas-themed characters are added to the gacha dressed in Santa clothes. The season is set to Winter and enemies are based on characters or concepts from several Christmas-related stories or tales.
• Climax Boss:
  • Yggdrasil Malice and later on Akasha serve as these, possessing much higher HP and more gimmicks compared to the bosses encountered before them and both fights having heavy plot implications.
  • The Black Knight serves as one to help tie up a few of the characters' personal plot threads.
  • Dykotomus' second fight serves as one as a whole of the Phantagrande Arc, before they move on to Nalhegrande Sykdom.
• Clingy Macguffin: The Horoscope weapons will attach to their wielders unwillingly, even if removed.
• Cognizant Limbs: Most bosses with multiple health bars invoke this trope, particularly the Impossible raid versions. Examples include Tiamat (her dragon tails) and Colossus (its sword-wielding arm). Just defeating the main body results in an instant victory. However, their "limbs" aren't to be trifled with, as they can provide additional buffs and abilities to the main body if left unchecked.
• Color-Coded Elements: The numbers that represent the damage dealt by characters are color-coded, which reflect a character's element. Red (Fire), Blue (Water), Brown (Earth), Green (Wind), Yellow (Light), and Purple (Dark). Additionally, numbers colored White represent the Plain Damage property.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The ability icons of characters are represented by color-coded borders: Yellow for abilities that Buff the team, Blue for abilities that inflict Status Ailments on the enemy, Green for abilities that heal and/or remove ailments for the team, Red for damage-dealing abilities, and Purple for Field effects, abilities that affect all players and enemies in the raid.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers:
  • For the borders of the characters: Gold for SSR-rarity, Silver for SR-rarity, and Bronze for R-rarity.
  • Weapons and Summons also follow the Gold to Bronze rarity colors as stated above, but also includes a light-gray background for Normal-rarity items.
  • Brown wooden chests contain normal-rarity items or rupies, silver chests contain SR weapons/summons and certain crafting materials, gold chests contain items like Merits and Animas and Archangel weapons, flipping golden chests with a rainbow have SSR summons/weapons and items like Damascus Grains or Urns, blue chests are given for reaching a certain honor threshold and can contain anything from either gold or flipping chests, and red chests are given to players who host the raid battle and gained the most points and can contain the same items as blue chests.
• Color Motif: Blue. Fitting for the game's sky world setting. It's in the title, the general theme of the user interface, as well as the lore-wise title theme of the main story cast (all having Blue or Azure).
• Combination Attack: Players can "Combo Call" their summons with other players, allowing everyone in the raid to benefit from the call effects of the summons simultaneously. The Arcarum Summons however, are an exception to this trope.
• Combo: Characters can attack up to three times per turn (with each strike having varied animations too), and this mechanic is affected by abilities that boost or reduce Double/Triple/Multi Attack rates. Though there are some that can guarantee either Double or Triple attacks for a limited number of turns. This also applies to bosses, like Yggdrasil Omega, who can attack up to eight times per turn.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard. There are some points in the story wherein you get to fight other characters in their playable versions, having the same skills used against your party. The one-on-one gauntlet fights against the ten Eternals are notable for this. Weapon skills and Summon Auras do not take effect, the Eternal you are facing has up to tens of thousands of HP, while yours are limited to 4 digits, they also take advantage of the Charge Attack Diamond and "Trigger" mechanics that bosses have (they can unleash their Signature Moves on certain HP thresholds while you have to rely on cooldowns). Fortunately, the fights are beatable with the right usage of your chosen Eternal's skills, and the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors still applies.
• Conlang: The language for the vocals of "Rose Queen" are neither English nor Japanese like the rest of the songs, but is entirely made-up.
• Constructed World: The Sky World is completely separate from Earth, with the only incursions being crossover shenanigans. "Right Behind You" shows an ancient map of a planet that resembles Earth which the characters interpret as a giant island but there isn't enough detail on whether the Sky World was Earth All Along or not.
• Continuity Cameo: For the first five examples, several characters who did not receive a summer version make an appearance in other summer characters' artwork. Other examples include characters from other franchises, (or minor NPCs of Granblue) who appear in some Fate Episodes or character artworks.
  • Heles' second artwork depicts Seruel rubbing sunscreen on her.
  • Lancelot and Vane are in the background of Percival's second artwork, playing volleyball.
  • Bridgitte and Baotarda steer a sailboat for Charlotta.
  • Anne apears in Grea's uncap art, playing with her.
  • Societte caresses Yuel's hair.
  • The Jewel Resort Casino's Play Boy Bunny waitress appears in SR Richard's uncap art.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The introductory scenes of some Fate Episodes make reference to some past events that involve the character. More often, they act as a re-cap of a certain story chapter and continue with it, while explaining said character's motivation for joining the crew (i.e. Veight). This overlaps with Rewatch Bonus as well. Many Fate Episodes of certain characters change parts of their dialogue if you have already recruited other characters connected to them lore-wise. In these cases, the dialogue may explicitly mention the relationship between the two characters, or have one of them mention the other, directly or indirectly (i.e. Randall, after recruiting Feather).
  • Two in the "Persona 5: Thievery In Blue" event, which bridges similar concepts between Granblue Fantasy and the Persona series.
    • The skyfarer crew is not even confused nor shocked when the newcomer group calls themselves "The Phantom Thieves". Instead, Rackam expresses joy in meeting a phantom thief in person, while Vyrn and Lyria mention that they are cool. The thieves didn't expect their reactions at all. It turns out, there is an in-universe Phantom Thief in the world of Granblue, and that scene plays differently if you obtained Chat Noir from the gacha.
    • When the Phantom Thieves demonstrate and explain their Persona powers, Katalina mentions that they also know highly-skilled magic users who fight with spirits of the deceased. She may be initially referring to Necromancy, and there are indeed characters in Granblue who fight alongside a Guardian Entity (as listed in the Shout Out tab). One of them is Lady Grey, who fits both descriptions perfectly.
  • There are also parts of the 2018 "Bzzt! Amped Up Summer" that reference two previous story scenarios.
    • One scene in the event has Quatre and Tien discussing about how Siete became upset for being able to convince only two Eternals last year. This references the 2017 "Poacher's Day" event where he only had Tweyen and Threo to accompany him.
    • The Gorilla also makes a cameo while the gang is being toured around the island. This time, it is an actual animal in the jungle rather than a tonic-induced hallucination.
  • The Odajumoki gang appear once again in the Fate Episode of the Aqours Second-Years. But this time, they work as tourist guides in a beach snack bar. One of the members mentions their act as a sign of goodwill after their encounter with the Grandcypher crew (referencing "Poacher's Day"). Their Dog-On-Wheels boat technology later turned out to be a tourist attraction called "extreme water-skiing".
  • Sharom Island gets brought up by Seruel in Scathacha's 5★ Fate Episode, where he remembers humans and monsters co-existing in a form of government.
  • "Make Up and Go" has two.
    • First, the experimental metal ingots that Sierokarte acquires for the heroes is from Eureka Island, where the final battle of "Robomi Generations" took place.
    • Second, the reason that the Mining Association is hiking up prices is because radical profiteers took over after the corruption in Sidheros Island was exposed after "The Inner Light".
  • "A Walk on the Wild Side" has numerous references to past story events:
    • Tomoi remembering Lucifer and Belial from "What Makes the Sky Blue".
    • Lowain recalls Vyrn's reaction after getting his own gearcycle in "The Other Side of the Sky".
    • Lunalu's cameo in her pajama attire, with the brothers recalling her CtK4Life group. She also presents the exact same manga panel from Popol Saga. Lastly, the Gorilla appears once more in an Imagine Spot, all of which are from the "Handsome Gorilla event".
    • The bros' "Iron is my body, lettuce is my blood" chant sends shivers down Tomoi's spine, a reference from "Table for Six".
    • Vira's characterization in this event hints that this takes place after her Grand version's Character Development Fate episodes, with her becoming mellow and friendly towards everyone, which is different from how Lowain remembered Vira as someone obsessed with Katalina. Even the imagined Psycho Vira MK II raid boss has a skill name that starts with "Certificus", the weapon that unlocks Grand Vira from the gacha.
  • To make things short, the "No Rain, No Rainbow" event references, or makes a flashback to a ton of past story events and fate episodes, while many characters (playable or otherwise) get name-dropped and casually discussed by the event cast's dialogue.
  • "The Maydays" reference a ton of past lore covered by the "What Makes The Sky Blue" trilogy. There's also a subtle reference to "No Rain, No Rainbow" as the Grandcypher's galley is brought up again, with a dedicated room for Sandalphon to brew and serve coffee to the crewmembers. And on Chapter 5, Lyria and Vyrn acknowledged that this event is just another average summer for them since they've already dealt with sentient watermelons, urkins and eals in the past, a reference to the previous summer-themed events of Granblue.
  • "Kappa Summer Chronicle" is a continuation of "The Maydays", recalls a summary of the "Second Advent" featuring Cassius and The Society members, and also gives references to the "Welcome to the Bistro Feendrache" event by way of Savarin's cameo and Siegfried recalling his cooking experiences.
  • Gearcycles are used by the residents of Tahar Island. Tabina and Vyrn acknowledge that Mysteria already had them before, a reference to "A Walk on the Wild Side".
  • Being an event focused on the ten Eternals, the "Seeds of Redemption" event references a lot of past story events that featured the Eternals, including their Continuity Cameos on Holiday-themed stories.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Specific boss battles, especially the Primarch and Xeno Raids have an increased resistance to elements which are not superior to theirs. In this cases, the game explicitly tells the players to follow the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors if they do not want to have a hard time.
  • Some bosses are immune to certain status effects (i.e. Justice Aracrum being Immune to Gravity, and Primarchs being immune to ATK/DEF Down) while others lower the success rate of being inflicted with a status effect (particularly the useful ones like paralyze) each time they're successfully hit with it. Some bosses play with this by becoming immune or vulnerable to certain status effects at certain HP tresholds. Ultimate Bahamut is a particularly special case. He's not immune to paralyze (though he does gain resistance to it), but it doesn't stop him from using attacks that are triggered at certain HP thresholds.
• Cool Airship: You and your crew get around the world with an airship called the Grandcypher. Noa's Fate Episode reveals that it was built by the Astrals as their flagship to invade the world. Through the Crew/Guild system you can also get the Dravenspirit, Frontier, and Engella, though they only receive passing mention in the main story.
• Cooldown Manipulation: Some characters and enemies have access to skills that manipulate the "Skill Intervals", either raising them or lowering them.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: A majority of the game's content is made up of multi-party raid battles in which other players can participate in fighting boss battles that others have hosted.
• Counter-Attack: Some characters have passive or active skills that allow them to dodge an enemy attack, and follow-up with an attack of their own. Buffs such as "Counters on Dodge" will also give this effect to affected party members.
• Cover Album: After the band Stella Magna was involved in the music production of Granblue Fantasy Versus, they also released an album containing their own cover versions of several Granblue tracks from the browser game, simply titled STELLA MAGNA - Songs from GRANBLUE FANTASY -.
• Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: Chapter 116 has a serious example, as Katalina and Rosetta cover Lyria's and Io's eyes to shield them from the sight of a soldier being burned alive by one of the Holy Erste Empire's Titan Suits.
• Creation Myth: According to myth, the God of Creation created the Sky World which had the various races slowly grow on the many islands that were created. Eventually his creations rebelled against the god, splitting him into two beings, one with the power of creation and the other wielding the power of destruction and regeneration. The former left, creating a stagnant world, being unable to destroy anything. The latter stayed in the sky world, making it undergo a cycle of destruction and regeneration all the way up to the present day.
  • As of the "Right Behind You" event, it's really unclear how much of this is actually true and how much of it is a misremembering of events between the Astrals and the Moon-dwellers.
  • The creation myth gets briefly mentioned by Sandalphon in "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000". But this time, he calls the split halves of the Creator as "the god who fashioned the stars" and the other as "the god who remained in the sky". Lucio later expands more into this, stating that the orignal god is The Omnipotent one, his master who came from another dimension and shaped this world based on the previous world he left behind, splitting himself in the process. The two halves are in eternal wars to overpower the other and fuse once more, with the proxy war between the Astrals and the Skydwellers being one.
• Creator Cameo: Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita, the game's composers, appear as "Nobiyo" and "Narita", the director and conductor of the Sky Philharmonic Orchestra respectively, which originally served as an in-joke for how Narita and Uematsu were hosting live Granblue orchestra performances circa 2016, but has since gone on to become a fleshed-out part of the setting. Both of them also serve as free summons granted as rewards for playing "Together in Song" to use as battle.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: The game takes place in a vaguely European setting, with many of its places and characters given western names. While there is a Japan-like country among the floating islands, and the vast amount of trading done implies some of the cast should be familiar with some concepts, there's still a few times when their knowledge is well over what one might expect with everyone wearing kimonos for the New Year, everyone participating in White Day, and J-Pop idols and fundoshi are commonplace enough for people not to remark on them. This can also lead to minor continuity errors such as in Mirin's intro Fate Episode where Lyria says she's never seen a kimono before and is baffled by the garment despite it being entirely possible to meet various characters before her who have kimonos and she herself has worn a kimono in New Year's cutscenes. In Sig's episode, she and Vyrn didn't even know what a sashimi is and how it tastes like.
• Critical Existence Failure: Playable characters can still perform any ability at low health as they can normally do at max health. However, this is zig-zagged as everyone has a "critical health animation" that plays when their HP bar is red, which usually causes them to crouch in pain and the gameplay is still not affected. Likewise, being hit with specific debuffs like Paralyze will always send the character in their "critical health animation" even if they are at full health.
• Critical Hit: Handled a bit differently compared to other games. First, you either need a passive or a buff that lets you make critical hits. Second, you can only make critical hits if the enemy is already elementally weak to whatever attack you're making. The chance and how much additional damage you do varies, and different sources can stack and proc at the same time. Though Ultimate Bahamut is non-elemental, it can deploy a special field effect that allows any character, regardless of element, to use critical hits against it.
• Critical Hit Class: The availabilty of a Critical Node (which increases the damage and chance of critical hits) in the Extended Mastery Perks depends on the character's Style, Race, and Unique nodes - Attack-style characters benefit from having one Critical Node in their top EMP row. While Human and Draph characters have another Critical Node in their second EMP row. There are those that have yet another one in the third row. For example, Sturm has a total of 3 Critical Nodes for being an Attack Draph while also having an extra Critical Node in the bottom.
• Critical Status Buff:
  • Enmity, a weapon skill that increases party members' attack based on how much HP they're missing. Getting the most out of the skill be extremely risky since it requires leaving your party with very low HP.
  • Also inverted with Stamina, which increases attack when they have more HP, allowing the party to benefit from its max effects with full health, but disappears at around 50% HP.
• Crossover: Granblue has crossed over with other games and anime (most closely with THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls and Rage of Bahamut due to Cygames having a stake in all three games) over the years. Other game franchises and/or anime series make collaborations with Granblue as a way for them to promote any upcoming movie or anime series for that season, or simply for milestone and anniversary celebrations. On the other hand, Cygames does this to promote the game to the fans of these franchises.
  • The Rage of Bahamut "crossover" is less an event and more an ongoing thing; a substantial portion of the cast is drawn from RoB, with more getting added periodically as time goes on, as event characters, gacha characters and promotionals for things like RoB anime DVDs. Hell, one of the main cast members is Rose Queen! Such that it seems the game is an Alternate Continuity for RoB or else a more subtle fusion.
  • THE iDOLM@STER: SideM had a promotional event with Granblue, but only the three main characters and Pierre from Beit appear here.
  • The January 2016 Unite and Fight event is themed after Slayers, with Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent as the recruitable characters.
  • Street Fighter also gets crossed over twice, the latest being the Street Fighter V crossover event of April 2016.
  • Sakura Wars and Space Invaders (yes, at the same time) had crossover events for May 2016.
  • The Tales Series has also had a crossover featuring characters from various games in June 2016, as a tie-in to one of their mobile games, Tales of Asteria.
  • There was a crossover with a Square Enix mobile game, Lord of Vermillion Re:3, in September 2016, using the Defense Order gameplay.
  • A crossover with Samurai Shodown happened in January 2017. Interestingly unlike other crossovers where characters were explicitly from another universe, this one simply introduces the characters as a part of the Sky World.
  • Shadowverse received a collaboration event, and Mordecai the Duelist makes a relatively unexpected appearance as the event's boss, still as persistent just like in the main game.
  • The Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu collaboration event happened mid-September 2017, with it being the first event to give out a free SSR character.
  • The October 2017 Cardcaptor Sakura crossover also had a free SSR character and was the first event with costumes for the crossover character. (Though Lina Inverse was technically first, her costume didn't have any actual changes to her appearance, it was simply made to give her a shorter Charge Attack animation.) Unlike other crossovers, which are mostly self-contained and not referenced after its completion, it had a Continuity Nod in "Auld Lanxiety" indicating that it's canon to Granblue in some form.
  • The December 2017 collaboration event with Attack on Titan has Mikasa as the free SR and Levi as the free SSR character of the event. Also, notably, rather than just being multiversal shenanigans, much like Shodown it incorporates a version of the AoT setting into the wider lore of the game, making use of the fact that the original adventure takes place on an island in the main AoT story, and just replacing the Marlean mainland with the skydoms.
  • April 2018's collaboration with Case Closed features Conan as the free SSR character with Amuro recruitable in the second half of the event.
  • A mini-crossover of some sort. Special Week from Uma Musume replaces Vyrn in the Daily Login Rewards screen for two weeks in June 2018 as a part of the "Uma Musume Campaign". It is basically similar to the special weeks conducted when the game reaches million-player milestones, or during holidays and anniversaries.
  • The Persona 5 event was on June 2018. This one notably has a very concrete place in the timeline, the crew runs into the Phantom Thieves just after beating Tiamat.
  • A crossover with Love Live! Sunshine!! was on August 2018 release with all characters from the idol group Aqours as recruitable in three distinct trios. In addition, the players could vote for one of the trios to receive a fifth uncap, with the second-years trio ultimately winning.
  • As of August 24, 2018, all Granblue players can receive a free SSR JEHUTY Summon as a part of promoting Zone of The Enders: The 2nd Runner M∀RS.
  • Granblue had a real-life collab with McDonald's in Japan. It also had themed skins for the Captain.
  • A crossover event with Futari wa Pretty Cure took place on October 2018, in celebration of the series 15th anniversary.
  • Another Cygames property, Princess Connect Re:Dive, had its crossover on December 2018.
  • Code Geass had its crossover event on June 2019, with Jun Fukuyama doing a special promo as Lelouch to hype up fans. Unlike other crossovers where the characters safely return home, Lelouch and company choose to destroy the means by which they were transported to the Sky World to keep Nunnally safe.
  • Love Live! had a second crossover in 2019, following up on a Sequel Hook in the Sunshine event that revealed the presence of μ's in Granblue.
  • As part of the April Fools' gag for 2021, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo had a limited crossover that was only around for April 1st where Bobobo and Vyrn? vie for domination over the day.
  • Final Fantasy XI had a crossover on May 2022 to celebrate the MMO's 20th anniversary. Uniquely the game's interface got redesigned and an option to remove voices from dialogue was added in order to directly emulate the original while playing the event.
• Crossover Cameo:
  • Kaisar Lidfard from Rage of Bahamut: Genesis appears in Amira's Fate Episodes.
  • Eris from Shadowverse appears in "Duelist of Eternity", still watching over the Morning Star.
  • Crystalia Tia, another character from Rage of Bahamut makes an appearance in Lily's 5★ episode.
  • For the Code Geass crossover event, Euphemia li Britannia appears in Suzaku Kururugi's uncap artwork.
• Crossover Cosmology: As with the characters appearing in Rage of Bahamut and Shadowverse, the game combines various deities and figures from different mythologies into one setting, though they are a bit different in depiction and at times characterization. Some examples include:
  • Classical Mythology: Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Aphrodite, Athena, Enyo, Cerberus, among others...
  • Egyptian Mythology: Horus, Bennu, Osiris
  • Hindu Mythology: Shiva
  • Japanese Mythology: Kaguya, Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto (Just called Tsukuyomi in-game)
  • Canaanite Mythology: Shahar ^note Though he likely began as a reference to the biblical passage due to the Helel ben Sahar addition to his name, Shalim
  • Norse Mythology: Thor, Baldr, Freyr
  • Biblical Figures: Lucifer^note Two versions. One that is an angel and portrays Lucifer pre-fall and one that isn't but fills a role similar to the fallen version of Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Beelzebub, Belial, Avatar (filling in for Satan)
• Crutch Character: Yodarha is nicknamed as "Yoda" because he's legendary for this. His SSR version's Limit Break has a special effect that can easily deal up to one million damage, no matter your own level or equipment. If you can get your hands on him early, he will completely destroy the first two thirds of the game, until you finally reach a level where a million isn't that impressive anymore, and he'll slide to lower tiers. Bonus points for having the trope's classic "old man with legendary skill but way past his prime" character concept.
• Cryptid Episode: One "Grand Blues! Radio" quest has Lowain, Lyria and Vyrn teaming up with the Lumiel Knights in a quest to find the rumored Loch Crabess as its meat can be used to make exquisite dishes. As it turns out, Crabess is a large crab capable of imitating the voices of those who enter its lair. While they did manage to defeat and cook it, consuming its meat allows one to temporarily change his/her voice.
• Cut and Paste Environments: The Fate Episodes are guilty of having near-identical background arts. Why would one character stand in the very same spot that another character stood in another episode? Why do some houses have similar interiors? Why do most towns look the same? All of these questions came from the usage of this trope.
  • One of the most jarring examples is found in the 5★ Fate Episode of the Aquors Second-Years. The piano room Riko discovers is basically the background image used for the "Lonesome Dragoness" Side Story event, minus Anne and Grea. The image from the said 5★ episode is even darkened out, in a possible attempt to hide the cut-and-paste.