Kingdom Hearts II / Tropes M to Z

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Tropes A to L | Tropes M to Z

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M — Q

• Mage Tower: Yen Sid, the sorcerer from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, resides in a tower simply called the Mysterious Tower.
• Magic Missile Storm: Sora's Wisdom Form shoots out flurries of homing magic shots from his Keyblade. Xemnas shoots his Etheral Blades as projectiles, sometimes from his hand and sometimes creating a line of them in the air that fire at once. Finally, Xigbar can do this with his magic bullets.
• Magic Music: Demyx (the Melodious Nocturne of Organization XIII) uses a blue sitar that's bigger than he is to summon water-clones. It also makes for a really effective club.
• Magic Versus Science:
  • Merlin and Cid have a fight over using magic or technology when it comes to defending Hollow Bastion, with Cid preferring science and Merlin using magic. The end result is that Tron gets some of Merlin's magic in addition to the upgrades that Cid programmed due to Merlin firing a spell a Cid just as the latter was taking a disc out of his computer.
  • The subplot with Ansem The Wise smacks of Science Is Bad as well.
• Magitek: An upgrade disc that Cid creates for Tron is accidentally exposed to Merlin's magic during an argument. Tron gets both the magic and the upgrades from the disc.
• Make My Monster Grow: Since the MCP can't really defend himself too well, he makes Sark grow in size to assist him when Sora and co. come to delete him.
• Making a Splash: The Musical Assassin Demyx is Organization XIII's water user. If he ever utters "Dance, water, dance!", you're in trouble. He also creates geysers and massive blobs of water to attack with.
• Mana Burn: Sephiroth's Heartless Angel attack, in addition to bringing your HP to 1, also zeroes your MP, forcing you to recover using items or stop him from completing the attack in the first place.
• Marathon Boss: The Final Boss stands out for having at least 6 different parts to it; one part, The Giant Nobody Dragon, is even split into 3/4 stages!
• Marionette Motion: Some of the more humanoid-shaped Nobodies move this way.
• Master of the Levitating Blades: Xaldin has power over wind and uses this to attack with his weapons without touching them.
• May It Never Happen Again: In the second visit to Port Royal, the heroes have to help Jack Sparrow break the curse of the Aztec gold once again. After taking out the Heartless and reclaiming the treasure, they all throw the chest into the sea so no one will claim it again.
• Meaningful Background Event: While Sora and co. are talking with Leon in Ansem's secret lab, Stitch can be seen crawling around in the background a couple of times. When Stitch does get noticed, he lands on the computer and indirectly causes Sora, Donald, and Goofy to get sucked into it and arrested by the MCP.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • Auron echoes this awesomely when he bluntly tells Hades, "This is my story, and you aren't part of it."
  • When Saïx confronts Sora over how important Kairi means to him, Sora replies, "Yeah. More than anything." Kairi replies similarly later when Saïx questions her if she wants to see Sora.
• Mechanical Abomination: Xemnas's giant Nobody dragon is entirely made of mechanical parts and shoots lasers and missiles to attack. During the first part of the final battle, it's also connected to a massive flying construct made of buildings. The enemies encountered during gummi ship missions also qualify due to being Heartless and Nobodies themselves despite looking like various flying and ground-based craft.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Wisdom Form replaces Sora's normal attack with the Shoot command, causing him to fire homing magic shots and fight at long range. He can also freely move about while magic is being cast when he normally has to stand in one spot.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Several of the Organization XIII bosses change up the usual boss formula when facing them by adding new, unique mechanics. This is even truer of the Chain of Memories members added in Final Mix.
  • Vexen will send a data circle to track Sora and analyze him. When he's collected enough data, he can create his own AntiSora (i.e., a data version of Sora in Anti Form). As the fight continues and he continues to collect data, the copies will grow stronger. Further, Vexen is immune to all damage until his shield is broken, and it counts as a separate enemy with its own HP bar.
  • Lexaeus has a power meter that will increase as he fights, granting his attacks more power and a wider area of impact.
  • Zexion can trap Sora's allies in copies of his lexicon that must be destroyed to break them free. He can also trap Sora himself in one, forcing him to find the real lexicon among an illusory arsenal of them and destroy it to return to the main battle.
  • Saïx will charge up a Berserk meter; when it fills, he becomes nearly invulnerable to damage and batters Sora with powerful combo attacks. Sora has to grab his thrown claymores and use them to wallop Saïx back to break him out of it.
  • Demyx will summon water clones that Sora has to kill a set number of within a time limit, or else its a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Luxord does not have an HP bar, rather he gives himself and Sora time bar that decreases when they take damage, and also fluctuates depending on if the player can successfully win Luxord's minigames he initiates during the battle. The player is thus not only in danger of losing by having their HP depleted, but of their time running out before Luxord's.
  • Marluxia will inflict Doom on Sora. Most of his attacks don't actually damage Sora, they just decrease the timer over his head, and when it hits 0, Sora is instantly killed regardless of HP.
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: The game does this between the classic and modern incarnations of Pete in the stage based on Steamboat Willie. Although it's more "Meet Your Mentor/Leader's Early Installment Weirdness". It also has an interesting boss battle where you fight modern Pete... with the aid of Steamboat Willie's Pete.
• Mêlée à Trois: It is Sora and his allies vs. Organization XIII vs. Maleficent and her allies, and The Heartless regularly changing sides among the latter two depending on which one is the strongest for the moment.
• Mercy Mode: If you are defeated by specific bosses, rather than restarting the battle or giving up, there's a chance you're given an option to instead continue the battle playing as Mickey Mouse, who is actually stronger than Sora. However, since Mickey has no combo finishers, he can't actually finish off the boss and so the real aim of playing as Mickey is to fill up the Drive gauge and use it to revive Sora. He can help you multiple times per boss, but the said chance of him doing so decreases from the initial 100% every time you use it, ultimately dropping down to 20% or so.
• Metal Slime:
  • The Bulky Vendor is a rare Heartless that occasionally shows up within certain worlds and drops rare items when one of four Reaction Commands is used on it. The Bulky Vendor's HP will automatically deplete and it will start to flee once it's found, so you have to catch it and use the Reaction Command before it dies.
  • Final Mix+ adds not one, not two, not ten, but TWELVE more of these in the form of the Mushroom XIII. Once you've beaten the game, there are three challenges you can go for that are miles above everything else in the game in difficulty, and while defeating the Mushroom XIII is the easiest of the three, it's still a ridiculous pain that requires having mastered use of all of the drive forms in the game. Your prize? A special Keyblade and a little crown for your head (or an upgrade of the crown you already have for beating the other ridiculous challenges).
• Message in a Bottle: During the prologue, Kairi puts a message in a bottle for Sora and lets it drift out to sea. Sora and Riku find it on the shore of the Realm of Darkness at the end of the game, because A Wizard Did It.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: In the Updated Re-release, Zexion's Absent Silhouette has a repeating mechanic in his battle where Sora needs to move quickly into a blue spotlight to avoid being bombarded with meteors.
• Metropolis Level: The game changes predecessor's Hollow Bastion from a Big Fancy Castle level to this, as the focus changes from the castle itself to the town around it. Once again, you have a safe commercial area, and a dangerous residential area (although the dangerous zones have a security system, the Claymore, that keeps things safe for the residents). Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep also features the city, this time by the name of Radiant Garden.
• Million Mook March: After the wall protecting Hollow Bastion falls, a very large number of Heartless are shown marching across the empty ravine towards the town.
• The Millstone: Mulan, while under her Ping guise, is so bad at combat that you're effectively entering each fight with only one ally instead of two. Too bad she's a Required Party Member until her true identity is outed to Shang.
• Mirror Boss: In a minor example, a part of the game has Roxas fight a shadowy version of himself.
• Mistaken Identity: Sora mistakes Riku for an Organization XIII member during the second visit to the Land of Dragons, leading to the two fighting.
• Monster Arena: The Olympus Colosseum from the first game returns, though in a lesser capacity due to the focus on the Underworld. In turn, the latter area has the Hades Colosseum, which hosts much harder battles against mooks.
• Monster Compendium: Like the first game, there's a bestiary maintained by Jiminy Cricket. And this time, you can also use it to view the enemies' reaction commands (and how many times they have been used).
• Mood Whiplash:
  • There's the scene where The game switches control from Roxas to Sora. One minute, you're watching Roxas grapple with losing his sense of identity, as the Lotus-Eater Machine he's been living in for a week forgets he ever existed, and being told he has to give up his life to bring Sora back. The next, Sora, Donald, and Goofy are dancing in a circle after being woken up, and deciding on what to do next, completely oblivious to the drama that it took to get them there. To help get an idea, compare this theme, which plays in the first part, with this theme, which plays in the second.
  • There is a moment in Port Royal where Sora and Goofy comment that they are surprised that Donald didn't give up on the treasure's curse (implying that Donald is greedy, although Donald never was in that world.) And then there's Atlantica ("Let's forget about our mission and... SING!!").
  • Congratulations! You've just defeated Xemnas, for good this time, and Sora, Riku and Kairi have all gotten home safely. And now they've got all new adventures to go on. Cue the ominous images of three people in armor, in somewhere filled with a lot of abandoned Keyblades. And what's with the unnerving piano music...?
• Mook Chivalry:
  • While the fight against the Blizzard Lord and Volcanic Lord is a Dual Boss, only one will attack you at a time. The Lord that's sitting out will focus on your party members.
  • A downplayed example occurs during the Battle of Hollow Bastion near the end, where Sora faces off alone against an army of 1000 Heartless. While around a dozen or so will attempt to attack Sora at once, the other few hundred will politely wait for them to die before stepping in to attack with another dozen or so. Then again, with Reaction Commands Sora will tear through dozens of them at a time with them unable to do jack about it. Perhaps not coincidentally, the majority of these Heartless are armored knights.
• Morale Mechanic: During the first visit to the Land of Dragons, Sora, Donald, and Goofy have to help Mulan and the Chinese Army with a number of missions, such as defending the camp. Each mission has a Morale meter that depletes over time and when damage is taken; if you lose all Morale, you fail the mission and get a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Mr. Exposition: Namine gets this role in the prologue, explaining to Roxas (and the players who haven't played Chain of Memories) just what the heck is going on in the Prologue. Once Roxas is out of the picture, Master Yen Sid from Fantasia serves this role to Sora. Finally, at the end of the game, Ansem the Wise picks up the role.
• Multiform Balance: Each of Sora's Drive Forms augments a particular aspect of his fighting style to the detriment of other attributes.
  • Valor Form is the Glass Cannon Close-Range Combatant form: Sora's attacks, running speed, and jump height, are all terrifically improved, and he can interrupt any combo to immediately execute a finisher, letting him quickly kill enemies and knock them into the air. However, Sora can't cast magic in this form and has no Guard ability nor any manner of dodging ability, making him very vulnerable to enemy attacks and relying on items and allies to support and heal him.
  • Wisdom Form is the Squishy Wizard Long-Range Fighter. Sora slides along the ground and fires magic bolts from his Keyblade to attack, bombarding enemies with strings of projectiles, and his magic is much stronger and he can chain spells together faster. However he can't fight in the air very well and the nature of spamming magic means he'll quickly run out unless the player burns through their supply of Ethers. In the meantime Sora is limited to his projectile attacks, which aren't very powerful and are slow with weak homing, making it easy to miss against speedy enemies or targets that are at a difficult angle to hit.
  • Limit Form, exclusive to the Final Mix+ versions, is a Mighty Glacier Mechanically Unusual Fighter. It's the only form to not require Sora give up an ally to use it and he doesn't dual-wield in it. The theme of the form is that it lets Sora tap into his lost abilities from the first Kingdom Hearts, which is reflected by replacing Sora's Magic commands with "Limit" commands — Strike Raid, Sonic Rave, Last Arcanum, and Infinity (Ragnarok). Using these Limits costs MP, but they can deal high damage and each hit with them heals Sora a bit, since he can't use his normal spells including Cure. This form has the best defensive potential of any form, as Sora can use Dodge Roll in it and it is the only form to retain the Guard command, plus guarding an attack lets Sora unleash a very powerful counterattack. However it has the slowest attack and movement speeds of any form, and the Limit commands lack invincibility frames for the most part, so the player needs to wait for an opening to use them safely.
  • Master Form is the Jack of All Stats Air Jousting form. It has the best aptitude in aerial combat and Sora attacks with huge, sweeping swings of the Keyblade that can hit in a wide area, making it great for groups of enemies but less effective against bosses. It augments Sora's magic into Spell Blade-like attacks that combine physical and magical damage and allow Sora to move while casting them, and magic attacks don't trigger finishers, encouraging you to combine magical and physical attack strings. But it lacks the power and speed of Valor Form, its spells and MP recovery aren't as good as Wisdom Form, and Sora has to give up both allies to use it along with an extra segment of Drive Gauge, so it isn't universally preferable to his previous forms.
  • Final Form is the Master of All 11th-Hour Superpower which can't be acquired until the player begins the final dungeon. Sora floats through the air with his Keyblades hovering behind him automatically attacking enemies, his combos are terrifically powerful, his spells are powered up to deal more hits over larger areas, and he can jump higher than even Valor Form and glide through the air. Simply put, it is (even in-universe) Sora tapping into and unleashing the true power of the Keyblade, and excels in all areas of combat. However, it costs the most Drive Gauge to use of any form and once again Sora has to give up both allies to use it, which coupled with it only being acquired so late into the game means that it's absurd power is only really useful for the postgame and the Superbosses.
  • Anti Form is the Fragile Speedster form. The Drive Form system is meant to be Power at a Price, and Anti Form is that price: the more Sora uses Drive Forms the greater the chances when transforming he'll give into his own darkness and turn into Anti Form instead (with the exception of Final Form, which for story reasons greatly lowers the odds of Anti Form occurring). In this form Sora loses his Keyblade and attacks enemies with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs combos of scratches, kicks, and punches, which aren't very powerful individually but can chainstun enemies, and since they considered to deal Neutral and Darkness damage he can hit enemies that can otherwise block physical attacks with impunity. Unfortunately Anti Form has no defensive abilities, Sora takes increased damage in it, he can't use any commands other than Attack, and he can't even pick up HP orbs, which means he can't heal and is extremely vulnerable to damage. While it has decent potential in certain situations, most of the time Anti Form is a hindrance, and in boss battles it's almost always a death sentence unless you stay on your toes and manage to survive until the gauge depletes and Sora reverts to normal.
• Multi-Mook Melee:
  • After defeating Demyx, you're thrust into a series of fights against Heartless while teaming up with Final Fantasy characters. Each wave is more dangerous than the last, with the fourth and final wave being filled with nothing but Heartless that have high HP and damage output.
  • The Monster Arena cups in the Underworld, including those of the more difficult Hades Colosseum, pit Sora against assorted mooks from various parts of the game in rounds or waves.
• Multi-Stage Battle: Mixed with Sequential Boss, the boss fight with Pete in Timeless River starts out with Sora having to stop his steamboat with the Cornerstone from escaping down the river. After that Sora fights Pete on foot, and after taking some damage, he yells, "How about a change", a curtain with Pete's face comes down, and the scene shifts to one of the four windows on Cornerstone Hill (where Sora had earlier had to clear each of them in order to gain information on how Pete had traveled to this time period). Sora, Donald and Goofy fight through each of the four windows until Pete is defeated.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Opening big chests involves Sora/Roxas tossing the Keyblade into the air then hitting the chest, all the while whooshing sounds and dramatic camera movements add to the mood. Said big chests will usually contain powerful one-of-a-kind armor, charms that will grant new summons, torn pages for the Hundred Acre Wood, or area maps.
• Mundane Utility: On the second visit to Agrabah, Genie complains about how all he's asked to do are the relatively simple (for him) tasks of clearing a sandstorm and fixing Agrabah.
• Mundane Wish: After defeating the Storm Rider in the Land of Dragons, the Emperor grants Sora and Mulan each a boon. Sora merely asks for information about the Mysterious Man (Riku) who had warned them of the giant Heartless, while Mulan wants to let the badly overworked Shang have some time off to rest. Lampshaded by the Emperor himself: "Such humble requests."
• Musical Episode: The game reworked Atlantica into this. The Unexpected Gameplay Change leads to a Musical Boss Fight against giant Ursula.
• Musical Theme Naming: A family of Heartless runs on this: Crimson Jazz, Silver Rock, Spring Metal and Emerald Blues.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The Struggle. When you get your opponent down to 0 HP, they are knocked out for a few seconds so you can collect more orbs, then they revive with full health. When YOU get knocked down to 0 HP? You lose instantly. It helps that the only remotely dangerous Struggle opponent is Vivi, whom you cannot fight again after Roxas' part of the game is over.
• Mystery Episode: The second visit to Halloween Town involves a thief going around stealing Christmas presents from Santa Claus, and then Dr. Finkelstein's Experiment. Jack is considered the primary suspect, and ends up leading the case to catch the thief and prove his innocence. At the end, the thief is revealed to be the missing Experiment, who^*like the Nobodies, Pinocchio, and TRON was created without a Heart, and was seeking one out for itself.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Seifer's position as the self-appointed head of the Disciplinary Committee in Twilight Town is a reference to Balamb Garden's student-run committee of the same name in Final Fantasy VIII.
  • Seifer's bullying of Hayner is a reminiscent of his treatment of Zell Dincht, a character from Final Fantasy VIII that Hayner heavily resembles.
  • Leon receives a letter that contains a pair of angel wings during the credits, implied to be from his Love Interest, Rinoa.
  • The Sorcerer, Sniper, Dragoon, Berserker, Assassin, Dancer, Gambler, and Samurai Nobodies are named after (and based off of) Job Classes from various Final Fantasy games. Dragoons also enable a Reaction Command called "Learn" to let Sora use their Jump attack. Learn is a reference to the Power Copying abilities of the Blue Mage class, while Jump is the Signature Move of Dragoons in most Final Fantasy games.
  • Ansem's study in the basement of Hollow Bastion looks suspiciously similar to the basement library in Final Fantasy VII where Sephiroth discovered his history. It's appropriate, considering the inhumane nature of the experiments conducted there.
  • Beast says "Get out!" when initiating his Limit Break, referencing one of his lines from his film to Belle when she trespasses into the West Wing and to Gaston at the climax.
  • Chicken Little says a line from his own movie: "Prepare to hurt" when activating his Limit Break.
  • Jiminy's Journal refers to the Gullwings as "friendly neighborhood something-or-others", a nod to a line they used to refer to themselves in Final Fantasy X-2.
  • When visiting Kanga's house in the Hundred Acre Wood and playing its minigame, you can see the valley of butterflies in the background from Pooh's Grand Adventure. The final major location to be unlocked is a real version of Skull Cave, the final setting of that film.
  • When Sora and his friends meet the castle servants in the Beauty and the Beast world, Donald tinkers with Cogworth's insides like Maurice did in the original film.
  • The cage that hangs below the Prison Keeper Heartless has the same design as the cage that Lock, Shock, and Barrel use in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
  • Dr. Finklestein's Experiment is not merely an original character design, it is based on various props used in the film.
  • The Mayor of Halloween Town quotes one of his lines from the movie: "I'm only an elected official!" when trying to make the Heartless leave Halloween Town.
  • The bit where Eric wrests the trident from Ursula, and "complies" when she demands it back by hurling it through her heart, is based on a scrapped alternate version of Ursula's defeat in the original film.
  • The paintings in Beast's Castle are actually background stills◊ from Beauty and the Beast.
  • Luxord invokes "Parley" in the Pirates of the Caribbean world, a code used in the films when a pirate wishes to negotiate with an opponent without being harmed.
  • The manner Tron receives the Eradicator program from the I/O Tower's reception point resembles one of the original film's posters.
• Named in the Sequel: In Final Mix+, the party encounter an armored entity at a barren wasteland, who wields a keyblade and does battle with them. This being is called the Lingering Will by the in-game journal, Birth By Sleep revealed him to be what is left of Terra.
• Negate Your Own Sacrifice: At one point in the story, Goofy saves Mickey Mouse from being hit by a falling boulder, resulting in it falling onto him instead, knocking him out. He survives, the sole reason being because he was an Iron Butt Monkey within his own shorts, something he promptly notes to Sora and the gang when he catches up to them.
• Nerf:
  • The Magic system has been heavily reworked since Kingdom Hearts to make it less powerful. Casting times are longer (especially if done in midair) unless Sora is in a Drive Form, the transition to a more traditional MP bar means you get less spell uses before MP is depleted, and MP can no longer be restored by hitting enemies with melee attacks.
  • Blizzard is now just a single projectile instead of having the shotgun-esque spread like in Kingdom Hearts.
  • The Cure spell now consumes whatever MP is left instead of having a set cost, preventing consecutive uses.
  • In the Final Mix version, the Fire, Blizzard and Thunder spells have slightly higher MP costs compared to the original release.
  • The Guard ability's animation is significantly shorter than the other games, making it harder to use.
  • The Final Mix version of the game significantly reduces the damage dealt by all Limits.
  • Strike Raid no longer provides invincibility if you delay between Keyblade throws for as long as possible.
  • Strike Raid, Sonic Blade, Last Arcanum (Ars Arcanum in Kingdom Hearts), and Infinity (Ragnarok in I) now cost huge amounts of MP, preventing more than 2 or 3 uses before you run out.
• Never Say "Die": Averted. Death and murder are explicitly mentioned several times over the course of the game despite its (mostly) kid-friendly nature.
• Never Split the Party: One of the minigames in the Hundred Acre Wood involves keeping all the characters together through a spooky cave.
• Newbie Immunity: The first fight is against Seifer. No matter whether Roxas wins or loses the fight, the game will continue on with the winner's friend taking their photograph, which then gets stolen by a Nobody.
• New Skill as Reward: Winning scripted battles will usually net Sora, Donald, or Goofy either an equipment slot or a new combat ability.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Sora is tricked into removing the lock that Zeus placed on the Underdrome. Hades is pleased.
  • Donald accidentally stepped on the keyboard of the system of the Master Core Program which leads to his and Sora's and Goofy's arrest and being transferred into the program.
• Nintendo Hard: The Final Mix version can be very hard on the Critical difficulty. Every enemy you encounter is fully capable of killing Sora quickly thanks to a combination of buffed damage output and Sora's reduced HP (losing most of the bar to one attack isn't uncommon), and healing is very restricted between the Cure Nerf and limited number of item slots. Level Grinding to brute force the game won't help you much, as damage is scaled and Sora's combat abilities are upgraded or expanded by hitting specific Event Flags. You have to play smart to win.
• Nominal Hero: From a UI perspective, at least. Jimminy's Journal highlights the heroes with blue or green backdrops and the villains with either red or grey. In a stark contrast to all other heroes, Captain Jack, Will, and Elizabeth all also given grey backdrops.
  • The same holds true for the Halloween Town cast (sans Santa Claus), where even the main trio get grey backdrops for their profiles.
• Non-Combat EXP:
  • Summons level up by depleting enough Summon bars, which will happen naturally whenever a Summon is out. It's possible to level grind just by having them out when not in combat.
  • Master Form acquires experience by picking up Drive Orbs, not by doing anything combat-related like the other Forms. Trying to level it up outside of grabbing orbs dropped by enemies is impractical, as there are very few ways to obtain them otherwise.
• Non-Dubbed Grunts: In the original Final Mix version, the Organization XIII members fought in the Absent Silhouettes use Japanese voices with generic grunts while the rest of the game reuses the North American version's English voice track. The international HD 2.5 ReMIX versions avert this, giving the Silhouettes battle grunts provided by their English voice actors from the Chain of Memories remake.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Timeless River is based on the old Mickey Mouse shorts from The Golden Age of Animation, and Donald and Goofy revert to their older designs while visiting. Sora does a Downplayed version of this trope; he reverts to his KH1 clothing and is modeled in the style of early Japanese animation, so while he sticks out, his appearance is still relatively appropriate. Modern Pete, on the other hand, retains his normal design with a greyscale filter, playing this straight to separate him from Past Pete.
• Nonstandard Game Over:
  • If Sora fails an objective (such as dying in the Coliseum or failing to defeat Demyx's water clones in time) or lets a specific character die during various sections (such as Jack Sparrow against Barbossa or Timon and Pumbaa against the hyenas), the player is treated to a unique Game Over screen of Sora standing disappointed instead of the usual screen of him floating in the air unconscious.
  • Losing to any of the Struggles in the prologue causes a static effect to black out the screen and reset you to before the fight started.
• Noodle Incident: Donald apologizes for some unexplained incident involving ice cream after he thinks Goofy dies.
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: There are more than a few levels like this or close to it (i.e. not a lot of exploration). Such is the case of The World That Never Was and Disney Castle. Allegedly done because the original was more in the opposite direction, to the consternation of many players.
• Nostalgia Heaven: Final Mix has Axel and Roxas meeting up one last time at the clock tower in Twilight Town before Axel fades away from existence or so it seems and before Roxas becomes consumed by Sora.
• Not Me This Time: When Sora and the gang visit Halloween Town a second time, they've found out that Santa's presents were stolen. Naturally, they accuse Lock, Shock, and Barrel for stealing the presents. While they did deny it, they've decided to cause mischief anyway simply because "[stealing presents] sounds like fun!" This didn't help their case as for once, they didn't do it (which the party only finds out after they've captured them).
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Demyx at a first glance is just a lazy, clumsy, and cowardly Cloudcuckoolander who Sora and co. take every possible opportunity to taunt and not take seriously, with even Jiminy's Journal describing him as nothing but a complete joke. However, during the 3rd visit to Hollow Bastion, after putting up with more taunting, he quickly commands Sora to be quiet in a Creepy Monotone, visibly shocking our hero, and then shows the gang just how dangerous he really is by fighting directly.
• NPC Roadblock: Subverted in Beast's Castle. The wardrobe is standing in front of a door. You can push her out of the way, but if you wake her up doing so she'll complain and move back into position. Move her fully out of the way and then she'll wake up and engage you in a friendly chat.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Implied with Demyx. He flees from Hades, talks in a very casual manner to Sora, and claims he's not good at fighting. When he confronts Sora for the second time at Hollow Bastion, he becomes very serious after a failed attempt at reasoning and proceeds to put up a good fight.
• Offscreen Teleportation: In Kingdom Hearts, whenever you see your allies get out of range, they would simply stay there. However, in this game, they will sometimes appear right next to you or even behind you when there's no way for them to get there.
• Old Save Bonus: Unlocking Japanese as an audio option for Theater Mode instead of the default English in Final Mix+ requires having a finished Re:Chain of Memories save file on the memory card. Notably, Final Mix+ added a few cutscenes not in the original edition of the game, which means that there is no English voiceover available for them. This, in turn, means that these cutscenes are essentially muted until you get around to finishing the other game. Which, naturally, is entirely in Japanese. At least Re:Chain of Memories comes with Final Mix +. The connection goes both ways: Re:Chain of Memories added several enemy cards representing the members of Organization XIII introduced in II and attack cards featuring Keyblades from the same. Acquiring them requires a completed Final Mix+ save. When Re:Chain was localized as a standalone game, this was understandably dropped in favor of needing the story to be completed.
• Ominous Floating Castle: The villain's hideout, the Castle That Never Was, which is right next to the Realm of Nothingness.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The game has Ominous Chanting in three songs: The Organization XIII Theme and both the main and battle themes to The World That Never Was. It doesn't appear to be in any particular language, however.
• Ominous Save Prompt: Done right before the endgame begins for real; you have to choose the option to open it.

  "Beyond this door lies the beginning of the end of your journey."

• One Degree of Separation: The game reveals that the "Ansem" Sora defeated was not really Ansem, but was merely the Heartless of an impostor called Xehanort, who studied under the real Ansem, who is friends with Mickey. Xehanort's Nobody, Xemnas, is the leader of Organization XIII, whose members Sora battles one by one in Chain of Memories and II. Six other members of the Organization are also Nobodies of Ansem's apprentices. One of them, Axel, is part of another trio with the Organization's two latest members: Roxas, Sora's Nobody; and Xion, Roxas' replica who looks like Kairi. Another Kairi lookalike is her Nobody, Naminé, who was born in Castle Oblivion, one of the Organization's bases.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • During the battle with Sark and the Master Control Program, Sark will occasionally put up a wall to stop the party from escaping him when the MCP loses one bar of health. By using the reaction command from it, Sora will leap up onto the top of the wall, jump off, and then stab Sark in the head, instantly killing him.
  • During the Final Boss battle, Xemnas can attempt to grab Sora, which can only be avoided with invulnerability from something like Reflect or a limit attack. Should he succeed, he'll attempt to rip out his heart. Riku can save Sora from this, but if his HP is too low when he gets caught, you're out of luck, as it'll be completely impossible to stop it in time.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The reward for getting 100% Completion on the Gummi Ship missions is the Crown/G gummi piece. When equipped it causes the Ship to start off in "berserk mode", but makes it so any hit will kill you.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. There are two Jacks (Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas and Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean), two Chips (the one from Beauty and the Beast and the one from the Chip 'n Dale shorts), Sora's best friend Riku and the similarly named Rikku from Final Fantasy X, and two Ansems (Ansem, Seeker of Darkness from Kingdom Hearts and the real Ansem the Wise that the first one stole his name from).
• Only I Can Kill Him: According to Sephiroth, Cloud is the only one capable of truly defeating him since he's a manifestation of Cloud's darkness. If Sora beats Sephiroth in an optional fight, he just shrugs it off like nothing happened.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Interestingly, the Hunter heartless in the Gummi Ship missions has been known to make its entrance by wiping out a large number of its fellow Heartless just to get a one-on-one fight with the player. Hunter-X in particular waits until basically the last second in the mission it appears in to intercept and challenge you, after you've escaped (and possibly destroyed) the dreadnaught.
• Open-Ended Boss Battle: The plot continues no matter if Roxas wins or loses to Seifer. Then, during the struggle tournament, while you have to win against Hayner and Vivi to progress, the outcome against Setzer merely determines whether Roxas earns a belt for winning or a medal for losing.
• Optional Boss:
  • All versions:
    • Sephiroth returns as an optional fight. After defeating the MCP in Space Paranoids, he can be found at the Dark Depths in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden.
    • Tifa, Cloud, Leon, Yuffie, and Hercules can be fought in various Underdrome Cups at Olympus Coliseum.
    • For the Gummi Missions, if you unlock and reach the end of Mission 3 in Assault of the Dreadnought, you are intercepted by the Hunter-X, the ultimate Gummi Heartless (right as you're about to leave the mission, to boot, as it kicks you into its own hyperspace wormhole thing to fight you).
  • Final Mix:
    • In several worlds there are strange entities called Absent Silhouettes of the Organization XIII members that died in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Examining them will trigger a fight with the member whose weapon is on the Silhouette.
    • At the end of the Cavern of Remembrance in Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden there's a room called the Garden of Assemblage that has portals that let you fight Data versions the Organization XIII members. These Data Rematches are much stronger, have more HP, and have their fight strategies slightly altered to ensure they're more difficult.
    • After beating the game a portal opens up in the basement of Disney Castle. Taking the portal will have you encounter a difficult battle with Terra's Lingering Will.
• Orbiting Particle Shield: Part of the game takes part in the world of TRON, where the MCP reprises its film role by protecting itself with an orbiting shield; the player must eliminate panels and/or wait for the shield to slow down before they can shoot at the MCP.
• Orcus on His Throne: After losing Roxas, Xenmas now waits around letting Sora kill the Heartless without really doing anything other than laughing at him at the beginning of the game, taunting Mickey a little halfway through the game, giving an order to Saix briefly, and then whining about how his plan was ruined toward the end of the game. Fitting that most of his final boss fight is also him literally sitting on a throne.
• Out-of-Character Moment: So, we've got Sora, our nice, friendly hero. He even feels sorry for a machine Dr. Finkelstein built since that machine was longing for a heart. Which would be sweet, if it didn't come after Sora killing Demyx, who was longing for a heart, and instead of feeling even a bit guilty about it, he asks if there are any other Nobodies who want to get beaten. The others call Sora out on it... For inviting more trouble, not because showing remorse might be expected. Made worse when, in coded, Mickey and the others are willing to risk reality in order to save Maleficent and Pete. As in, Big Bads who want to drown the world in darkness. But Demyx sure was deserving of his fate!
• Overrated and Underleveled: At the end of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Sora is put to sleep for a year, having his memories also siphoned off during the events of 358/2 Days, and by the events of II, is level one again and has to re-learn all his magic while also picking up new tricks.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: The Devastator Heartless launches a sluggish homing sphere of energy at the end of a volley of quick projectiles. Touching it will launch you a distance inversely proportional to its speed.
• Palette Swap: The Final Mix version changes the coloration of most Heartless.
• Pass Through the Rings: Several of the mini-games, although passing through the rings would just increase your score; it's not really required to hit all of them.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish":
  • The password to the DTD dataspace in Ansem's computer is comprised of the names of the 7 Princesses of Heart, who are necessary to get to the real DTD (Door to Darkness). The MCP even Lampshades this when he finds out what it is, stating that it was a simple password. When Tron changes it to lock the MCP out, he makes it "Sora, Donald, and Goofy" after his newfound friendship with them.
  • The password to Ansem the Wise's computer in the Twilight Town mansion's basement is "sea-salt ice cream", his favorite flavor.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • There's a specific area of the Pride Lands—Pride Rock, specifically—with an incredibly thick swarm of Heartless in it. By using area-of-effect spells like Magnega, one can gain massive amounts of experience in a short time. You'll also find yourself with more munny than you know what to do with. This was nerfed in the Final Mix version, where the swarm only has a 20% chance of showing up.
  • For even more EXP, you can disable Donald's Cure spell, set your party members to Sora Attack (to ensure that you always get the kill), get your HP down to critical levels by getting hit, then equipping the Experience Boost ability and Gullwing Keyblade (both double EXP when at half health or lower) to get quadruple EXP. At the end of the game right before the final boss, The World That Never Was becomes particularly ideal for this, as the only enemies that spawn are (late-game high-EXP) Nobodies that only drop MP orbs, ensuring that you won't constantly go over half health due to HP orb drops.
  • Discovering penisulas specifically for leveling the game's Drive Forms has been a large focus of the fandom for a long time, as it is functionally impossible to fully level them organically and experienced players are always on the lookout for faster and less tedious ways to power up.
  • Anywhere that spawns Gambler enemies will be a boon for this, such as Port Royal and one room in Yen Sid's tower. If you let a Gambler transform you into a die or a card while you are in Drive Form, your HP, MP and Drive gauge will be restored when you turn back. This way you can level each form up nonstop without having to worry about the Drive gauge running out. If you beat their minigames, you can also get a ton of munny from not only the one you beat, but any in the vicinity... and with the Drive Converter ability, you can change that munny into Drive orbs, which lengthens your Drive Forms and are the way to level up Master Form in the first place. Clever abuse can let players get immense amounts of Master Form EXP in seconds.
  • Again, Agrabah has the first room of the Cave of Wonders. Unlike most locations, the Heartless respawn after only going one room away, and the second room has a save point to reset the Drive Gauge (similar to the Gamblers above). With Drive Converter, it is an ideal spot to level up Master Form. There's also Mushroom No. 5 in the innermost chamber, which is great for both Valor and Limit Form to wail on and also has a save point right outside.
  • Sometimes, the player party will wonder around a location as NPCs. If Sora is in a Drive Form when he enters a room with his allies as NPCs, he will revert and the Drive Bar is reset (again, similar to the Gambler and save point examples above). The Solar Sailor (from the I.O. Tower) in Space Paranoids is a permanent case, allowing Drive Form grinding (and Elixir farming). The room right before The Castle That Never Was is ideal for Wisdom Form thanks to the bountiful weak Heartless nearby, but disappears after entering the castle. The graveyard room further up the castle is a good spot for Final Form after Riku joins the party, but before the first battle with Xemnas.
  • The Battle of the 1000 Heartless has several factors that combine for quick leveling of Limit Form - one of the very few times the game's critical path can be utilized for efficient Drive Form leveling. The Vicinity Break ability, learned right beforehand, has a huge range that will definitely hit multiple enemies in the crowded battle - put Sora into MP Charge to boost Drive Gauge gain, and you can easily go from empty to full Drive in seconds. This allows Sora to repeatedly enter Limit Form, use Limits until his Form expires (allowing himself to get hit between uses to regain MP via MP Rage), quickly build Drive back up again with Vicinity Break while in MP Charge and then go back into Limit Form... which also fully replenishes Sora's MP (and multiple steps have the side effect of healing HP, ensuring that he doesn't get worn down). Not only that, this battle is one of the few times in the game in which it is impossible to accidentally activate Anti-Form, making it even more ideal. One can go from level 1 to almost level 6 (the Drive Form Level Cap at that point) just by leveraging this method in this one segment.
  • As noted above, right before the final boss, The World That Never Was will be populated with nothing but Nobodies, making it perfect for Final Form grinding.
  • Possibly the best place for leveling most Drive Forms and Summons is Hall of the Cornerstone (Disney Castle)/Cornerstone Hill (Timeless River). There are 4 rooms that are easily accessible and have a decent amount of enemies. The best part? The door between Cornerstone Hill and Hall of the Cornerstone removes you from a drive form and resets your drive bar. Simply enter, kill enemies until you're almost out of drive, and run out. Rinse and repeat.
• Percussive Therapy: Towards the end of the Prolonged Prologue, Roxas regains (some of) his memories of his time in Organization XIII, and realizes that he's spent the past six days living a fake life before he could be sacrificed to revive The Hero. Angry at the deception, Roxas attacks a nearby computer terminal to blow off some steam. When Sora sees the smashed terminal in the endgame, he decides to find a way to revive Roxas.
• Permanently Missable Content: There are a few harmless missables during the tutorial, but they aren't even counted in Jiminy's Journal (the main tracker for completion). Considering it was made by Square Enix, it's surprising that otherwise, the series has mostly avoided this problem since then.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Axel is initially a bit too keen on becoming best friends forever with Roxas (who is only 15- or rather, his soul is 15, Roxas himself is only less than a year old). After Roxas left, Axel goes into this trope full throttle, and many scenes where it looks like Axel is unhealthily obsessed with defeating and taking Roxas back.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • No. IV of the Mushroom XIII. Once you know the key to beating it (Wisdom Form and circle-strafe), it's fairly simple to beat even as early as you get Wisdom Form, allowing the player an easy way to stock up on Tents and Drive Recoveries. Furthermore, it's within fairly close reach of save points and is in a small area you can easily leave and re-enter to respawn it.
  • Gambler Nobodies have their pockets lined with infinite stacks of Munny. Winning their Reaction Command minigames causes them to drop some of their stash, letting you farm cash off of them for long as you want.
• Pirate Episode: Port Royal, where Sora, Donald, and Goofy go to areas based on Pirates of the Caribbean. When Sora first meets Captain Jack Sparrow, he is excited at the idea of being a pirate.
• Pivotal Boss: The MCP is completely stationary due to his large size, sitting the the middle of the battlefield out of reach. The only way to damage him is by using a Reaction Command when Tron is out.
• Playing with Fire: Mulan's skills and Limit Break are all fire-based, due to being used along with Mushu. Mushu himself was a fire-based Summon in the first game.
• Point of No Return: Entering the Door to Darkness at the Altar of Naught sends you into the final (and quite long) fight against Xemnas with no breaks.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Much of the plot’s mystery is prolonged by certain characters refraining from sharing what they know with Sora for one reason or another. DiZ keeps secrets because he is trying to manipulate Sora, Naminé and Riku feel too guilty about their past actions to come forward, and Mickey knows what happened to Riku but refuses to tell because he made a promise not to.
  • Averted in the Halloween Town world; the conflict from the original Nightmare Before Christmas film is mostly avoided because, once the villains have been dealt with on the first visit to the world, Santa Claus simply explains to Jack why him trying to take over Christmas would be a terrible idea.
• Portal to the Past: The door to the Timeless River within Disney Castle functions as this.
• Power Copying: The Drive Forms. Each form's fighting style is a reflection of the person from whom the form is derived:
  • Valor Form: Reflects Goofy's all-physical, up-close-and-personal fighting style.
  • Wisdom Form: Reflects Donald's all-magic, distance-oriented fighting style.
  • Master Form: Reflects Mickey's fighting style, using physical, magical, up-close, and distance attacks.
  • Final Form: Reflects Roxas's fighting style, using lightning-fast attacks and both Keyblade and Nobody-style attacks.
  • The Final Mix-exclusive Limit Form reflects how Sora fought in the first game, using some of the special moves that were usable in Kingdom Hearts, but not the original sequel.
• Power Floats: The strongest Drive Form, Final Form, has Sora always floating above the ground.
• Powers Do the Fighting:
  • While he can jump and glide all over the place in Final Form, Sora never touches the Keyblades as they float around butchering everything within his now vastly inflated striking range. In fact, the Keyblades automatically initiate attacks while doing things like using an item, healing, or doing anything other than standing perfectly still, so you could feasibly kill hordes of enemies without ever touching the attack button.
  • If Sora can gain control of Roxas's weapons during his boss fight, they mostly act as A Taste of Power for Final Form by floating around him in a glowing spectral form and mostly enhance Sora's combos by independently using Final Form's attacks. There are also some attacks unique to this state, such as enhancing combo finishers by doing a Criss-Cross Attack.
• Pre-Asskicking One-Liner:
  • From Mickey Mouse, of all people:
    • "They'll pay for this." Followed by Flung Clothing and a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. This, along with very powerful music, makes the King a force for kicking ass!
    • His cry of "Sora!" whenever he appears during a boss battle too.
  • Most bosses get one before the fight begins. Sora tosses one out whenever he enters Drive mode.
• Precap: If the game is left idle at the title screen for long enough, it will play a montage of cutscenes backed by an instrumental remix of "Sanctuary", the main theme.
• Pre-Final Boss: If you don’t count the one-on-one duel with Xemnas that is the last fight before the Point of No Return to the final boss fights with him, then the Organization’s second-in-command Saïx is this. His boss fight is also punctuated by The Reveal of Roxas and Sora’s actual connection and how Riku was able to capture him and take on his current appearance.
• Pre-Rendered Graphics: Though most cutscenes were done in-engine, the cutscene before the Battle of the 1,000 Heartless was pre-rendered. It shows in that the characters in the player's party have their default equipment, unlike other cutscenes where Sora, Donald, and Goofy use the weapons the player equipped them with. This is probably because more than 1,000 objects would have been far too many for the PlayStation 2 to render all at once.
• Press X to Not Die: The fight with Sephiroth has him open with a 13-hit slashing attack that must be blocked with a Reaction Command/Reflect or dodged. Failure to do so is almost certainly guaranteed to kill Sora on higher difficulties or without Second Chance.
  Sephiroth: Show me your strength. (Beat) That's enough.
• Prison Dimension: It's stated in this game, and later elaborated on in Birth by Sleep, that Pete's constant troublemaking led Mickey and Minnie to banish him to another dimension, where he remained until Maleficent found and recruited him.
• Prison Episode: The first (and unplanned) visit to Space Paranoids revolves around the party being in a digital prison following an accident involving a mysterious blue alien. With the help of a friendly program named Tron, they manage to escape their cell, and subsequently escape the computer that's imprisoned them.
• Prolonged Prologue: The game's prologue with Roxas takes between three to five hours to complete. Some of it is skippable, including the cutscenes, but even skipping all of the optional stuff still leaves at least two hours before reaching the title card. As for its importance and interest, it will depend exclusively on how many games the player has played so far. While the story presented in the prologue does little to set things up for the actual plot and main character Sora, it is quite important to conclude the first part of Roxas arc.
• Promoted to Playable: King Mickey can now be controlled, though only during some boss battles if Sora dies. He is limited to the standard movement options, the standard combo moves without any of the modifiers, the Pearl spell, cannot kill bosses, and has a special non-damaging command to quickly fill the Drive Gauge (which is used to revive Sora).
• Purposely Overpowered: There's one keyblade with better magic and one with better strength, but the Ultima does still have the highest total stats. At least until Final mix added another keyblade with significantly better magic and only slightly weaker strength, but with the major drawback of not being able to gain experience while using it.
• Puzzle Boss: Several of the Final Mix Organization XIII data rematches feature unique gimmicks that can only be countered with specific strategies.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Pete has taken up the role of a one-man Quirky Miniboss in the Kingdom Hearts series from this game onwards.
• Quit Your Whining: Sora does it with Beast after the latter, consumed by despair after Xaldin steals his rose, asks Belle and Sora to leave him, telling him to man-up and get both his rose and Belle back.
  Sora: C'mon, you need to hear this. You used to be fearless. You would have given your life to save Belle. Don't you know what that meant to us? You gave us all courage. Hmph, maybe you should have kept some for yourself. I mean, are you really gonna throw your happiness away? The rose is your only hope, isn't it? Well, it's the only hope for Cogsworth and the others, too. So, don't throw away your last chance. Remember what it was like before Belle lived here?

R — T

• Radial Ass Kicking: In the Battle of 1000 Heartless, Sora starts out surrounded by Heartless and proceeds to fight them all.
• Rank Inflation: Once you go past "A" Rank during Gummi Ship missions, it switches to "S" and then starts adding numbers after that, eventually capping at "S++10".
• Reactor Boss: The final Gummi Ship mission, "Assault of the Dreadnought", has you flying inside a huge battleship and destroying the core. You don't actually need to destroy the core to finish the stage, but it does get you bonuses.
• Recurring Boss:
  • Axel is fought twice by Roxas, first in the Struggle arena and later in the Old Mansion.
  • Hades. When you first meet him, he is impervious to your attacks and you're forced to flee while he hurls fireballs at you. Becomes beatable later, being fought and defeated in the second visit to the Colosseum, then again at the end of two of the Colosseum cups.
  • Pete is fought twice, first in the Underworld with the aid of Hercules, and three major fights in Timeless River. (Plus one fight in the optional Hades Paradox Cup.)
  • Demyx has two boss fights, one in Olympus Coliseum (which is really just destroying the Forms he summons) and again in Hollow Bastion.
• Red Herring: The masked character DiZ has the same unique skin tone and eye color as series villain Ansem, the same interest in manipulating anti-hero Riku, admits to using a pseudonym, and in dialogue is heavily hinted to be Ansem himself. The twist? DiZ is Ansem, while the villain we knew as Ansem isn't. All the clues pointed towards DiZ being a villain, when he's actually the most useful member of the protagonists' side (although he's not very nice).
• Regenerating Mana: The Mana Meter recharges after a set amount of time once depleted.
• Remixed Level: A few of the worlds in Kingdom Hearts are revisited here, but with redesigned or repositioned locales, such as Halloween Town (which now includes Christmas Town) and Agrabah. Hollow Bastion is also in both games, but the first game focuses on the castle, while the second game features the surrounding town.
• Retcon: Ansem, the villain from previous games, wasn't the real deal, but the Heartless of an impostor named Xehanort (who's actually a man named Terra who was possessed by the original Master Xehanort but lost his memories due to Terra's lingering will holding him off from taking complete control). The real Ansem is a good guy that Xehanort banished to the Realm of Darkness 9 years before the events of Kingdom Hearts.
• Retraux: Timeless River is one big homage to the Disney shorts from The Golden Age of Animation. The art style resembles old Disney cartoons, the entire level is in black and white, and most of the audio is in a grainy mono (with large amounts of static in the HD 2.5 ReMIX version).
• Required Party Member:
  • Mulan, as Ping, is required to be out at all times during the first visit in the Land of Dragons. This is Justified by Sora and co. trying to convince Captain Li Shang to let Mulan/Ping join the army, so she has to actually be present during fights to prove she's capable.
  • For the Groundshaker fight, your party is just Sora and Simba - Donald and Goofy apparently sit that one out.
  • To defeat the MCP it's required to use Tron, as his Identity Disc was altered with a magic program that can delete the boss (done via a Reaction Command to deal damage). Unlike the others mentioned, he is not required to be active at all times during the fight, and can be swapped out for Goofy/Donald until the Reaction Command prompt comes up.
• Resurrection Sickness: During the events of the game, Oogie Boogie is revived by Maleficent. Weakened and unable to remember what happened in the previous game, Oogie ignores Maleficent's orders and went on his own to recreate the storyline of his movie and to meet his end again at the hands of Jack Skellington as well as Sora, Donald and Goofy.
• Ret-Gone: while Sora is sleeping and Naminé is reconstructing his memories, everyone who knew him (aside from Riku, Mickey, and, to a slightly lesser degree, Kairi^note as she does forget his name) forgets that he existed until he awakens again.
• Reverse Escort Mission: Around the quarter-point of the game, Sora must escort Queen Minnie to the throne of Disney Castle. The throne sits in a massive audience chamber flooded with Heartless that can seize Sora with bolts of electricity. Fortunately, Queen Minnie has a Reaction Command activated just by getting close to her, and Final Fantasy fans already know their job got a lot easier when they learn that Reaction Command is called Faith. Getting across the audience chamber in the period between the end of the escort mission and the cessation of Heartless in Disney Castle is actually harder than getting Minnie there.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Sora gains power-ups from smashing fireworks in the Land of Dragons. He also gets those power-ups by smashing suits of armor in Beast's Castle.
• Rewatch Bonus: Go back and play this after playing Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]. Some plot holes get cleared up while some of Xigbar's cryptic actions and attitude make a lot more sense.
• Reduced Resource Cost: The "Energy" ("Wellspring" in other games) synthesis materials serve this function in this game only, where they serve as "modifier" materials that, when added to a recipe, will halve the materials needed to make it. An Energy Crystal is only required to forge one item though — the Ultima Weapon, which would normally require thirteen of the Orichalcum+ synthesis material when there's only seven in the game.
• Ring of Fire: During the battle between Axel and Roxas, Axel sets the stage on fire in an attempt to defeat and eliminate Roxas.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When Goofy is knocked out and presumed killed by flying debris, King Mickey says "They'll pay for this!", throws off his cloak, and summons his Keyblade. Many Heartless were about to die.
• Roger Rabbit Effect:
  • Consider the mere existence of a Pirates of the Caribbean world, called Port Royal in this game. It is a bit jarring, because it's done in a more realistic, grittier style than the anime/cartoon styles of the rest of the game. it's even lampshaded. The protagonists are baffled upon landing on Port Royal and immediately comment that the world looks different. Kingdom Hearts III rectified this by giving the trio pirate attires when they return the third time.
  • Subverted with Space Paranoids, which is based on TRON. The only live-action-style characters in that world are Tron and Sark, though unlike the cast in Port Royal, they look a bit closer to the main human cast. It helps that Space Paranoids is all blue and shiny, and that Sora, Donald and Goofy receive armor that match the world's style.
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Seifer of Final Fantasy VIII, known for being Squall's Rival Turned Evil plays The Rival to Roxas in this game and has nothing to do with Squall.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • King Mickey spends his time trying to fight the Organization and figure out what's going on behind the scenes. Queen Minnie actually does take a bit of action as well during her Escort Mission, being able to cast Pearl and team up with Sora to cast Faith.
  • In the Disney Worlds, many monarchs are proactive: Simba, king of the Pride Lands, Beast, formerly a prince, Jack Skellington, "king of Halloween" are capable party members that can fight the Heartless with Sora.
• Rubber Man:
  • Nobody mooks are able to stretch and contort their bodies to various degrees, emphasizing their status as Humanoid Abominations. Creepers in particular will use this ability to shape themselves into weapons to attack.
  • Since it's bolted to a door, the Thresholder miniboss is able to stretch its arms to hit you from across the room.
• Sad Battle Music: The battle theme that plays during the fight against Roxas ("The Other Promise") is a remix of his normal theme. It's arranged to emphasize the tragedy of the situation, making much heavier use of the piano and other instruments not present in the original composition.
• Sad Clown: DiZ/Ansem the Wise, when he was recalling Riku declaring himself Ansem to King Mickey.
  "I could only laugh, to hide my shame."
• Sadistic Choice: During the second visit to Beast's Castle, Xaldin ending up stealing Beast's rose and kidnaps Belle. He then forces Beast choose which one he wants to keep. Beast chooses Belle, wanting her to be safe even if it means the curse isn't lifted. Belle promptly decides to Take a Third Option for Beast and elbows Xaldin, saving herself and the rose.
• Sanity Slippage: Roxas in the prologue definitely has trouble coping with Twilight Town's Mind Screw, his dreams' Mind Screw, and the Organization's Mind Screw. He also has some weird emotional responses and zones out constantly. Reviewing the game after beating Days would seem to imply a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder bleeding over.
• Santa's Existence Clause: During the first trip to Halloween Town, Sora and co. actually get to meet Santa Claus and become his bodyguards, with Sora being a bit too excited about it. But when they finally meet the jolly old man, Sora is revealed to be on the naughty list because he stopped believing seven years prior to the events of the game after being told by Riku that Santa does not exist. This reveal causes the teenager to moan in embarrassment.
• Save Point: A staple from previous games, also present in the worlds of this game, specifically at important locales or in locations that let you enter the world from that point. For example, in the Pride Lands, there are three save points at the three corners of the world - Rafiki's tree (which is outside Pride Rock), the Elephant Graveyard, and Timon and Pumbaa's oasis. The save points will fill up your health and magic stats.
• Saving Christmas: Both visits to Halloween Town involve preventing Christmas from being indirectly ruined. The first time Sora and co. are saving Santa Claus from being turned into a Heartless by Maleficent and Oogie Boogie, while the second visit they're retrieving stolen presents.
• Say My Name:
  • Roxas has a tendency to say "Hayner! Pence! Olette!" as a way to make sure he's back in reality.
  • "Sora, Donald, Goofy!" Said by too many characters, including the ones in question.
• Scary Stinging Swarm: One of the early jobs Roxas can do in Twilight Town involves him killing bees inside the town's theatre district. Even when not doing the job, or when playing as Sora later on, the bees just keep coming back. They also appear as foes in the penultimate episode for the Hundred Acre Wood.
• Scenery as You Go: Sora & Co. run into a great chasm within The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. A shimmering staircase materializes beneath their feet as they cross it, stopping only to do battle at every landing.
• Scenery Porn: Every world has a unique art style for starters, but the best is The World That Never Was: It's a dark world filled with shadow, subdued blues, and glaring whites with the artificial Kingdom Hearts moon hanging overhead along with the enemy's stronghold and, as you advance, reality seems to warp as the "moon" becomes smaller while the castle grows larger. The castle is also a wonderful visual sight being mostly a white that'll blur your vision and blend in with the enemies with the occasional splash of metallic grey and black.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • While Sora, Donald, and Goofy are on their way to talk to Hades, they see Demyx of Organization XIII running away from the Lord of the Dead's base. The implication is that Hades sacred Demyx so badly that he just decided to bail on his mission to make contact with the god.
  • Maleficent gets so annoyed by Oogie Boogie's short-term memory loss and disrespect that she ditches him just before Sora and co. show up, abandoning her plan to turn Santa Claus into a Heartless.
  • On the second trip to Port Royal, the Aztec medallions are stolen and the cursed pirates return. Jack Sparrow's reaction to finding out is to turn the ship around and take everybody back to town, though circumstance force him to help.
• Second Hour Superpower: The (lengthy) prologue has you play as Roxas, whose combat mechanics are very similar to the first game's and has very few options. Once you get control of Sora, you get the much more varied KH2 combat mechanics and several more options, most notably Drive Forms.
• Secret Character: There are two optional Summons, Stitch and Peter Pan. They're found in chests in Space Paranoids and Port Royal respectively.
• Self-Deprecation: DiZ / Ansem The Wise calls Xehanort the "foolish apprentice of a foolish man" in one of the ending scenes. This is after Xemnas claims that "only a fool would be [his] apprentice".
• Sentient Vehicle: One type of Heartless, found in Timeless River, takes the form of a convertible car that attempts to run down Sora and his companions.
• Sequel Hook: Played with. The games always end with a letter from King Mickey being opened and read, but not showing the player the contents: But in this case, the bonus movie you can unlock as before shows a ludicrously vague explanation of the plot for the prequel. Yes, a prequel hook.
• Sequence Breaking: The game features the return of an early sequence break - despite being harder (on Proud mode, at least), it's recommended by fans that you go straight to Beast's castle after the first Twilight Town because you gain Cure - whereas you don't in the Land of Dragons (which is recommended as the next world).
• Sequential Boss: Xemnas. Right after the first stage of the fight (where you duel him while he's Dual Wielding Laser Blades), you have time to save and go elsewhere afterward, but it's completely back-to-back from then on. First there's the rush to Xemnas's floating fortress thing, then the two turbines, then the core, then Armored King Xemnas, wielding the weapons of the Org. XIII members that appear in this game, then an attack on Xemnas' dragon-shaped Humongous Mecha in rail-shooter style, then another round with Armored King Xemnas (dropping many of his attacks for kickass skyscraper-destroying sequences), then finally one final fight with Xemnas himself, in Twilight form.
• Serial Escalation: How many more ridiculous cool reaction commands and cutscenes can you put in this game? The game's final level ends with an area where you can cut in half, and casually kick around skyscrapers. And you can also deflect hundreds of lightsabers.
• Series Fauxnale: The game wraps up several loose ends from Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and feels like a finale for the series' story, with the Mickey's Letter Sequel Hook being vague enough that the franchise could have ended without leaving too many hanging threads. It wasn't the end, as prequel Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, interquel Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, and sort-of sequel Kingdom Hearts coded added to the Story Arc and set up the events for Kingdom Hearts III.
• Sequel Escalation: While this game was already an Actionized Sequel, the few returning worlds are rather notably expanded in terms of size and scope,^note With the exception of Atlantica, which went from a relatively orthodox exploration/combat area to a one-room Rhythm Game hub to the point where Agrabah and Halloween Town have completely revamped layouts that are much more open. The interior of the Cave of Wonders in particular looks completely different, though given its nature, that can be explained.
• Sequel Hook:
  • After beating the game and watching the credits, there's a scene at Destiny Island where Sora, Riku, and Kairi read a letter from King Mickey that contains urgent information.
  • There are two secret endings (depending on what version you're playing) that can be unlocked. They're FMV concept trailers for the prequel Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep that show off parts of the game's climax.
• Shapeshifter Weapon: Creepers can contort there bodies in such a way that they can become swords or spears, which they use for some of their attacks.
• Shapeshifting Heals Wounds: Activating a Drive Form refills Sora's HP. Each Form even comes with a 1-AP ability to make it a Reaction Command when Sora's HP is low.
• Shared Life-Meter: In Final Mix, Larxene creates several copies of herself that all share one lifebar, so an attack that hits multiple clones will deal multiple times the normal damage.
• Sheath Strike: Samurai Nobodies will sometimes attack using the sheaths of their katanas.
• Shielded Core Boss:
  • The MCP in the second visit to Space Paranoids. While being harassed by Sark, Sora has to hack through a barrier, presumably some sort of firewall, and fire a beam using an Action Command with Tron to damage it.
  • The Updated Re-release includes an Optional Boss fight against Vexen, whose shield needs to be destroyed before his actual health can be damaged. He'll also respawn his shield in he isn't attacked right after it breaks. Naturally, this also applies to his data battle.
• Shifting Sand Land: the Windswept Ruins, located in Agrabah, are half-buried in sand dunes and surrounded by sandy cliffs. The furthest area of the ruins is a bridge leading to a tower surrounded by enormous sandfalls. When fleeing the ruins on Carpet, one of the last hazards you have to dodge is the sand erupting around you.
• Shipper on Deck:
  • Throughout the game, Donald Duck and Goofy tease Sora about his feelings for Kairi. When Kairi and Sora reunite in the end and share a tender embrace, the camera cuts to Donald and Goofy looking pleased.
  • When Kairi stumbles into Twilight Town, befriends Hayner, Pence, and Olette, and tells her story about Sora and the others (i.e. the events of the first Kingdom Hearts), Olette is utterly mystified by it, going as far to call it "romantic."
  • Sora acts like this for the canon Disney couples. He gets downright misty-eyed when Mulan and Shang are appointed the Emperor's joint bodyguards, and seems to approve of Will and Elizabeth (which leads to some of the aforementioned teasing from Donald and Goofy).
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Several boss fights, including the final one, have Sora separated from Donald and Goofy.
• Shoot the Dog: Enforced by the main party using a fake Scar Ghost in an attempt to snap Simba out of his hesitance. Through it, they call him a "do-nothing king", claim he'll lose all his friends, and will leave a legacy as "King Simba the Doubtful", all because he's "worried by a silly ol' ghost". This results in Simba giving a Big "NO!" and killing the fake ghost.
• Shoot the Medic First: If you let Crescendos run around, they heal everything to max health, but if you use a Reaction Command at the right time, they will drop HP orbs. Not very helpful if there are more than one of these little buggers and you can't hit them all at once, i.e. Chicken Little.
• Shout-Out:
  • Scrooge McDuck tries to make a business out of selling Sea-Salt ice cream.
  • The giant Nobody that Roxas fights is called Twilight Zone in the Japanese version, obviously a reference to the TV series of the same name.
  • The final Gummi Ship route, Assault of the Dreadnought, is heavily reminiscent of the final battle of Return of the Jedi. Both involve flying into a giant spaceship equipped with a Wave-Motion Gun to destroy its core.
  • Two NPCs in Twilight Town are Biggs and Wedge, named after characters from Star Wars. Doubles as a Mythology Gag, as the two are Recurring Extras in Final Fantasy games.
• Shown Their Work: The city plan of Chang'An, as visible from the mountain in the Land of Dragons, is entirely accurate.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!:
  • Happens when Xemnas tries a Break Them by Talking on the heroes about how he had no other choice than to commit the actions that he did, only for Sora to say "Give it a rest! You're Nobodies. You don't even exist. You're not sad about anything!" Xemnas then laughs and confirms this.
  • Riku delivers another Shut Up, Hannibal! in that scene when Xemnas asks the heroes why they considered Organization XIII to be an enemy: "That's simple. It's because you mess up our worlds."
  • It also happens two more times, when Sephiroth tells Cloud to give in to the dark side and Cloud literally tells him "Shut up." The first time, it's in the middle of a war and Cloud is kind of trying to focus. The second... not so much.
  • The moment when Hades tries to recruit Auron as his personal enforcer.

    Auron: This is my story. And you're not part of it. (stands ready to fight)
    Hades: Did you forget who you're talking to? I am the Lord of the Dead!
    Auron: Eh, no wonder no one wants to die.
    Hades: You are FIRED!

• Single-Stroke Battle: The Samurai Nobodies have a Reaction Command that triggers a showdown between them and Sora. Successfully pulling it off causes Sora to leap past them with a single slash, more often than not killing them.
• Skyward Scream: When Roxas, upon discovering that all of his memories are fake, that he has no right to exist, and that to restore Sora's memories and wake him up, Roxas must be sacrificed. He attempts to attack DiZ for putting him through all of it, only to find out that he isn't even in the room, just showing him a projection of himself. Roxas's anger, despair, and frustration reaches a boiling point there, and he just screams.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The game features Christmas Town, accessed through a door in the Hinderlands of the Halloween Town World.
• Smart Ball: Goofy is a bit more observant than his buds, like when he sees through Mulan's obvious male disguise while Sora and Donald can't. It's said in his journal entry that he often notices stuff that others miss.
• Smashing Survival: Xemnas' final attack^*(And it really is his final attack, as the next part after surviving it is a cutscene, after which Xemnas is stunned and can be finished off without resistance.) involves trapping Sora and Riku in a field of darkness filled with thousands of laser bullets aimed right at them. Somewhat counter-intuitively, you have to block for both Sora and Riku by mashing X and Triangle simultaneously.
• Snowlems: In Final Mix, Donald Duck is turned into a snowduck whenever he is in Christmas Town, which fits with the Christmas theme that the party take on, with Sora being a vampire with a black Santa attire, and Goofy becoming half-dog, half reindeer.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Jack Sparrow and Simba give up all their items and abilities if they are removed and returned (making some boss battles a lot harder until you realize that). The game also makes use of this to add dramatic tension: It is also done after the scene when Goofy is seriously knocked out and isn't selectable in the party for a period of time, feeding the temporary but dramatic insinuation he actually died.
• Someone Has to Die: Roxas has to merge with Sora so Sora can wake up from his year-long sleep. In this case it isn't really death, exactly, but he still treats it like one.
• Something Only They Would Say: Sora is able to identify Riku based on a secondhand account by the Emperor of China describing him as a rude young man.
• The Soulless: The Nobodies are beings who have lost their Heart, which is one third of what makes up a complete being. Due to this, they are by default emotionless, although with time and empathy they can be made to regain some semblance of feeling.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: During the battle against Roxas in the Final Mix version, a remix of his melancholic theme called "The Other Promise" is used. A stark contrast with the average frantic battle theme.
• Spanner in the Works: Both DiZ and Xemnas attempt to use Sora for their own plans, but Sora doesn't act in the way they envisioned him to and ultimately derails everything for them without really knowing it. Lampshaded by DiZ:
  DiZ: While I was trying to bring Sora back, I had so many plans in store, but once Sora was an acting force, they fell apart.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • Inverted in Olympus Coliseum. In Hercules, the hydra never killed anyone. In the game, it regenerates after Hercules "killed" it in an exhibition battle, where it proceedes to completely desolate the original Coliseum. It's heavily implied that it killed everyone inside.
  • Subverted with the Interceptor in Port Royal. Sora and co. actually manage to save the ship when Barbossa tries to blow it up, allowing it to survive the events of the game's version of the film plot. During the second visit to the world, Luxord hijacks the Black Pearl and uses her cannons to destroy the Interceptor.
• Spell Levels: The power of Sora's magic is determined by the suffix in its name. A base level spell has a normal name (like Fire), mid level spells end with -ara or -ra (Fira), and the strongest level ends with -ga or -aga (Firaga).
• Spoiler Opening: The opening CGI movie and prologue sum up Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, spoiling them for those who haven't played either yet. An older Kairi in the costume that doesn't appear for about half the game, an odd connection between Kairi and Namine, and a connection with Sora and Roxas, for all those people who didn't play the first one or Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories or are just getting into the series? Everything told for you and you didn't even have to try.
• Shoot 'Em Up: Before entering a new world for the first time, you need to fly through a shoot 'em up level with their Gummi ship. You only need to survive making it to the end to proceed, although completing the goals in each Gummi ship level is necessary to get 100% Completion.
• Standard Female Grab Area:
  • Averted in Beast's Castle; when Belle is grabbed like so, she elbows her assailant in the gut, steals the rose back, and runs back to Beast to the cheers of not only Sora, but the players, too.
  • When Axel kidnaps Kairi, she is grabbed by the elbow.
• Stationary Boss:
  • The Thresholder is completely bolted to the door it's guarding, and doesn't budge. It can stretch its arms out to compensate for its lack of mobility.
  • Genie Jafar floats in one spot during the boss fight against him. However, his desperation move allows him to repel Sora a long distance away and change the arena to throw obstacles.
  • Armored Xemnas sits on a throne during the fights against him, and he refuses to get up. He can telekinetically throw copies of Organization members' weapons across the arena, however, and as with Genie Jafar, this doesn't prevent him from tossing Sora and Riku away to assail them with projectiles.
• Stay in the Kitchen: This does get awkward in the Port Royal stage. Though Sora does tell Will to leave early on, it's rather strange that he would tell Elizabeth to do the same later in the stage when she actually played an active role in combat in the portion of the movie the game is covering. He also doesn't brush off Will.
• Stealth Pun: When Belle is being held by Xaldin right before the battle with him, she elbows him in the gut and you can hear an audible, "Oomph" from Xaldin. In other words, Belle clearly knocked the "wind" out of him. Xaldin's element in the game is Wind.
• Stellification: At the end of the second visit to the Olympus Colosseum, Zeus puts up a constellation of Hercules, as he did in the film, alongside ones of Sora, Donald, and Goofy as well.
• The Stinger: Two of them in the original, three in the Final Mix version. The first is Sora and Riku relaxing on their island, before Kairi shows up with a letter from Mickey. The second and third are set-ups for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep.
• Stock Footage: At the end of every world's first story run typically, where Sora opens a new Keyhole to travel to further worlds; the only differences are where the scene starts and what item is used to make the respective Keyhole appear. Everyone else present even conveniently disappears during these scenes and then reappears right afterwards.
• Stock Scream: As the trio fall through the portal between Christmas Town and Halloween Town, Goofy lets out his famous holler.
• Storming the Castle: During the endgame, Sora and company must fight through Organization XIII's castle in order to reach Xemnas.
• Story to Gameplay Ratio: The game features a significant amount of cutscenes, and the sheer number of Action Commands during playable sections because of all the mandatory Action Commands.
• Stuff Blowing Up: The Gummi ship levels tend to be full of exploding objects, being shoot 'em ups. Once the ship is upgraded enough, the entire screen will fill up with explosions at the touch of a button.
• Stumbling in the New Form: When the party first explores the Pride Lands, Sora, having magically turned into a lion cub to better blend into the world, is unable to walk very far on his paws. This leaves him, Donald and Goofy helpless as the Hyena pack surrounds them. The only thing that saves the party is Scar calling for the hyenas.
• Summon Backup Dancers: Justified, Demyx can create water "clones" that float around and play the sitar. You need to get rid of them all in time to prevent a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Superboss:
  • In the international release, the only boss that you don't have to fight to beat the game is Sephiroth; like the first game, you have to fight him one-on-one, and he's ridiculously tough. Beating him nets you the Fenrir Keyblade, which reduces your combo by one (more useful than it sounds, since it means your Finisher launches faster).
  • The third level of the Assault of the Dreadnought gummi ship course ends with a boss fight against the Hunter-X, which has every Spam Attack that the other enemy ships do plus an attack that's easily strong enough to one-shot most of the player's ships and hits half the screen.
  • The Final Mix version went overboard with this, featuring 19 new ones alongside Sephiroth.
    • There are the five Absent Silhouettes, shadowy spirits of the members of the Organization who had died in the previous game (Larxene, Xexion, Lexaeus, Vexen, and Marluxia) have different tactics and a different level of strength since then due to the gameplay no longer having cards.
    • At the end of Hollow Bastion /Radiant Garden's Bonus Dungeon, the Cavern of Remembrance (itself a trial to get through), you find the Garden of Assemblage, where data replicas for all members of the Organization await. All thirteen of them have their unique traits turned up a notch, with massive amounts of health and the ability to deal immense damage.
    • In a mysterious portal at Disney Castle, Sora can challenge what many consider to be the hardest fight in the game: The Lingering Will. It features a bevy of powerful, hard-to-avoid attacks, a massive HP bar, and attacks that mostly make it invincible, making opportunities to strike few and far between. Much like Xemnas’s secret battle from the first game, it acts as a teaser for the next major game, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and is the discarded armor of former Keyblade wielder Terra, which, after Terra had his body and heart taken by Xehanort, took on a life of its own, fueled by Terra’s rage and desire to protect his friends.
• Superpowered Evil Side: The Anti-Form Drive Form subverts this trope as it's actually a penalty form (at best Awesome, but Impractical) to discourage overuse of the Drive Forms; it can only be triggered randomly (chance determined by a hidden "Anti-Point" mechanic) or by activating any form but Final in battle with the ability Light & Darkness active. While Anti-Sora looks damn cool, he's not actually much more powerful than Sora in terms of offense, and can do nothing other than attack solo in a blitzing frenzy of clawing, kicking, and firing dark energy blasts. The inability to heal, gain experience, or really do anything else makes this form a liability. Also, Sora takes 50% more damage while in this form and can't revert until the drive gauge expires or he leaves the level. Sora also gets a Super Powered Light Side in Final Form, which is unlocked after Sora's fight with Roxas. Like Anti-Form, it has to be triggered by chance when using other Drive Forms, but once unlocked, Final Form can be manually activated at any point, and also reduces the risk of Anti-Form with each use. In this form, Sora wears all-white and takes on an angelic theme with two Keyblades serving as wings as well as weapons.
• Surprisingly Easy Mini-Quest: The need to kill 1000 Heartless. The horde consists of two enemy types that both have Reaction Commands that take out about a dozen other enemies each. Plus the PS2 CPU can't actually handle that many enemies at once so most are just background, gradually disappearing as you take the Heartless down.
• Surprisingly Happy Ending: The game's closure begins playing its last scenes following the Final Boss and it looks almost certain that the story will end with Sora and Riku separated from their friends and left stranded on a beach to waste away into darkness, at least content with reconciling their friendship and knowing that everyone and everything they love in the realm of light is safe from harm thanks to their actions. And then Kairi's message in a bottle, which she wrote and sent adrift way back in the games' Prolonged Prologue, finds its way to Sora and Riku. Immense happiness follows.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: When Roxas asks Naminé what will happen to him if Sora awakens, she dodges giving a straight answer by stating that "[He] won't disappear!" Roxas is noticeably disturbed by her response.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: Hades exploits this by tricking Sora into using the Keyblade on a barrier placed by Zeus himself. It falls easily, allowing Hades access to the Underdrome. By the Final Mix+ rendition of the second game, though, it starts getting weird, where the superboss known as the Lingering Will demonstrates the Keyblade's ability to transform into a whip, a buckler, a bow, a humongous cannon, an airspeeder, a floating pickaxe and what seems to be a giant drill bit.
• Sword Drag: Roxas drags his Keyblades against the ground during his cutscene fight against Sora.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Near the end of the Timeless River visit, Pete has the Cornerstone of Light and is riding away in Steamboat Willie. He could easily get away if he didn't decide to attack Sora with garbage, letting him fling it back to damage Pete.
• Tagline: "The story is not over."
• Take a Third Option: The villain Xaldin of Organization XIII has the Beast caught between a Sadistic Choice. He has stolen the Beast's rose, as well as Belle. However, he will let one of them go, at Beast's choice. And there's not a damn thing Beast can do about it. Belle, on the other hand, catches Xaldin off guard by elbowing him in the side, takes the rose, and runs. Even Sora notes that as Belle's running, she seemed to be having a really good time.
• Taking the Bullet: Goofy shoves King Mickey out of the way as a rock from a Nobody/Heartless fight falls towards him. The rock proceeds to hit Goofy instead. King Mickey gets very angry and several Heartless wish they'd never been born. He gets better, though.
• Taking You with Me: Axel does this when he, Sora, Donald and Goofy are about to get swamped by Nobodies. Later on, the final battle with Xemnas has shades of this. The heroes have wiped out all his underlings and ruined his plans, and he seems to care less about his own survival than dragging Sora and Riku down with him. Even after beating him, they're nearly trapped in another dimension until Sora and Kairi's connection opens a portal.

  Xemnas: We shall go together.

• A Taste of Power:
  • The prologue's final boss fight against Axel has Roxas dual-wield Oathkeeper and Oblivion.
  • During Roxas's boss fight, you can gain control of his weapons. Though they have a few unique moves under specific circumstances, Oathkeeper and Oblivion mostly enhance Sora's combos with Final Form's attacks in this state.
• Technobabble: Sora and his friends have a hard time understanding what Tron is saying when they first meet him, because of this trope. As time goes on, Tron becomes easier to understand as a result of gaining emotions due to his friendship with them.
• Teleport Spam: Yuffie spends most of her time teleporting during battle. She'll teleport next to you to perform a close-ranged slash and occasionally, she'll float in the air to perform "Doom of The Living", a Spin Attack. Other than that, she'll never run, walk, or jump. She originally averted this in Kingdom Hearts, where she would run, somersault, cartwheel, and jump all over the place, but couldn't teleport.
• Tennis Boss: The last part of the final battle requires this; great deal of button mashing, since it's not one powerful attack - it is a goddamn torrent of energy blasts. Really, it's Press X and Triangle simultaneously not to die.
• This Is My Story: While Auron is not the main character, he calls out the usage of it to Hades in one of his Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu? moments.
  "This is my story, and you're not part of it."
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman:
  • It's not that the magic in the game is bad, it's just that beating the crap out of enemies with physical blows is a lot more efficient, as most of Sora's abilities boost his physical combos in some way, and Wisdom Form isn't very good. The Final Mix release added the Mushroom XIII, who were specifically designed to encourage usage of magic and/or Wisdom Form to accomplish their challenges. Critical is also a lot easier if you use your MP instead of relying on physical attacks like the other difficulties.
  • Chicken Little's whistle more or less has the same effect as Magnet, meaning he has at least some use before you get the spell.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself:
  • When Simba and Scar are fighting on the top of Pride Rock, Sora stops Donald and Goofy from interfering because he knows it's Simba's responsibility. When Scar is defeated and comes back as a Heartless, they decide it's time to step in and help.
  • Similar moments occur with Cloud's battle with Sephiroth and Ansem's attempt at committing suicide to destroy the Organization's fake Kingdom Hearts.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: When Saïx enters his berserk, he starts attacking so violently that his sword gets flung at you repeatedly. Fortunately, he seems to carry around a limitless supply of them.
• Timed Mission: The Cerberus Cup and its Paradox version are timed. You start off with 2 minutes in the first round and gain more time on each round clear.
• Time-Limit Boss:
  • Luxord. It's done in a kind of weird way; both the player and the boss have time bars, and they go down more through taking damage.
  • The fights with Demyx tend to be easy, right until the moment a time limit to defeat a certain number of his minions is arbitrarily invoked. Especially annoying as only a particular special move seems effective regardless of how strong the player actually is.
• Time Skip: The game is set a year after the first game. 358/2 Days takes place during this time, specifically 358 out of 365 days. The remaining seven days are Roxas' week-long summer vacation, as shown in the prologue of II.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Merlin tells Sora, Donald, and Goofy to not be tempted to make any unnecessary changes to the timeline while they're in the past of Disney Castle (AKA Timeless River). The thought never crosses Sora, but Donald tries to go back after they're done to do something unknown related to Daisy.
• Tomato in the Mirror: At the end of the prologue, Roxas finds out that he's Sora's Nobody, his normal life in Twilight Town is a complete lie because he was living in a computer simulation with tampered memories to placate him, and he was the 13th member of Organization XIII. He has to give up his physical form in order to return to Sora so he can finally wake up from his slumber.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Mulan becomes an infinitely more competent party member as soon as she is revealed as a woman. She drops the bumbling soldier act and proves to be an elegant swordswoman.
  • Kairi is a lot more physically active than in the first game, and gets to wield a Keyblade near the end.
• Totally Radical: Seifer's "undeniable proof that [they] totally owned you lamers". He speaks using a lot of rather forced slang, mostly in the computer-simulated version run by DiZ, and is unlikely to impress most audiences.
• Train-Station Goodbye: Played with when, after Roxas merges with Sora at the end of the prologue, Sora cries when he leaves Twilight Town on the train even though he hardly knows the people he is leaving and doesn't seem to be leaving for good.
• Traintop Battle: The Solar Sailer battle in Space Paranoids, though the sailer looks more like a flat boat than a train. And unlike the one in The Grid, it's an actual battle with a weight limit.
• Triumphant Reprise: Again, after the credits roll, Sora and Riku are sitting on a tree relaxing, when Kairi calls their name and runs up to them with a letter signed by King Mickey in a bottle. Together, the three of them read the letter while Hand in Hand (the battle theme from Traverse Town in Kingdom Hearts 1) triumphantly swells in the background.
• Turns Red:
  • The Hot Rod heartless will charge in a berserker rage once their HP is low. Most times they strike you from where you're not looking. (This is a real pain at higher difficulties if you're at a lower level.)
  • The Large Body heartless go berserk at low HP and start bellysliding after you at an astonishing speed, but can be stopped by blocking and/or using a reaction command on them, unlike the previous example.
  • The aptly named Berserker Nobodies do this, repeatedly using a long, unstoppable combo on you that renders them nigh impossible to hit with anything but magic while they're performing it, and only giving you a few seconds to land a combo of your own between each assault.
• Tutorial Failure: The game has a very deep, complex and well-balanced battle system once you know how everything works... the problem is the game's tutorials are more focused on telling you how to navigate the menus and find new commands, as opposed to teaching you what the game's many combo abilities, spells, summons and transformations actually do. As a result, many first time players and reviewers come out of the game seeing it as "mash X (and occasionally triangle) to win."
• Twirl of Love: Non-romantic version, where Riku picks up King Mickey and twirls him when they are reunited in the ending.

U — Z

• Ultimate Authority Mayor: Subverted for Laughs with Halloween Town (see above), when the Mayor is freaking out and begging Jack to help with The Heartless because he's "only an elected official."
• Undead Abomination: The Grim Reaper is a special type of Heartless created by Luxord as a personification of the Aztec gold's cursed properties, taking on an undead form when it takes any of the gold, activating the curse and inflicts it on Jack Sparrow. When Sora and the gang defeat it, the curse itself is destroyed.
• Underground Level: The Underworld is half this and half Big Boo's Haunt. It takes place in the world of Hercules, as is where Sora and his friends have to help Hercules find and defeat Hades (who has started causing havoc once again). Later in the game, it is possible to play Multi-Mook Melee tournaments to win cups, each being more difficult and requiring a higher level.
• Underrated and Overleveled: Near the end, Kairi is given a Keyblade during a cutscene and starts wielding it against Heartless and Nobodies. She is seen defeating them despite having zero combat experience, and even one-shots them when Sora would have to take a couple swipes before killing them.
• Under the Sea: Atlantica makes a return from the first game and Chain of Memories, though gameplay-wise it departs from the usual format seen in the other worlds. It's now based on rhythm-based minigames (which include two songs from the original Little Mermaid movie), and the boss battle against Ursula is also played in this fashion.
• Unending End Card: Just like the first game, there is no way to leave the results screen other than resetting. Also like the first, this doesn't apply to the Final Mix version.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change:
  • The Gummi Ship levels are Shoot 'em Ups, and allow for some very advanced ship customization.
  • Most levels have a mini-game or two; skateboarding in Port Royal is not what one would expect to do there, for instance.
  • The Hundred Acre Wood contains a collection of mini-games, and is completely devoid of actual combat.
  • Atlantica has no combat, and instead contains a number of rhythm mini-games. Of the five songs featured, three (Swim This Way, Ursula's Revenge and A New Day Is Dawning) are original and the other two (Part of Your World and Under the Sea) come from the film.
• Unexpected Shmup Level: The game updates the Gummi Ship sequences from the original game to be a full rail shooter. It even adds a Battleship Raid complete with a Reactor Boss. And then there's the random rail-shooter segment during the final battle which does not involve the Gummi Ship. And that's leaving out the minigame in Christmas Town.
• Unexplained Recovery: In the first Kingdom Hearts game, Ursula is killed at the end of the Atlantica world, but she returns along with her Co-Dragons Flotsam and Jetsam in this game with no explanation as to how they came back. Ursula's journal entry Handwaves she used the power of darkness to revive herself.
• The Unfought:
  • Despite being a prominent antagonistic presence for the first half of the game, Maleficent is never fought.
  • The hyped-up duel between Roxas and Sora only happens in a cutscene in the original version of the game, but was added as a playable boss fight in the Final Mix.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: The Lexaeus fight features an attack where Lexaeus will jump out of bounds and then charge at you in a powerful rush. Chicken Little as a summon features a collision box that will push enemies back from where the "camera" is for his baseball attack, to make sure he doesn't clip into enemies. By standing in the right spot and using Chicken Little at the right time, it's possible to push Lexaeus out past the edge of the floor and have him fall into the black void. However, Lexaeus just floats forever at the base of the room, never actually landing, meaning he can't be finished by Sora's lightning, and he has no way to get back up to the main platform to finish the fight, making it a softlock.
• Unperson: Though it doesn't happen, this was what Organization XIII intended to do to Roxas in the data version of Twilight Town. Once they had recovered him, they would erase all trace of his existence from that world. It's why when the Nobodies steal photos of Roxas (they can't tell the difference in the data world between the actual Roxas and images of him), they steal the word "photo" as well.
• Unsettling Gender-Reveal: Like in the source material the story around the Land of Dragons is based on, Shang doesn't take well that "Ping" is in fact a woman, much less that she's Mulan.
• Updated Re-release: The Final Mix rerelease of the game features updated textures and many palette-swapped Heartless, a new "Critical" difficulty, a new "Limit" Drive Form for Sora, more items, a new mini-game called "Puzzle" that unlocks special items, hordes of new extra-hard optional bosses, several new cutscenes, an extra ending leading up to Birth by Sleep, and a "Theater Mode" where you can watch previously-viewed cutscenes, and many other changes from the original. It was released alongside a complete 3D remake of Chain of Memories, which did saw release overseas as Re:Chain of Memories, since it's techically a new game. Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix was re-released internationally as part of Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD ReMIX in 2014 with remastered HD visuals and re-orchestrated music.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Nobody bats at eye at Donald, Goofy, or Pete despite anthropomorphic animals not being natural in most worlds.
  • Heck, Captain Shang was more bothered about learning that "Ping" turned out to be a woman, than about the one blowing her cover being a tiny, talking dragon.
• Useless Useful Spell: Of all things, Cure ends up being this in Critical. Compared to items, using Cure at the end of the MP bar is a complete waste instead of using Limits, since the incredible damage it causes with the invulnerability they provide is far more useful than healing you when you die in two hits anyway.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them: During the boss fights against both Data Marluxia and Marluxia's Absent Silhouette, Sora can use the Restore Count command to steal Marluxia's scythe and beat him with it, dealing damage and restoring the amount of hits Sora can take.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The World That Never Was, the stronghold of Organization XIII. It's made up of a large city with a harsh art style to contrast the previous Disney worlds, is overlooked by a large white castle (the Organization's headquarters) that floats in the air above a large crater, and has a heart-shaped moon (actually Kingdom Hearts itself).
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • The suits in armor in Beast's Castle are actually servants cursed by the enchantress, just like in Beauty and the Beast. You can destroy some of them.
  • In the Underworld, little orbs of light will constantly appear around Sora and co., do nothing but float around benignly, and will appear nowhere else in the game, implying they're the spirits of the departed. You can hit them to destroy them, and they drop MP orbs. It's almost unavoidable to destroy some of them, just because they always spawn quickly and in large numbers, making them an efficient way to refill MP.
• Video Game Flight: Final Form. It's not as much flying as it is hovering, but it does end up lasting long enough to qualify anyway.
• Villain-Based Franchise: This game solidifies that everything that happens was caused by Xehanort in some way or another.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Hades' plans fail, he freaks out and turns the entire Underdrome into a firestorm through sheer rage alone.
• Villain Song: Since Atlantica is a Rhythm Game world, the Ursula boss fight features one called Ursula's Revenge.
• Visible Invisibility: The Dark Thorn in Beast's Castle.
• Violation of Common Sense: Valor Form levels up as you deal hits to enemies. This means that the best Keyblades to use when level grinding the physical-inclined Drive Form are the ones with the lowest Strength, so you kill enemies slower and can inflict more hits on them first.
• The Voiceless: Multiple examples in Final Mix.
  • In the Japanese PS2 release, the added Organization XIII members in Absent Silhouettes don't have any in-battle lines, only Voice Grunting voiced by their Japanese voice actors so as to stay consistent with the English audio of the rest of the game. Zexion and Vexen appear during an added cutscene, but during the main game their voices are muted for the same reason and the cutscene can be viewed in Japanese in Theater Mode. 2.5 ReMIX partly fixes this in both languages by providing full English and Japanese audio for the new cutscenes during the main game, and the English version goes the extra mile to re-dub the Absent Silhouettes' battle grunts with ones by their English voice actors.
  • The Lingering Will's dialogue is conveyed through ethereal metallic noises, which would be in-character for it; however, it's been shown in both Birth by Sleep and KHIII to speak using Terra's voice.
• Waiting Puzzle: A variation occurs during the Duel Boss fight against Xemnas. The battle begins with Sora and Xemnas running up/down a building towards each other, mirroring how Roxas and Riku did the same in the "Another Side, Another Story" secret movie. A Reaction Command "Clash" will pop up, which will do no damage to Xemnas when used. Wait a second, though, and the command will change to "Break Through", which deals a little damage. Wait another second and it changes to "Finish", which causes Sora to slam Xemnas into the side of the building and do quite a bit of damage. Since most players will hammer Triangle as soon as they see the prompt, this counts as this and a bit of a Guide Dang It! as well.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • The Twilight Thorn actually hits pretty hard. This can be bothersome, because it launches a number of attacks at you, and the reaction command function, which you're supposed to use to defeat it, has only just been introduced. The only target you can hit on it is several times higher than you can jump, it rarely puts that part close enough to you to attack, and you only have 2 potions to your name. And need we remind you, this is the first boss of the game.
  • Shan Yu is another one of those bosses that forces you to learn a certain technique that you're really going to need later in the game. In his case, it's parrying. If you master the technique of waiting for him to attack (and he telegraphs his attacks), countering them, and only then attacking him, he's quite easy. But try to button mash your way through the fight against him and he'll shrug off everything you throw at him and shred you.
  • Demyx, while not a difficult boss to actually fight, has time challenges that make him a tough opponent, and like Parasite Cage he's the mid-game boss and is where the game gets Darker and Edgier than it already is.
  • Xaldin is considered the hardest boss in the game for where he is fought at, but he serves as a reminder for how powerful the rest of the members of Organization XIII are.
• The War Sequence: The third visit to Hollow Bastion eventually leads to a huge battle between the heroes (backed by the local Final Fantasy characters) and a huge amount of Heartless invading the world.
• Warm-Up Boss: The fight against the Twilight Thorn during the prologue is the first real challenge you face, but it's also designed to teach you about Reaction Commands and how they interact with bosses. Twilight Thorn always opens with a move that won't immediately damage Roxas while granting an opportunity to trigger a chain of Reaction Commands, and the timing for activating them is extremely generous due to the boss's slow movements during the cinematics.
• Water Is Dry: Riku and Sora come out of the ocean just as dry as they went in. Sora's hair also is still as spiky as it was when it went in. This is quite common throughout the series. Each character who falls into water comes out dry. Even in Atlantica and Prankster's Paradise, does Sora go into water and appear dry on the surface, despite being a merman in the former. And at one point in Port Royal, we get to see him unconscious with half of his body in water... and he is STILL dry.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • Xaldin shoots you with a wind blast gun. Ansem also does it with darkness.
  • In Final Mix+, the Lingering Sentiment can morph his keyblade into a giant cannon to shoot explosive bursts of magic at you.
• Weapon Tombstone: There is a room in The World That Never Was that houses graves with pictures of the weapons that each Organization member used.
• Weird Moon: Kingdom Hearts itself is the moon in The World That Never Was. Fittingly enough, it's heart-shaped.
• Weirdness Censor: When investigating the Seven Wonders of Twilight Town during the prologue, Pence comes up with "sensible" conclusions that totally ignore some of the seemingly impossible events that Roxas witnesses. Justified since he's a simulation created by DiZ, who's trying to cover up the fact that Roxas is in a computer.
• Wham Episode: The third visit to Hollow Bastion (about halfway through the game) unloads a bunch of plot twists and revelations:
  • Ansem from the first game was actually the Heartless of an impostor. That impostor also has a Nobody, who is the leader of Organization XIII.
  • Goofy dies (but not really).
  • The impostor-Ansem's real name is Xehanort, who was once an apprentice of the real Ansem. His Nobody, the leader of Organization XIII, is named Xemnas.
  • Organization XIII has captured Kairi after Axel's botched kidnapping.
  • Sora killing Heartless is all part of the Organization's Batman Gambit to help them create Kingdom Hearts.
• Wham Line:
  • From Secret Ansem's Report #2, a very early and giant tip-off that "Ansem" from Kingdom Hearts wasn't actually Ansem:
    That is when I discovered the "Ansem Reports." Though they bore my name, the only one I had written was number 0. Apparently he [Xehanort] had gone on to pen numbers 1 through 8 himself.
  • While players could probably have taken a guess beforehand (and Final Mix makes it obvious with a new flashback scene), this scene answers one of the game's running mysteries:
    Sora: I don't get it. Why's everybody been calling me Roxas?
    Riku: Because, Sora. Roxas is your Nobody.
  • You see the Big Bad with his hood off for the first time, and Mickey identifies him after a flashback.
    Mickey: Xehanort! Ansem's apprentice! The leader of Organization XIII is Xehanort's Nobody!
  • Combined with a Wham Shot, Naminé entrusts protection of Kairi to a cloaked figure she identifies as Riku... who then takes off his hood to reveal the face of Ansem.
• Wham Shot:
  • DiZ speaking to a mysterious figure in an Organization cloak, who pulls his hood off and reveals, and announces, himself as Ansem. It's your first hint this story is gonna get weird.
  • Roxas pulling out two keyblades before his final battle against Axel, both marking the first time in the series where you can Dual Wield keyblades, and confirming that he's the mysterious keyblade wielder from the first game's secret ending.
  • The cutscene where Riku is restored to normal is one, but many first time players were quite surprised when said cutscene ended, and the party select appears with him as the Guest-Star Party Member. Especially right before the final boss. And especially since other GSPMs joined in the beginning or middle of the story arc.
• Where It All Began: Inverted, as Hollow Bastion/Radiant Garden, the penultimate stage of the first game, is the new hub world since Leon and Sora's other allies took it back between games. Played straight with Twilight Town, the world the game begins in and that Sora returns to at the end of the game to find the portal to The World That Never Was, the lair of the Organization.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • The scenario in Agrabah takes quite a few plot points from The Return of Jafar which was the direct to video movie that preceded the Aladdin TV series. Points include Iago's Heel–Face Turn, Jafar manipulating someone in order to gain his freedom and destroying Jafar's lamp to stop Jafar.
  • The whole of Atlantica revolves around the events of the original Little Mermaid movie, only retold as a musical. The first Pride Lands visit is based on the second half of The Lion King, after Simba grew up.
• Wintry Auroral Sky: Christmas Town downplays this with a dim blue aurora stretching above the horizon in all three of its outdoor maps.
• Wistful Amnesia:
  • Kairi still has a very vague recollection of Sora during the prologue, even though she isn't supposed to remember him yet due Naminé's memory tampering.
  • Sora doesn't retain any of the memories of his Nobody, Roxas, yet he feels like he has met Hayner, Pence and Olette before when he wakes up. He even cries when he leaves Twilight Town at the beginning of the game, though he was no idea why.
  • Xemnas is supposedly unable to remember anything from before 10 years ago, yet a cutscene added in the Final Mix version shows him talking to Aqua's discarded Keyblade and armor as if he remembers his time as Terra/Master Xehanort.
• Wolfpack Boss:
  • The first fight with Shenzi, Banzai and Ed forces the player to confront all three of them at once. Averted with the second fight, in which they're a "Get Back Here!" Boss instead.
  • Some fights in the arena feature any combination of four Optional Bosses: Cloud, Yuffie, Tifa, and Leon. The last of these battles, naturally, is all four of them.
• The Worf Effect: The game uses this trope to establish the Nobodies as credible opponents. Over the course of the game, they constantly one-up the Heartless and even at one point best Maleficent.
• Wrecked Weapon: In the "Birth by Sleep" FMV, Ven's Keyblade shatters after Master Xehanort freezes him. This is one of the few details that got changed in the actual game.
• Wrong Context Magic: Since the Keyblade has magic not native to Port Royal, it allows Sora and co. to harm the otherwise invincible cursed pirates as long as their true form is exposed by the moonlight. It also makes Sora, Donald, and Goofy immune to the Aztec curse when Luxord tries to inflict it on them during the second visit.
• Yin-Yang Bomb:
  • Xemnas' final form dons a black and white robe to represent him standing outside both light and dark.
  • Sora and Riku when using "Eternal Session," which ends with their Keyblades trapping the enemy between spheres of light and dark.
  • Sora himself in Final Form, which he gains after overcoming Roxas. His outfit is a mix of black and white and he's depicted wielding Oathkeeper and Oblivion in official art.
• You Are Not Alone: Sora scolds Riku for trying to take on so many burdens himself when he has so many friends who'd gladly help. Even Donald and Goofy, who aren't as close to Riku as Kairi and King Mickey, confirm it.
• You Are Not Ready: The game features an arrogant old man with a thing for vague statements about your ignorance, he turns out to be wrong about many things too. The Kingdom Hearts world isn't a good place to be an enigmatic mentor.
• You Are Worth Hell: After kicking the final boss's ass, Sora and a wounded Riku are left alone on a beach in the World of Darkness. They accept their fate, willing to be the dark side of the world's coin to protect the light from any further threats. They come back, though.
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Unbeknownst to Sora, it turns out that all those Heartless he's been killing lead to him helping Xemnas complete Stage One of his plan to give himself and his fellow Nobodies hearts.
• You Don't Look Like You: Jessie, who has a completely different appearance in addition to the trademark changed backstory. If she is meant to be the same Jessie otherwise.
• You Fool!: Xemnas is fond of this. "Cursed FOOOOOLS!"
  • DiZ does it to himself, saying that it was foolish of him to think that he could ever hope to understand the essence of a heart in terms of data.
  • Ansem and Xemnas do it to themselves to each other near the end.
    Xemnas: Only a fool would ever be your apprentice.
    Ansem the Wise: Xehanort. Foolish apprentice of a foolish man.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After Naminé finishes restoring Sora's memories at the end of the prologue, DiZ orders Riku to destroy her, at least partially because of his prejudice against Nobodies; Riku, however, has no intention of doing so, both because of Naminé helping him and Sora during the events of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and because he's not happy to discover that DiZ only helped restore Sora for the sake of petty revenge against Organization XIII, and instead lets her go. During the game's final act, Organization XIII also declares that, with their Kingdom Hearts completed, they have no further need for Sora, and try to dispose of him.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: You beat Xemnas in suitably epic fashion, albeit with relative ease, along with a good, long cutscene with characters ready to head home. Anyone who took a look at the OST would know that there's one more boss theme left...
• "You Used to Be Better" Speech: After Xaldin takes the rose from the Beast and causes him to approach the Despair Event Horizon, Sora tells Beast on how he once bent time and space itself to save Belle from Maleficent and helped Sora motivate his own desire to save Kairi. He then reminds Beast on how much the rose means to everyone in the castle, and how Belle's presence renewed their hope on breaking their curse. This causes Beast to snap out of his despair.
• Zero-Effort Boss: Past Pete's primary move is trying to punch you and only hurting his hand in the process. The only ways he can hurt you is if you attack him and he gets knocked into the air and causes a shockwave when he lands and you are close enough to be hit by it, or when he runs around after being hit by you and crashes into you causing Collision Damage. Even then, the damage both these actions cause is almost nonexistent. You cannot lose against him. This is done for story purposes to help the heroes realize he is far too weak to be the Pete they know.

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