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alt title(s): Stay Night 
King Arthur. Herakles. Cúchulainn. Gilgamesh. Medusa. Kojirou. Medea. Quetzalcóatl. Kullervo. Al-Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah.
These names are legends scattered across the world. Their origins are tales of great heroism and terrible bloodshed. Even villains can be the heroes of their own tales, and the telling of them inspires mankind.
In Fate/stay night, when a hero is venerated enough by humanity, they can become a Heroic Spirit that surpasses time itself. There is a ritual where seven Spirits can ally with a Sorcerer Master via contract and become Servants. This ritual culminates in a seven-way war to acquire the ultimate prize, the Holy Grail, which can grant the wishes of the Servant and Master who are victorious. As their true name would give opponents an advantage over them, it is hidden. Instead, each heroic Servant Spirit is given a Class by which they are addressed: Saber, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Caster, Berserker, and Assassin. There have, however, been unprecedented new classes.
There Can Be Only One Servant who gets the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail War that results in this has happened before, at great cost in lives.
Fate/stay night opens with Shirou, the Ordinary High School Student who happens to know a little bit of magic from his late father, a retired mage. Shirou is the sole survivor of a terrible fire that destroyed his hometown — the site of the last Holy Grail War. Shirou desperately wants to be a hero to overcome his Survivors Guilt, but as the events unfold and he gets sucked into the current Holy Grail War, he learns that heroes are only heroes when people die. Can he be a hero and still maintain his gentle nature? How holy can this Holy Grail be, if so many die over it?
Then there is Saber, the Servant Spirit who gets bonded to him. Her true name is unknown, but she has the mannerisms of a knight and the appearance of a young girl. Add to this an aloof girl named Tohsaka Rin, a rival Master and schoolmate who finds him too pathetic to kill off immediately (and her Servant, Archer, who claims to suffer amnesia in the beginning due to his botched summoning). Rin is a professional mage who knows the Grail War rules, but her conscience results in her helping out, despite her protests to the contrary. In addition, Shirou has to protect his "family" — his self-appointed "older sister" and teacher Taiga, and the neighbor girl, which shows off Fate/stay night's Dating Sim origins.
Fate/stay night is based on a Visual Novel created by the company Type-Moon, and is set in the Nasu Verse, the same universe as Tsukihime (although the anime is created by a different company than the anime of Shingetsutan Tsukihime). Of the three alternate storylines in the game- " Fate", which focuses on Saber, " Unlimited Blade Works", which focuses on Rin and Archer, and " Heaven's Feel", which focuses on Sakura.
The anime adaptation is the Fate route with some extra material added in to make the series fill out 24 episodes. This is used to give more attention to characters who are pushed to the background in the Fate route. Some of these are semi-original (Archer's fight with Berserker, which wasn't seen in the visual novel) and some are directly lifted from other routes (a chunk of the Heaven's Feel scenario was implanted and rewritten in order to give Caster, Assassin, Kuzuki and Sakura more attention). Overall, it basically takes an approach similar to Shingetsutan Tsukihime but with far less mangling of the story. The manga adaptation, still coming out, is also based on the Fate scenario - although, again, material from other routes and original material are both used.
A second manga also exists titled Kaleid Liner Prisma Ilya. Unlike the first manga, this one has basically nothing to do with established continuity; rather, it features an Alternate Universe storyline with Ilya as the main character... oh, and she's a Magical Girl, complete with a talking staff named Ruby, helping Rin recover 'Class Cards', magical artifacts with the powers of the Servants. It's largely an Affectionate Parody, both of Fate/Stay Night and magical girl tropes in general, and doesn't take itself very seriously as a result. Still, it is very funny, intersperses this with largely random moments of awesome ( Ilya uses Archer's Class Card to draw on Unlimited Blade Works and trace Excalibur so she can defeat an evil version of Saber. Look me in the eyes and tell me that isn't great.), and is very nearly worth it just so you can catch all the FSN references .
A movie was announced for release in January 2010; it is based on the "Unlimited Blade Works" route.
A prequel exists in the form of Fate Zero. And for those who want to know about its characters, we have the character sheet.
Finally, there are two more video games: Fate/unlimited codes, a Fighting Game for the arcades, PS 2 and PSP; and the newly announced Fate/EXTRA, an RPG for the PSP whose primary point of notability is the ability to choose the main character's gender.
Because of the Road Cone, note that Fate refers to the Fate route of the story, UBW refers to the Unlimited Blade Works route of the story, HF refers to the Heaven's Feel route of the story, and HA refers to Hollow Ataraxia, the canon Fan-disc for Fate/stay night.
This show provides examples of:
- Accidental Innuendo: "I've shown you mine, so the least you can do is show me yours" and "I am the bone of my sword."
- Adaptation Decay/Pragmatic Adaptation - Both the anime and manga are extremely watered down, censored versions of the original visual novel. Then again, there's only so much you can do in the timeframe for an anime and the necessity of the sex scenes is debatable.
- And besides, Fate/Stay Night was at least respectable in regards to honoring it's source canon (mostly the Fate route), the characters were in character, and the show enjoyable enough that fans can proclaim So Okay Its Average at worst. Another Nasuverse series wasn't so lucky.
- Against The Setting Sun - Fate's ending. UBW's normal end does this too.
- All Just A Dream - Hollow Ataraxia
- All Myths Are True - The wide variety of legendary heroes who can be summoned as Servants. Partly explained by Assassin, who is by his own admission a fictional character, as a reverse of the hero making the legend (see Clap Your Hands If You Believe). This still doesn't explain how a mage is able to acquire the legendary artifact needed to summon the specific hero, such as Gilgamesh's: the fossilized remains of the first snake to shed its skin (tied to a legend about his quest for immortality).
- A direct corollary of Assassin admitting to being fictional is that all the other heroes were definitely real, since being fictional was a sign of the fact that he was summoned by another Servant, and became downgraded.
- All There In The Manual - The anime touches on elements from the visual novel, such as Archer's identity, Ilya's parentage, and Sakura's relationship with Rin, without actually providing its own explanations. In order to understand certain elements from the visual novel, in turn, you may have to reference a published extra called Fate/side material.
- Almost Dead Guy - Loads.
- Alternate Continuity - Possibly with itself. Archer's mysterious past is known to at least resemble the Fate scenario also followed by the anime, but how much is unclear. Actually, essentially all routes and endings are alternate continuities, with Hollow Ataraxia taking place in yet another continuity. Also, Zelretch appears from an alternate continuity in one route, just to say hi.
- Ancient Conspiracy - The Mage Council and The Church are big in the Nasu Verse. Also, the true purpose of the Grail Wars, and to a lesser extent, the true nature of the Fuyuki Grail.
- Artifact Of Doom - The Holy Grail
- Artistic License/Did Not Do The Research - Where do we start?! King Arthur is a girl. Cú Chulainn has blue hair and red eyes. Medusa is a purple-haired mythological hero, and uses Bellerophon, the name of the greek mythological hero who rode the Pegasus, as reins for controlling magical beasts. Herakles is a nine-foot-tall monster, Medea has elf ears and a Noble Phantasm with no mythological foundation whatsoever, and Hassan-i Sabbah looks like a black-skinned freakish cripple without a face. Gilgamesh suffers from Phenotype Stereotype and wears a full plate, a form of armour that post-dates his existence by about two thousand years. Fate Zero is about as bad.
- It should be noted that quite a few of these are just cases of mixing different elements from different versions of the legend, as well as being adapted to the games overall setting. Like Medusa being a priestess of Athena before being cursed, thus explaining non-monstrous appearance. And her summoning of Pegasus references how it came to being.
- Ascended Extra - Luviagelita Edelfelt. She's created as an April's Fools hoax of a Fate-themed wrestling game spinoff. Then, she appears in Fate/Unlimited Codes.
- Not quite true. Luvia first appeared in one Heaven's Feel ending and then ascended into a full role in Fate/hollow ataraxia. The April Fool's hoax came a few years after, then came Fate/Unlimited Codes.
- Attempted Rape
- Back To Back Badasses - (HA) Assassin and Souichirou
- Bait And Switch Credits - Second opening, depicting Shirou and Archer facing off a la the Unlimited Blade Works scenario from the game.
- The opening credits show a lot of scenes that don't actually appear in the anime, but are Continuity Porn to those who have played the game.
- Be Careful What You Wish For - Discussed in Fate and UBW, but averted since the Grail gets destroyed in every route. In UBW, there are a few more versions when you discover what Archer wished to do and what Archer currently wishes to do.
- Being Watched - Rin in the prologue, twice.
- Mirrored later in HF by Shinou, who's equally uneasy.
- Beyond The Impossible - Think that the battle scenes are epic? Use the patch described here to implement the Realta Nua CGs/SFX - it multiplies the epic GAR. Many times over.
- Big Damn Heroes - Lancer in UBW, when he saved Rin from Shinji. The rest goes into Crowning Moment Of Awesome. Also in UBW, Archer does this once when he saves Shirou from Caster and two more times near the end. In HF, Rider saves Shirou twice in this fashion (first against True Assassin, next against Dark Sakura)
- Subverted by Gilgamesh in Fate and the anime, who, after saving our heroes from their last opponent, becomes their new one.
- Bittersweet Ending - Fate: Did Not Get The Girl but decides that life goes on. UBW: Cannot absolve Archer's fate. Heaven's Feel: Gets the girl, but hundreds of people have died for it.
- Bleached Underpants - The anime is based on an eroge. The PS 2 version of the game removes the H-scenes, as well.
- Blood From The Mouth - Shirou averts this trope after flushing out Ilya's binding spell, noting as he does that such an injury is light.
- Blood Magic - The runes in the ritual used to summon servants are normally drawn in blood. Rider also possesses Blood Magic abilities.
- Rin melts half of her supply of Power Crystals and uses those to draw the rune used in an attempt to summon Saber by force. It was a very risky move, as those were damn expensive. She ends up screwing up by attempting the summon one hour early (thanks to the clocks in her house).
- Later, it is revealed that the reason was not due to the incorrect time, but the fact that she used the wrong catalyst in the summoning: a crystal that she would later give to Shirou after saving his life, which became his (and thus, Archer's) most valued possession.
- Actually, Rin didn't have a catalyst that connected her to Archer. The pendant she had wouldn't have any connection with Heroic Spirit Emiya until it passes into Shirou's possession and he becomes a Heroic Spirit. It was actually Archer himself who had the catalyst - his version of Rin's pendant which he kept his entire life - which linked him specifically to Rin.
- Broad Strokes - Hollow Ataraxia.
- Break The Cutie - Sakura's backstory. In one Heaven's Feel Bad End, she inflicts her experiences on Rin.
- But Thou Must
- By The Power Of Greyskull - All Noble Phantasms must be called out to be used.
- Calling Your Attacks - When a servant uses what's usually their most powerful weapon, they shout its name. This is at least explained as being required to unlock the power of the weapon here, but it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
- Character Alignment - In the status pages. These tend to be points of contention among the fandom, particularily Gilgamesh's.
- Chekhovs Gun - In Fate, the sword Caliburn that keeps appearing in Shirou's dreams.
- Chekhovs Gunman - Gilgamesh shows up in the prologue as Rin and Archer are scouting around the city.
- Chekhovs Boomerang - Done across routes. In Heaven's Feel, Caster is taken out of the game early on. Having played a major role in the previous route, most people put her out of their minds. But then, literally at the last day of the route... her Noble Phantasm, Rule Breaker, is what saves Sakura.
- A similar, albeit far less dramatic, case with Azoth. The Azoth dagger, a near last-minute addition in Fate that Shirou uses to kill Kotomine, shows up again in Heaven's Feel, supposedly as a tool for Shirou to project Zelretch's Gem Sword. However, its real importance was Shirou using it to kill Dark Saber.
- Chekhovs Lecture - In the final fight with Berserker, the anime and the Fate Route, Shirou is able to defeat him because he remembers Archer's advice that if he found an enemy he cannot defeat alone that he should visualize something that can.
- In Heaven's Feel, Ilya's explanation to Shirou of how transferring a person's consciousness works. Guess how she saves his soul in the True End.
- Chekhovs Skill - Shirou's ability to use magic to create fake objects. Also, Lancer's Ansuz Rune in Unlimited Blade Works. Rin and Archer's discussion on Reality Marbles.
- Clap Your Hands If You Believe - All Mythological Heroes Are Real... if their legend is popular enough. The more well-known heroes are in the time they are summoned, the more powerful they are.
- Competitive Balance - Fate/Unlimited Codes puts Competitive Balance on all the fighters, which consist of both Servants (who have their own power rank differences) and human characters (who have all taken on and defeated Servants, but only under good circumstances).
- Conspicuous CG - What Bleached Underpants did to the sex scenes in the anime. "Mana Transfer Dragon" has become a minor meme as a result.
- Contractual Immortality - Shirou but it's averted in Heaven's Feel. Also Rin.
- Cool And Unusual Punishment - In Fate/unlimited codes, for abandoning her and leaving her to fight the Grail War on her own, Rin turns Archer into a chibi and makes him her "mascot character".
- Cooldown Hug - As she can't quite bring herself to deliver the fatal strike, Rin gives one of these to Sakura at the end of their battle in HF instead. The writing in this scene is one of the most affecting moments in fiction, in this troper's opinion.
- The Corruption - The contents of the current Grail.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique - Any Noble Phantasm that must be called out to be used, because calling out the Noble Phantasm's name reveals its identity, therefore its wielder's identity, and therefore all the wielder's abilities and weaknesses. Also, Saber's Noble Phantasm (thanks to her dwindling supply of mana), and Shirou's main ability, which eats away at his body.
- It gets worse for Shirou in the Heaven's Feel scenario, where he loses an arm and gets Archer's arm grafted on as a replacement. The magic circuits within the arm greatly boost Shirou's Projection abilities, but bombards Shirou's mind with a lifetime of Archer's memories and experiences, eroding the former's mind at an incredible rate. For this reason, the arm spends most of its time under a Power Limiter.
- The Dark Side - Heaven's Feel route goes over this.
- Deadly Upgrade - (HF) The arm.
- Deadpan Snarker - Archer and, to a lesser extent, Rin.
- Deal With The Devil - Rather involuntarily, Sakura becomes outrageously powerful by virtue of drawing on the power of Angra Mainyu.
- A more direct example, one of the ways one becomes a Counter Spirit is to make a deal with The World. In exchange for a Miracle, one is taken out of the cycle of Reincarnation and thus serves the World forever after death. Nasu Verse has Continuity Drift on the differences between "normal" Heroic Spirits and these.
- Deathby Pragmatism: A rare video game example.
- Death Is Cheap - Shirou and Saber by virtue of outrageous self-healing which can revive someone from the brink of death. Shirou once more by virtue of a single-use revival magic cast on him by Rin. Berserker by virtue of possessing eleven layers of automatic revival magic, meaning he needs to get killed twelve times to die. And, in hollow ataraxia, everyone because of the time loop.
- Deus Sex Machina - Loads and loads of it.
- The Devil - In UBW, we learn that Angra Mainyu, the devil in Zoroastrianism, lives inside the Holy Grail and has corrupted it. As is explained in HF and HA, it turns out that Angra Mainyu isn't the Devil — he's a Servant whose legend was born of a ritual where a single man was ritually sacrificed to personify all the the sins of his fellow humans so he'd absolve them by being killed (kind of like an unwilling Jesus). In the Third Holy Grail war, when Angra Mainyu, summoned as Avenger, got killed because he was a horribly weak Servant, the Grail identified him as a human rather than a servant and tried to fulfill his wish. Considering that the Holy Grail is an omnipotent device whose entire purpose is to seek and grant wishes and that Angra Mainyu is the personification of the world's wish for a concrete form of all evil... OH SHI-
- Did Not Get The Girl - The only ending in which Saber stays is the UBW
harem good ending.
- That would be Rin's harem, btw, as she likes to make perfectly clear.
- Downer Ending - Bad ends excepted, HF normal ending.
- Dropped A Bridge On Him - UBW: Rider dies anticlimactically, off-screen, to Kuzuki and Caster. Heaven's Feel: Assassin dies almost instantly as True Assassin is summoned. Lancer and Caster may also count, although Caster's Rule Breaker is still an important element (see last spoiler under Chekhovs Boomerang), and Gilgamesh succumbs quickly from The Worf Effect against Dark Sakura.
- Dying As Yourself
- Earn Your Happy Ending - In the ending of the Fate Scenario of Realta Nua, as Saber lies dying, lamenting on losing Shiro she is visited by Merlin, who feeling that she is owed something for all her hardships claims that there is a way for her to be reunited with the one she loves. However, it would require two impossible feats: she must wait for him continuously and Shirou must pursue her endlessly. They do. And are reunited in what appears to be Avalon. This is weird though, because it's implied that the version of Shirou Saber gets is Archer.
- Really, pretty much every ending that could remotely be called "happy" counts as this. Heaven's Feel True End in particular.
- Of course For Heaven's Feel Saber died earlier in the route and Ilya sacrificed herself in order to save Shirou. But she mentions in the final Tiger Dojo that there's no such thing as a real happy ending and it's only natural that some people are missing.
- Editing Works/The Abridged Series - Character development, Cliff Notes style:
- Fate
Shirou: I want to save everybody!
END.
- UBW
Shirou: I want to save everybody! Archer: That is both a logical contradiction and a denial of the self. Shirou: But the ideal encompasses an aesthetic that makes the endless journey worth it. Why can't I selfishly pursue selflessness? Archer: FUCK. Gilgamesh: MONGRELS! THOSE SWORDS ARE FUCKING PATENTED!
END.
- Heaven's Feel
Shirou: I want to save everybody! Archer: That is a logical contradiction and a denial of the self. If you do not realize this, you get no Sakura sex. Shirou: You're right. I'm a moral relativist. God is dead. Archer: That’s the spirit. Here‘s a present before I go away, don‘t mind it if it starts to kill you. Kotomine: But I'm still evil somehow, right? Shirou: Right.
END.
- Elemental Powers - And very exceptional ones; Shirou has "Sword", Rin has all five ("Average One"), and Sakura has "Shadow" and "Imaginary Numbers".
- Shadow and Imaginary Numbers are the same thing. Her actual second and artificial attribute would be "Binding."
- Eleventh Hour Superpower - (Fate) Caliburn, Avalon; (UBW) Rho Aius and Unlimited Blade Works; (HF) The arm, Nine Lives, Jewel Sword Zelretch, Kaladbolg II, Rho Aius, Rule Breaker, Excalibur.
- Equivalent Exchange - You pay for your magecraft, no matter what. True Magic, on the other hand...
- Erotic Dream - Just play the Heaven's Feel route.
- Everyone Calls Him Barkeep - the Servants are usually only addressed by their Class. Knowing a Servant's real name may give a clue to their weaknesses, so their names are kept secret where possible. Also, out of formality, most Servants refer to their masters simply as "Master," but Archer and Saber go against common practice and refer to their Masters by first name.
- Extraordinarily Empowered Girl - FSN seems to live off of these.
- Failed A Spot Check - Nobody but Ilya and maybe Rider notices Shirou's brain damage caused by his projection. To be fair, he is a bit a oblivious on occasion.
- Shirou is pretty bad at picking up Sakura's rather obvious crush on him too.
- Fan Preferred Couple - Archer/Rin and Rider/Sakura, anyone?
- Fetish Fuel - There's plenty to go around.
- Fetish Retardant - Nasu's legendary skill at work, although one must wonder how much of it is the fault of the translator, who has shown some clear apprehension at translating the sex scenes.
- Praise the translator for making those semi-readable, it's not his fault. Nasu is infamous for his h-scenes (he apparently really likes seafood metaphors, for example). Some people came up with some ideas to make them "less awkward, more fun!"
- Oddly, aside from the previous example (the first scene in Fate), Nasu's actually improved at writing H-scenes (the ones in FSN aren't nearly as bad as in Tsukihime);the second scene of Fate is actually the high point. Of course, there's Rin x Shirou in UBW and the Erotic Dream in HF, which are actually intended to follow this trope (the first is played for awkward laughs, the second for horror).
- Final Boss Preview
- First Name Basis - Rin calling Shirou by first name, Saber calling Shirou by first name, and Archer calling Rin by first name (but Archer overdoes this for a moment by saying that Rin's name suits her well - Rin means cold).
- Fission Mailed - Tell Saber you're fasting today.
- Food Porn - Oooh yes.
- Fountain Of Youth - (HA) Gilgamesh did this with a youth potion because, apparently, "this whole mess is stupid, screw you all". All the more hilarious, considering that he's been an Evil Overlord (in the past), not to mention a dog-kicking Big Bad who wanted to unleash a terrible curse on humanity because only those who could survive it were worthly of being ruled over; when he reverts, he turns into a Cute Shotaro Boy that everyone loves.
- Freudian Excuse - Ilya and Sakura
- Funny Aneurysm Moment - The "I am the bone of my sword" invocation/chant for the Unlimited Blade Works reality marble isn't given much weight or attention, and only seems to be there for the Rule Of Cool. Until the Heaven's Feel route, that is, where its meaning becomes painfully clear after Shirou uses Archer's arm for projection, catapulting him past his limits and resulting in an eventual rebound that reforges his body into thousands of swords, killing him from the inside out. "I am the bone of my sword" indeed...
- Also, Sakura's jealousy. Cute? A funny little argument with Rider about Shirou finding her attractive? Not so much after killing Shinji, going berserk and hitting you with the worst bad ends of the game plus her villainous breakdown against Tohsaka at the end, where it's also revealed that no, Sakura did not pick up the little cues that Tohsaka really did care about her all along.
- Remember the humorous scenes you can get if you nag Saber for "a super move that can defeat a Servant" during training? In one ending of Heaven's Feel, Shirou actually wins against Dark Saber... by using Archer's super move with Kanshou and Bakuya against her. Though maybe it's just Hilarious In Hindsight.
- Game Breaker - In-universe, Sabers have reliably won every one of the Grail wars that had a clear victor. In the fifth one, we specifically have Saber herself, although having Shirou as her master renders her more balanced, Berserker with his twelve lives and immunity to attacks below B-rank, and Gilgamesh, who is canonically about five times as strong as your average Servant.
- To be more accurate, a Saber s always one of the finalists. No Grail War has finished properly. Even with the 5th and last one, only in Fate Route is it a clear victory of a Servant, maybe UBW somewhat. in HF, the Servant battles become irrelevant.
- Gas Leak Coverup - A number of non-fatal incidents around the town (caused by Caster's efforts gathering mana) are attributed to gas leaks.
- Good Bad Translation - One overly-literal fansub had Shirou saying "People die if they are killed" with an ultra-serious look on his face. A screenshot of this sub is now a meme when talking about bad translations and/or Engrish.
- Good Thing You Can Heal - Not counting the Bad Ends, Shirô has his guts torn open, arms broken, heart impaled and nerve system burned too often to be healthy. Every time, by next day he's dizzy and nauseated but otherwise fine.
- Gotterdammerung - Modern magecraft vs. the age of gods.
- Gratuitous English - In both the meaningless title and Archer's famous Engrishy "I am the bone of my sword" speech, which makes great deviations from the Japanese "translation" that accompanies it in the game (see Field Of Blades). Also, Rin Tohsaka's spells are in German, or should we say "Gelman".
- Gratuitous German - A lot of Rin's spells are in really strange german, for example "Neun, Acht, Sieben, Stil Schießen, Beschießen, Erschießen!"
- Groundhog Day Loop - Hollow Ataraxia time loop
- Gut Feeling - Rin, Saber, and Shirou mostly.
- Hammerspace - The whole point beyond both Shirou and Archer's Trace Projection magecraft.
- Have A Nice Death - The Tiger Dojo serves this purpose plenty of times.
- Hentai - Some people are very surprised when they find out that the original Fate Stay Night was an H-game.
- Hermetic Magic
- The Hero Dies - Dead Ends aside, the Normal End for Heaven's Feel.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel - A lot of the game overs are like this. Believe me, you have no idea what a violent, meaningless death is until you've played this game.
- And then there's Heaven's Feel. Sweet fucking God, Heaven's Feel. As this troper learned the hard way, one shouldn't play it at night.
- Whatever you do, don't think about the Makiri parasitic worms. Don't think about how, if you've had the comparative good fortune to be born male, they'll simply kill and eat you. And especially don't think about how, if you're unlucky enough to be female, they'll eat you alive (ovaries first) while essentially raping you at the same time.
- Hijacked By Jesus - The Holy Grail, which was originally the Cauldron of Someone Celtic, has been reimagined via the Legend of the Cup of Wishes. So this is a legend that was hijacked by Jesus and then hijacked by Japanese Mythology; but it turns out in the game it was hijacked by a bunch of mages.
- Ho Yay - Enough to deserve subcategories.
- Prologue
- Rin x Saber: (Fate and HF routes only.) So, Saber defeats Archer immediately, repels Rin's A-Rank instant magic, and rushes in to deliver a fatal blow to Rin, pausing for just a moment to briefly compliment Rin on her magic skills. Rin, instead of having, say, a normal response to Impending Death, just lies there blankly mesmerized by "how heartwrenchingly beautiful and valiant" Saber's figure is.
- Fate Route
- Rin x Saber: H-Scene, Rin hitting on Saber, and Rin mentioning how she likes Shirou and Saber both the same *nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink*.
- Really, did you have to go any further than 'H-scene'? When two characters have lesbian sex, complete with Rin actually saying that she 'never knew she was into girls until now', it's generally pretty clear there might be some Les Yay there.
- That the observation is delivered in Rin's usual Deadpan Snarker voice turns that into a Crowning Moment Of Funny for a lot of people.
- Unlimited Blade Works Route
- Saber x Caster: Caster likes to torture Saber a bit much.
- Rin x Random Injured Girl: Rin just brought this one all on herself.
"Hold on, Tohsaka. How's that girl...!?"
"She's doing better. She's sleeping in the nurse's office now, so her life's not in danger."
"——————I see. That's good."
I sigh with relief.
...That means all problems have been resolved.
Then what's left is———
"Huh? W-why are you staring at me? H-hey, I wouldn't do something like that!"
I don't know how she misunderstood.
Tohsaka, um, makes the stupidest misunderstandings sometimes.
- If you think about it carefully, she probably did. Still not getting it? Here's a hint: THE GIRL WAS SUFFERING FROM *MANA DEPRIVATION*.
- Rin x Saber: What kind of girl insists on going out on a date with a guy, invites another girl along on the date, and then spends half her time with that girl? It seems more like Rin was dating Shirou and Saber at the same time...
- The Good Ending to the route, the only path in the game in which Saber stays in the modern world, makes it pretty clear that she was doing exactly that. Here's a hint: It's also a 'harem' ending. Rin's harem, not Shirou's.
- Shirou x Issei: Now you weren't expecting this one, were you? But, Shirou forcibly takes off Issei's clothes in one scene.
- Heaven's Feel Route
- Sakura x Rin
- Sakura x Rider - One of the few remaining Servants with her Master after and chooses to stay with her.
- Sakura x Dark Saber - WHAT? (with an echo of OTP!)
- Hollow Ataraxia
- Rider x Mitsuzuri: Rider has a bit of a weird stalker crush on Mitsuzuri.
- Rider x Rin: Shirou imagines this one for a moment.
- Human Resources - The Holy Grail's power comes from absorbing the souls of the heroic spirits who died in the war.
- Not to even bring up the innumerable living corpses in Kotomine's basement. That they're all orphans from the same disaster as Shirou somehow makes it even worse.
- Humiliation Conga - Happens to Shinji a good few times in various routes. In the Fate route, Shinji's second, brief Humiliation Conga is followed by his abrupt death.
- Hyperspace Arsenal
- Image Song - Released during the run of the anime, sung by the voice actors; only some characters (Saber, Rin, Sakura, Ilya, Rider, Caster, Archer, Shirou, and Taiga) got them, though. The original game had an album called Wish that had three voiced songs for the heroines and instrumental songs for all the other important female characters.
- Immortality - Lets list characters and types of immortality they possess.
- All the servants: Type II (Doesn't age.) and Type III (Super regeneration) as they're immortal spirits — they're not supposed to last past the end of a Grail War, however. Gilgamesh and Saber, who are both material and not 'true' heroic spirits, have magic that compensate for it.
- Shirou: Type III (Super regeneration)
- Berserker: Type I (Invulnerability) but with exceptions for the highest grade of attacks, and Type IV (Resurrective - New body on death.) on top of regular Servant immortality.
- Al-Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah: Type VIII (Immortality Through Legacy - All the leaders of the Assassins take on this name and identity, giving the impression of a single, immortal al-Hassan ibn-al-Sabbah.)
- (HF) Zouken: Type IX (Parasitic - Taking over the body of another person to extend lifespan.) but also Type VI (Immortality Only - Even if protected from a death from old age, he's not protected from old age and eventual decay itself.)
- (HF) Dark Sakura: Type III (Super regeneration)
- Instant Runes - Straight in the anime, averted in the game - Rin does actually draw the whole summoning circle for Archer, but it's skipped in the anime because of the Rule Of Cool. Saber's summoning circle, on the other hand, is not instant in the anime, but it does draw itself over scratches in the floor where it had been drawn previously. Also, Rider uses instant (blood) runes when she summons a Pegasus — not THE Pegasus, but still formidible.
- Isnt It Sad - Rider? Berserker? Assassin?
- It Got Worse - Heaven's Feel, over and over again. All the more effective due to it being accomplished without a single Diabolus Ex Machina.
- Its A Wonderful Failure - Oh, so very much. Lots of High Octane Nightmare Fuel in there - and the occasional ending that actually isn't Nightmare Fuel is almost startling and a welcome respite..
- Made worse by the fact that you have to eventually see all those bad endings in order to unlock everything. Anyone who can watch all of them in one sitting without temporarily becoming a twisted emotional wreck might not have a soul.
- Jackass Genie - The Holy Grail, due to Angra Maiyuu's influence, will twist any wish made to it in a way that will kill or hurt as many humans as possible.
- Kung Fu Magic - Studying magic without the Martial Arts to deliver it in the Nasuverse is basically a glorfied death-wish.
- Limited Wardrobe - Almost everyone has, at most, two sets of clothes (typically school, armor, armor/casual, or school uniform/casual, or in Ilya's case, cold-weather/normal). Other, non-standard outfits are Dark Sakura, Ilya's Dress of Heaven, Rin's bedclothes, and the occasional birthday suit.
- Loads And Loads Of Characters
- Love It Or Hate It - HEAVEN'S FEEL!
- Luminescent Blush
- Magi Babble - So much....
- Magic Missile - The Gandr spell actually sounds like a gun, and even leaves bullet holes behind.
- Magic Wand - (All routes) The Azoth sword, (all routes) Rin's jewels, (UBW) Caster's staff, (HF) Zelretch, and (HA) Kaleidostick.
- Memetic Mutation - The aforementioned "People die if they are killed" became a popular meme due to this YTMND.
- Mental World - Unlimited Blade Works
- Mind Control Eyes - (UBW) Issei and (HA) Rin-chan
- Mind Rape - (HF) Archer's arm grafted unto Shirou does this to him.
- Mistaken For Gay - Subverted. In the Versus Valentine story in Type-Moon Ace Vol. 2, Issei tries to give Shirou Valentine's Day chocolates. After telling Issei he's straight and hearing "it'll bother me if you don't accept these!" in reply, Shirou freaks out and runs away. Later it turns out that Issei was just delivering the 'chocolates' on behalf of Ilya... and then Issei gives him actual Valentine's Day chocolates and tells him that they're from him. Cue freaking out and running away again.
- Moment Killer - At one point in HF, it looks like there's going to be a H-scene with Sakura...and then Saber walks in.
- Mons
- Moe Moe - Sakura. Oh my god. If Heaven's Feel does not break your heart in to a thousand tiny, tiny pieces that are also somehow on fire... no. Just, no.
- Mood Whiplash - Very, very many of the bad endings are intensely sad, intensely disturbing, or both. They are then followed by a trip to the Tiger Dojo, which is a completely goofy little comedy segment where Ilya (in a gym uniform, for no discernable reason other than fanservice) and Taiga give you hints as to what you did wrong, occasionally mock you, and run their own little Boke And Tsukkomi Routine.
- Moral Event Horizon - (HF) Sakura's killing hundreds of people and devouring their bodies and souls isn't... unless she rapes Rin in a Bad End. Shinji starts out as a Jerkass, but crosses the line fairly early by trying to kill off the entire school to power up his servant. Shirou's Bad End where he pragmatically allows Sakura to die to save many people, considering everyone's reactions, might be an in-universe example.
- If you can feel anything but utter loathing for Gilgamesh after what he does to Ilya and Berserker in UBW, then you're a better person than me. It takes a special sort of bastard to blind, maim, and rip the heart out of a terrified child after murdering her only friend in front of her eyes. The fact that he was clearly enjoying himself and even going out of his way to make her suffer more really doesn't help.
- If it's any consolation, I'm pretty sure she was dead before he ripped out her heart.
- It's not!
- Mundane Utility - Rin's first order of business to Archer: "Clean up this mess."
- The next morning, the first thing Archer does is make tea. Damn good tea according to Rin, but still...
- My Name Is Inigo Montoya - (UBW) "It's not a mistake!" (Shirou's defense of his ideals, to Archer)
- "So she can eventually smile in front of other people...you're getting in the way of that. Get lost. Sakura can't smile if you exist...!" (Shirou's thoughts about Angra Mainyu, while fighting Kotomine)
- Nasuverse is more fair with this trope. In both cases, Shirou was still going to lose the fight. It was just that in the first case Shirou's determination convinces Archer to forfeit a fight he was clearly winning and in the second case Kotomine just collapses right before he manages to deal the finishing blow thanks to his limited lifespan.
- No One Could Survive That - (HF) Gilgamesh to Dark Sakura upon skewering her to apparent death.
- No Ontological Inertia - Well, there is some, but servants soon cease to exist if they stop getting mana from their Masters.
- Non Standard Gameover - (HF) The simple end where Shirou fights Saber solo and dies defeating her.
- Also of note is the "Mind of Steel" game over where you basically... win. Just in a non-nice way.
- Not Himself - (HA) Many of the characters are nothing like they were in Fate/stay night, which is actually an early clue that something's wrong with this reality besides the whole Groundhog Day Loop thing.
- Not Quite Dead - A ridiculous amount of times:
- Fate Route:
- Berserker, who gets massacred by Rin, but then it turns out he has 12 lives.
- Subverted: Caster sets it up for this, but Gilgamesh sees through it and takes her out (again).
- Unlimited Blade Works Route:
- Archer first gets cut off from any mana supply, then is stabbed through by Shirou, then takes multiple attacks from Gilgamesh, and finally reappears long after he should have disappeared to quickly save Rin from the Grail and kill Gilgamesh (saving Shirou), and still have a good-bye talk with Rin. Sheesh.
- Lancer gets back up after stabbing himself due to a command seal order, stabs Kirei, still scares the hell outta (and lightly stabs, for safe measure) Shinji, and rescues Rin. He's Killed Off For Real after that.
- Also notable with Assassin, who should be long gone from not having a master or a mana supply, but turns out to have both...just enough to stick around and fight Saber a second time before his actual death.
- Berserker gets smacked around by Gilgamesh's Gate of Babylon and chained with Enkidu, and then his master dies. Berserker forces himself to stay alive through sheer willpower, shatters the chains, and attacks one last time before dying.
- Caster thinks she's killed Kotomine, but Rin knows better - as she noted, Caster really should have checked the body (or noticed the later lack of one).
- Heaven's Feel Route:
- Saber and Berserker, after they are "killed" by The Shadow.
- Rider, who would have normally disappeared when Shinji lost, except that it turns out her true master was Sakura.
- Rin, who survives Sakura's attack because her Magic Crest will forcibly keep her alive as long as there is mana to power it.
- Zouken does this a few times too, thanks to him being made of the special "worms" he created, and then the core of said body being somewhere inside Sakura's heart.
- Oh Crap - HF: Rider's Crowning Moment Of Awesome against True Assassin, who, upon discovering Rider's chain-spike embedded in his shoulder, only had one thing to say ("W-Whaaaaaat?!"). Cue epic wall-slamming...
- Older Than They Look - Technically all the Heroic Spirits are at least hundreds, if not thousands of years old, chronologically, but special mention goes to Saber, who is said to look a couple of years younger than Shirou, but is actually around ten years his senior due to the age-stopping effect of Avalon when possessed by its rightful owner, and Gilgamesh in Hollow Ataraxia.
- And let's not forget Illya and Zouken. The former is only around eight to ten years older than her looks, but the latter's decrepit grandfather features hides the fact that he should have been dust over a century ago.
- Omnicidal Maniac - Angra Mainyu as spawned by the Holy Grail
- One Hundred Percent Completion - In FSN, you have to complete all three routes for the new splash screen. You also have to accomplish every Tiger Dojo for other bonuses. In FHA, there is a literal One Hundred Percent Completion counter.
- Paint It Black - Anyone who made a Face Heel Turn through The Corruption.
- Parental Abandonment - That'd be Ilya.
- Pet The Dog - Illya (homocidal sociopath) and her Servant Berserker (Nigh Invulnerable embodiment of madness and destruction) get poignant sympathetic moments in the UBW and HF routes in the game that reveal the deep bond they share (and their Start Of Darkness), with Berserker's determined devotion pushing him to impossible acts even by his standards. Servant Caster's love for her Master, willingness to sacrifice herself to save him, and farewell speech almost make up for the fact that she freely murdered and drained the energy/souls of people throughout the city to achieve her goals. Also, Makiri Zouken's original (and long forgotten with insanity/senility/desire for life) goal of making the world a better place.
- Player Punch - Heaven's Feel has six simple words: "Save Saber"/"Bring the knife down." Guess which one is the right choice.
- This troper would argue that Heaven's Feel is basically one long barrage of Player Punches.
- The Good Times Montage and the music that accompanies that particular scene makes it hurt even more. Way to twist the knife there, Nasu.
- Power Degeneration - Shirou when he uses magic above his level, especially with Archer's arm.
- Power Glows - Justified: Mana distorts reality, so strong enough amounts of mana become visible to the naked eye.
- Power Levels - Gilgamesh's profile in the game lists the max base damage of his main attack as "4000", whatever that means. Of course, considering that he's also listed as Chaotic Good...
- Precision F Strike - HF: Shirou's response to the idea of letting Angra Manryu be born and wrecking Sakura's life even more (in addition to pretty much destroying all of humanity)? "Fuck that."
- Precision Guided Boomerang - Kanshou and Bakuya, Archer's twin swords. As long as Archer holds one, the other will always return to his hands. This is their special abilities as Noble Phantasms, along with the anti-demonic charms which improve magic resistance.
- Public Domain Character - Every Servant except one Archer is a Hero from myths and legends, So Yeah.
- Public Domain Artifact - And of course their Noble Phantasms are in the same situation, with the exception of a few that were made out of whole cloth.
- Random Power Ranking
- Rank Inflation - The stat system.
- The Real Remington Steele - in the sequel game
- Right Makes Might - Shirou vs Archer and both Shirou vs Kotomine fights
- Right Through His Pants - Lampshaded in the UBW H-scene, when Rin tells Shirou that he's a failure as a man if he keeps his clothes on while doing it. Of course, the whole scene is being played for laughs, so...
- Road Cone - With three different story paths, it's only natural that adaptations of the series would leave out some things. Both anime and manga are based on "Fate", though the movie is based on "Unlimited Blade Works".
- Root Of All Evil - Supposedly, Angra Mainyu.
- School Uniforms Are The New Black - Rin skipped school to show Archer around the city. Despite being the heir to a rather wealthy family, she still choose to wear her school uniform for this outing.
- Sealed Evil In A Can
- Servants Need Popularity Badly - The more popular you are during the time period you're summoned, the more powerful you are. The inverse is also true. Saber, for example, as everybody knows King Arthur. If a heroic spirit was powerful enough during his lifetime, then he can get around this problem. For example, Gilgamesh. Berserker, being Hercules, is both.
- Shout Out - If you listen closely to the background music whenever Shirou's TV is telling the local news, you can hear some music from Tsukihime, another Type-Moon Visual Novel.
- There are a few of these in the anime with regard to the Visual Novel. In an early episode, Shirou introduces Tohsaka Rin with some narration; one of the accompanying images of her is an animated version of the final CG from UBW's True End.
- Sliding Scale Of Idealism Versus Cynicism - Depends on route. Fate is very idealistic, Unlimited Blade Works lies in the middle, and Heaven's feel is rather cynical.
- Staking The Loved One - Saber in Heavens Feel.
- Statistically Speaking - Averted: The stats of the Servants seem to have little, if any, bearing on their actual abilities. Archer is able to hold off Lancer despite being statistically inferior to him in practically every way, and True Assassin and Gilgamesh get defeated by humans they should, by all accounts, outperform several times over given how their stats match those of respectively Lancer and Saber.
- Indeed, the only stats that ever seem to come into play are Saber's B-rank Luck and Magical Energy, which allow her to withstand Lancer's Gae Bolg attack and Rider's Eyes of Petrification, respectively.
- Which is not to say that the other statistics are completely meaningless. Lancer is much faster and quite a bit stronger than Archer; Archer only holds Lancer off because he has obscene amounts of battle experiences. Stat differences also come into play in the Heaven's Feel route, since Dark Saber is slower and has a weaker sixth sense than normal Saber, allowing Shirou to actually outmanoeuvre and defeat her in one ending, despite his only advantage being limited usage of Archer's full speed and projection. The fully-empowered Archer is completely unable to break through normal Saber's defence in direct close-quarters combat in UBW, so the statistic change was quite important here. It gets weird though, when Archer beats down True Assassin easily with what appears to be his bare hands, since despite the fact that Assassin class is supposed to be weaker than the other classes, this War's Archer is actually ranked below True Assassin in both speed and strength. The only answer possible here is Archer is just... really good at what he does.
- Stay In The Kitchen - An important point in the Fate route and the anime is Shirou oh-so-slowly accepting the fact that Saber is in fact far more powerful than him and he needs her protection, not the other way around. Shirou has some amusing and impressively sexist lines in the game—at one point approvingly commenting that perhaps an escape from being assaulted late at night will teach a strong female classmate some femininity.
- Rin is somehow quite exempt from Shirou's Stay In The Kitchen attitude.
- He's either not really as sexist as his reputation indicates (maybe he just has something against tomboys), or he's just scared of Rin. Really, it's hard to question Rin's femininity (unless you're Issei, of course).
- Ironically enough, when Shirou makes the infamous remark in Fate, he realizes what he's said and tries to take it back right away as all the females around him begin to emanate hatred. When Mitsuzuri is implied to have been sexually assaulted by Shinji in UBW, he can only think about how horrible it is that something like that happened to a strong girl like her.
- In Fate, he may have just been projecting his problems with Saber. It's hard to tell if Shirou didn't want Saber to fight because she was a girl, or if that was just a shallow excuse so he wouldn't admit that he didn't want a loved one to be in mortal danger.
- Oh, and the one character who confirmably has traditionalist views on gender roles is Issei.
- Strong As They Need To Be - Nasu is KING of this trope.
- Of course, this being a Visual Novel, player error makes it possible to subvert this trope.
- Arguable: At least some of the time he adjusts power levels of servants by switching what master is giving them power, or having a servant acting without a master which makes them much weaker. Most of the major cases of someone matching a theoretically stronger opponent is thanks to these kind of plot changes
- Stupidity Is The Only Option - The Tiger Dojo sometimes Lampshades this: "Go back to the previous choice and try choosing the reckless, immature choice!"
- Arguably subverted in Heaven's Feel where you're forced to choose between going against principles Shirou holds in the previous two routes by saving Sakura, or coming to a premature Bad End as a result of letting her die. Whether it was the smartest choice or not differs depending on the reader...
- Sword Sparks
- Synchronization - Servants and Masters who are in tune with one another have this to a certain extent. Also Shirou and Archer in Unlimited Blade Works route.
- Tear Jerker - So many it's
almost cruel; Nasu just got malicious towards the reader with some of them. And don't even start on some of the endings...
- Temporal Paradox - The actual goal of two Servants in the game.
- The Electric Slide- Saber does this one during her first fight with Berserker.
- The End Of The World As We Know It - Quite likely the result if the villain wins in UBW or HF.
- Their First Time - Shirou x Saber x Rin in Fate route. Shirou x Rin in UBW route.
- The Many Deaths Of You - The game gets very.. graphic, discussing in first person perspective, how you die or fail.
- Theme Music Power Up - "Light and Darkness" plays during the last battle of Heaven's Feel, between Shirou and Kotomine. Or rather, half of the song plays at first, giving a tense techno beat while Shirou's getting his ass kicked. It's only when he reflects on Sakura and pulls off a frenzied counterattack that the second half of the song plays.
- In the Fighting Game spinoff Fate/Unlimited Codes, Archer finishing the Unlimited Blade Works chant switches the stage's BGM to a remixed version of "Emiya."
- There Can Be Only One - The very concept of the Grail War.
- At least, that is what they want you to think.
- Talking Is A Free Action - In two forms:
- Talking Is A Free Action - Mostly averted, but spell-casting is pretty much done at the speed of plot. Seriously, sometimes they even cast complex spells (even a binding contract ritual) in less time than it takes for an already incoming blow to land.
- Thinking Is A Free Action - Apparently in the Nasuverse, people can have long-winded epiphanies several hundreds of words long in the span of two or three seconds, regularly and in the middle of combat, no less.
- Or the actual epiphanies are at the speed of thought, and all the several hundreds of words are just for the benefit of those reading...
- Yes, yes. That's meant to be the implication, but these are not the kinds of epiphanies you can have in a split second. These follow long chains of reminiscence, doubt, discovery, determination, and logic. That is not something gained by a flash of insight but something attained after lengthy contemplation and that kind of contemplation cannot be accomplished in the span of seconds in the heat of battle.
- That's assuming all of the contemplation has taken place just during any given battle. Trains of thought and logic can start long before that in the back of the brain and finish with seconds-long flashes of insight or discovery.
- This Is Your Brain On Evil
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works - Justified with Kanshou and Bakuya due to the intrinsic magnetic property they possess that will always pull them back together. If you throw them to the sides of your opponent, they'll sweep in and cut them apart. Knock them away with a second pair of them and they'll continue doing this.
- Time Travel - The Holy Grail summons the souls of dead heroic spirits across time. Justified in that the location of their dead souls is separated from time, but the effect is still summoning spirits into a time different from when they last lived.
- Took A Level In Badass - Shirou in every scenario.
- Tragic Dream
- Transformation Sequence - (HA) Rin's Magical Girl transformation
- Troperiffic - just look
- Turn The Other Cheek
- Two Teacher School
- Ultimate Showdown Of Ultimate Destiny - With various mythology the world over.
- Underwater Kiss - One of the Sakura events in HA.
- Unreliable Narrator - The Narrator is given to making observations which are later proven false.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee - (UBW) Rin's plan for defeating Caster.
- Unwanted Harem
- Violation Of Common Sense - The choices you have to make sometimes.
- Waif Fu - Saber
- Wall Of Text - a visual novel is text-based by nature, but at times the presentation bogs down with dense blocks accompanied by unvoiced, single static images.
- Wave Motion Sword - Three of them, in fact. (Excalibur, Ea, and Zeltretch.)
- Weirdness Censor - Not even an rumor about the (rather obvious) war going on, even for things that couldn't be covered up or downplayed easily (sonic booms from attacks, shining golden light shooting into the sky at a flying horse, etc).
- Played for laughs on a smaller scale, when Rin gets so angry at Shirou that she shatters her "perfect student/school idol" image in front of everyone to shout at him. Everybody stares... then go back to what they were doing, subconsciously repressing those memories to maintain their "perfect" image of her. This happens on two separate occasions.
- What Do You Mean Its Not Awesome - the scene in the Chinese resteraunt in Heaven's Feel. Only, it is played completely straight.
- And yet it works; in a route filled with genuine High Octane Nightmare Fuel, Kotomine ordering a second mapo tofu comes across as menacing.
- Xanatos Gambit - Archer does this large-scale in the Unlimited Blade Works route (see Fake Defector). Rin does two small-scale versions: in the Fate route she deliberately attacks Berserker, fails, gets caught, and just when Berserker is about to crush her to death she reveals that that was just the setup to her true attack, and in the Unlimited Blade Works route she challenges Caster to a duel between magi, gets her ass handed to her, then suddenly bumrushes Caster and beats the crap out of her using martial arts in a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- Xanatos Speed Chess - Kotomine in Heavens Feel. See the page for details. It's even believable (apart from the still living after having his heart destroyed three days beforehand thing, but honestly, Shirou has survived worse).
- To be exact, his heart was beating due to Angra's energy. Sakura crushes the connection. Hence Kotomine running out of time, since his heart relied on Angra's mud to keep on beating.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair
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