Granblue Fantasy / Tropes M To Q

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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M

• Magikarp Power:
  • Rusted weapons have stats that make them completely useless. However, with a Horn of Bahamut, they can be transformed into Bahamut weapons, which offer powerful attack and HP buffs based on a character's race.
  • Certain characters with five star uncaps can be completely mediocre or downright unusable before said uncap, but incredibly powerful afterwards.
• Magitek: A medieval world with (magically) powered flying machines.
• The Magnificent: Many characters have unique titles which likewise summarize their lore or abilities. (i.e. Dark Dragoon Forte, Dark Angel Olivia, Percival as The Lord of Flames, etc...) A lot of them are even used as the title of their respective introductory Fate Episodes.
  • These are even used in the card names of those appearing in the "Brigade of the Sky" expansion of Shadowverse.
• Male Gaze:
  • When using the Summon Call of "Anat, For Love and War◊" under the Standard Animation settings, one of the first scenes shown to the player is a close-up of her uncovered thighs.
  • Every single introductory fate episode of a female character's summer version will have a scene where they try out their new outfit... followed by close-up shots of their portraits focusing on their legs and chests for a few seconds.
• Mana Burn: Some character skills have a "Cut to Mode Bar" effect that reduces the Mode bar of an enemy by a specific amount.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Some Arcarum objectives require you to eliminate all monsters of a given quantity in that map.
• Mecha-Mooks: There are robotic or machine-like enemies that can be encountered. One type of them includes the mass-produced Golem constructs.
• Medieval Stasis:
  • In one very specific and plot-relevant regard, "Right Behind You" and "Auld Lanxiety" reveal that there isn't much progress in astronomy despite the fairly modern grasp of geology, engineering, and other scientific fields. Part of it is because most people haven't put much thought into studying or sending things beyond the atmosphere, with Zooey only doing so because of her ability to instantly warp to space. However, their belief that the moon is a star until the crew finds a diagram of the world and its moon in "Right Behind You", taking it to mean that the moon is an island floating just out of reach and still unable to explain why the moon has phases indicates far more than just a lack of interest in studying the stars.
  • A flashback in "What Makes the Sky Blue II" reveals that airships pretty much looked the same in the War and the ensuing several centuries since.
• Mega City:
  • The Erste Empire's capital island, Agastia, is a gigantic sprawling city and military complex that occupies the entire island with little greenery to be seen.
  • Libertaria Island serves as the Oarlyegrande Skydom's entertainment district, and as such is one giant city full of nightclubs, theaters, and stadiums.
• Mercy Mode: If you keep on failing the same Main Story quest for a specific number of times, the game will offer you a 20% increase in attack and HP if you re-attempt that same quest for the next two hours. And it can stack up to 5 times (for a total of 100% increase in attack and HP) if you still keep on failing that one quest.
• Metagame: Just like any MMORPG title, Granblue is also subject to different gameplay metas due to the availability of characters, weapons and summons that could outright stand above the rest. Fortunately, any meta defined by the playerbase tends to last for several months or years (unlike the continuously, fast-evolving pace of metas in Card Games and MOBAs).
• Metal Slime: Literally plays all aspects of this trope. There are enemies aptly named "slimes" which are depicted as slimes peeking from inside metallic jars which have an extremely high defense but are vulnerable to Non-Elemental damage. They are only fought in specific quests dedicated for farming them for experience points or money (but can seldom appear in story quests). There are two notable variants - silver slimes which provide thousands of EXP, and the gold slimes which provide thousands of rupies. During weekends, there is also a chance-based quest where players may fight "Giant Slimes" which can provide ten times the reward than the regular slimes. Lastly, these Giant Slimes can unleash an attack that deals lethal damage to the party but will also instantly kill the Slime, and will provide the rewards as long as one party member is still standing.
• Might Makes Right: As what the Black Knight coins it, the battle against her in Chapter 63 is a "Battle of Wills", her way to test if the captain's resolve in protecting Lyria is greater than hers in terms of protecting Orchis.
• Mini-Game: The "Detective Barawa: The Jewel Resort Incident" has various puzzles that the player must solve in order to proceed. The Case Closed crossover event also has similar puzzles.
• Minigame Zone: The Jewel Resort Casino where you can play poker, bingo or slot machines.
• Mirror Match: Raid bosses who are Promoted to Playable can still be used in their respective Raid boss battles (i.e. using Zooey against Grand Order) without any problems. But this trope is averted for Gameplay and Story Integration purposes in story mode, where the player is prohibited from using a certain character in a chapter if that character would act as a boss fight.
• Missing Child: There are several character Fate Episodes or free quests that include the crew members getting into situations where they are tasked to find a kid who has gone missing, though some instances have twists that play around this "kid got lost and you must find him" trope.
  • In Aliza's event episode, the kid deliberately asks Aliza to keep quiet as he doesn't want to return yet. He goes on a quest of obtaining 10 body parts from forest monsters just to prove his bravery. She helps the kid in their quest and returns to town afterwards.
  • In Mikasa's episode, a little boy cries as he got separated from her sister. Later on, the sister explained that she intentionally went into hiding so that her brother would learn the lesson of not depending too much on others.
• Money Multiplier: An effect in the Journey Drop Shop allows players to increase the amount of Rupies earned during battles.
• Money Sink:
  • The cost for upgrading Siero's Shop when it is your first time unlocking an Eternal? 200,000 rupies, that would be a lot, considering the amount of coins a player earns by joining quests. (though there are faster ways to earn millions of coins outside of quests). Upgrading the shop does not do any other gameplay significance, either. Luckily, this is only done once per account.
  • Reducing Weapons and Summons for Elemental Quarts, and Stones take up a lot of money, yet this is the most efficient way of gathering said items if one were to uncap the 4th star of a weapon or summon.
• Money Spider: The Gold Slimes are notable for dropping a lot of rupies when killed (1,050 each). On the other hand, the King Goldslime variant multiplies the amount by 10. Their high spawn rates in the "Slimy Search" quest line makes it the best place to farm when the player is in need of money (provided they have an access of Non-Elemental Damage to make the farming a lot easier).
• Monochrome Past: Almost all of the character-centric flashback scenes are sepia filtered, especially if the said character narrates or thinks about a past event in their life from their own perspective.
• Monster Town:
  • The Mist Shrouded Isle which has a town inhabited by zombies and other non-zombie undead people.
  • Sharom Island, which was featured in the Violet Violence event, is inhabited by monsters made peaceful by a certain kind of flower that blooms there.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • When Noa inspects the heavily-damaged Grandcypher, he concludes that the ship is done for and there is nothing he can do about it. Rackam is saddened upon hearing this, and the rest are about to say goodbye to it as the wrecked ship rests against the sunset... Until Walfrid appears out of nowhere and explains that there is a way to repair it. Vyrn then calls on Noa for attempting to put the group to a melancholic state.
  • Chapter 6 of "A Walk on the Wild Side" is played as though Tyre finally talked to Vira in the best circumstance he imagined. Then at the end of the scenario, he accidentally calls Vira a "dudette", irritating her enough to transform into Psycho Vira MK II. This outlier clarifies that the previous scene isn't real as the narration claimed it to be, but yet another one of Tyre's Imagine Spot.
  • The "Divine Generals' Assembly" event. The Generals get some time to relax and bond with each other at a resort, and despite their actual assembly continually being delayed it's a very light-hearted event... and then you find out the resort staff are former Child Soldiers, and Tiare wants the Generals to disband because they remind her of herself — she doesn't want to see them go through the things that she has.
  • Chapter 3 of "Old Bond", specifically the second half of it. After the trials Fediel and Wilnas put the captain through, which were fairly light-hearted, Lu Woh's is a trial by combat where he holds nothing back and comes very close to outright killing the captain. Had Seofon not been there, it's likely he would have succeeded.
• Mook Horror Show: Occurs in the Shadowverse collab event "Duelist of Eternity", when the imperial soldiers have the misfortune of trying to take down Mordecai, a powerful undying warrior.
• Mugging the Monster: The Mafia antagonists in "Bzzt! Amped-up Summer!" really should have just left the crew alone, even if Tien hadn't been with them at the time.
• Musical Episode: What the Image Song Fate Episodes usually become.
• Must Let Them Get Away: The protagonist lets this happen several times but two notable examples are:
  • In "000", Lucilius is defeated and Lucio/Sahar begins the process of sucking him into the dimensional rift. Belial pops in and bargains with the crew to let him take Lucilius and leave in exchange for giving the crew a ship to escape on before Etemenaki collapses. Knowing that they're all too battered to keep fighting, the protagonist agrees to let him go, which Sandalphon also agrees to, despite his previous desire to kill Lucilius and retrieve Lucifer's body, claiming that if Lucilius and Belial come back they'll just defeat them again no matter how many times it takes them. From a writing perspective, this was obviously just an excuse to preserve the villains for a future story event.
  • It happens again in "Marionette Stars" in a similar way. With the exception of Tikoh, the crew is exhausted and/or heavily injured after their respective battles and Tikoh is presented with he choice of letting Ferdinand get away so that she could heal Ragazzo or killing Ferdinand. She doesn't want to heal Ragazzo, as he's Ferdinand's subordinate, but the kindness in her heart and Feather's plea forces her to save him, allowing Ferdinand to carelessly walk off to be preserved for a future story event.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: The Torhid royal family agreed to have Baragona murder every single member to appease the True King and the Torhid king and queen would sacrifice themselves in a mad attempt to distract him as part of one long con to position Baragona in a place where he would be able to destroy the Great Wall.
• My Name Is ???:
  • In a typical Visual Novel fashion, any on-screen character who hasn't properly introduced their name yet (directly by themselves or indirectly by other characters) will be temporarily labeled as "???".
  • Some of the Elite Mooks and bosses of the Arcarum expeditions have their HP and ATK levels replaced with "???" instead of using the typical green and red bar indicators of most enemies encountered in that mode.
• My Nayme Is: One of the enemies encountered in Arcarum is named "Journey Dryft Lyzard".
• Myth Arc: The heroes' quest to reach Estalucia, the Island of the Astrals, which involves having to find the piece of the Sky Map. However, the Sky Map search is put on hold halfway through the first arc after the Black Knight is arrested and it becomes clear the Erste Empire can't be ignored. After the first arc ends, the Sky Map search continues.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Characters who originated from other Cygames franchises such as Rage of Bahamut, THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls, and Shadowverse will retain one (or more) of their original artworks from their respective games, albeit with minor changes to match the art style of Granblue Fantasy.
  • Amira's installed Charge Attack is the same as this scene in Rage of Bahamut.
  • The introductory paragraphs of the "Duelist of Eternity" are the exact same ones seen in the first chapters of every class from Shadowverse.
  • The Bellringer Angel summon from the collaboration event has the Ward icon from Shadowverse briefly covering your team.
  • One of Grimnir's Summon Call voice lines in this game is the same line he speaks (in Japanese) in Shadowverse when his card's Enhance effect activates.
  • The Peek-A-Vyrn foundry item in the "Make Up and Go!" event references the Grand Blues! comic strip where a "gigantic" Vyrn peeks in the window of Charlotta's room.
  • In Episode 13 of the anime, Djeeta repels the laser beams of the floating droids by simply blocking them with her sword. The in-game weapon that later came with the Blu Ray Vol 4 Promo Code is named Prototype and its "Defend" Sword Master ability is a Repel buff, as a reference to that anime scene.

N

• Nerf:
  • When certain SSR characters are ridiculously overpowered or game-breaking, they'll quickly get nerfed by Cygames, directly via rebalance patches or indirectly nerfed via external mechanics.
    • Hallessena could apply 40% attack buffs to herself for every turn so it got nerfed to 25%. Given that she loses the buff upon taking damage, it was later changed to 35% and given a cap.
    • Korwa was subject to a nerf because of her buffs being permanent and stronger than any other character released in the game at that time, letting players beat high level raids solo. The nerf changed it so she has to constantly reapply buffs.
    • The Luminiera Sword Omega possesses the passive skills "Horus's Majesty"^note +(1+skill level)% Attack and HP up, Omega modifier and "Light's Might"^note +(1+skill level)% Attack up, Normal modifier. While the weapon isn't much at base values, the way skill-ups and damage modifiers work makes this a contender for best weapon in the game at max power. The nerfbatting, while not directly aimed at the sword's stats, came in the form of locking the "Light's Might" skill until the weapon reaches level 120^note Thus requiring the player to reach level 101, fully uncap a sword, and then perform a material-intensive 4th uncap, making it so only seven swords can be bought with Renown per account, and making the drop rate so abysmal that players often consider the sword a worthy use of a Damascus Ingot.
    • With a fully-decked out Enmity weapon grid especially the Celeste Claw Omegas, even midgame players were able to steamroll through the contents when Summer Zooey was released. Her Conjunction skill makes a perfect synergy with an Enmity Grid, by giving the full offensive benefits while being at 1 HP and Invincible. She was so game-breaking back then that many players used to bring a Dark Enmity Grid almost everywhere without risks. Afterwards, the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanics were redefined to break players out of this complacent meta brought by Summer Zooey. Many enemies and Raid bosses were later given Plain Damage attacks to bypass Conjunction's invincibility, and some contents like Xeno Raids have increased off-element resistance to counter her.
    • Threo's Plain Damage skill "Ground Zero" was used in the Arcarum's Normal and Hard difficulty modes to easily clear through enemy mobs since no enemy had HP that went higher then her skill's damage cap. It basically made her one-shotting almost everything. With the Extreme mode update, its damage (along with other sources of Plain Damage) is now halved whenever playing in Arcarum on Extreme difficulty.
    • Combining Doctor's Maddening Vitality skill (a bunch of buffs in exchange for permanently lowering their HP cap) with characters like Geisenborger and Vaseraga essentially allowed them to be immortal 1 HP tanks because of how their skillsets worked. While the former initially had no problems (probably because of how rare this setup actually was thanks to the Arcarum time gating and he still required significant support and setup for it to be viable), Vaseraga essentially could solo raid bosses like Akasha by himself. Cygames' response was to make it so the skill could only apply to those who had HP at 20% or more of its original cap.
  • On a somewhat more positive side, enemy raid bosses may get nerfed in ways to make them easier to defeat, making it easier for beginners to catch up with the bosses' rewards. Impossible Raids would often have their maximum player limits raised so that more players could join on the fight and potentially kill the boss in a shorter time. Direct nerfs to some bosses were also present, such as reduced defense for the six Tier 1 raids, some even having their gimmicky mechanics removed, like in the case of Twin Elements (Impossible).
• Never Mess with Granny: The mysterious "Elderly Woman", the boss NPC who lets you unlock Row IV and EX2 classes. It's a 1 v. 1 fight against her, and she fights with the strong element to counter what you use (or same element if you use Light/Dark) and uses copies of your skills against you. And you have to fight a different version for each class. Lore-wise, it is stated that she has mastered several classes already, now teaching them to you once you defeat her. In the EX2 class quests, she suddenly pops-up when the protagonists cannot solve the current issue on their own, yet some quests imply that the Elderly Woman is initially watching the crew from a distance.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: The game will actively prevent you from creating direct paradoxes or Mirror Matches with your playable characters. If a character is fought as a boss, missing in-story, or present in the scene but unable/unwilling to help you, then you can't use said character for that specific quest. You can't use multiple versions of the same character in the same party, either.
  • In addition, since replaying a story chapter has no actual bearing on the story, it is totally possible to bring the Black Knight, Sturm and Drang, Rosetta, and Vira to fight their boss versions after beating them once.
• Non-Combat EXP: Characters can still gain EXP and level up outside of combat. You can "Upgrade" a character with weapons, angelic fodders, and special "Power-up" items such as macaroons, cakes, Valentine's Day chocolates, and spellbooks.
• Non-Elemental: There's a seventh damage type, represented in white text, which isn't affected by the element weaknesses and strengths and is usually at a fixed number of damage. It also ignores all types of damage reduction or defense, making it invaluable against slimes and other enemies with high defenses. There's also a non-elemental enemy type which attacks with random elemental types and has no defensive strengths or weaknesses besides a slight resistance to light/dark.
• Non-Indicative Name: There is a weapon called the "Aquamarine Hatchet" that looks like an axe as appropriate to its name. It is categorized as a Sword for equipment purposes.
• No-Gear Level: Downplayed with the Huanglong and Qilin raids (but not the Dual Boss version of them). While you still have a full grid of weapons and summons, the skills of said weapons and summons are disabled, leaving you to get by using just their raw stats.
• No Ontological Inertia: Most flunky bosses, such as the Grand Order raid, work like this. If the main boss is defeated, then the raid is considered completed and the mooks will automatically drop to 0 HP regardless.
• No-Sell: The "Unchallenged" buff serves as this, it nullifies all the amounts of damage dealt by an opponent to your characters for the next turn.
  • It's also possible to stack "Damage Cuts" and "Repel" buffs, allowing players to block 100% of the incoming damage.
  • The Godsworn Alexiel summon provides a 100% DMG cut for one turn if the summon is fully uncapped, while the Grimnir summon provides a 10,000 HP shield regardless of uncap, which is usually high enough to block most attacks that isn't Skyfall or Gamma Ray.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: Zig-zagged.
  • Though there are events, seasonal lines (most of which are assumed to be non-canon) and other things that imply a passage of time, most of the cast doesn’t appear to have aged over the 6 years the game has been out. There are a few exceptions such as Meg (whose aging up is attributed to trauma rather than time passing), Petra, and Sara who got a little taller in her new version. Everyone else regardless of how much Character Development they receive over the years stays the same.
  • Gran and Djeeta are an odd case, as their physical age depends on what class you’re using for them rather than how much time has passed. This applies to Gran especially, as he can go from looking like a young boy to a buff young adult.
  • Taken to near-parodic levels when Nicholas and Marie get together, the latter becomes pregnant, she gives birth and their son is already at a stage of development of being able to walk (or at least stand by himself), Nicholas and Marie are still intended to be at the same age in their latest appearance as they were in their first appearance despite the fact that all of these would require at least a year minimum to happen.
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: Trophies / Titles earned from completing in-game achievements reward the player with extra Crystals, though there are ones that provide additional benefits:
  • The only way to unlock Ranko Kanzaki and Kirari is to call their summon numerous times, completing achievements related to these tasks give summon copies and items that allow the player to proceed to the next step in unlocking them.
  • A set of Coop-Quest trophies provide a Class Distinction, which are used for forging Class Champion Weapons.
  • Clearing Dark Rapture (Hard) once and five times with a party consisting of only one element ^note Characters that can switch elements like Lyria do not count towards this rewards Tidings of the same element used for fully uncapping Dark Opus Weapons.
• Not the Intended Use: Being a browser-based game, the player can simply refresh the page when the game fails to respond, or if assets are not loaded properly (both of which can be attributed to server or connectivity issues). There is even an in-game Refresh button to help smartphone users in these situations. However, refreshing the browser will also allow the players to skip animations entirely. Usually, players take advantage of this tactic to skip the long Charge Attack animations and proceed to adding next turn skills in the queue. Cygames has since tried to combat this by implementing a "Waiting for the last turn to be processed" dialog as well as a lockout timer to prevent players from queueing skills faster than the game's animations.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Arcarum plays with this a bit, due to its reliance on Random Encounters suddenly appearing on seemingly-empty nodes. Even in its mechanic of presenting an unexplored map, the player never knows where the enemies would pop out. In Extreme difficulty, there are also tougher enemies that sometimes appear only when all other enemies are defeated. Lastly, the dialogue between Lyria and Vyrn while the player moves to new nodes is basically them worrying if something or someone is watching from behind. The final stages of the expeditions reveal that there are indeed others following them, the Evokers who will also run away once Lyria and Vyrn notice their presence.
• Not Just a Tournament: The titular race of the "Platinum Sky" event. Behind the scenes, there's a conspiracy to fix the race in order to profit off the bets, which is further connected to a secret research lab that the Society wants eliminated. Played with though in that the heroes (except those connected to the Society) are unaware of the conspiracy and are just focused on winning the race until the racer the conspiracy is backing is at risk of exploding and killing alot of people.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • During the Unite and Fight event after the release of Summer Zooey, it was possible to combine her and the Dark version of Sarunan (previously considered a Joke Character) to rapidly farm honor and ranking by massively overkilling the bosses. Cue a hard cap on the amount of honors one could earn from a single battle applied before the qualifying day was even complete, which was then applied retroactively.
  • Because Threo's Ground Zero ability is a game-breaker that bypasses enemy defense and cheeses the Normal and Hard difficulties of the "Arcarum: The World Beyond" mode, any sources of Non-Elemental/Plain damage were Nerfed to deal only half of their supposed value in the mode's Extreme difficulty, as Cygames' measure to prevent Ground Zero from breaking all of the mode's content.
  • Several late-game raids have a passive that lets them bypass non-elemental damage cuts entirely, for the sole purpose of preventing players from filling the raid with an entire squad of Spartans using Phalanx to protect each other every turn. Ironically enough, this fix ended up prompting another obvious patch: Anre was given a skill rebalance that gave him a Fire Cut effect on top of his Damage Cut skill, because the supposed strongest tank in the realm was now completely useless for tanking.
  • On release, the Super Ultimate Bahamut raid was quickly broken by a strategy that involved getting multiple turns out of Can't Act, a debuff that guarantees the target can't do anything for a turn, by repeatedly extending it. Cygames was quick to issue a patch that made it so that Can't Act cannot be extended past one turn.
  • On June 2022, Cygames admitted that they had to remove the ability to have multiple Qilin summons in the same grid as part of the month's patch because the ability to instantly refresh skills multiple turns in a row was far too broken and several raid bosses inflicting the Summonless debuff was solely to prevent the use of Qilin.
  • The combination of the Yatima summon and Bellringer Angel summon was capable of bypassing summon cooldowns when working with the limitations of the former. 10 minutes later after the release of the Yatima summon, the Bellringer Angel summon was changed to be one-time use, preventing Yatima from copying its call.
• Oculothorax: The "Unite and Fight" events has Solo boss fights against Ahura, a large floating eyeball with bat-wings.
• Oddly Shaped Sword: Because there are around a thousand or so weapons that are equippable and/or wielded by the gacha characters, some swords are bound to have oddly-shaped blades. Take Balmung for example, its tip has been split into two axe-shaped sides. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the Aquamarine Hatchet, which despite clearly being an axe from its design and description, is classified as a sword.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: In the event, What Makes the Sky Blue 3: 000, it can be invoked by the player on two different occasions. The player can tell Sandalphon that he has delicate fingers, a callback to what the latter said when he threw the captain off the edge of an island.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Characters have two raw numerical stats, ATK and HP which represent their health and attack power respectively. There are also secondary stats represented by percentages such as Defense, Critical Hit Rate / Damage, Dodge Rate, Hostility Rate, Skill Damage, Charge Attack Damage, Stamina, Enmity, Damage Caps, Healing Caps, Debuff Success, and Debuff Resistance. While almost all of them can be boosted by Extended Mastery Points, Rings, and Weapon Skills, the Attack stat is considered as the best stat to invest towards. Granblue is ideally about being able to defeat "mob" opponents and bosses in the fastest way possible (Justified, as multi-player raids have a time limit, and the best way to contribute to raids is to deal as much damage as possible within a few turns.
• One-Steve Limit: In general, the game tries its best to avoid having exactly similar names that refer to two different characters by having alterations or simple variations to their spelling. Some examples include a Human named Aletheia and a Harvin with the surname Alethea. This also applies to most Crossover characters. Other comparisons are Luna and Lunalu / Sara and Sarasa, / Mina and Minami / Sophie and Sophia / Anne and Anna / Therese and Theresa, and many more. There are also cases when this trope doesn't apply.
  • The game explicitly mentions that only one version of a character can be used in a party. If the player attempts to use an alternate version of that character (be it of a different rarity, or a Summer or Holiday themed version), the game will instead offer an option to swap out one of the versions instead.
  • Close friends and relatives of the Black Knight will refer to her nickname as Apollo, which is also the name of a summon and a raid boss.
  • The "Persona 5: Thievery in Blue" crossover adds Journal entries for the Phantom Thieves, citing their code names and real names separated by a slash. This is to avoid a duplicate in Skull / Ryuji's case, as there is already a character in Granblue known simply as "Skull".
  • There are two characters with the name "Tsubasa", but one of them is from a crossover and has the surname Kashiwagi. The other is known only by their first name.
  • Even minor named NPCs have names almost matching that of an existing playable character. An example would be in Evoker Maria Theresa's Fate Episode who introduces NPCs Charles and Charlotte in a game where Charioce and Charlotta are playable.
  • Since the Dragon Knights of Granblue and the Knightmares of the Code Geass playable units are named after Arthurian knights, players can have a team Lancelots and Gawains. When talking about titles, there are now two entities who use the title of "White Knight" - One is a Luminiary Knight from Granblue, and the other is Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass.
• Ontological Inertia: An odd case. If a unit (can be an enemy, or a playable character) has a Repel buff and dies before it even expires, the damage will be reflected back to the attacker by the end of the turn after the said unit is already gone.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Much like Remilia Scarlet, the effects of sunlight on the vampires of Medvecia are merely psychological. They also have red Head Wings and are mostly blonde. While they are known to suck blood like a typical vampire, they can still survive by sustaining on regular food.
• Out of Focus: Common for games with a lot of characters.
  • Not everyone appear during in-game events. some are not even lucky to be casted as supporting characters, and a majority of R-rarity characters are not given enough characterization outside of their own Fate Episodes.
  • Likewise, Collaboration characters are only given focus on their respective events.
• Overly Generous Time Limit: Raid boss battles have a time limit of 90 minutes each, seems too long for one boss isn't it? You can even call in other players to join your hosted raids, and let them kill the boss for you in under 10 minutes, or 3 if the players have well-developed grids - and there's still too much free time for that raid! That is, until you fight the game's Marathon Boss fights such as the Impossible or Ultimate versions of Bahamut, you'll need all the time to contribute in the raid. The latter of which can take up to an hour of fighting, and since the players have no restrictions on the number of Full Elixirs, running out of time is easily one of the main causes of defeat.

P-Q

• Pain & Gain: The Enmity family of skills provide increased damage the lower the party's HP (e.g. Oblivion's Enmity provides "a big boost to dark allies ATK based on how low HP is", with each element having a similar description). While primarily granted via weapons, several characters also possess similar skills as well as skills to maximize their chances of survival while at low HP.
• Palette Swap: Enemy mobs sometimes have color-coded variants of the same model that appear in other quests:
  • The brown, silver, and gold slimes in the "Slimy Search" quest lines.
  • The crabs, "Elemental Sprites", and the "-Gyre" type enemies whose color varies depending on their element. These are common in the Rotating Trial quests.
  • The Mimics, whose color theme varies depending on the type/rarity of treasures that they drop when defeated.
• Party Scattering:
  • When the party reaches the Nalhegrande Skydom, Loki closes the Grim Basin on the group, scattering them all across the Skydom.
  • Also happens again on Chapter 124 of the main story wherein Vyrn, Rackam, Lyria, Katalina and Mikaboshi were dragged by Otherworldly creatures into miniature black holes. Both the protagonist's and Loki's respective parties had to retreat and recover before they plan on rescuing each of their kidnapped comrades.
• Patchwork World: Inverted. Though the world of the Skydoms is made up of floating islands with varying climates, pastures, landforms, and color-coded themes, it is hinted that these islands were once connected, and the setting that the game drives into is an "aftermath" of the world.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: There are Angel Halo quests which pit the players against easy-to-kill enemies, and they drop dozens of treasure chests containing lots of EXP fodders, which further increase the levels of the players' characters, weapons, or summons.
  • The Weekend Sliming quests serve as one for players who are easily able to deal Non-Elemental Damage, the entry cost is slightly higher than the Angel Halo, but the enemies in Weekend Slimes can provide up to a ten thousand experience points or coins per run.
• Pensieve Flashback:
  • The Celestial Strait in "What Makes The Sky Blue: Paradise Lost" is a dangerous route according to Rackam. One of the reasons why many skyfarers never make it out of this route is due to a space-time distortion. When the crew do manage to enter the Strait, they experience visions alongside the stormy weather. These visions are actually events that happened in the past, before and during the War, including a vision of Lucifer meeting his friend, Lucillius.
  • Sandalphon didn't just inherit Lucifer's Supreme Primarch powers, but his memories as well. He is capable of accessing these whenever he sleeps and acts as an observer during these scenes.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • You can only get one copy of a Seraphic Weapon. At first players could accidentally sell or feed it away, but it's been changed to be impossible to lose.
  • There is one Cross-Fate Episode exclusive to Comiket 2014. If you started playing after that, there is no way to view it.
  • The story events, new ones of which are run at the top of each month, are also this. While they rarely impact the main plot, the later ones from 2016 and 2017 especially do a lot to expand on and develop a number of the cast members. However, if you don't play the event while it's out, you'll miss out on getting the scenes from it (and its associated SR character and SSR) forever. The events do tend to get rerun, but it usually takes a year or more, and after the rerun they may not come back.
  • Averted with various old events as they are now permanently playable Side Stories accessible from the world map, allowing one to see the story, farm/buy weapons and get the event's characters.
• Perspective Flip: My Beloved Auguste stars Meg as the Point of View character who observed the events of the previous Summer events from her eyes and how it affected her.
• Point of Divergence:
  • The Miscolored Memories events depicts in a nightmare created by Oneiros what happens if Gran/Djeeta dies without Lyria reviving him. Katalina and Lyria are constantly on the run, always fearing for their lives while Rackam, unable to fix the Grandcypher, remains stuck on Port Breeze for the rest of his life.
  • Lady Katapillar's introductory Fate Episode is based around Vira getting the upper hand in the "L.E.T'S. H.A.N.G." event.
  • The Titanic Yeager event is this for Attack on Titan where the crew finding themselves in Estioss led to a chain of events that gave the cast of Attack on Titan a hope for freedom. In the ending of this event, the Shingashina trio are sent off to travel with the crew as a form of expedition and Levi joins along to keep watch of Eren.
  • Justice's pact with Maria Theresa involves finding the answer to a question among the lines of "What if a powerful being capable of changing history dies before they can fulfill their role?". And as to Invoke this trope, Justice notes that the Singularity is one of those beings.
  • The Code Geass collaboration event, "Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion - The Blue Reckoning" has one where Lelouch, C.C, Suzaku and Kallen are taken to the Granblue Fantasy universe before Euphemia's death and deciding to stay in the Granblue Fantasy universe at the end of the event. Granted, they still have plans to find another way back home, but the fact that Suzaku and Kallen are aware of Lelouch being Zero, and having plans to willingly cooperate with each other, has the potential of changing many things that are to come in their home series.
  • "And You", the 9th Anniversary event, is built on this trope. Orologia, the Wedge of Causality, created many simulations in order to find the one timeline that would ensure the MC and the crew survived. Naturally, as it's with stories based on this, it shows what would happen in different scenarios caused by specific choices or luck.
• Pillar of Light: The so-called "Divine Retribution" that destroyed Torhid with one shot.
• Plant Person: One of the common enemy mooks you can encounter are the Alraune Cute Monster Girls. A stronger version is named "Bella Donna" in the Arcarum mode.
• Play Boy Bunny: Female attendants of the Jewel Resort Casino (and a few playable characters) sometimes wear this outfit.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: If you use a Light character against a Dark enemy and vice-versa, your team will always receive 75% from the opposition's damage while enemies receive 150% from your party. In other words, you will always deal more damage, and the enemies will deal lesser damage to you in a Light versus Dark matchup. This can be used for the players' advantage when fighting Granny in unlocking Tier 4 classes.
• Play Every Day:
  • You gain an useful item or currency the first time you open the app every day.
  • There's an egregious amount of things behind daily, weekly and monthly caps. From good farming quests to Renown and Prestige pendants, from Co-Op Missions to Soul Berry and Half-Elixir buying, the game makes an effort of giving the player a lot of homework if they want to make efficient use of their currencies.
  • Players are given a free chance to draw at the Rupie Draw gacha, and can use rupies to draw up to 100 low-rarity. items daily. Likewise, if there is an ongoing anniversary campaign, or during seasonal and milestone celebrations, the game usually offers free chances of drawing from the Premium tab.
• Plot Coupon: What initially starts and drives the crew to progress to Eustalcia. They have to collect pieces of the Sky Map, items obtained from most of the story's primal beasts, which then reveals the next place that they have to travel to.
• Plot Coupon That Does Something: Certain story chapters will provide the player with Wonders, items that provide additional bonuses that can be toggled on or off. Most often, they are received from Primal Beasts along with the Sky Map pieces listed in the Plot Coupon entry above.
• Point-and-Click Map:
  • All islands and the quests provided therein are accessible by simply clicking on them.
  • The Arcarum Map is this, and the "locations" are represented by nodes, in which the player can freely move back and forth once discovered.
• Popularity Power:
  • Fan Popularity Polls are sometimes conducted to let players decide on which among the existing characters and summons would appear in the next rate-up banner. Near the end of 2018, a poll was also conducted to determine who would receive a new outfit for the game's 5th anniversary, with Sandalphon and Silva winning the male and female categories respectively.
  • Not only the above, but this also determined that "What Makes The Sky Blue" would get a direct sequel, culminating into a trilogy due to fandom demand according to Word of God.
  • Adding to this, who appears in the gacha, gets an event, or receives an alternate unit also seems to depend on a character's popularity or the popularity of the group connected to them, though by 2020, Word of God explained in a live stream that they weren’t simply going to release what was popular anymore and have begun to give SR and SSR units to lesser and unpopular characters as well.
  • This tends to be inverted in the cases of characters who aren't particularly well-liked as characters but are ticketed, sparked, or simply widely used if obtained because they were given a powerful unit, or a core unlock weapon. This has led to speculation that certain unpopular characters are given powerful units by the developers in hopes that players will become interested in them because they're "forced" to aim for them in the Gacha if they want to keep up with the ever-changing meta of the game.
  • Belial’s popularity as a villain is likely the reason he received a game breaking summon that then went to become the most sought after summon in the game, dethroning Shiva, Bahamut, and Lucifer in the fan favorite summon polls for a while until the further game-breaking summon Beelzebub was released. Humorously, many speculate that Beelzebub getting a broken summon similarly acts as an inversion of the Popularity Power trope, as he's not well-liked as a character due to his Hate Sink status, but being given a broken summon forces the players to aim for him if they want to keep up with the games meta.
• Power at a Price:
  • Weapons with the Haunt Skill boost attack, but reduce the party's double-attack rate. Similarly, the Tyranny weapon skill boosts attack at the cost of 10% max HP reduction.
  • Some characters have EMP Nodes that trade out a flat increase in attack at the expense of reduced defense.
• Power Creep: Being an RPG gacha game, this is inevitable as there are characters, summons and weapons bound to offer more utility and strengths than some. However, going into the games 7th year, it seems like the power creeping has become largely intentional:
  • Generally, many characters have become less useful over time not because of their raw stats, but because they don't offer the variety or utilities that new characters often bring to the team, to the point where the old characters were initially unable to catch up to the Metagame. However, there are a number of rebalance patches and 5★ uncaps that attempt to bring older characters up to a more current standard, though some older characters' kits are just too flawed to improve much. There are even some cases when the new SRs being released heavily outclasses some of the older SSRs, unless of course these outdated SSRs get rebalanced.
  • Direct powercreep can occur between characters of the same elements, as the game now puts more emphasis on the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors when making a synergy out of the characters, weapons and summons. There are some outlier characters however, who can be slotted in a different element just because they are that game-breaking even when the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors is taken out of consideration.
  • For the longest time, grids revolving around 3★ Omega Series (Tiamat Omega, Colossus Omega, etc...) and Optimus Series (Zephyrus, Agni, etc...) Summons were enough to tackle most of the usual content and commonly-hosted raids (Omega Boss Battles, Proto Bahamut, Grand Order, etc...) that the game offered in its early years. But as more end-game contents are added, the summons get upgraded auras in their 4★ uncaps to give players increased stats and damage boosts to catch up with the more challenging contents. This also applies to the weapons with added uncap levels, such as the Omega Series Weapons getting their 5★ on the 4th Anniversary Update. Consequently, the older raid bosses such as the aforementioned Omega Boss Battles that were once known to be quite difficult? They are now easier to defeat, thanks to the weapon and summon upgrades.
  • This is quite the case for some free and farmable SSR summons such as Anat, Sylph and Poseidon who later have updated versions obtainable from the Premium Draw ("Anat, for Love and War", "Sylph, Flutterspirit of Purity" and "Poseidon, the Tide Father" respectively). While the Summon Call effects remain the same, these Premium Draw summons have 120%-140% Elemental Attack boosts, similar to the Genesis Summons. Among these summons, the gacha "Anat, for Love and War" directly powercreeps her farmable version by a 60% increase to the Main Aura.
  • Weapons with EX modifiers are obtainable from Crossover events and other sources. While their initial weapon skills are "Big Boost to Damage" and can be upgraded to SL15, their second weapon skills can be very niche and extremely situational in certain ways. Then new Xeno weapons came for each of the elements, and while they can also be upgraded to SL15, they instead have "Massive Boost to Damage". But even if Xeno weapons have only one weapon skill, Xeno weapons are still consistently better than Collab EX weapons. And it doesn't stop there, the Proving Grounds weapons introduced much later are also SL15 EX weapons with a "Big Boost to Damage", but their second skills are more powerful and interesting. Long story short? If you have either or both Xeno weapons and Proving Grounds weapons for the same element, you won't be needing those third-party crossover weapons when you require an EX Weapon Skill modifier.
  • Seasonal variants of characters generally are released as stronger, more useful versions of their non-limited selves, to the point where this has become a source of ire for players as those who cannot roll for certain limited seasonal characters will either have to rely on sparking (a process which takes a year of saving up crystals and tickets) or anniversary ticketing them (which costs real money). As well, some seasonal variants have even begun to power creep the Grand units of certain characters. A good example of this is Helel ben Shalem, who's had her Grand unit fall out of usefulness due to the release of newer darker units, but her water summer unit is one of the best units in the game with a more varied kit and more usages to match it, making it unlikely to be powercrept anytime soon.
  • While in the early years of the game the summons Lucifer and Bahamut were considered highly sought after due to their usefulness and strength, they've begun to show their age as being among the first summons released during the games launch year, especially into the games 8th year after the newer, incredibly broken Providence summons Belial and Beelzebub were released and had begun to overshadow them in usefulness, leaving them in desperate need for a rebalance of some kind to bring them up to the new summons' levels. That hasn't stopped players from continuing to use them, however.
  • While Yuni herself doesn't exactly power creep any Light characters, her unlock weapon "Harmonia" is the Light equivalent of playable Lich's "Pain and Suffering" unlock weapon and acts as a power creep to most other Light element weapons in the game, so much so that it was quickly determined to be a must-have in both Magna and Primal grids after it was released. Not only that, but in most Light grids, you'd need two of them to see the full effect of its power creeping potential.
• Power Echoes: Anyone who uses Dark Essence for themselves speak in this manner, if Pommern, Furias and Freesia are any indication.
  • The Supreme Primarch Lucifer, and later Sandalphon after inheriting the role, sounds like this when using his power.
• Power Equals Rarity:
  • Zig-zagged, SSR characters are easily considered as the most sought-after characters due to the luck factor of being able to draw them in the gacha. They tend to have the highest level caps of 80 (or 100 in a 5★ uncap), and in turn having the highest base attack and health. R-rarity characters on the other hand have a significantly lower level cap, and have fewer skills compared to the SR and SSR characters. Because of the max levels being tied to rarity, higher-rarity characters usually have higher ATK and HP base stats compared to the lower rarities. But due to the cycle of old characters becoming outdated gameplay-wise, and new characters having more utilities, even SR characters can prove to become stronger than a number of SSR characters of their own element, especially for 5★ SR characters who can have a level cap of 90 in contrast to the level 80 cap for a majority of SSR characters.
  • This trope is then averted for SR characters who, not only can surpass some SSR characters, but are also given out for free during story events (i.e. Meteon, Minami). Likewise, SSR characters who are in the lower tier rankings and are below SR characters in terms of utility also avert this trope. Most third-party Collab SSR characters also avert this as despite being a free SSR during their events, they only fill in certain niche roles, with only a few collab characters being usable in harder content.
• Power Floats: It's mentioned in the first Fate Episode of Metera's Wind version that Flight magic is incredibly advanced and that only the most proficient of users are able to fully fly freely; this is consistent with magic users like Niyon, Marquiares, and Tweyen being incredibly powerful and all flying unassisted. All of the Primarch and fallen angel characters have the ability to fly / levitate because of their wings, as do certain primals, Lucio and Helel ben Shalem.
• Power Levels: There is a PWR statistic that can be seen on the Home Screen based on your recent party. However, it can actually be misleading in a sense that it only totals the ATK and HP values of your weapon and summon grids, and does not take into consideration any weapon skills (that play a larger role in the game's damage formula).
• Powered Armor: By the third arc, the Holy Erste Empire mass produced Titan Suits for their imperial soldiers – exoskeleton machinery with mechanical weapons and can amplify their combat performance with Dark Essence.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • While Ultima weapons can have powerful effects, they're limited to wielders of certain weapon types and finding a good party that uses all the same weapon type can be quite difficult. Unless you're a Fire player where the only hassle is getting the 1-2 limited characters to complete your party.
  • Depending on RNG, the extra stats of the Over Mastery Rings can be underwhelming or unusable on the character you can give it to. Sometimes, it can increase the Healing Cap by a great amount... on a character with no innate healing abilities! Or worse, grant a Charge Attack Damage increase on Korwa or Summer Diantha (characters who don't deal damage with their Charge Attacks). Said Rings even require a good deal of effort to be acquired in the first place.
  • Applies to some characters as well. Some characters will receive rebalance or 5* uncaps (or both) that either add nothing of note to their kits or make them less useable than they were before the uncap. A recent example is Gun Zooey's rebalance leading into her 5* uncap tied to Created by the Stars, Loved by the Skies, which many fans agree was disappointing uncap overall, as it didn't really fix anything about her kit.
• Prestige Class: You only get a handful of classes at the start, and need to level the ones you have to get access to later ones (who are usually a straight upgrade to one of the two classes needed to unlock them). Row IV and Extra II classes have even more requirements.
• The Promised Land: At least from the perspective of The Inchoate World, the island of Sephira is their promised land.
• The Prophecy: Has a rather story-encompassing one regarding the three main characters. The crew's journey is prophesized to bring about destruction to the world, and even the higher authorities in the Erste Empire know about this, such as Walfried. The Blessed One also states that the Girl in Blue (Lyria) and the Red Wyrm (Vyrn) are two conflicting entities that should not coexist. The only person capable of bringing them together is the Singularity (You, the Captain), to whom the Primarchs mention as the one upon which the fate of the world revolves around. Heck, even their temporary stay at the Edgelands is a part of the prophecy.
• Protagonist Title:
  • Inverted with the game's title wherein Gran and Djeeta are derived from Granblue Fantasy. "Gran" is obvious as the first syllable, while "Djeeta" is derived from reversing the last two syllables when pronounced in Japanese ("Fantasy" -> Fantaji -> Taji -> Jita -> Djeeta).
  • The first Robomi-related story event is simply titled "Robomi". Its two sequels retain this theme, being "Robomi: Generations" and "Robomi Z". However, the latter two event also include Nicholas as the co-protagonist.
  • Siegfried stars in his featured event, "SIEGFRIED".
  • Sturm and Drang with their own event, "Sturm and Drang: A Mercenary's Life".
• Pun-Based Title: Belial Avatar's track in "What Makes The Sky Blue III: 000" is titled "Parade's Lust", which is a word play trying to sound like "Paradise Lost", the track used for Avatar's boss fight in the previous "What Makes The Sky Blue" event.
• Punny Name:
  • The first boss of the "A Slice of Summer" event is named the "Rising Sunfish".
  • In "The Other Side of the Sky", one of the Red Wing's members is named Killa Taiga, which sounds a lot like "killer tiger".
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Whether this trope applies or not depends strictly on your party. Most characters' gender has no relevance in actual gameplay, but a handful of them take it into consideration during certain in-battle interactions. Aversions include:
  • Helnar's Charge Attack does more damage with more females in the party.
  • SR Herja gets increased double attack rate if the main character is male, and increased Critical Hit rate if they're female.
  • SSR Lilele's buffs are stronger when applied on males.
  • Lowain's ATK Up buff is stronger with more females in the party.
  • Nina Drango gains Blush levels if males interact with her, transforming into a dragon once she gets enough stacks. Notably, some females also trigger Blush.
  • Macho Ultimatum, the third skill of Soriz's SSR version grants him increased attack, defense, and a gender-restrictive Substitute when there are female allies alongside him.
• Puzzle Boss: Scripted fights with pre-determined characters (especially Challenge Quests in Story Events) will occasionally have these kinds of bosses. Being pre-determined characters, your party usually come in their base stats, without any weapons skills or summon aura to your advantage. Winning against these bosses requires trial-and-error, or you can simply consult a guide on what skills should be cast on a specific turn. Some bosses (such as Poseidon) are even scripted to obliterate the entire party if the player messed up using their character skills. Others can only go down if certain conditions or strategies are met (such as April Fools' Day Katalina's Charge Attack being the only one capable of one-shotting "Vyrn?" or timing Narmaya's Charge Attacks properly in order to defeat Okto in the former's final Fate Episode.)
• The Quest: As your father's letter summarizes it, your journey as a captain is kickstarted by your missing father telling you to meet him on Estalucia. Of course, there are plenty of obstacles and plot twists along the way, much like a typical hero's journey.
  "I'll be waiting for you on Estalucia, the Island of the Astrals."