Kingdom Hearts / Tropes I to O

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I

• Ice-Cream Koan: Starting with Union χ, the series uses "may your heart be your guiding key" as Arc Words, passed down through generations of Keyblade Masters. It's just a fancy way of saying "follow your heart" with this trope thrown in, since even in this series, keys don't act as guides in any capacity. The fact the saying is used in different contexts reinforces that it doesn't have any real meaning to it.
• Ice Magic Is Water: Water-themed monster are considered Ice-type (at least, until Kingdom Hearts III made Water into a separate element). This trope creates a Guide Dang It! on why the player should use Fire magic against, say, Demyx.
• Iconic Sequel Character: Much of the recurring cast debuted in the sequels (including pre-existing Disney characters who play major roles)
  • Chain of Memories - Axel, Namine, Marluxia, Larxene, Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, DiZ.
  • II - Roxas, Pete, Yen Sid, Xemnas ^note not counting Kingdom Hearts Final Mix, Xigbar, Xaldin, Saix, Demyx, and Ansem the Wise.
  • Days - Xion.
  • Birth by Sleep - Terra, Aqua, Ventus, Eraqus, Vanitas, and Master Xehanort - notably, the Big Bad of the franchise is only introduced five games into the series!
  • Dream Drop Distance - Young Xehanort.
  • χ - Ephemer, Ira, Aced, Gula, Invi, Ava, Luxu, and the Master of Masters.
  • III - Yozora.
• Identity Concealment Disposal: * The series does this a lot:
  • Ansem initially appears as a cloaked figure in the original game, but after The Reveal has always appeared since in full view.
  • The Disney Villains initially appear as Sinister Silhouettes hidden in the shadows in scenes where they're conversing (including Hades, who, given his flaming hairstyle, should be very difficult to hide in shadows), but as the plot stops requiring the viewer not to know who they are, the lighting on selective members improves and the darkness stops concealing them.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, all the members of Organization XIII initially wear face-concealing hoods as part of their uniform and reveal themselves one by one throughout the game. None of them ever puts the hood back on after having taken it off once.
  • Similar to the Organization, the Unknown of Birth By Sleep wears a black robe with the hood up, since the developers didn't want to show his face. When he returned as the main antagonist of Dream Drop Distance, the hood is down and never goes up.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The Final Mix version of Kingdom Hearts has Final Mix: Beginner (Easy), Final Mix (Normal), and Final Mix: Proud (Hard). Kingdom Hearts II codified the use of Beginner, Standard and Proud, with its Final Mix version adding in Critical (Very Hard).
• Immune to Fire:
  • Axel, Organization XIII's Number VIII, is a pyrokinetic Nobody. As such, Fire Spells typically do not deal any damage to him, and in fact heal him of any damage he would have taken.
  • Hades, Lord of the Underworld and main villain of the Olympus Coliseum, is a hot-tempered, flame-headed god who is immune to Fire-based spells and attacks, absorbing them without issue.
  • Chernabog is a gigantic dark demon who dwells within the volcano Bald Mountain. He bathes in fire from his domain and breathes it as an attack, and is typically unaffected by Fire attacks.
  • The Volcano Lord is a large boss Heartless with command over and immunity to Fire magic.
  • Red Nocturnes are small Fire-wielding Heartless that, in the majority of games in the series, take no damage from Fire attacks and instead heal. This is downplayed in some later games in the franchise, where they will take damage from Fire attacks, but it will be greatly decreased.
  • Crimson Jazz Heartless are essentially larger, more dangerous Red Nocturnes, using their massive size and pyrokenesis to attack. As such, they do not take damage from Fire attacks.
  • Played with with Wizard Heartless. They are immune to Fire-based magic, but that is also because they are immune to elemental magic attacks altogether.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes:
  • Zippers galore, even on hats!
  • Dusks actually have zippers for mouths.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Keyblades. While consistently referred to as swords and variably used in many varieties of fighting styles including as mediums for channeling magic, at the end of the day, Keyblades are still just giant keys. How most of them can actually cut anything is a mystery since only a small handful have any sort of cutting edge or even points on the striking side.
• Improbable Weapon User: Sora's giant key, Goofy's shield, Demyx's sitar, Zexion's lexicon (a book)...
• Inconsistent Dub:
  • Renames to Heartless are occasionally inconsistent. For example, a Heartless—Japanese name "Loudness"—is introduced in Chain of Memories as "Crescendo" but was renamed "Loudmouth" in Days.
  • While fourth-tier level spells consistently use the suffix "-gun" in Japanese, the English dub is inconsistent about it. KHI and KHII use "-gun"^note No level 4 spells actually appear, but some high-level equipment would use "-gun" spell names, 3D and III use "-za", and 0.2 uses "-ja".
  • Three different characters show up in the black coat with the hood up, and are all called "nazo no otoko" by their respective games while wearing this guise. All three have different translations for the phrase in the English games—"Mysterious Man" (Xemnas), "Enigmatic Man" (Marluxia), and "Unknown" (Young Xehanort).
  • All games prior to KH2 were dubbed into various European languages, but all games released afterwards only had English voice tracks for their Europe-wide releases (although text was still translated). Oddly enough, Quebec^note and the rest of Canada and the US too, but they don't care as much and aren't affected by the pseudo-law mentioned here only received games up to KH2 in English, and only started having French options for the game^note on the same cartridge as English and other European languages at the very point where they stopped providing French audio, which just happened to coincide with a pseudo-law requiring games to be released in French in the province.
  • The Realm of Darkness is known as "Dark World" in the original Japanese. It is translated as "The Realm of Darkness" everywhere in the English versions except for its world logo in Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage- and Kingdom Hearts III, due to said logo being fancifully animated and therefore unchangeable.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Oblivion keychain can be obtained in-game once you pass a certain event. While it's not Ultima, it's still pretty fantastic. Its attack power is outstripped only by Ultima and Fenrir, and doesn't have the latter's downgraded magic stats.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Ultima Weapon. Good luck hunting down all the synthesis items. Also, Final Form is an Infinity+1 Super Mode.
• Informed Flaw: The "tyranny of Light" ^note Explicitly said by Master Xehanort in Birth by Sleep.. So far, all the major problems have come from the Darkness side of things, and any pure-Light examples (e.g.: the Princesses of Heart, Ventus, etc.) have been unambiguously good. Furthermore, the closest thing to a Light Is Not Good problem — Eraqus — only ends up going full-blown Knight Templar because of Xehanort's Manipulative Bastard-ry.
• Instrument of Murder: Demyx wields a sitar that can manipulate water.
• Interface Spoiler: Minor, but something that might have alerted players to the fact Roxas is not the player character for the second game is the fact that when he levels up, the notice bar is in yellow. Yellow is the colour used for guest players in the first and second games.
• Invisible Parents: Sora's mom gets a single line in Kingdom Hearts and his dad gets mentioned by Riku in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, but they are otherwise completely absent. Riku and Kairi are also implied to have parents, but they never get any mentions. Interestingly, Sora mentions both of his parents in a flashback during Chain of Memories.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Sora's interactions with Beauty and the Beast characters, since Haley Joel Osment voiced Chip in one of the direct to video sequels. Also in the Japanese version of Birth by Sleep, Terra's seiyuu voiced Zero, and Master Xehanort's actor voiced Dr. Weil. And in Re: Chain of Memories, Kairi and Naminé, are respectively voiced by Alyson Stoner and Meghan Jette Martin who played archenemies in Camp Rock.

J

• Jagged Mouth: Nearly all Heartless, as well as some Nobodies have these
  • Some Dream Eaters from 3D exhibit this, such as the Skelterwild and Fishbone, who go for this look instead of having exposed teeth.
• Jekyll & Hyde:
  • Used as a gameplay system in KH II. The normally skillful Sword and Sorcery fighting style of Sora becomes an uncharacteristically wild, animalistic style where Sora literally rips his enemies apart with his bare hands when he slips into Anti-form. You similarly have no control over when a Super Mode activation will go to Anti-form rather than the one you actually selected.
  • Story-wise, in an interesting inversion, Riku and "Ansem" in Kingdom Hearts II. Riku took on the appearance of Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, in order to more freely travel between the worlds and keep himself beneath suspicion.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: As Mickey says in Re:coded, "I should have known there were no coincidences—only links in a much larger chain of events." Looking at the series chronologically in-universe helps one make sense of it, but the mythos of the series is so deeply entwined that you need knowledge of the plot of every game to understand it; something not everyone can afford since the series is expanded through (so far) SIX different game platforms (but there are numerous remakes that mean you can disregard the mobile and Gameboy Advance titles). By this point it's pretty much impossible to follow the overarching story if you just pick a random game and dive in. And as of Dream Drop Distance, on top of the Mind Screw, Mind Rape, human cloning, death and resurrection, alternate dimensions and Gambit Roulette games, we're adding time travel to the equation now. Also qualifies as a Kudzu Plot.
• Jungle Japes: Deep Jungle (Tarzan), The Pridelands (The Lion King), and Neverland (Peter Pan) all feature at least a few aspects of a jungle. Most commonly, monkey-like Heartless will appear in these worlds. In the Pridelands, Sora, Donald and Goofy even change in savannah animals to blend in.

K

• King Mook: Darksides and Twilight Thorns, which are a giant Heartless and a giant Nobody, respectively. While each one is a mini-boss in its own right, they usually show up right at the end of a prologue or right before a Wham Episode.
• Kudzu Plot: The series starts as a simple story of a boy trying to find his friends and stop a Mad Scientist from destroying worlds. Then it becomes multiple stories about various Enemy Civil Wars between 13 super-powered Empty Shells of the first game's enemies. Then it turns out everything that has happened so far has been an Evil Plan set in motion decades ago by an Evil Mentor who would become the previously mentioned Mad Scientist and his Empty Shell. Before long Recursive Realities appear, the main character becomes a Soul Jar for half a dozen characters, the Big Bad becomes a Hive Mind of over a dozen, Time Travel becomes involved, and centuries-old Prophecies show up. And then it's revealed that the Big Bad was actually being manipulated by his Dragon with an Agenda, which was the first phase of his plan, while Keyblade wielders from the ancient past reappear in the present and video game characters turn out to be Real After All. And that's just the first phase!

L

• Land, Sea, Sky: It's a common theme amongst the main trios.
  • The Destiny Trio's names are this trope in Japanese: Sora (sky), Riku (land), and Kairi (derived from "Kai", meaning "ocean").
  • For the Twilight Town trio, Roxas is the sky (his name is an anagram of Sora with an "X"), Axel/Lea's the land ("Lea" meaning "meadow"), and Xion is the sea ("shio" is Japanese for "tide").
  • The Wayfinder Trio uses a Latin version: Ventus (wind), Terra (earth), and Aqua (water).
  • Even Sora, Donald, and Goofy fit the theme: Sora's the sky, Donald is a duck (a water-based creature), and Goofy is a dog (a land-based creature).
  • The Final Battle against Armored Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts III is set in three phases. The first is on the lands of Scala ad Caelum, the second in the seas, and the third in the skies.
• Large Ham:
  • Even in a World of Ham like Kingdom Hearts, Ansem, Seeker of Darkness manages to out-ham everyone else. It's quite impressive. Just about every single one of his lines is said at No Indoor Voice volume, he makes a lot of exaggerated movements, and his constant philosophizing on the nature of hearts has made him a Fountain of Memes among fans.invoked
  • For someone who's supposed to be an emotionless vessel, Xemnas sure does like to ham it up. His boss battles are the main source of this, as he tends to be a Cold Ham otherwise. During battle, he's a Screaming Warrior.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • The opening of Chain of Memories (the original GBA version) spoils none other than the ending of the first game, although to be honest it isn't given too much context. The remake, on the other hand, places a recap of the first game's events within the opening movie.
  • The Prolonged Prologue of II assumes that you have played the first game and Chain of Memories, because all important plot points, right down to the endings of both games, are discussed with impunity.
  • Auron is Dead All Along.
• Legacy Boss Battle:
  • Sephiroth appears as a Superboss in Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II. The first one as one of the coliseum matches with no context except for one Final Mix exclusive cutscene, the latter game has him cameo during the 1000 Heartless War where he asks where Cloud is, vanishes and then taunts Cloud a little bit later.
  • The Absent Silhouettes in Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix are Superbosses against the members of Organization XII that had "died" in Kingdom Hearts Chain Of Memories.
  • Xehanort (or rather Xemnas and Young Xehanort) invert the trope, as they first appeared as Superbosses in Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, respectively, albeit with their identity hidden from the characters (and the audience).
• Legacy Character: Many games have new characters that physically resemble established characters and often have similar personalities and abilities. This is actually almost universally significant, as it means those characters are likely connected to each other in some manner. The exception is Aqua and Kairi, whose connection (Aqua inadvertently named Kairi her successor as Master) is comparatively superficial, thus, Aqua looking like an older Kairi and happening to be friends with Legacy Characters of Sora and Riku, is just coincidence.
• Leitmotif: A very frequent musical inclusion.
  • Kairi, Sora, Riku, Roxas, Naminé, Xion, Ventus, Aqua, and Terra all have their own theme tunes, although Xion's uses riffs from Kairi's, Ventus's is a combination of Roxas's and Sora's, and Aqua's and Terra's are lifted wholesale from "Fate of the Unknown" [Aqua's theme also has riffs from Castle Oblivion's world and battle themes].
  • Vanitas' battle themes, "Enter the Darkness" and "Unbreakable Chains," use an original riff for the first minute or so, before vaulting into Roxas' theme, then Ventus's theme, and finally ending with a minor-key version of Sora's theme before looping back to the beginning. All of this because Vanitas is Ventus' darkness, and Ventus' heart had already bonded with Sora when they first met.
  • Master Xehanort has a theme that appears first in Birth By Sleep, but was remixed and appears whenever he is present in 3D.
  • Battles against Riku and/or "Ansem" in the first two games open with identical organ chords, though all instances of fighting the latter used some portion of "Forze del Male" as his motif. Also, every battle with Xemnas uses the same bits from "Darkness of the Unknown." However, anything involving past!Xehanort uses "Dark Impetus." A bonus battle in Birth By Sleep Final Mix even mixed the first two of them together.
  • The vast majority of tunes related to Organization XIII use some part of "Another Side"'s melody (the exception being Xemnas, as he uses the themes noted above).
  • "Destati" is a very general mystical/arcane motif, and plays during such cosmologically significant moments as Sora's dream at the beginning of the first game as well as in the End of the World and final battle.
  • Several other themes also have riffs from "Dearly Beloved".
  • All of the Nobodies' themes seem to be the normal characters' themes (for those that have them) slightly altered.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: See, Demyx has all the work ethic of a bar of soap. He goes above and beyond the call of Dismotivation, running and hiding at the first sign of combat. Saïx tries and fails to get Roxas to motivate him. But put a traitor in front of him, and you better run for your life.
• Letter Motif: X for Organization XIII. At first it seems to be just be more mysterious, but it's revealed later on that any "X" placed by Xehanort becomes the "Recusant's Sigil", a mark of domination that Xehanort can use to track and influence his subjects.
• Level Limiter: EXP Zero is an ability that causes Sora and the party to stop gaining levels as long they have it equipped. In some of the games such as Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], EXP Zero is exclusive to their respective Harder Than Hard modes. In the case of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts coded, simply de-equipping your Level Up chips allows you to stay at Level 1.
• The Lifestream: The actual Kingdom Hearts, also known as "the Heart of all Worlds". All hearts go there when a person's body dies.
• Light/Darkness Juxtaposition: The franchise treats Light and Darkness as opposing forces. Light is generally good and Darkness is generally evil, with the heroes often wielding light to vanquish the dark forces such as the Heartless.
• Light 'em Up: Sora, Roxas, Xion, Ventus, Aqua and Mickey all have powerful light spells and/or abilities.
• Light/Fire Juxtaposition: features Roxas and Axel, both members of Organization XIII, who form a brotherly relationship while Axel keeps Roxas in the dark about his past, and they have powers over Light (Roxas) and Fire (Axel) respectively. Their personalities also contrast one another, as Roxas is brash and naive, compared to the laidback and devious Axel.
• Lightning Bruiser: Several, both on heroes and villains alike.
  • Sora In Kingdom Hearts II. He is faster and stronger than any other playable protagonist in the series (barring King Mickey from the same game). Sora is basically the embodiment of this in III, much faster than Aqua was in 2.8.
  • Riku also counts. Fast, strong, and has great offensive and defensive options, both as a boss and a playable character.
  • Roxas is also a prime example. He can dash at the speed of light, has two keyblades of infinite sharpness and as the icing on the cake, has formidable vitality. In Kingdom Hearts III, he is the most powerful companion in the game; unlike the other keyblade wielders in Keyblade Graveyard, his attack AI has virtually no downtime, and he spends much of the battle either hammering Saïx with combos close up, dashing around the battlefield avoiding attacks, firing projectiles from his Keyblades or surging in as an explosive particle of light. About the only things that stopping him from completely Stunlocking Saïx are the boss' immunity frames and his own lack of an aerial combo, and his constant dodging gives him some of the highest uptime among party members to boot.
  • From Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Terra is the physical powerhouse of his trio, with the greatest Strength stat and, using their respective dash moves, the greatest speed.^note Aqua and Ven's dash moves are still more effective, in that they have greater invincibility frame coverage, but Terra's covers the most distance in the shortest amount of time. The Lingering Will is even more so, outspeeding even Sora in the boss battle against it while being infamous for killing unwary players in seconds.
  • Although Aqua starts as a Squishy Wizard, she can evolve into this later in the game. Her Barrier is far more effective than the Block that Terra and Ven have, her Cartwheel is just as good as Ven's Dodge Roll, she has a wide arsenal of unique and powerful spells for both bosses and groups of normal enemies, and she has Command Styles like Bladecharge and Rhythm Mixer to make up her physical deficiencies.
  • Master Xehanort's boss fights in III demonstrate that age hasn't completely dulled Xehanort's senses. He mainly levitates and teleports around the field and is extremely swift, and he has a plethora of powerful attacks at his disposal.
  • His younger self also applies. He moves and teleports rapidly and hits with combos powerful enough to drain you from full health to critical.
• Literal Split Personality:
  • Sora's Nobody, Roxas and his replica, Xion. They're put back together in one being by the end, but it's clear that they are still there in Sora's heart somewhere. III reveals that their hearts are contained in separate boxes inside Sora. One of the game's subplots is Sora trying to find a way to free them (and Ventus, who merely took refuge in him) and give them proper bodies.
  • coded alludes to some of the issues involving clones/copies/replicas/etc. While Kingdom Hearts II put forth the idea that they should be re-absorbed with the original and don't have true identities of their own, coded seems to argue that copies who develop connections to others are deserving of their own identity. Dream Drop Distance outright confirms that any sentient being who can feel but don't have hearts will eventually grow hearts of their own.
  • Not counting the people Xehanort goes Grand Theft Me on, there's his Heartless Ansem, his Nobody Xemnas, and his younger self who all coexist with each other.
• Like an Old Married Couple:
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Sora and Donald act like this in the Deep Jungle world when bickering over finding Riku or King Mickey, which causes Sora to crash the gummy ship into the world. When Sora regroups with Donald and Goofy in that world, Sora and Donald give each other the silent treatment but are distracted from further bickering through their decision to help Tarzan and Jane stop Clayton from hunting and killing gorillas
    • Sora and Riku start up this kind of bickering in Neverland and Hollow Bastion when Riku reveals that he has fallen into darkness. Sora behaves like a wife who was wronged by her husband when he finds out.
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment with Squall Leon and Aerith, in which the former asks the later if she’ll be okay by herself (the whole town was currently in a crisis) while he goes out to retrieve something, and her only reply is to coldly stare at him, who decides to shut up and leave.
• Living Shadow: The Heartless, some varieties moreso than others. They typically appear through inky black shadows, or from dark places.
• Lore Codex: The games include a log of the journey, featuring plot recaps, character bios, details on enemies, minigame high scores, and more. In I, Chain of Memories, II, and III, this takes the form of Jiminy Cricket's journal, while other games have the information in the player character's personal logs.
• Lucky Seven:
  • The Princesses of heart are seven human incarnations of Light. 3D introduces the idea of seven guardians of light.
  • Subverted in Kingdom Hearts χ, where the six foretellers plus the Master of Masters represent the Seven Deadly Sins.

M

• MacGuffin Location:
  • The titular Kingdom Hearts. It is said to be the ultimate source of knowledge and power, letting whoever controls it have dominion over the entire universe if they choose. The primary goal of the main antagonists is to obtain it.
  • The Chamber of Waking, which houses a comatose Ventus, and is located in Castle Oblivion. Somewhere. Only Aqua (the person who created the Castle) is capable of finding it again.
• Macro Zone: Wonderland (Alice in Wonderland) features its movie's iconic size-changing food and potions, while the Castle of Dreams (Cinderella) features segments where the player must shrink to the size of Cinderella's mouse companions.
• Made of Evil: The Heartless are literal embodiments of the darkness that infuses the universe. Their predecessors, the Unversed, are manifestations of the negative emotions of Vanitas, a being of pure darkness.
• Magic A Is Magic A: An underlying component, and one that may be surprising to newcomers or those merely scanning the plot, is that the series is internally consistent. Retcons exist, usually for the purpose of clarifying/simplifying the cosmology, and the first installment is often glossed over. Despite this, the myriad plot points all conform to what is an overarching storyline.
• Magical Weapon: Keyblades can open any lock with a touch, open portals between dimensions or close them, and can be used to channel magic.
• Magic Knight: All Keyblade wielders and most of Organization XIII use a combination of physical butt-kicking and spectacular magic.
• Magitek: All over the place, most prominently the Gummi Ship and the Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden laboratories. When you're talking about a physical machine that subjects someone's heart to darkness in order to shatter their heart and turn them into a Heartless, it's hard to draw the line between science and magic in this series.
• Malevolent Architecture: The Land of Departure lies directly between the light and dark realms. Word of God clarifies that the castle houses a mechanism that transforms it to invoke this trope should it fall into the wrong hands, and that's how Aqua made Castle Oblivion.
• Mana Meter: In some games you have a set number of magic points. Others avert this by having other limits on magic and abilities.
• Mana Potion: Ethers, and some enemy item drops, will restore magic points or spell uses (depending on how the game limits magic).
• Many Spirits Inside of One:
  • Sora, who, as of Dream Drop Distance, is confirmed to host three additional hearts in addition to his own. The oldest, Ventus, has been taking refuge within him since he was 4 years old. The second, Xion, goes to him after her defeat in Days. The last one to enter is Roxas during the prologue of II. Not to mention the major twist in I that Kairi's heart has been residing inside him since the destruction of Destiny Islands, forcing him to sacrifice himself so the final keyhole can be opened. By the end of III, everyone has gotten out.
  • Terra is no slouch in this department. Other than his own, he is forced to host Xehanort in Birth by Sleep. The game's secret ending also reveals that Eraqus secretly moved to him after he was struck down by Xehanort, acting as an extra line of defense for Terra against Xehanort's influence. As with the above, no longer the case as of III.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Between Disney and Square Enix.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Sora means sky, the "kai" in Kairi means sea, and Riku means land. Also, the Keyblade Knights in Birth by Sleep happen to be called Ven(tus), Aqua, and Terra, Latin for wind, water, and earth, respectively.)
  • There's also Naminé. "Nami" is a word for "ocean wave". Remember whose Nobody she is?
  • Xion's name has a truckload of meanings. The first part of Xion's name- "shio"- is the word for "tide". "Shion" is also the name of a plant associated with memories in Japan. Furthermore, sans the "X", it is an anagram for "No i". For those who do not understand, "i" is a mathematical term for the square root of -1, an imaginary number. In addition, being a clone formed of memories whose appearance changes depending on who looks at her, she initially had no self. No "I".
  • Nomura really went all out with Vanitas. Not only does it mean "emptiness" in Latin and looks like Ventus, but the kanji for emptiness is the same one as the one for sky. His name is connected to a Biblical quote, as well — "all is vanity and a striving after wind". Now consider what he spent most of the game doing...
  • Most of the original cast from χ have meaningful names. The Foretellers are all named after the Latin words for the Seven Deadly Sins. Ephemer is short for "ephemeral" AKA something that lasts for a short time, which perfectly describes him, as he is chosen to become a Dandelion by Ava very early. Skuld, meanwhile, is named after one of the Norse goddesses of fate, again symbolizing her role as a Dandelion. Strelitzia is the name of a flower and alludes to her being the sister of Lauriam, Marluxia's original self. Finally, Brain, other than being a self-explanatory English word, may refer to a computer virus; in-game, he calls himself the "virus" that threatens the ordained fate as dictated by the Book of Prophecies.
• Meanwhile Scene: Dream Drop Distance has scenes between every level that shows what the supporting cast is up to, usually Yen Sid, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. III follows suit, with cutscenes after each of Sora's adventures showing either Riku and Mickey's journey or the machinations of Organization XIII.
• Melodrama: The series puts its emotion on its sleeves, which also fits the style of both Final Fantasy and Disney's animated works.
• Memento MacGuffin: At the beginning of the first game, Kairi talks about a lucky charm she's making from seashells. Later in the game after Sora rescues her from Hollow Bastion, she gives the finished charm to Sora as a memento. However, the Oathkeeper is a little different from your typical Memento MacGuffin in that it also has a practical purpose; it's one of Sora's best weapons throughout the series.
  • He also makes a promise when he gets it to give it back to her, about 3/4 of the way through the first game. At the end of Kingdom Hearts 2, when he does manage to return home despite all odds, the first thing he does is give it back.
• Metafiction: The series has acquired a surprising amount of meta subtext.
  • Dream Drop Distance, without going into spoilers, makes reference to a group of 7 and a group of 13, and the arrival of the 13th member of the latter group completes the set. The series contains seven base games current — Kingdom Hearts, Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts II, coded, 358/2 Days, Birth By Sleep, and Dream Drop Distance. Add in the Updated Rereleases of all games except Dream Drop Distance and Days, and that's an additional 5, bringing the total to 12, and the promised Kingdom Hearts III makes thirteen. If Nomura really didn't have all this planned out from Day One, he is playing some mean Xanatos Speed Chess to make it all work together.
  • The 7 and 13 form the χ-blade, formerly attempted to be formed by Ventus and Vanitas, but they didn't form a complete union. There's been two PlayStation 3 HD re-release bundles for the series that bring the first six games into HD, but they're missing 3D and thus the series is not complete just with them. The PlayStation 4 has two re-release bundles that contain the games already released for the PlayStation 3 in one bundle and another bundle containing 3D, an original game, and a movie, allowing the whole series to be complete on the PlayStation 4 as long as one has a good enough Internet connection to allow the Downloadable Content to be downloaded because these bundles either ship incomplete on disc, or otherwise need patches to kill bugs.
• Metal Slime: Many different kinds:
  • The first game has three separate varieties, all based on mushrooms. White Mushrooms and Rare Truffles will heal you and grant you rare items if you hit them with the correct attack based on their cues...unless you move too slowly, and they leave. Black Fungi are more akin to the traditional Metal Slime, being very tough Heartless that must be defeated with a critical hit to drop their rare items.
  • Kingdom Hearts II introduces the Bulky Vendor as the new Metal Slime, a walking capsule prize machine that gives better rewards the longer you wait to activate it, but begins jumping around increasingly quickly as its timer depletes and eventually vanishes.
  • Re:Coded provides the Gold Tricholoma, a new kind of mushroom that teleports around the System Sector in which it appears and provides large amounts of SP when hit.
  • Birth By Sleep has the Prize Pods, which show up in certain areas and must be hit as many times as possible to make them drop their flavor-themed prizes. These flavors are used to make ice cream at Disney Town, items which allow the user immediate access to their Command Styles when used.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Maleficent has an attack during her first boss fight in which she summons large magical meteors on Sora, Donald, Goofy, and the Beast. Interestingly, they come not from above, but travel horizontally after emerging from a magic portal.
  Meteors of Heaven, unleash thy fury!
• Mighty Glacier: Goofy is the slowest attacker and the slowest mover in battle. He's also got way more HP than any other companion, and his Shield Bash techniques tend to help gather enemies together in one spot.
• Mind Screw: Big time. Even if the player manages to figure out the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot of the series, the heavy emphasis on abstract concepts taking concrete forms and alternate worlds and realities based on said abstract concepts (plus, in-game explanations that are usually vague or incomplete) means the player will always be questioning or be confused about the mechanics and physics of which the series operates on, no matter how consistent they might be. Dream Drop Distance arguably augmented this by including Time Travel into the mix.
• Model Museum: Many of the games include Jiminy's Journal where, on top of story recaps and collectable lists, there are character bios that allow the player to view full turnaround models of the various enemies, allies, and side characters.
• Monster Arena: Olympus Coliseum (Hercules) and Mirage Arena feature arenas where you can fight powerful foes.
• Monster Mash: Sora, Donald and Goofy take on monster-like forms in Halloween Town, with Sora wearing a vampire attire with fangs, white skin and an eyepatch, Donald being wrapped like a mummy, and Goofy becoming a parody of Frankenstein's Monster.
• Ms. Fanservice: Aqua. Tight black shorts and thigh-high black stockings for Zettai Ryouiki (also emphasizing her long legs), a corset-like top that doubles as a Sexy Backless Outfit, she's got a pair of crossing straps on her outfit to emphasize her breasts, blue hair, and to top it off she's a badass Action Girl that could easily take on any of the other protagonists of the series. The ratings for the English release of Birth By Sleep noted part of the reason for the rating was Jiggle Physics, and they're subtle but they're there, and when she visits Olympus Coliseum they engage in some Lampshade Hanging about it all, Hades visibly giving her a once-over and a leer.
• Museum Game: To varying degrees. For example, the first and second main games in the series not only have you visiting different Disney movies and interacting with the characters, but there's even an information gallery with details about the characters (albeit their role in Kingdom Hearts rather than their own movies specifically), including details of when the character was first created, and occasionally trivia (e.g. "Doorknob was the only character in Alice in Wonderland who wasn't in the original book").
• Mushroom Man: The Mushroom Heartless family, which includes White Mushrooms, Black Fungi, Rare Truffles, and Pink Agaricuses.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The victory poses the characters sometimes do is highly reminiscent of the victory poses Final Fantasy characters often do.
  • The way Genie is summoned within the first game is highly reminiscent of the scene in the original Aladdin when the Genie's first summoned out of the lamp, only instead of the lamp that's reacting, it's Sora's keyblade.
  • The theme song for Disney Castle/Disney Town, the home setting of the classic Disney characters like Mickey, Donald and Goofy, is an instrumental remix of the opening song to The Mickey Mouse Club. It's even credited within the credits as "Mickey Mouse March" whenever the song's featured in one form or another (practically any game that portrays events within Disney Castle or Disney Town), the same as any other songs that weren't specifically composed for the game.

N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Ansem, Seeker of Darkness. The Final Boss of the first game, and one obsessed with the power of darkness.
  • Xehanort. Also a Significant Anagram; minus the X, his name spells out "another" or "no heart."
• Nice Guy: Most of the heroic cast are friendly, easygoing and kind people. A few of them stand out though.
  • Sora nearly always has a smile on his face, gets along quite well with most people, and has Chronic Hero Syndrome.
  • While Roxas is more short-tempered and blunt then Sora, he is still a happy, cheerful, kind, and carefree individual in good company, and like Sora cares deeply for his friends and is extremely protective of them.
  • Ventus is sweet, cheerful, curious, and gets excited at anything new or interesting. He also makes new friends easily in different worlds and cares deeply about Terra and Aqua.
  • Xion is without a doubt one of the most kindest and selfless chacters in the Kingdom Hearts series. She always puts her friends before her self, and has a strong sense of justice and generosity, willingly sacrificing herself to join with Sora.
  • Kairi's a friendly and accepting person, and Birth by Sleep shows she's been a total sweetheart since she was a child. She doesn't hold Riku's actions in I against him and not only forgives and befriends Lea despite him kidnapping her as Axel, like Sora with Roxas she recognizes Naminé as her own person and is determined to give her her life back in III.
• Never Say "Die": The series usually avoids outright saying "die", "Death", "killed", etc. In Dark Road, Hades actually lampshades this when Eraqus and Xehanort's party ask about their friends who have "disappeared" (not knowing they legitimately don't know if they're dead or not), insisting he prefers to just use the word.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • The Organization's modus operandi in II is to release Heartless to attack innocents. Sora must kill the Heartless, but releasing those hearts will only grow the Organization's artificial Kingdom Hearts.
  • According to coded, thanks to killing off Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas, Sora and Riku ended up reviving Master Xehanort. Much like the above, they had no other choice - Xehanort's Heartless and Xemnas both posed universe-level threats and had to be taken out.
  • The Foreteller's actions once they realize there's a traitor directly contribute to the first Keyblade War, and the ultimate result of that is Xehanort's start of darkness.
  • Terra, Aqua, and Ven do this over and over again due to Xehanort manipulating them throughout Birth by Sleep. The Bad Guy Wins is almost in full effect; the only thing a few last-minute efforts did on the part of the heroes was delay Xehanort's actions for a while. Even so, because the three of them don't effectively communicate, Terra's body is lost, Ven has to seal himself inside Sora's heart, Aqua is trapped in the Realm of Darkness, and Xehanort gets the X-blade.
  • After their duel, Aqua's choice to sacrifice herself and send Terranort back to the realm of light resulted in Xehanort's eventually return to power. Had she not been so heroic, Xehanort would have remained amnesiac and trapped in the realm of darkness indefinitely (although, so would Terra).
  • When Sora defeats Maleficent in the first game, she seems to disappear. Unbeknownst to Sora, the defeat actually caused her to be sent to the distant past. Though she fails to change history, she becomes privy to information that will make her a lot more dangerous when she returns to the present.
• Nonindicative Name: The Heartless are actually hearts that have been consumed by darkness, and it's the Nobodies ("no body") who are actually the empty shell of the body left behind when a heart is thus consumed. Thus, the Heartless have no bodies, while the Nobodies are heartless.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: Party members just get dazed when defeated. After a breather (or some healing) they'll be ready for action again. This doesn't apply to Sora unless it's a battle Mickey shows up in.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Applies strongly to Shiro Amano's manga adaptation. While the originals and Square Enix carryovers use his native art style, Amano goes to great lengths to imitate the art style of every Disney character's individual movie.
• Non-Standard Skill Learning: The series spreads learning abilities across various methods (level up, progress the plot, defeat a boss, or complete some other challenge), but that comes across as not having one "standard" method in the first place. Though stat boosts come primarily through level-ups, so that might create an expectation that most character growth is from experience points.
• The Nothing After Death: In III, Sora nearly dies at the Keyblade Graveyard and is sent to the Final World, which resembles an infinite salt pan: a featureless void other than the sky and its reflection. Souls of the dead gather here, but lose form and simply repeat emotions and thoughts from their lives without noticing each other or their surroundings.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: Jiminy's Journal gives you a quick summary of what you're doing in the current world, hopefully keeping you from getting too lost.
• NPC Random Encounter Immunity: Justified. The Heartless are drawn to the keyblade, and most people don't have one. With that said, The Heartless can also be made to do evil peoples' bidding, so they do sometimes attack towns, in which case this trope gets averted.

O

• Obviously Evil:
  • Take a wild guess who the villains are in the Work Picture. Subverted slightly with several other characters who are either more complicated than they appear, such as DiZ, Xion, and Riku Replica, or are being forced to act in a certain way, such as Saix, Xion, and Axel.
  • Master Xehanort's motif that plays in Birth By Sleep is dark, and he also was the one who gave Master Eraqus his scar, even if he was forgiven.
• Official Couple: The subtext between Sora and Kairi was always only subtext thanks to this being a series where No Hugging, No Kissing is in full effect. Come Kingdom Hearts III, however, it's heavily implied the two have a Relationship Upgrade when they share a paopu fruit in a way that recreates the cave drawing they did all the way back in the first game, making the subtext outright text.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: In KH2, Kairi and Mickey get knocked outside the door to Kingdom Hearts as Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Riku go to fight Xemnas. But at the end of the battle, all six characters are shown facing Xemnas in fighting pose, as if they HAD been fighting.
• Older Is Better: Played with throughout the franchise.
  • The further back in time the story goes, the stronger the Keyblade wielders were, with skills and abilities that the modern wielders don't even know exist. However, going further back also sees Sora's predecessors making less and less use of The Power of Friendship, which is constantly presented as a vital force in the setting, and their lack of it is a Fatal Flaw that brought about their ruin. Sora and his friends triumph over foes that stronger, better-trained Keyblade Masters fell against by standing united where their predecessors stood apart. At its most extreme, the ancient Keyblade wielders in Kingdom Hearts χ were each practically a One-Man Army, but their competition with one another eventually led to a war that destroyed the world.
  • Meanwhile, the Keyblade wielders of Sora's era are clearly advancing in their power faster than the protagonists of Kingdom Hearts χ, Riku and Mickey are obviously extraordinarily powerful and have mystical abilities that have nothing to do with combat... but also struggle against forces of Darkness that the ancient wielders could have overcome with ease. This franchise's interplay with this trope is quite ambiguous, with evidence for and against it.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: "Destati" and all its derivatives feature chanted lyrics in Italian about awakening to one's destiny. The chanting is featured in scenes that emphasize darkness or general mysticism, like fights with Xehanort or the Dive to the Heart sequences.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: A recurring motif in music for the series, especially in Final Boss themes. "Forze Del Male" and "Beyond the Door" from Kingdom Hearts; "Struggle Away", "The Force in You", "Revenge of Chaos", "The 13th Struggle", "Castle Oblivion", "Forgotten Challenge", "Graceful Assassin", and "Scythe of Petals" from Chain of Memories; "Tension Rising", "The Corrupted", "The 13th Dilemma", and "Darkness of the Unknown" from Kingdom Hearts II; and another boss theme from 358/2 Days.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: In the first game, Chain of Memories, and II: Final Mix, Organization XIII fills this role. They're definitely the bad guys, but missing some crucial context. It gradually gets revealed over subsequent games.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Riku and Rikku. Rikku was actually cut from the first game out of the fear that this would cause confusion, and her name is never actually spoken aloud when she appears in Kingdom Hearts II.
  • Jack Sparrow and Jack Skellington. In the Japanese version, game interface calls the pirate "Sparrow" and the skeleton "Jack" to avoid confusion. In the US version, the game interface calls both of them 'Jack' but when you use an item on them (or cast cure on them) Sora will say "Jack!" for Skellington and "Captain!" for Sparrow.
  • This trope is rather conspicuously averted when it comes to two particular names. The villain of the first game called himself "Ansem", only for Kingdom Hearts II to reveal that he was just impersonating the real, original Ansem. The character "Xehanort" is mentioned in II, but in later games players encounter various incarnations of this character, all of them named "Xehanort". The end result is that specific characters tend to have titles tacked on to their names (such as "Ansem: Seeker of Darkness" and "Ansem the Wise") by fans to keep track of who they are talking about.
• One-Winged Angel: Most final bosses do this at least once. We're talking about Square Enix AND Disney, King and Queen of this trope.
  • Maleficent transforms into her Dragon form in Kingdom Hearts I, while Ansem, Seeker of Darkness goes through three different forms in his final battle.
  • Ironically, Sephiroth, the Trope Namer, who appears in both I and II as a Superboss, is not an example, because he never transforms for the duration of either of his fights.
  • Xemnas goes through three transformations in Kingdom Hearts II. The last one is in an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield, where he's unleashing his full power.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Master Xehanort does this multiple times during the same boss battle. He starts off normal, gains an armored form, raises up dark forms of himself, then goes back to normal for the final blow.
• Only Friend: During Axel's death scene, he tells Sora that Roxas was the only one he liked, and basically his only friend. Other than being inherently sad, playing Days makes it even tragic in hindsight; Axel actually had one other person he liked, but he (and everyone else) forgot about her.
• Order Versus Chaos: Past the early portions of the series, it becomes clear that the conflict between primal light and darkness by themselves corresponds more to order and chaos rather than good and evil. Light and order being good and darkness and chaos being evil are both still mostly in effect, but characters like Riku and Terra still manage to harness darkness in a righteous manner whereas Eraqus's obsession with the order of light causes him to be oppressive and domineering.
• Our Clones Are Different:
  • The Replicas are an artificially created type of Nobody created by the Mad Scientist Vexen to fulfill the plots of Organization XIII. In general, they are highly inconsistent but are always Born as an Adult. The first, the Riku Replica, was created based on the battle data the Organization collected on the original Riku during his time with Maleficent, being identical to the original (at first) and believing that he was the original until the two Rikus met face-to-face. The second, Xion, was intended to be a clone of Sora based on the memories extracted from him in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, but ended up developing a sense of self and then ended up basing herself on Sora's Love Interest Kairi. Both were dismissed by the Organization at large (including Vexen) and seen as mere tools, referred to as "Puppets" by their colleagues.
  • The Constructs are digital clones created by Jiminy Cricket as part of his Datascape. They have identical personalities to their source and are fully aware of their true nature, but they usually don't angst over it.
• Overrated and Underleveled: Zig-zagged.
  • Sora restarts each game he stars in at level one when he was one-shotting enemies and soloing bosses in the previous game. However; it's explained in Chain of Memories as being forced to forget, and at the start of Kingdom Hearts II, he was spending the past year asleep, progress being hampered by Roxas and Xion. In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], his and Riku's reversion back to Level 1 deals with them entering the Sleeping Worlds and losing all of their abilities to learn the proper techniques for Keyblade Masters. Sora then gets his heart temporarily shattered and goes comatose for a while at the end of that game, the damage and need to recover from which explains his drop back to level one for the next game.
  • However, played completely straight with Donald and Goofy. When the court mage and knight-captain join Sora, they're at the level he is and only have a fraction of their abilities.

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