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Disgaea

Disgaea is a series of Turn Based Strategy games created by Nippon Ichi Software (Atlus published the first game in America, since Nippon Ichi didn't have an American division at the time).

There are currently three main games in the series and one spinoff:

All three games are highly regarded by enthusiasts of Turn Based Strategy games for their twisted humor and myriad ways to customize and level up characters and equipment. Oh, and the Prinnies are so cute too, dood!

The first two games both have PSP remakes, with the NA localization of the first entitled Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness, and a DS remake of that remake, Disgaea DS. Afternoon of Darkness is known for its Etna Mode, a "What If" story where Etna accidentally kills Laharl, and takes over as the main character. The localization of Disgaea 2 is entitled Dark Hero Days, complete with its own Etna Mode variant starring the titular Dark Hero, Axel.

A new game for the PSP has been released in Japan recently called Disgaea Infinite, an Alternate Universe Visual Novel which is often described by the fandom as Disgaea on even more drugs, if that's even possible.

The first two games have been adapted into manga, with the original game also getting an anime adaptation.

This series as a whole provides examples of:

  • Adaptation Decay: Both the anime and the manga series suffer from this, for being inadequately able to cram 40+ hours of fighting into several DVDs (or books) worth of content. Characterization of others besides the main threesome also seems to have taken a hit. In that respect, the Disgaea 2 manga is considerably better than the Disgaea manga.
  • Affectionate Parody: The whole series is a giant parody of anime and RPG cliches.
  • Air Guitar: Asagi has this as her idle animation in Disgaea3.
  • All Your Colors Combined: The Prism Rangers, a parody of Sentai shows like Power Rangers, would have 'transformed' were it not for Etna shooting two of the three. In a side-quest in the second game, all seven of them show up, and they use this as their ultimate attack. All slots of the Prism Rangers, apart from the relatively strait-laced red and blue, are filled by various random people, such as someone who can't speak english and a salaryman who answered the wrong job posting.
    • Purposely spoofed by the main cast of the third game when they do their own role call (Calling themselves the Evil Rangers) after defeating Prism Red. The reason?
      Mao: Heh...perfect. In many ways, or at least more than one, we have achieved total victory!
  • Alternate Continuity: Though most of the sequels and cameos occur after the Best Ending of Disgaea 1, "Prinny, Can I Really Be The Hero?" takes place in the Normal Ending, judging by the presence of Prinny Laharl as a boss fight.
    • This is actually debatable depending on whether or not the war mentioned in his secret file is referring to his invasion of Celestia. Also, after beating Flonne in the DLC level, she says that she was attempting to reach the Seraph to transform Laharl back, who died during the Normal Ending.
    • The actual alternate continuity would probably be the light novels released in Japan. In the official game canon, Disgaea 2 takes place three years after the first game with Disgaea 3 set three years after Disgaea 2 (See Continuity Nod below). The light novels, however, set Disgaea 2 (Subtitled Mask of the Maoh) over 120 years after the first Disgaea (Subtitled Enter the Maoh). Within those 120 years (The novels Revelations, Returned, On Love, and Battle of the Maohs), we meet Laharl's relatives, Flonne's family, and Gordon and Jennifer's daughter. Scans can be seen here.
  • Animated Actors: In their fourth wall breaks, the characters often talk as if they were actors. Most frequently manifesting itself as them trying to become the protagonist.
  • Anime Hair
  • Attack Of The Fifty Foot Whatever: FLONNEZILLA!
  • Badass Decay: Etna. Though she's still largely popular, she was no longer badass after Disgaea 2. As someone on Cyberdance puts it: "In three years she turned from a crafty smartass to a whiny teenager who can't get her snacks.
  • Bad Boss: Netherworld Prinnies are treated (with good reason) pretty badly, but Etna is just sadistic. Sadistic enough that other demons were shocked in Prinny. Yukimaru and Rozalin comment about in in the second game.
  • Beehive Barrier (In the protecting spells for physical and magical attacks)
  • Benevolent Boss: Both Mao and Laharl's dads were good to work under.
  • Beyond The Impossible: It nearly matches the Trope Namer in sheer over-the-topness.
  • Blue Eyes: Adell, Yukimaru, and Almaz. All three have the piercing variety which given their role in the party or clan traits is justified.
  • Bonus Dungeon: There are quite a few of them in all of the games, including a system to create an infinite number of random dungeons.
  • Boring Invincible Hero: Spoofed. Characters are thoroughly aware of Main Character privileges, and will often try to steal your spotlight.
  • Butt Monkey: The Prinnies are an entire race of butt monkeys. Mid-Boss is also an example, though much moreso in the anime and especially the manga than in the games.
  • Cap: In this series, as well as many other N1 games, the Power Levels really do go Over Nine Thousand!
  • Chaotic Neutral: The true alignment of most of this series demons (as much as they would say otherwise). Notable examples are Mao, his father, Sapphire (with several Chaotic Evil traits), and Axel.
  • Chef Of Iron: Mr. Champloo of Disgaea 3. A Demonic Cooking Teacher Martial Artist.
  • Chew Toy: The Prinnies are the Nippon Ichi world's choice for menial labor and Stuff Blowing Up (they deserve it, though; they're working off their karmic debt for bad deeds done in a previous life).
  • Color Coded Multiplayer (For minor PCs)
  • Combination Attack (Just about any character can do combination attacks with any other character, in the third game this is taken to absolutely absurd levels.)
  • Council Of Angels
  • Crapsaccharine World (The situations in each game can be quite serious despite the quirky characters and humor)
  • Cross Dressing Voices: Barbara Goodson (Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers and Alcyone from Magic Knight Rayearth) supplies the voice of Laharl in the video games.
    • Rather refreshingly for a profession that has no problem with replacing previous actors with sound-alikes, she voices Laharl in every single instance, even in other games where he's no more than a brief cameo.
  • Cute Bruiser
  • Cute Little Fangs: General feature of most demons.
  • Cute Monster Girl: The Succubus and Nekomata races in the first game, the plant-girls in the second. Notable because the Succubus and Nekomata characters (as well as Jennifer) were drawn by a different artist — Yoshiharu "Ryoji" Nomura — the artist who did the characters and art for the Marl Kingdom / La Pucelle games — did the "sexy type" characters with the new artist Yuichi "Haradaya" Harada for the rest — which is why they stand out so much. (Both links go to their respective homepages, which may be are NSFW.)
    • Also subverted when Dratti -one of Laharl's vassals who happens to be a big, scaly (and snarky) dragon- points out that it's a she.
    • Also lampshaded with one of the Flora Beasts you meet early in the second game, who happens to be named Bridget...
  • Cute Mute: Pleinair.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: A major plot point of the 3 games is the nature of demons/angels as being supposedly "absolute evil/good", nature vs nurture, etc. For example, Flonne staying with Laharl during Disgaea 1 to prove that he can love (and thus, isn't truly evil), Rozalin becoming more upset the more of the outside world she sees, etc.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Etna & Laharl
  • Death Of A Thousand Cuts (Averted — large level differences will render one immune to enemy attacks. Because combos increase damage, however, it can also be played straight by piling on gargantuan combos For Massive Damage.)
    • Also played straight with Prinnies.
  • Difficulty Spike (For a lot of players, the need to start grinding always comes somewhere around chapter 10-11 of each game.)
  • Disc One Nuke - Some dungeon crawling in the Item World and prodigious Level Grinding can turn any character you wish into this; during the New Game Plus, everybody is this in just about all but perhaps the last few chapters after the first replay cycle (unless you pass the bill to make the enemy stronger), and even more so in subsequent cycles.
  • The Ditz (at least one per game)
  • Divine Date - Cross-realm romances are very common. To wit:
    • Laharl's mother was a human, his father an Overlord.
    • Laharl himself is not dating a Fallen Angel (and a minor demon)
    • Adell hooks up with Rozalin, a.k.a. Overlord Zenon.
  • Doppelganger Attack - One of the Bow's special moves, among other things.
    • Mid-Boss have one. It even use the combo attack animation, showing four close-up pictures of Mid-Boss before he start his attack.
  • Downer Ending - Each game has at least one "bad ending," which normally requires more dedication than the good ending to get as they are either gained by passing a certain bill or killing your own allies. In the first game, for example, you have to pass at least 100 bills in the Dark Assembly by force before the final battle. This gives you an ending where Laharl wanders the Netherworld for eternity holding the flower that Flonne got turned into.
    • Disgaea 3 has one if you can kill the level 2000 Overlord's hand in chapter 1
  • Early Bird Cameo: Asagi is a test character that the NIS team used to test the engine for another one of their games, Makai Kingdom. (It is rumored she was going to be the main character for Makai Wars, which was canceled and possibly rerolled into Makai Kingdom, but this is not confirmed.) They liked her so much that they left her in as a bonus character, a "cameo from a game that they haven't made yet" (or since). They've added her to every game since then — including Disgaea2 and 3 — and she's become a sort of mascot for the company. She's even in the opening movie for Disgaea3.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Based on a recent Japanese popularity poll, Asagi and female archers are hugely popular.
    • Of course, she has nothing on bit character Plenair's inexplicable popularity, as seen below.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: This is a reccurring theme between the 3 games, along with What Is This Thing You Call Love and Noble Demon.
  • Everythings Better With Penguins: Prinnies, dood! They even have their own game.
  • Evil Laugh: There are Evil Overlords, thus it is required.
  • Evil Overlord: Plenty of them.
  • Fallen Angel: The female healers are apparently such, the best ending of the first game also makes Flonne one, but she is still the Love Freak she was as an angel
  • Fan Nickname: Raspberyl is commonly referred to as "Paddlebutt-tan" in fandom, due to the shape of her tail.
    • A few fans have begun to refer to Pleinair's game-breaking speed as "batdodging."
  • Fantastic Racism: A major theme of the first game despite its light hearted nature. More specifically, the point about judging a group before you know them, a point elaborated on in detail by Lamington. Almaz comments on this in the third game as well.
  • Fastball Special: Prinnies explode when thrown. If their blast hits other Prinnies, they explode as well, setting off a chain reaction.
  • Fetish Fuel: Has its own page.
  • Five Man Band: In each game. The descriptions of the Prism Rangers also note such a dynamic:
  • For Massive Damage: You can do billions of HP worth of damage in one turn by one character if you want; if you're not that patient, you can still kill a lot of things fast by using combo attacks, team attacks, and tower attacks (a new feature of the second game).
  • For The Evulz: It is notable that while this is encouraged by petty demons, those like Master Bigstar and King Kricheveskoy avoid this. They don't necessarily turn to good, rather they engage in more efficient, productive and goal-oriented evil that really makes more sense than the weaksauce crap most demons expect from each other.
  • Fusion Dance: In all of the games, you can create stronger enemies by tossing them into each other (except for Prinnies, who explode when thrown). In the third game, you can merge characters with Monster characters during battle, making a third character. Examples shown in the demo videos include Archers with Golem arms, and showing two of the human characters merging to do a special combination attack.
  • Gainaxing: Whilst most characters stand still when it's not their turn, the Kit-Kat and Succubus monsters, well, don't.
  • Gag Boobs: Any girl of the series who isn't a Pettanko has these. There is no middle ground.
    • Except Asagi. She specifically mentions it in Prinny Can I Really be the Hero?
    • Rozalin counts as well. She'd be this trope if she were in a game aiming for realism, but in a game with PERPETUALLY Gainaxing cat girls, she comes off as not quite big enough.
  • Game Breaker: Many examples of these can be found, but the Majin class in particular stands out. They're better than EVERYONE. At EVERYTHING. The highest rank of Majin, the Divine Majin, is just Flat-out broken. Then again, the requirement to unlock the class is incredibly outlandish, requiring you to have five characters of five different classes at level 200 each just to be unlocked. Seeing as the final boss is only Level 90 by default, this means that you're very unlikely to unlock the class until the New Game Plus.
    • However, the Argus, the red coloured galactic demon, is available MUCH earlier. A level 300ish Argus is damn near impregnable to anything and anyone up to level oh, 900, with the proper defensive build. You can unlock a lot of bonus levels early by taking an Argus or two with you, and either pumping them with attack (if you want to soften the target(s) up with melee) or defense (for making the enemy waste all their MP before you officially come out to play.) This troper had access to Prier by level 180 thanks to the Argus. Not that she could be beaten by such puny levels...there's quite an insane difficulty jump between the extra characters and their gate guards of course. The galactic demons, even the weakest, have such ridiculous defensive stats that you can beat the entire game using them as Schmuck Bait towards anyone a higher level than you. Their counter rate is also pretty nice. The only con against them is, beimg a monster type they will likely fall behind in damage capability, especially since that's one of their lower-end stats.
    • Special mention goes to Adell in the third game's DLC, more specifically Vulkan Blaze. An S rank fire move (the strongest elemental technique in the game) that targets one panel. Doesn't sound that broken until you realize that Adell has an evility that inflicts 30% more damage in one on one combat, which essentially gives said S ranked attack a free 30% boost. In addition, many of the boss fights have enemies in which fire is the best option.
    • Purposefully Overpowered.
  • Genre Savvy: Nearly everyone. Even Flonne, or more accurately, especially Flonne, as she turns out to be a huge Toku and anime geek.
    • As is Mao, who attempts to use take advantage of his knowledge of tropes. For example, if only a Hero can defeat a Big Bad Overlord, he'll become a Hero. This ends up being Wrong Genre Savvy.
  • Geo Effects: The Trope Namer.
  • Girlish Pigtails: Etna, the Archer Class (adding Princess Curls to boot), etc.
  • Give Me Your Inventory Item: The Dark Assembly.
  • Glass Cannon: Every single character in the postgame content. The long and short of it (see One Stat To Rule Them All below) is that after a certain point, you are simply never, ever going to be able to survive more than a hit or two from the bosses, and gameplay descends to trying to get your numbers high enough to instantly kill the enemies before they instantly kill you.
  • Guide Dangit: Nothing in the game tells you how to get which ending. This can be especially frustrating when you finally do go on GameFAQs and learn that team-killing, accidental or otherwise disqualifies you from the Good Ending. Some of the better equipment is also nigh impossible to stumble into by accident.
    • Also, the conditions for unlocking most Dark World maps in the second game are pretty much impossible to guess, and for some maps it could take hours of experimentation if a FAQ is not used.
  • Guns Are Worthless: Averted, since guns are common in the Netherworld, and even have the best range and hit-percentage of all weapons.
    • Though perhaps not; while guns themselves are potent weapons, they are also the least common weapon for characters to have high proficiency with. For example, in the first game, only two classes, one of which was optional and required you master guns with someone else against all logic, used them with any proficiency.
  • "Hey, It's That Voice!": You might find yourself saying this a lot. For starters, Disgaea 2 has Norio Wakamoto and Nobuyuki Hiyama in the Japanese track.
  • Heroic Sociopath: Many, many twisted examples, as this is a series with tons of NobleDemons and Dark Is Not Evil characters. Sapphire embodies it.
  • Horny Devils: Succubi, naturally. Nekomata (and Flora Beasts), also being cute female (er, mostly) demons, are occasionally lumped in with them (usually when they show up together). Almost all the Horny Devils are drawn by the La Pucelle artist, making them stand out.
  • Idiot Ball: Several characters on several occasions, mostly played for comedy. Mao in the 3rd game is particularly fond of the ball, too — he might have even swallowed it.
  • Infinity Plus One Element: Star magic is somewhere between this and Non Elemental.
  • Infinity Plus One Sword (with enough Level Grinding, any weapon can become an Infinity Plus One Sword)
    • At which point you find a zero-level Infinity Plus Two sword in the hundredth level of the Infinity Plus One sword, level that up until you find an Infinity Plus Three sword in its final level, and so on, until you finally have a 100th-level Infinity Plus Infinity sword of the most powerful base type in the game. To actually get a weapon up to Infinity Plus Most status, you need to ensure it is a legendary item of the most powerful base type, fully leveled, stuffed with the maximal amount of specialists throughout the leveling process, and in the hands of a character with maxed out proficiency (which modifies weapon strength geometrically, not linearly). And weapon proficiency is just one of many, many ways in which one can level up an Infinity Plus One Character.
    • THE Infinity Plus One Sword is the Yoshitsuna sword, its base states are significantly superior to all others of any type, not that you need it to break the game.
      • To Illustrate just how much of a game breaker this sword is, among other benefits, it has a range of 5 panels. No need to actually get close to your opponents anymore, just stab 'em from across a gap, or have your Mighty Glacier character stand between you and them!
      • This is actually broken in the latest games. Yoshitsuna isn't the ultimate sword, it's the next-to-best sword. (The "best" sword, the Baal Sword, doesn't have the bonus to range that the Yoshitsuna has, making it less useful.) And in one of the spinoffs, Yoshitsuna wasn't a sword at all — it was the Space Battleship Yoshitsuna. The Japanese producer has said it doesn't matter what Yoshitsuna is, as long as it's the most badass item in the game.
      • A producer who is, of course, named Kobayashi Yoshitsuna.
  • Japanese Love Pleinair: Pleinair was rated in the top ten most popular characters in Japan and a Disgaea 2 poll concerning its DLC rated her as the number one most wanted character, yet she's nowhere near that popular in America.
    • To expand upon this — Pleinair has her own line of erotic fan comics and 1/6 scale "garage kit" figurines, sold at the popular Comiket anime convention in Japan, including one called "Pleinair Handbook" with some really big name manga artists contributing to it. Pleinair is literally just the mascot of the artist's webpage. She has no popular manga, no speaking roles, nothing to her name except a bunch of random sketches on the artist's webpages (most of which were removed half a decade ago) and a few random cameos in NIS games. The mind boggles.
    • Captain Gordon, Defender of Earth seems to have a much larger fanbase in America than in Japan.
  • Laughably Evil: Regardless of how evil most of the characters may be, they rarely fail to be funny.
  • Lawyer Friendly Cameo: The Prism Rangers.
  • Leitmotif: Several characters have their very own theme songs.
  • Level Grinding: The ultimate example - the game caps out at Level 9999, and you can store up to 270,000 levels for stat bonuses through the game's Reincarnation system. Considering that most games before this followed the Tactics Ogre / Final Fantasy Tactics system of a level 50-99 level cap...
  • Little Miss Badass: Etna, although she's Really Seven Hundred Years Old.
  • Little Miss Snarker: Etna yet again.
  • Loads And Loads Of Characters: The three games have just enough special characters that join so that you don't really have room to use generic characters. Most of these special characters join at a low enough level that it's pointless to use them, however. The third game has an alternative — Loads And Loads Of Generic Characters — it contains male and female versions of every generic NPC that was in Disgaea 1 and 2, as well as generic characters from some other NIS games.
  • Luke I Am Your Father: A lot of examples. By the third game, they start spoofing it in an alternate ending when Laharl waltzes in and claims to be Mao's father. Nobody believes him for a second of course, especially when Flonne and Etna start both arguing that they're his mother.
  • Made Of Explodium: Prinnies. Picking them up and throwing them causes damage equal to half that Prinny's remaining Life Points. Also, causes any other Prinnies caught in the blast to explode, with similar results.
  • Memetic Badass: Pleinair isn't mute; she dodges spoken dialogue.
  • Memetic Mutation: Captain Gordon, Defender of—Oh, screw it. If you don't get it by now...
    • Also, "Everyone's loli for Etna"
  • Money Fetish
  • Mood Whiplash: Each game has a narrative opening that sounds dark, dramatic and tense, as opposed to the general wackiness and humor of the plot.
  • Multiple Endings: Depending on how many allies you kill, you can see some of the endings of the game, before the actual end of the game!
  • The Multiverse: Each game is considered to be in its own universe or series of universes, but dimensional portals abound. This makes for easy cameos from other games in the series.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Just take a look at the picture above — Do any of them really look like they could blow up the world?
    • Though they do it with magic and ki attacks. But they do hit pretty hard too, okay REALLY REALLY hard.
  • New Game Plus: The game's bonus content tends to become unlocked after 2 or more play-throughs, which is good, cause for the most part the level requirements for even beginning to prepare for a NIS game's bonus content is several exponential orders of magnitude higher than the original bosses.
  • Non Standard Game Over: Triggered by a loss to Mid-Boss in the first game, or to Axel in the second (these also count as Multiple Endings). There are also multiple instances in the games of winning "unwinnable fights" thanks to the New Game Plus mode. Some of these cause Nonstandard endings. In other instances, these are caused by the hero having too many Ally kills, which allows unusual plot choices that end the game (refusing to show mercy where in the "real" plot you do, for example).
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Mid-Boss is the grandmaster of this, as Seraph Lamington's secret partner in the masterful Xanatos Gambit to turn Laharl into a decent ruler and make peace between their two realms. About the only part of his personality that isn't an act is his impressive vanity, exemplified when he pauses to point out to himself how awesome he is after menacing a lesser villain
  • One Hit Point Wonder: The Deathblow geo effect will turn anyone into this: if they're hit by attack strong enough to do even one point of damage, they die instantly.
  • One Stat To Rule Them All: NIS games tend to become offense only affairs in post game. Got better in the second game where tank builds (Taro and Wood Golems) are actually playable. The problem runs WILDLY out of control in the third game thanks to the stupid way the damage formula works. Modifiers that increase damage occur BEFORE calculations based on offense versus defense rather than after (modifiers that reduce damage occur after those calculations). This trope shows up much earlier as a result, around the point where you fight Marona.
  • The Other Darrin: Michelle Ruff took over for Amanda Winn-Lee as the voice of Etna in every game after the first. They even re-recorded Etna's dialogue for Afternoon Of Darkness.
  • Plot Armor (lampshaded)
  • Poke The Poodle: The demons tend to be more naughty and mischievous than anything else, despite what they might say. Except in the bad endings, Demon deciding to kill AND EAT his little brother and sister, anyone?
  • Power Fist (Lots of classes use unarmed strikes with weaponry — and Adell, of course.)
  • Rain Of Arrows (The ultimate attack for bow users)
  • Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Laharl, Etna, and Flonne from Disgaea. Mao and Raspberyl from Disgaea 3. For that matter, most of the Disgaea demons have ages tallied in millennia despite appearing as young humans.
    • Judging from its mention in Disgaea 1, it seems 100 years for a demon is proportionate to 1 year for a human, making Laharl, Etna and Flonne (at the time) physically 13, 14, and 15 years old. Sheds new light on Flonne's insecurities.
    • Or 300 years to 1 year for angels, Flonne mentions angels living a very long time, and she seems kind of immature for a 15 year old.
      • Try 150 to 1. She may not be the equivalent of a 15-year-old, but she sure as hell isn't a 5-year-old, either.
      • It's probably the same for angels as demons. The prinny commentary mentions Etna is supposed to look fourteen and sound a little doubtful about it. She may act a little immature at times for a fifteen year old, but you have to remember something; Flonne is Flonne.
  • Reconstruction: Disgaea was very much a reconstruction of the SRPG genre after it almost died out in the 1990s, dropping the longwinded political stuff that had plagued the genre since Tactics Ogre.
  • Red Eyes Take Warning (All demons in the Disgaea series, barring non-fire mages (and possibly Yukimaru), have red eyes. They're usually no more or less fearsome than the humans in the game. Adell's sprite also has red eyes, though it may be a result of his hair being in his way because all art depicts him as blue-eyed.)
  • The Red Mage
  • Reluctant Warrior: Flonne hates fighting, but does so to help Laharl. Later cameos show she's all too willing to fight for anime DVD collections, too.
  • Royal Brat: Prince Laharl
  • Say It With Hearts: The best possible reaction (generally only possible with lots of judicious bribing) in the Dark Assembly is "Loves" with a heart after it.
  • Sentai (Parodied in the form of the Prism Rangers)
  • Shout Out: More than can possibly be listed. Characters and item descriptions reference everything from Guilty Gear (Bridget, as mentioned above) to Monty Python ("Charred Newt: sadly, it did not get better").
  • Sidetracked By The Gold Saucer: It's surprisingly easy to get addicted into gaming the Dark Assembly. Perhaps the easiest way to to farm for items in the item worlds, which can power level your equipment and your characters, and gives you the mana to try even more fun bills... wait, what am I forgetting? Oh, right, the plot...
  • Slap On The Wrist Nuke: Most outrageously destructive attacks leave the terrain unscathed, and can cause surprisingly little damage in the wrong conditions.
  • The Smurfette Principle: Averted: The main character gender ratio is roughly one-to-one in the first two games and in the third when you count the hidden story characters, there are more females than males.
  • The Speechless: Pleinair in the second game; in the first, she is the guide to the Dark Assembly, and she actually tells you how it works. Pleinair is actually the artist's website's mascot character; she usually carries around a stuffed bunny who does her talking for her, and doubles as an emergency food supply. Really! Turned into a playable (and unbalanced) character in the DS re-remake of D1. And as a little joke to her normally mute status, is the only character in the game who has no voice acting and makes no sound when carrying out commands in battle.
    • The Disgaea 2 manga shows that she's not actually mute: she just gets stage fright when the television cameras are rolling.
      • This is Adaptation Decay — in the artist's original homepage comics and other art with her, she never, ever speaks.
      • Except that she speaks when she's your Dark Assembly/Home Room Receptionist in both the first and third games. Plus, the recent DLC gave her a voice.
    • Subverted: in the second game, if/when the player completes the Dark World version of the story stages, the player will get an item and ONE word "Congratulations"
  • Spiteful AI: Enemies will off their allies to rob you of experience. Quite aggravating with high-levelled enemies.
  • Status Quo Is God: Despite over half a dozen cameos to his belt, Laharl and the Disgaea 1 crew haven't had any character development outside of Flonne becoming more and more of an Anime and Toku geek. Etna left him and joined the Disgaea 2 cast during Disgaea 2's main story, but by the end had went back to him again. However, given the nature of the series, this is probably understandable.
  • Stripperiffic: though, unlike most examples, quite a few of the men are subject to this trope too — shirts seem to be a foreign concept in Hell.
  • Stuff Blowing Up - Again, Prinnies; some of the animations for the attacks also look like they've been directed by Michael Bay.
  • Stupid Sexy Flanders: Characters of either gender can be charged and convicted of the crime of "Liking Girls" or "Liking Guys".
  • Super Sentai Stance: The Prism Rangers are the obvious example, but their certainly not the only ones. Flonne does, at one point, try to get Laharl and Etna to do one, with very limited success.
  • Talking Is A Free Action (Most battle scenes begin with lots of dialogue between the characters, and can be skipped. Etna hangs a lampshade on it on the tutorial level of the first game. Flonne actually scolds Laharl for even suggesting they attack before a later opponent finishes explaining his motivations.)
  • This Is Your Premise On Drugs - Final Fantasy Tactics on crack, and with lots of leather...and penguins.
  • Troperiffic: These games are well aware of what makes up standard plotlines.
  • Unusable Enemy Equipment: Cloned characters cannot have their items stolen. However, using a special item that steals items on death, "Dropouts" from Disgaea 3 can. Whether or not this is a bug is up to the reader — it certainly lowers the post game grinding as you can simply clone thousands of copies of Innocents / Items / etc you want. In addition, it's important to note that Nippon Ichi has patched the game several times at this point and the bug has not been removed yet.
  • Unusual Ears: All demons have 'em, but the humanoid non-demon characters don't.
  • Verbal Tic: Lots, okay? Just leave it at that, dood...Zam.
  • Video Game Stealing: You can steal items from just about any monster, and taking these items away actually has a discernible effect on their performance — for example, steal an archer's bow, and they're a sitting duck. Disgaea Thieves can even steal stats! It's pretty much the only way to level them up, since their growth and aptitude rates are far inferior to other created characters. Thieves in D2 are more balanced, and can also use their thievery skills to inflict Standard Status Effects.
  • Violence Is The Only Option / Violence Really Is The Answer: The fundamental rule that all the Netherworlds thrive on. Even the "good" demons can't escape it as Raspberyl encourages the idea of breaking into someone's house and challenging them to a fist fight as long as the fight ends with the two fighters laughing on the ground and shaking hands afterward!
  • We Have Reserves: Sort of. You're restricted to only 10 of your units on the field at any one time, including corpses which you cannot revive until the end of the battle. However, the game does absolutely nothing to stop you from tossing your worn-out, beaten, nearly-dead husks of units back into your home base and bringing out new ones. A sometimes legitimate strategy is to attack with a set of fragile speedsters and glass cannons, then throw them back into the home base before they can be killed off, and bring them around for another pass next turn.
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome: A lot of the characters' ultimate special attacks, such as the Prism Cannon example above, seem to operate entirely on Coolness and Nonsensoleum. They're still hella devastating, though.
  • What Is This Thing You Call Love: An important plot point in all three games - In D1 you have Laharl learning to be caring - sorta - because of Flonne, and ultimately forgiving Lamington after he "kills" Flonne, as well as Etna defrosting a little after recovering her memory of King Krichevskoy, the first person to ever show her any kindness; D2 is essentially a love story between Adell and Rozalin, complete with Meet Cute and Slap Slap Kiss .... Gun To Face... ; and in D3, the entire plot turns out to be Mao feeling soul-crushing guilt over selling out his father to the Super Hero out of spite, which he repressed so far he forgot about it. See also Even Evil Has Standards above.
  • Widget Series: ...and those are some damn big widgets, I tell ya whut...
  • World Of Ham (It's a miracle people in the Disgaea universe aren't deaf from all the shouting the characters do.)
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Mao is convinced that studying video games, manga, anime, and toku shows is the way to learn how to beat an overlord, and attempts to use his knowledge of Fantasy / Scifi RPG tropes to further his goals. Unfortunately, Disgaea is, for the most part, a parody of those tropes...
  • You Kill It You Bought It: This is normally how Overlord succession works.
  • You Should Know This Already: Fallen Angel Flonne, featured in just about any casual mentioning of the later games and their bonus content.
  • Zettai Ryouiki: Etna and Pleinair's costumes.
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