Granblue Fantasy / Tropes D to H

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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D

• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The DEF Down debuff and its Elemental and Stackable variants lower the affected target's defense for a given duration.
• Damage Reduction: The Defense statistic plays a role in reducing the damage your characters receive. There are also Elemental Defense Ups as its variations, and DMG Cut buffs that reduce damage by a specific percentage.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Or Triumphant Reprise depending on interpretation, all of the Omega raid bosses have sections taken from or resemble their respective island's themes.
  • The powerful, blood-pumping theme of Merkmal Island, first island of the Nahlegrande chapter, comes back as a lonely guitar piece for the ruined Starke Island, and as the chapter's melancholy closing credits.
• Deadly Dust Storm: The Tahar Island is infamous for its desert sandstorms which are mostly the result of a Primal Beast dwelling there.
• Deadly Environment Prison: Drang finds out to his dismay that the Istavion outpost he's been taken to is located in the middle of the deadly Grim Basin.
• Death Dealer:
  • The Discarded Puppets in the Arcarum Expeditions use the Tarot cards to cast spells on themselves and on your team.
  • Can be deliberately done by the captain and Lyria, as the manner of summoning an Arcarum Primal Beast involves the use of tarot cards, much like the Persona franchise.
• Death from Above: A majority of the Summons' Call Animations count, and in a multitude of ways! A giant laser beam fired by a dragon (which bores a hole in the clouds)? Light beams raining from the skies? Falling light swords? Swords that fall from the sky and detonate afterwards? A meteor drawn from the sun itself? A laser beam, forming a straight line that incinerates the ground? A giant fish mimicking a nuclear warhead's explosion? You name it!
• Death Is Cheap: For primals. A heavily wounded primal will retreat into its core until fully recovered. The only known way to actually kill a primal is through the use of Otherworldly Weapons as shown by what happened to Lucifer in Paradise Lost though even that was written to be a plot contrivance per Word of God. As well, it's left up in the air as to whether this is permanent or if primals can come back from it.
• Deconstruction: The 2019 event Primal Resonance delivers a unique one about the Unite and Fight events. The Big Bad primal is utterly infuriated at skyfarers, and explains how the island would be more peaceful and at ease for primals beasts to dwell on if it wasn't for the many crews who arrive at every active season, get absolutely violent both against primals and one another, and attack primals for sport and bragging rights. Given the further depth developed for the lore of the island in this event, it sure makes skyfarers sound far more monstrous.
  Geo: "Do you know how many times your people have come to this island? How many times they have scarred it with their wars for supremacy?"
• Defeat Equals Explosion: Happens to some notable raid bosses, such as Bahamut and the Arcarum (which is different from the death animation of common enemies that fade to red when defeated).
• Degraded Boss: Several bosses from previous Unite and Fight events can be found as random encounters in the Arcarum dungeons.
• Designated Girl Fight: In "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000", your party doesn't get to fight the corrupted form of Azrael and Israfel, instead the twin archangels Halluel and Malluel hold the line in their first encounter so that Sandalphon and the rest can pass through. Even in their second encounter, the twins are holding back Azrael and Israfel, only to have a winning chance when Michael, another female angel joins the fight.
• Detective Drama: Any event or Grand Blues Radio quest involving Barawa will end up like this, supporting characters who end up accompanying him will be labeled as either; a fellow detective, a victim, a suspect, or a witness.
  • Naturally, the Case Closed crossover is one of these. For bonus points, Barawa is also a major supporting character.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • In general, Primal Beasts who have been Promoted to Playable have a near-perfect synergy with their respective summons:
    • Yggdrasil has a Refresh skill which heals allies per turn, her summon can boost the amount and cap of any healing done to the party.
    • Tiamat has a Guardian of the Wind passive that boosts her offensive stats as long as she has a Mirror Image buff. At its final uncap, her summon's call is upgraded to provide a Mirror Image buff to the party.
    • Alexiel's Uncrossable Realm stacks with her summon's Call Effect even at base form, allowing the party to easily have more than 100% DMG Cut.
    • Olivia is known for having ridiculously long cooldowns on her skills which bring helpful utilities against bosses. Her summon's final uncap reduces a Dark character's skill cooldowns by 1.
  • If you have upgraded all six Seraphic Weapons to their SSR forms, the shortcut icon for the Seraphic Weapons would disappear from the Extras menu of the Home page, clearing out a used space. There's actually no more reason for the game to remind you about Seraphics at this point (although the Shop still has a section for the said weapons, but it would only contain links for rewatching cutscenes with the Primarchs).
  • If you have accumulated at least 300 Cerulean Sparks on the same banner, a large "Trade for Spark" button will appear at the bottom of the Premium Draw screen, regardless if you last used a single or a tenfold draw.
  • For the Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu event, due to the characters from the event literally being the weapons that can be traded in the event shop, the weapons cannot be reduced, sold or used to upgrade other weapons.
  • For the Code Geass crossover event, players can choose whether to show the pilots (Lelouch, Kallen and Suzaku) or the Knightmares (Gawain, Guren, and Lancelot) as their respective unit's inventory and party artworks. Their units' names will them change accordingly to match what is displayed on their artwork.
  • The late June 2019 summer event "The Maydays" is actually split into three sub-stories and the story banner will change depending on your progress in the event's story.
• Dialog During Gameplay: Some Scripted Battles employ this trope by having your playable characters discuss strategies on how to defeat the boss, or even converse with the enemy. In other cases, your other party members will comment on the status of the captain, such as praising Gran/Djeeta if they deliver a killing blow, giving thanks for buffs, and threatens the enemy if the captain is defeated. Certain characters will also banter with each other during battles like any pair of siblings. Such groups and pairings like the ones listed are just a few examples:
  • The iDOLM@STER characters
  • Barawa, Sarya and Chat Noir
  • The Three Old Men (Eugen, Soriz and Jin)
  • Almeida and Io.
  • The four Dragon Knights (Lancelot, Vane, Siegfried and Percival)
  • Society members (Zeta, Vaseraga, Eustace, Beatrix and Ilsa)
  • Yuel and Societte
  • Mysteria Academy students (Anne, Grea and Owen)
  • Black Knight and Orchid
  • Sturm and Drang
  • The Gunsisters (Silva, Cucoroux and Cameiux); Silva also has character banter with Tweyen.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: The "Final Limit Break" or FLB stages for some weapons (101-200), summons (101-150) and characters (71-90 for SRs and 81-100 for SSRs), which are represented by a blue star. Not only do these levels tend to require higher amounts of Experience points to level up, they also provide minimal stat increments per level. In order to compensate, FLB weapons gain a new subskill, FLB characters gain improved passives and skill-sets, and FLB summons gain an additional aura effect.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In Cain's episode, a Rhem doctor once accidentally splashed a bit of hot disinfecting water on the previous Sovereign, giving her a minor injury. He then lost the right to serve as the doctor of the court and was stripped off his title.
• The Dividual: Two characters function like this (Morphe/Phoebe and Dorothy/Claudia). Since they're both two characters in one, each one has their own set of three skills with different effects and a shared fourth skill to swap out for the other. The Maids also have the added bonus of going up to 200% meter for their charge attack.
• Double Entendre: The trophy reward for beating Belial or Avatar at least 200 times in "What Makes the Sky Blue: Paradise Lost" is titled "Let's Climax Together".
• Double Knockout: In "A Thousand Reasons", the match between Feather and Randall ends in a tie as both simultaneously land a knockout blow on each other.
• Double-Meaning Title: The Japanese title typography for "Seeds of Redemption" (こくうしんしん) is written in a way that can also be read as こら、しすくん (Literally meaning "Hey, Seox").
• Downer Ending: Reflections of a White Clover ends on one with Krelkulkil making off with two demon swords, both eroding away at his mind, under the belief that one of them holds the soul of his dead fiance. And there's no telling whether this is actually true or just a delusion brought about by the demon sword. Thus, Sevilbarra is pretty much back to square one in his journey. The only consolation is that a deadly collection of demon swords was sent plummeting to the bottom of the sky, meaning that they won't be ruining the lives of anyone else.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: Any time the Eternals show up, expect them to have an objective that keeps them away from the plot or have something prevent them from using their full power. The exceptions are Seox in One Thousand Reasons, where he was eliminated because he was surprised by a cheater, and Seofon not solving the problem during the many times he could have in Poacher's Day for no apparent reason. Threo is debatable in that she theoretically could solve the plot of things she's in, but she's not very bright.
• Dramatic Irony: The third arc of the main story reveals that the captain's father had a mission that involves the prevention of a singularity from appearing, thus explaining why Vyrn had his memories and powers sealed and Lyria hidden away. And then his son/daughter turned out to be a singularity...
• Draw Aggro: Characters with the "Substitute" buff will take in all incoming damage for themselves during the next turn. Additionally, the "Hostility" buffs determine the chance for a party member to be targeted. high Hostility characters will be targeted more than those with low Hostility.
• Driving Question: The eponymous question of the anniversary events, "What makes the sky blue?" It's a rhetorical question as characters muse on the eternal status quo of a blue sky. Lyria thinks it's nice that the skies don't change, Lucifer envies the Skydwellers' abilities to ask such mundane questions without expecting an answer, and Belial mocks the idea, claiming that the sky being blue is merely just one outcome and there isn't any reason why the sky has to be blue beyond that's just how it was.
• Dub Name Change: Applies to several characters and gameplay terms in the English translation.
  • The Magna boss/weapon suffix was changed to Omega.
  • Guild War Weapons were renamed Revenant Weapons.
  • Zenith Points were renamed to Extended Mastery Points (EMP for short). All terms associated with them were also changed to Extended Mastery.
  • The Guild Wars event was retitled Unite and Fight.
  • Any character who appeared in the localized version of Rage of Bahamut and had their name changed in that game retain the changed name for consistency.
  • Shirou from the Robomi event had his name changed to Nicholas.
  • Lucilius has his name changed from “Lucifaa”. Likely because translating it to its real meaning would mean giving him the exact same name as Lucifer due to it being an alternate pronunciation for the name, tying into the theme of All three of the faces being named “Lucifer” in some way, which would be confusing for the English speaking readers.
  • Most of the Primal Beasts kept their names, but The Order Grande got reworded to the more English Grand Order, and Chevalier got inexplicably renamed Luminiera.
  • Some charge attack names were changed like Lady Grey's Bone Death Waltz being changed to Death March.
    • This even applies when some characters say the attack's name, like Grea saying Madness Cleave when the text says it's Cleaving Madness and Veight whose charge attack is named "Bleeding Edge", yet he shouts "Blood Edge".
  • Speaking of Charge Attacks, the Japanese word used when a character unleashes these kinds of moves is "Ougi" which then translates to "Secret Art" or "Ultimate Move". Katalina even shouts the word in a trailer for Granblue Fantasy: Relink. But in the English localization, what we get is "Charge Attack" instead.
  • The Omega weapon line was changed to Ultima to avoid confusion with the aforementioned dub name change for Magna weapons.
  • In "A Thousand Reasons", the name of the tournament in spoken Engrish Japanese is Skygrande Fight. The English translation's text calls it Grandsky Rumble instead.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Some people took issue with the Love Live! Crossover event trivializing depression by making it happen unnaturally and being "cured" by idols singing. There's also the matter of the "heroic" idols simulating a natural disaster to trick people to come to their shows.
• Dump Stat: Since Over-Mastery / EMP Rings rely on RNG when it comes to providing stat bonuses, they can have the unfortunate effect of giving a stat boost which is technically useless on a specific character. This is rather infuriating given the amount of time and effort required to obtain the rings. Fortunately, the player can reroll a character's additional stats by giving them another ring. Some of the common dump stats include the following:
  • Charge Attack Damage and Cap Up for characters who cannot deal damage with their charge attacks such as Korwa, Summer Diantha and Kokkoro.
  • Healing Cap Up for characters without a healing ability
  • Skill Damage and Cap Up for characters who do not have damaging (red) skills.
  • Multi-Attack Rate Ups for characters who cannot attack, such as Sakura Kinomoto and Lyria. These stats may also become useless for characters who can permanently multi-attack in the first place, such as Albert, Amira (in her Half-God, Half-Demon form) and Owen.

E

• Early Game Hell: But of course! This is an RPG gacha game that encourages grinding. When you're still starting out, you have to rely on RNG to give you at least decent units that can potentially be one of your end-game characters. While the earlier player Ranks encourage you to play Story modes for more Crystals and resources, it becomes much harder for beginners once they start the meat of the game - the multi-party raids. A starting team with a basic SR weapon grid can dish only 4 to 5 digits of damage at most, and you'll also have to rely on Support Summons to boost your DPS. And while you can host Omega raids as early as Rank 30, don't expect to defeat it alone without a decent SSR grid. Lastly, while you can use real money to obtain more Crystals for Draws, grinding for SSR weapons is still very much encouraged so that your team won't hit like a wet noodle.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The first batch of characters the game had would actually meet/join you because of their connections to the weapons that unlocked them (the Thunder Rapier was stolen from Rosamia, the Draph Hammer is an old work of Galadar's, the Mandau is able to seal Zehek's power, etc.). Later characters have more varied motivations, probably because there's only so many spins you can put on "you have this thing so I will now join you" before it gets stale.
  • Most of the earliest characters lack a wide variety of facial expressions present in most of the latest batches. Even some of the oldest examples like Silva only stick to a single static image for all of their dialogue. Out of Focus R characters are hit hard with this.
  • Early events and story showed that their bond gave Lyria the ability to disappear into the main character's body at will. That was very quickly slipped under the rug, and now they are two separate existences even though they effectively share one life. Also, in an example of Characterization Marches On, Pommern was once way more of an asshole compared to later chapters, where he acts as the more reasonable foil to Furias's status as a complete maniac.
  • A majority of the story events, and character Fate episodes will always have a battle sequence for every chapter. Heck, even in most of the Main Story Chapters and earliest Fate Episodes, there were always enemy encounters, appearing out of nowhere and interrupting dialogue for no justified reason. But as the newer updates came in, this eventually became old, allowing events, fate episodes, and story arcs to narrate the dialogue without worrying about unnecessary interruptions from fighting "random" mooks if the episode part doesn't demand battles. For example, The final 5★ episode of the Aquors Second-Years don't have battles as they are simply taking the time to compose a new song.
  • On the topic of earliest character fate episodes, some of their chapters can be very short, with cases like the first chapters of Albert's and Seruel's skill unlock episodes lasting less than a dozen lines each before the battle begins.
  • Some of the game's earliest events and crossovers such as "Festival of Falling Flame", "Duelist of Eternety" "SideM Fantasy" and "A Tale of Intersecting Fates" all have short stories, even only having 4 Chapters, and don't expect the episodes of each chapter to be long either. This is in contrast to the latest events which all have 8 Chapters in total, including the Prologue and Epilogue. And when it comes to the latest crossover events, there are also additional Daily Cutscenes for the duration of the event. Nonetheless, general criticism from the playerbase tells that these old events are too short and the plot appears to be resolved quite quickly.
  • Due to the Continuity Drift in the Evokers' Fate Episodes, the "memories of the War" Aborted Arc has been re-used but subtly integrated. However, the episodes of Fraux, Geisenborger and Caim seem to borrow a lot from the first iteration of Arcarum. Most of their first batch of Fate Episodes are significantly shorter than say, Maria Theresa or Nier. Furthermore, Fraux's backstory is tackled on the penultimate uncap of the Devil, and the primal beast isn't awake in her early episodes.
• Easter Egg:
  • Lyria's victory animation has a small chance of imitating her Grand Blues! version, dribbling Vyrn like a basketball or eating a seemingly infinite amount of noodles.
  • Diola has a chance of going completely off-script in Summer Diantha's charge attack, interrupting their synchronized lines up to the final line.
  • Sakura's victory animation has a chance of having Tomoyo popping out of a bush that appeared out of nowhere and squeal at Sakura being in action like her home series does.
  • Mirin's victory animation normally involves her throwing her katana into the air and catching it without looking. There's a small chance that she'll actually miss and let her blade fall to the ground, before striking her normal pose while visibly nervous.
  • If you have Joker on your party, there's a chance for the Victory Cutscene to be replaced with Persona 5's own complete with Background Music Override.
  • Some characters who share special lore relationships will have unique lines to each other when used in the same party. Additionally, if the characters all belong to a common group, they will simultaneously recite the name of the Chain Burst. Examples include the Society members and the Cinderella Girl idols.
• Eastern Zodiac: Every year, a new character based on the current year's Zodiac is introduced: Anila is the Goat, Andira the Monkey, Mahira for Rooster, etc. Unfortunately, that means that if you can't get said character during the year, it's Permanently Missable Content for a year before being put back in the gacha.
• Elegant Classical Musician: The five musicians of the Sky Philharmonic Orchestra, all having mastered their instrument and bringing brilliant and elegant music all across the Skydom for everyone to enjoy.
• Elemental Powers: Characters come in one of six elements, Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, Light and Dark.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Earth beats Water, Water beats Fire, Fire beats Wind and Wind beats Earth. There's another elemental set, Dark and Light are weak to each other. Only the player has the advantages of the second set, enemies with those elements aren't strong against the opposing element.
• Elite Mooks: The Coop Quests feature enemies that you encounter in other story quests as typical "weak mobs". In this mode, not only do they have increased health, attack, and defense, they also have more skills and abilities to make the battle harder. Justified as the Coop Quests are made for multi-party battles, and it would be difficult for a beginner to fight these mooks alone.
• Elite Tweak: Despite the massive amount of content in terms of characters and weapons, players have created recommended guides which provide the most plausible damage output for every element. There exists guides of Basic Grids for Omega and Primal Weapons, and then there are otherwise game-breaking builds which are now otherwise accepted as the "norm", such as a Summer Zooey with a Celeste Claw Grid and another weapon grid build favoring Luminiera Sword Omegas over Luminiera Bolt Omegas.
  • Certain characters synergize well with a majority of other characters, or stand out with a majority of the content, sometimes to the point of serving as "game-breakers". The aforementioned Summer Zooey's extreme usefulness in Emnity grids makes her viable for other elements also utilizing Enmity-based weapons. The same goes to Korwa who can provide strong buffs regardless of the characters' elements.
• The Empire: The main enemies of the game, the Erste Empire. Even more so once they actually get an Emperor. By the third arc, a certain section splinters off to become the Holy Erste Empire, using Zwei's resemblance to Orchid as a pretext for taking over islands in Phantagrande.
• Equipment Upgrade: There's the uncap mechanic for weapons and summons which increases the items' level cap, and are represented by stars. The player can then upgrade a newly-uncapped item by "feeding" other weapons, summons, or EXP fodders into it.
  • The shop also allows the players to Reforge specific items by gathering a large amount of the required items and sacrificing them to the weapon or summon. Each Forging Upgrade increases the item's level cap, directly increases its stats, or upgrades its rarity from SR to SSR.
• Equivalent Exchange: Alchemy in Granblue works in this principle as well, as discussed by Cagliostro and Clarisse in the former's event episode.
  Cagliostro: Alchemy is esentially the decomposition of matter to be reshaped into something else entirely. Meaning that if you have no matter to begin with, you can't make anything.
• Establishing Character Moment: Most introductory Fate Episodes are like this: the crew meets their future party member, we get an idea of their personality, usually they also get a chance to show off how powerful they are, and then they ask to join the crew with the Captain giving their consent. The exceptions are either event characters, who get theirs during the event, or alternate versions of existing characters, in which case their first Fate Episode instead usually serves to establish their Character Development.
  • The Eternals are a special case. The crew meets the Eternals over the course of awakening their Revenant weapon, slowly learning about the weapon's respective Eternal until the weapon is complete, unlocking their first Fate Episode where you battle them.
• Everyone Is Bi: With a few exceptions (Metera, who is straight, and Sandalphon and Vira, who are very deeply in love with a man and a woman, respectively), everyone is implicitly bisexual, or at least not leaning a certain way. Some of this is due to the player character, who's either male or female, being able to participate on both sides even in gendered holidays (Valentines and White Day are both gendered in Japan, with the latter even existing because of it), but many of them show interest in both sexes. In a rarity for fiction, the characters also have preferences for which gender they prefer, even having their lines changed depending on whether you play as Djeeta or Gran if it applies to them.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows:
  • SSR (a.k.a. the highest-rarity) characters and summons are represented by a Rainbow crystal when drawing them from the gacha or the Token Draw... Or they can come from Amber crystals too!
  • If a golden chest flips in mid-air, accompanied by both a harp tune and a rainbow, expect that it contains a very rare item such as an SSR Weapon, an SSR summon, a Damascus Grain, an Elemental Urn, a Blue Sky Crystal, a Silver Centrum, or a Gold Brick. It can also drop Elemental Centrums and Supreme Merits!^note While most of the mentioned items are indeed rare, the last two are actually common drops from raids.
• Experience Booster: The Journey Drop Shop allows the players to buy items which increase the rate at which Experience Points, Rank Up Points, and Upgrade Experience are earned. There are also summons such as the White Rabbit that passively increase the experience points earned in a battle.

F

• The Faceless: The Evokers' backstories presented many characters whose faces are covered in shadows, easily indicating that they have minor roles.
• Faceless Goons: A lot of the generic enemy Imperial soldiers you encounter in the story and events always wear helmets – even the wizards in robes!
• Faction Motto: The Holy Order of Lumiel Knights has a simple one with "Forever Pure... Forever Righteous".
• Fading Away: This is how your defeated party members vanish in battle.
• Fairy Sexy: The "Pixie" type enemies are fairies with revealing legs, while there are also "Sprite" type enemies with exposed midriffs.
• Fake Longevity: The game is similar to MMORPGs wherein you need a lot of materials to upgrade or uncap characters, weapons, and summons. The most obvious examples would be the Eternals and Evokers who can only be recruited after you fully upgrade their respective items (Revenant Weapons for the Eternals, and Arcarum Summons for the Evokers). It could take months for a casual player to grind and obtain any of these characters, especially if they lack some of the extremely rare pre-requisites such as Gold Bars or Sunstones.
• Famed In-Story: Since the Grandcypher crew (especially Orchid) saved Phantagrande by bringing down the oppressive Erste Empire, their deeds have become a legend to the skydwellers. Later on in the third arc, a group of young aspirants roleplay each of the crew, along with mimicking their armor, equipment and speaking mannerisms. They even have a mascot dressed like Vyrn! In Chapter 116, Pommern summarizes their legend as "The brave skyfarers who fight to stop the evil empire. And the golem who was born at the end of it all..."
• Fanservice: Females generally have revealing outfits, particularly in their summer or seasonal versions which apply one or more of the Zettai Ryouiki or Cleavage Window. Likewise, Almost all Erunes are known for having a Sexy Backless Outfit.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • The Crystalia and Souval races are the victim of this as both are viewed as troublemakers by the other races that inhabit the island. It's a bit more justified than usual, considering the Crystalia radiate deadly cold unless they're in presence of certain individuals and the Souval have a tendancy to Hulk Out, but then any reason they had falls apart when they order genocide on two races that mostly keep to themselves and were native to the island in the first place, while the "regular" races being here is a relatively new thing.
  • In a Shout-Out to Rage of Bahamut, there are people with hatred to demons due to the war that took place long in the past. But this led to several Draphs being mistaken for demons to those who had seen such war due to the horns they possess. Evident in Nina's fate episode where a Draph man, being mistaken for a demon, was beaten up by a human who is too hung up in the past to let go of his vendetta of demons. And in Azazel's fate episode, he also mistook an NPC Draph for a demon and mistook the Draph talking with his human co-worker as a form of slavery.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
  • Generally, the Phantagrande Skydom evokes the typical pseudo-European Medieval Fantasy setting as most characters (including the majority of the playable cast) have Western Names.
  • The Nalhegrande Skydom resembles the Wutai of Fantasy settings, notably China. Characters there are usually wearing silk clothes, or evoke color themes of red-green that evoke China's ancient settings. Notably, one of the characters introduced there is named Bai Ze, from a Chinese legend. It is also the location of a superweapon named "The Great Wall".
  • Tahar Island from the "Dancing Avengers" event evokes Indian culture. Aside from the event itself being a love letter to Bollywood and the setting being a desert, the new characters' names, lifestyle, appearances and outfits do look like they are inspired from Indian fantasy.
• Feather Flechettes: In its summon call and boss battle, Garuda can send several sharp feathers at its opponents.
• Festival Episode: The New Year events feature characters based on the Zodiac signs, as well as Kimono / Yukata outfits for certain characters.
• Fictional Currency: Rupies, not to be confused with the real world Rupees, seem to be the standard for the entire world of Granblue Fantasy, and look like simple gold or copper coins.
• Field Power Effect: Few characters (and bosses) have skills that can deploy special Field effects to the entire raid, which in turn, affects all players and enemies alike under a specific duration. They are represented as skills with a purple border.
• Finale Title Drop: The "Make Up and Go!" event has the ending chapter display the title just after the last line of narration appears.
• First Town: Zinkenstill and Port Breeze both fit this trope, being the areas where several of the gameplay tutorials are taught, the beginning of the conflict with Erste gets set up and several characters get introduced to the player. Both islands are full of calm and beautiful grasslands.
• Fishing Minigame: The "Bzzt! Amped Up Summer" event has nodes which allow the player to play this kind of minigame. The player is given limited chances to cast their reel in a specific node, and they must properly time their clicks when the indicator reaches a highlighted spot in the sea (where creatures named "eals" also become visible). The mini-game gauges the timing of each click and gives bonus eals for every perfect one. These accumulated eals can later on be used to trade for rare materials in the game.
• Fish out of Water:
  • The recruitable Primals are these, and most of them will be amazed at how the human world and society works, particularly on small and material objects or items.
  • Being Crossover characters, the collaboration characters also count as they are not initially familiar with the world of Granblue. The first reaction of the crew will mostly involve asking where they come from and informing them of the skydom.
• Fission Mailed: There are specific quests where you must be defeated by the boss as a requirement for that story chapter. However, the game will try to fool you by displaying the "Failed" prompt just like when you fail any other quest or raid. The difference is that these instances will display the "Next" button on the lower right of the screen, instead of presenting a pop-up asking you to revive your party for a Full Elixir, like how the typical Quest Failure in this game works.
  • You need to be defeated by Yggdrasil Malice in Chapter 40 Part 3 in order to proceed.
  • Your entire party must be defeated by Vacheron in Chapter 3 Part 4 of the "A Tale of Interescting Fates" event in order for the story to continue, as your attacks would only do nothing but scratch it.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: In the prologue of "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000", Sandalphon wonders why he was able to see Lucifer's memories, particularly the scenes presenting the creation and rebellion of the fallen angels. He thinks that a present danger actually triggered that specific memory, of all things. A few moments later, Halluel and Malluel relays the exact location of Pandemonium to the crew, warning them that fallen angels have also been sighted.
• Fixed Damage Attack: The Poison status effect, including Damage-Over-Time debuffs act like this trope in the game. Poisoned characters or enemies take a fixed Non-Elemental damage per turn until the debuff expires.
• Flavor Text: The Wicked Sick Blaster's in-game description appears to be written from Walder's perspective, which is completely different from all of the other character, weapon, and summon lore descriptions in the Journal.
• Floral Theme Naming:
  • The "Five Flowers of Fate" event features Canna, Harie, Diantha, Linaria and Diola and four of them are named after the flowers canna, dianthus, linaria and viola.
  • Other selected few are also named after flowers such as Rosetta, Orchid and Sophie^note In-universe only, from the sopheria flower in her origin game.
• Fog of Doom: In Silva's Fate Episode, a black cloud of monster swarms approach the village. Lyria initially mistook them for rain clouds, but Silva immediately saw more than meets her keen eyesight. The village seems to be aware of them too and its citizens take shelter near a bell tower, since the monsters are afraid of its loud ringing.
• Food Porn:
  • "Little Skyfarer a la Sacre Blumiel!" has minigames wherein you get to cook for Charlotta, with the dishes being displayed at the player's view.
  • "Kappa Summer Chronicle" has this shot◊ of the cast being delighted at the shrimp dishes on the table.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Players who are aware of the Never the Selves Shall Meet mechanic of the game (you cannot fight a boss using their own playable versions in your party until you clear that Story Chapter for the first time) will notice an oddity in the "Table for Six" event. The fact that you can fight Lady Katapillar and Psycho Vira by using Katalina and/or Vira is a dead giveaway that something's off about them - it's All Just a Dream.
  • When players first met Vira in the story as when she opened her eyes, they lack a shine, hinting a part of her mental state.
  • Before Yggdrasil and Tiamat were Promoted to Playable, there were events and story chapters that show them with new or updated artworks, a hint that they will be more than just summons and raid bosses ("What Makes The Sky Blue" for Yggdrasil, and Chapter 95 for Tiamat)
  • A common trend of Cygames in the Grand Blues! webcomic is to release a comic strip starring a specific character, only to introduce a new event or gacha version of the said character in-game afterwards. One notable example is Alexiel, whose playable version was introduced just around 2 days after having her first comic appearance. This led to players taking hints from the comics to predict future additions in the game's character roster. Chances are, if a character suddenly appears in a comic, he/she will be received an updated version, or will star in a future story event.
  • The True King mentions in chapter 131 that Zegagrande is a Skydom that he has yet to conquer, hinting at the plot of Granblue Fantasy: Relink which takes place in that Skydom.
• The Four Gods: An event revolves around this titled Rise of the Four Beasts, featuring all four of them and the additional Huanglong and Qilin for you to fight.
• Fun with Acronyms: The English translation of Friday’s machine during 2018’s Auld Lang Syne event gave out FRIED SHRIMP, or, Fantastically Radical Idea for Ending Drudgery, Saving Human Resources from Infinite Mental Pain.

G

• Gag Series: The official Grand Blues! manga counts as this, complete with many examples of Character Exaggeration, Affectionate Parody, and Lampshade Hanging. Notably, this series served as the basis for the 2017 and 2018 April Fools events "Big Bad Shadow" - Grand Blues! was stated to be an Alternate Universe from the main game, with the manga version of Vyrn featured as the raid boss.
• Gameplay Automation: After clicking the Attack button, an "Auto" button appears at the lower left of the screen which will automatically lock the succeeding turns into the Attack phase. While this feature is useful for multi-wave battles such as Angel Halo where you can easily defeat mobs using normal attacks, the functionality of "Auto mode" is limited to auto-attacks and prevents you from using character skills or summons for the next turns unless it is toggled off. A "Full Auto" feature was later added to supplement this, by allowing the characters to use their abilities first before attacking. But this is subject to Artificial Stupidity since the A.I. follows a set of rules.
• Game-Favored Gender: As with most gacha games featuring male and female characters, there was a definite preference for female character releases, especially in the early years of the game. They’ve gotten better with male character releases over time, though the game still heavily favors female characters.
  • When it comes to Fanservice, female characters tend to have lewder uncap art and more dynamic, suggestive poses while the most a male character might get is a pose where his shirt is open. Summer Shiva averts this a little as his uncap art shows the outline of his ass and his back as he stands under a waterfall.
  • The vast majority of seasonal limited characters are female. As of April 3rd, 2022 there are 66 female seasonal units vs 19 male ones.
  • Grands don't escape the gender imbalance either, as there are 25 female Grands vs 15 male Grands.
  • There is gender imbalance in element distribution, at least in Dark. As of April 3rd, 2022, all Dark limited units are female, including seasonal limiteds.
  • Borders on Double Standard, but if there are two female characters in uncap art, they’re more likely to be depicted physically interacting (Touching, cuddling, etc.) vs two male characters in an uncap art together who will usually be at a safe distance from each other. An uncap that demonstrates this pretty well is Summer Medusa's uncap art which features the Primal Pals watching the sunset◊.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • While most events have a character that requires you to fill up the loyalty bar join you at the start of the event, some only join you at a certain point in the event story. (i.e. Stan from the Boots and Blades event doesn't join you until the near end of the event story.)
  • In the "Gripping Freedom" event, you don't get the story's primal beast, you get the Odajumoki gang as summons instead. Why? Because the event's Big Bad has the primal beast self destruct, making it impossible for Lyria to acquire any of its essence.
  • In a case, you can't unlock several characters' fate episodes (discounting the Guild Wars characters) until you reach a certain point of the main story. It was to avoid giving the players spoilers of the main plot far too early, like Dante being formerly part of the Crew of Enforcers when they're formally introduced to most players at the end of the Golonzo Island arc. There's also Zooey, A.K.A. the Grand Order who only joins the protagonist after they defeat Akasha, and Apollonia A.K.A. the Black Knight, whom the requirements of getting her fate episode is to reach chapter 65.
  • During the story, certain chapters don't allow the use of certain story characters or mandate it depending on the events. Notably, you can't use the Black Knight for a long time.
  • The introduction fate episodes change somewhat if you already have the character in a different form.
  • From Chapter 80-83, you only have Katalina as your ally when choosing your party. As Rackam, the Grancypher pilot is sent away from the air blast that occurred during chapter 79 which got the main party scattered, the player won't likely have an access to the ship that could call on the characters they recruited through the premium draws, that and the nearby dock is blocked by outlaws. It was only in chapter 84 that you can choose other allies for your party again as they would be able to find a local airship to get the party members to the location.
  • In the event "Poacher's Day", several characters' skin tones change halfway through to look a bit more tanned. It makes sense, given that they're out under the sun in swimwear for the majority of the event.
  • In a Mythology Gag sense, The support skill of the recruit-able characters from the Katsugeki Touken Ranbu collaboration is an increase of charge the lower the character's health. It's a reference to the awakened state mechanic where back in Touken Ranbu, the character may have a chance to attack twice and deal more damage than usual when they take moderate or severe damage from enemies.
  • Some story events and Fate Episodes differ depending on whether you've recruited a certain character, usually adding a short explanation of who they are for the benefit of people who haven't recruited the character and don't know who they are. Rewatching the cutscene gives the option to toggle which characters are considered to be recruited if you own any of the characters that trigger the change.
  • In the Attack on Titan crossover, the Granblue cast can't do much against the Titans during story missions until the Attack on Titan characters help, due to their lack of proper weaponry or experience against Titans. Subverted with the event battles, which treat the Titans like every other enemy.
  • In Auld Lanxiety, Gran/Djeeta, affected by the Klesha and doubted on Vyrn and Lyria being real, questions them. All these questions are based the story events and the number of questions varies on how many events the players have done in each account. For example, if you started during July 2017, the first question will be related to the Poacher's day event. Players who played before 2016 are given questions from the Eye Of the Storm event.
  • The weapon specialty mechanic: a character shown wielding certain types of weapons in the story will gain stat bonuses for every weapon of that type in-game. This also applies to characters having two specialties, or characters who fight using a Guardian Entity (i.e. Sara and Lady Grey having Melee specialty since their guardian entities fight enemies by respectively punching and clawing, or Anne having Spear specialty because her Heroic Spirit uses a Jousting Lance).
  • It is justified why the Arcarum Badges serve as the players' tickets upon entering the Arcarum expeditions. General Vizan explains that these are documents that serve as proof allowing the Grandcypher crew to assist in Menea's investigations on that island, and that each entry point has a garrison, justifying the mode's checkpoint system. He also mentions that the badges are issued at regular intervals, just as the game gives out one Arcarum Badge every day at 5AM JST.
  • During the "My Hero Academia: Rescue Another World" collab, players can select up to three characters to be registered as Sidekicks. Sidekicks receive 8 times more EXP from quests, up to a total of 15 million bonus EXP. The only character that cannot be selected as a Sidekick is the collab's secret character, Himiko Toga, due to her status as a villain in the world of My Hero Academia.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: There are quite a few plotholes that arise for the sake of gameplay convenience and the gacha system, such as:
  • Characters joining your crew before you actually meet them in the story. This also extends to some characters' Fate Episodes, such as Yggdrasil - if you unlock her way early before progressing to a certain plot point, you will be treated with a Late-Arrival Spoiler that pretty much summarizes the climax of the first arc.
  • Characters arbitrarily not joining you despite expressing the desire to do so because they're a drop from the gacha (such as Vira, Ferry, and Noa). There are also cases of characters who stayed behind or parted ways from your journey (such as Orchid, Drang, Sturm, Black Knight and Pholia) but are still playable in your party. It gets jarring when said characters get re-introduced in later arcs of the main story. For example, in Chapter 118, Noa is revealed to have stayed in Golonzo, and he is glad to meet the crew again after a long time. There are no changes to this scene even if you have already obtained them from the gacha as regular party members, aside from the game preventing you to use them in specific story chapters.
  • Acquiring the higher rarity version of a character that's gone through their Character Development arc before the low rarity starting version.
  • Traveling around the world and completing sidequests when doing so should be logically impossible if the player is currently at certain points in the Main Story line such as where the party gets split up numerous times.
  • Acquiring characters from Crossover events who would then return (lore-wise) to their respective franchises. For example, during the "Duelist of Eternity" event (and its side-story rerun), Arisa and Luna are able to return to their world after defeating Mordecai, but they are still permanently available in the character roster of this game after doing so.
  • There are some characters whose weapon specialties do not match the weapon type that they actually use in-game, such as Yaia having Sabre specialty with a frying pan.
  • Some story scenes will feature other characters lending their assistance to the player in battles, yet the party will be composed of player-selected characters and those who offered help do not appear in-game. It can be justified for NPCs such as Kaisar Lidfard in Amira's Fate Episode. This takes effect when the entire main cast is stated to take on the boss in-story, but gacha characters are used in-game.
  • In the "Poacher's Day" event, the boss fight against the Queen Sea Urkin takes place underwater. While the story mentions that the characters have to dive in order to reach the boss, you can still use your characters, weapons, and summons like what you can normally do against the boss fights above sea level. For example, even Jessica can fire her cannon without any drawbacks.
  • Characters and Primal Beasts re-appearing as permanent high-level raid bosses even though it would be impossible to do so outside of the stories and events where they initially appeared, due to lore-related circumstances. For example, Tiamat Malice being only in the memories of Rackam, Akasha who had been sealed inside Lloyd, Avatar whose cores have been disassembled in WMTSB3 and Lucilius and Belial who have been trapped in between dimensions.
  • This was originally thought to be the case with Lucio before it was revealed that he and Lucifer weren’t the same character as Lucifer is stated to be one of the strongest primal beasts in existence, likely only second to Bahamut himself but this didn’t necessarily translate to Lucio as a character with even Olivia pointing out in her fate episode that she can’t feel the full extent of the Supreme Primarch’s power. He is still relatively strong playable character himself, if not one of the best light premium draw characters in the game despite this.
  • As stated on his character section, Sandalphon, after obtaining the tetra-element wings, that according to the original “What Makes The Sky Blue” event having all of them would make him a match for if not stronger than the Supreme Primarch himself as well as him now having 12 wings post-activating Lucifer’s powers to take down Lucilius, who with 12 wings is one of the strongest beings in existence, is still one of the lesser light SSR characters. None of the power he’s supposed to have based on in-game lore and dialogue translates to Sandalphon gameplay wise, even after his 5* uncap. Likely justified due to the fact that him being that powerful would break the game, especially since he was a free event SSR. Likewise, he is also only a light SSR, despite him originally being a null element raid boss that could do damage in any element with the tetra-element wings.
• Gathering Steam: Some character skills have stacking effects that become stronger with each cast. Buffs and Debuffs that work under this mechanic are separately labeled either with a "(Stackable)" suffix, or a number under the status effect's icon. There are also characters whose skills combine the latter case with Mana Meter, such as Korwa, whose Charge Attack buffs become more potent the more Fils she has.
• Genius Loci: According to the final stage of co-op, Pandemonium itself is a primal beast and it can speak. According to Lyria as well, it can feel pain.
• Generation Xerox:
  • As the plot unfolds, it appears that the protagonist's Disappeared Dad took mostly the same path before them, becoming a skyfarer with similar goals and a very similar crew, including Vyrn, Rosetta, and Lecia's father Walfried. Rosetta even lampshades it when she finds out Lecia joined with the crew during her time stuck on Lumacie, ultimately chalking it up to fate.
  • This goes a bit further when you obtain Seox and play his second fate episode which hints that both the protagonist's father and Seox's father were good friends and the protagonist's father helped Seox out. So recruiting Seox can be seen as this.
• Genre Throwback: Discounting the gacha and grinding mechanics, the gameplay of Granblue Fantasy takes inspiration from the early, 2D Final Fantasy titles - Turn-based Eastern RPG gameplay, chibi character designs, four playable characters on the right side of the screen with enemies on the left (as well as bosses taking over the entire side), mechanics that allow the characters to cast abilities or use potions before attacking, the ability to use summons, the top-to-bottom attack sequence per turn, the fading animation of enemies when defeated. Even some of the Granblue staff are veterans involved in these early Final Fantasy games.
• Ghost Town: Played literally and figuratively in the case of Tramont Island, the "Mist-Shrouded Isle". By the time you get there, it is already under Celeste's curse, making the inhabitants unable to die, turning them into either shambling corpses, pale undead citizens or literally ghosts. After you defeat Celeste, everyone vanish, save for Ferry who joins your crew, leaving the island with no inhabitants, making Tramont Island a figurative Ghost Town per this trope's definition.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Chapter 75 has the Rock Winger, a very large bird acting as a boss while being extremely durable and hits as hard as the powerful Primal Beasts. However, the game does not even give an explanation as to why it is so strong, and it doesn't even have an entry in Lyria's Journal, thus lacking lore and background information. Unprepared players can have a hard time fighting it.
• Giant Woman: Applies to female humanoid Primal Beasts, who are sometimes depicted to appear as large as the Grancypher. Though the playable ones can shrink into normal skyfarer sizes. The ability to grow and shrink to any size seems to be a trend among the primal beasts.
• Global Currency: Rupies run the monetary economy both in-game, and story-wise.
• God in Human Form: A lot of Primal Beasts look humanoid on some level, but some of them are seen outright taking a human form and walking among the mortals. Examples include Noa, Grand Order/Zooey, Oneiros/Phoebe or Rose Queen/Rosetta. Noa is in fact never seen in any other form, probably because where most Primal Beasts govern concepts or natural phenomena, he is the "god" of shipwrights, a distinctly human activity.
• Going Home Again: After visiting her sister's grave on the island where she spent her last years, Ferry returns to Tramont island to hold a solitary funeral service for her. As she's still grieving at the time, she then enters her family's mansion and begins sorting through her family's belongings and cleaning the rooms, in an attempt to find some emotional closure.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: SSR items have gold borders and backgrounds in their inventory and party artworks.
• Golem: The Erste Kingdom specialized in making these to protect their island. The Erste Empire later introduces the modernized versions.
• The Good Kingdom: As revealed in the third arc, the Erste Empire is now known as the Erste Kingdom under the leadership of Queen Orchis, along with Adam and Pommern as her subordinates. The old empire is gone, and Erste is now being ruled by its proper royalty.
• Gorgeous Gorgon: You can encounter attractive female Naga who wear Fur Bikini as their only form of clothing. A variant named the "Sephiran Naga" frequently appears in Arcarum. True to this trope, they can inflict the Charm status effect.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Arcarum Expedition maps may sometimes require you to kill all enemies in the current area to move on to the next one.
• Government Agency of Fiction: "Skydom Bureau of Invesigation" or SBI, an Expy of the FBI, the agency for detectives like Rick and is also mentioned in the event "The Other Side of the Sky".
• Gradual Regeneration: The Refresh buff will recover a party member's HP for a fixed amount every turn. The Revitalize buff does the same, but in addition, if a party member's HP is already at full, it instead grants them a small amount of charge bar.
• Gratuitous English:
  • The Primal Beast Sagittarius is infamous for this, as he solely speaks in English and it often comes out as Engrish. Even the trophy given out for beating his Xeno version in a raid is in English in the Japanese version.
  • Several of the songs used for bosses such as "Black Silver Wings", "Defend Order - Offensive Defense", "New World Order" and "Paradise Lost" have vocal lyrics spoken like this.
  • In the "Persona 5: Thievery in Blue" event, Ryuji of the Phantom Thieves tries to introduce himself in pure English.
• Great Offscreen War: A war between the Astrals and the rest of the Skydwellers had happened millennia ago, causing the former to retreat to their home island and leaving behind dozens of their creations which still remain in the present. Various characters, lore and story events likewise reference this event simply as "The War" that have affected the way the skydwellers live now.
  • In a Pensieve Flashback scene at "What Makes The Sky Blue II: Paradise Lost", the Grandcypher crew en route to Canaan were able to catch a glimpse of what happened in The War, with the skyfarers going into battle against beasts, including dragons.
  • The "Kappa Summer Chronicle" event adds a bit more exposition on The War. Kappas do exist, but were forced into hiding, and traveling between places because the Astrals targeted beings with special powers to turn into primal beasts, kappas included.
  • An unrelated war waged by the Great Oarlyegrande Skydom against the Otherworld happened in Ecksegrande Skydom ten years prior to the start of the game. The Otherworld won and permanently took over the Skydom.
• Guest Fighter: You can recruit many from other franchises to fight alongside you. Such as:
  • Ryu, Chun-Li, Rashid, Karin,
  • Lina, Naga,
  • Amira, Cerberus, Albert, Vania, Forte,
  • Sakura, Erica, Gemini,
  • Rin, Uzuki, Mio, Kirari, Brynhildr/Ranko...
  • ... and many more.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The damage formula isn't covered in detailed by any tutorials, so the player would have to rely on guides from other players when they want to min-max their grids' numbers. And even if the party menu does show some estimated damage values, those are merely estimates, and only against the weaker element than the primary weapon. There are a lot of factors that the counter doesn't include, that the player would also be better off just running the Training Dummy stages than looking at the "Estimated Damage" values.
  • The Forging / Crafting of Bahamut, Atma, Seraphic, Class Champion, and Revenant Weapons, along with the Arcarum Summons is a step-by-step Item Crafting process. Even though the shop displays the items needed for a weapon or summon to be forged to the next step, the shop does not display the items required in the succeeding steps unless you finish the current one. Players wanting to prepare and gather all involved items in advance may have to look up for a guide on crafting that specific equipment.
  • Continuing the Forging system of the shop as stated above, the "One-time Shop Upgrade" when recruiting an Eternal for the first time may leave some players exhausted. It requires you to gather a dozen R-rarity weapons, plus five boss items, and 200,000 coins. Yes, R-rarity weapons from multiple sources across the Main Story chapters. These weapons are only dropped by "Rare Monsters" with a random chance of appearing on a stage, and defeating said monsters does not guarantee a drop either, the probability of the weapon dropping is based on RNG. What's worse? Players may have already obtained some of these weapons when playing through the story, and may have sold, or foddered them to other weapons without knowing that they are needed for upgrading Siero's Shop.
  • Knowing how a raid boss behaves and fights is also crucial for a raid's success, especially if a player is aiming for an MVP or Vice MVP position in a raid. Bosses have scripted "triggers" that cause a certain attack or effect to happen, and players are expected to look up for attack patterns beforehand, unless they want to manually encounter these triggers by themselves.
  • Cross-Fate Episodes are special Fate Episodes that are unlocked by owning two prerequisite characters and completing the second Fate Episode of both. However, the game does not explicitly tell you in advance that such Fate Episodes exist, as they only appear when both conditions are met. Likewise, a Cross-Fate episode would only be registered in the Journal after completing it, and are not counted towards a character's episode percentage in the said journal.
• Guns Are Worthless: Averted. Guns not only have high power and are used in a number of good classes, but they have the same all-important skills that every other weapon type has. Additionally, a number of strong damage dealers use guns.

H

• Happy Holidays Dress: Some characters receive themed outfits or alternate versions depending on the given holiday.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The game has a plethora of mobs, and raid bosses taking the appearance of monsters, human creatures, or both. Such examples are derived from Classical Mythology like Harpies, Lamias, Minotaurs, Centaurs, Alura Une, and many more.
• Halloween Episode: Much like the Christmas Episode, new Halloween-themed characters are added to the gacha wearing related Pumpkin or Trick-or-treat outfits. The setting is set at nighttime and event enemies include Jack-O-Lanterns.
• Hamster-Wheel Power: The Ultra Dog-On-Wheel Battleship Jenkins operates under this mechanism, with a dog in place of a hamster.
• Harder Than Hard: Battles have a difficulty scale from Normal, Hard, Showdown, Impossible, Nightmare, and Proud.
  • Normal and Hard are the beginner-friendly contents that can be cleared with just a few weeks of grinding, depending on the player's characters, weapons, and summons.
  • Showdown Raids are tailored for up to 30-man raids and the bosses can have millions of HP. But given the maximum number of participants up to 30, there is a high chance of success as long as everyone contributes bufffs, debuffs, and damage outputs.
  • But this trope directly applies to the latter two: Impossible raids are like the Showdown-level raids, but the bosses have way more millions of HP, attack patterns, and will sometimes include sub-bosses.
  • Nightmare raids are also like the Showdown-level raids, having almost the same millions of HP and attacks, but the player will have to fight the boss alone, with no back-up from other players.
  • Maniac is the solo battle equivalent to Nightmare, as players have to engage with swarms of enemies that wear them down before facing a version of the raid boss with similar numbers.
  • And then there's Proud. As the name indicates, the battles only exist as a means to test a player's pride. They will commonly throw out several penalties at a time on the player to force them to stick to a certain style of playing, have incredibly short trigger time for their charge attacks, and grind the party's HP down very quickly if they don't have adequate HP and defense buffs to tank most attacks.
• Hard Mode Perks: In general, higher difficulty raids and battles will award more EXP, RP, Rupies, and items. However, there are still notable parts where this trope takes effect:
  • Arcarum Extreme has a chance of spawning special bosses that drop crafting materials used in forging an Arcarum summon to 4★. And unlike Normal and Hard, the Extreme Difficulty also rewards players with thousands of EXP and RP per battle.
  • Impossible Difficulty Raids and other special raids can provide the players with blue chests. During events and Rotating Showdowns, even the Maniac and Nightmare difficulty raids can also drop Damascus Grains and Gold Bricks, two of the rarest items in the game.
  • King Gold / Silver Slimes have a higher chance of spawning in the Very Hard difficulty of the Slime Search Quest.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: A typical JRPG trope. Regardless or not the player decides to min-max on HP Weapon Skills and Summon Auras over ATK. The ATK value still outnumbers the HP value of characters. This is due to the raw values of almost every calculable base stats of Characters, Summons, and Weapons having almost a 10:1 ratio between ATK and HP. As a result, expect to deal hundred thousands or millions of damage to the enemy for every attack, while they can only deal thousands in return.
• Heroic Second Wind: If your entire party gets wiped out, you can revive all of them in one go using a Full Potion, and this will also fill up their charge bars immediately.
• Hidden Elf Village:
  • Medvecia, the hidden island of vampires, in the "Fall of the Dragon" event. They've secluded themselves for a long time and forbid any outside contact, out of fear that their strength may trigger bloodlust and harm the other species.
  • The Attack on Titan collab is part of Granblue Fantasy's world, with its story taking place on an island secluded from the rest of the Skydom. Those that do end up there are swarmed by Titans.
• Hidden Eyes: In order to depict characters undergoing emotional stress, their artwork would have the eyes covered in shadows. This is common in flashback and dramatic scenes, such as in Narmaya's Fate Episodes.
• High-Altitude Battle: Plenty, as this trope applies to any fight that happens onboard the Grancypher, or raid battles that take place in the skies. Notable examples include Luminiera Omega, the four Primarchs, Belial, and Sandalphon. This also takes full effect in the anime when the crew faces off against an enraged Tiamat.
• High School AU:
  • Lowain, Elsam, and Tomoi come up with one in the "L.E.T'S. H.A.N.G." event where the former two are students and the latter an instructor at Albion Military Academy. It's noted that due to it being a fantasy of theirs and not having the full details from Katalina, there are discrepancies from reality. The "Table for Six" event adds Sutera and Korwa as students and Isabella and Jin as faculty members.
  • Sincerely, Your dearest Friend, is a dream the Captain had of a modern day world with Identical Strangers of the captain, Cain, Belial, Lucilius, Rosine and Vyrn taking the stage.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs:
  • Albert has a Fate Episode titled "Trial by Lightning".
  • In his episode, Reinhardtzar mentions "Nalhegrande wasn't built in a day".
  • Io drops one in a cross-fate episode with Ryan.
  "It's not over 'till the Primal Beast sings!"
  • In the Cross-Fate Episode of Silva and Cucouroux, Vyrn mentions "a pain in the tail".
  • In her second episode, Hallessena says "Less talkie, more slicey", which is based on the phrase "Less talkie, more workie".
  • Razia says "Don't count your dragons before they're hatched." during her SR version's episode.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Common in scripted story battles:
  • The first time you fight Yggdrasil Malice, since she's far too powerful for the main characters to defeat.
  • The one-on-one battle between Cain and Zeyen, your attacks won't even connect on Zeyen, and you get defeated instantly in a single hit.
  • The first battle with Ganesha, he has way too much HP to reasonably defeat and the battle ends after several turns.
  • Similarly to the above example, Gilbert's One-Winged Angel form has too much HP to reasonably defeat and the battle ends after several turns due to Gilbert's form breaking down.
• Hope Spot: As a dimensional rift is slowly pulling everyone near Etemenanki, the main cast is in dire need of an airship to escape. Belial arrives, Not Quite Dead and just with an ship that they needed. He even tries to gesture it as a sign of goodwill and leads a rope for them to know where it is parked. Little do they know, it was all just a ploy of the Fallen Angel of Cunning, with said ship being rigged with a bomb. Fortunately, Sierokarte arrives just in time for the main cast to jump off to safety.
• Hot Springs Episode: Certain character Fate Episodes would sometimes involve a trip and bath to hot spring resorts. However, there isn't much fanservice as the characters' bodies would be covered in steam for most of the time.
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Applies to characters who have undergone a very noticeable Art Evolution in their other non-limited versions.
  • Summer, Christmas, and Valentine's Day versions / outfits of characters play this trope straight, as they usually reveal more skin than their non-limited counterparts, particularly the Summer-themed ones.
  • An update in 2018 introduced "EX Poses" for some Summer-themed characters as a way of introducing Art Evolution to the game's earliest batch of characters.
• Hour of Power: Players who belong in a Crew can take advantage of the Strike Time mechanic of the game. The Crew's captain can set 2 specific hours of the day wherein all of their crew members will benefit from its effects. Strike Time provides 100% Charge Attack Bar for all party members (including those in the backline) at Turn 1 during these specified hours.
• Hourglass Plot: When Lucifer was still the Supreme Primarch, he kept Sandalphon safe in the gardens, teaching him how to brew coffee to prevent boredom and leaving him behind to fulfill his duties. Their situations are reversed by the end of the "What Makes The Sky Blue" trilogy - Sandalphon is now the Supreme Primarch who bids farewell to Lucifer in the gardens, even reminding him to brew coffee in his spare time. Lucifer then finally understands how Sandalphon must have felt every time he left him in that garden.
• Humans Are Bastards: While not the case for all of them, a lot of the NPC villager characters are unlikeable assholes. If a villager dies, a lot of the time they will be an Asshole Victim.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: In Chapter 3 of "The Maydays" event, Martin accepts that animals like sharks are only driven by their instincts, and humans are at the wrong when they hunt the animals in retaliation.