Video Game / F-Zero

Welcome to the world of 2,000 Kmph.

"You got boost power!"

For the first game in the series, go here.

F-Zero is a racing game franchise created by Nintendo that began on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990.

The story goes that, in the 26th century, Formula One races have long since given way to F-Zero races: incredibly dangerous, high-speed affairs sponsored by wealthy ex-space merchants who have came to the accurate conclusion that seeing people risk their lives going thousands of kilometers per hour on the most insane race tracks known to man or alien would be a fantastic way to get the masses to gamble. As for the racers themselves? Well, provided they can survive and take first place, they can expect a huge cash payout and gain universal prestige. In this way, the F-Zero Grand Prix attracts a diverse crowd of eccentric individuals from across the galaxy — including cyborgs, evil clones, monkeys, dinosaurs, and the undead — all willing to put their well-being on the line for reasons ranging from paying for their kids' education to funding their newest world domination scheme. And out of the ever-growing cast of colorful characters, the de facto protagonist is Captain Falcon, a legendary racer and renowned bounty hunter.

Pilots race using the titular F-Zero machines, technologically advanced anti-gravity vehicles capable of barreling down courses faster than the speed of sound. One of the core gameplay elements is the the single energy bar used for both your ship's shields and boost power. The more damage you take (be it from the course or ramming into fellow racers), the less you can boost, hurting your chances for victory. But the more you boost, the more likely you are to be one stray hit from an early retirement.

List of F-Zero games

• F-Zero (SNES, 1990)^note One of the original launch titles for the system in both Japan and North America.
• BS F-Zero Grand Prix (Satellaview, 1996)^note Japan-only remake of/pseudo-sequel to the first game, featuring four additional tracks as well four vehicles different from the original racers (the Blue Thunder, Luna Bomber, Green Amazone, and Fire Scorpion). The BS in the title stands for "Broadcasting Satellite," the Satellaview's service of transmitting programs via satellite.
• BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 (Satellaview, 1997)^note A follow-up to the previous title featuring BS F-Zero's vehicle line-up. It was released in two versions: the common BSF-Zero 2 Practice included one new league with a new track called "Mute City IV" and the four race courses added to the previous Grand Prix, while the SoundLink broadcast version remains fairly undocumented outside of surviving videos showing a unique "Forest" area. Like the first, this game was only released in Japan.
• F-Zero X (Nintendo 64, 1998)
  • F-Zero X Expansion Kit (64DD, 2000)^note Exclusive to Japan, featuring twelve new tracks, a car and level editor, the ability to create custom cups, several additional pieces of music (including a hard rock arrangement of Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road theme for the course of the same name), and three new machines, all souped up versions of pre-existing ones (the Super Falcon, Super Stingray, and Super Cat respectively for the Blue Falcon, Fire Stingray, and White Cat).
• F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (F-Zero for Game Boy Advance in Japan; Game Boy Advance, 2001)
• F-Zero GX (Nintendo GameCube, 2003)
  • F-Zero AX (Arcade, 2003)
• F-Zero: GP Legend (F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu in Japan; Game Boy Advance, 2003)^note Based on the anime of the same name.
• F-Zero Climax (Game Boy Advance, 2004)^note Another entry that did not make it to North American shores, also based on the anime. Featured a level editor similar to the one in the F-Zero X: Expansion Kit.
• F-Zero 99 (Nintendo Switch, 2023) ^note  A battle royale racing game where 99 players compete against each other online at the same time, similar to Tetris 99 and alike titles. Based on the original SNES game.

Related media

• Super Smash Bros.: Captain Falcon has appeared as a fighter in all games in the series. While the captain was the sole representation of the series in 64, the series would be more broadly represented starting with Melee. Mute City, Big Blue, and Port Town Aero Dive appear as stages.
• Animal Crossing: Starting in Wild World, the Blue Falcon appears as a piece of furniture that can be obtained.
• Mario Kart
  • Mario Kart Wii: The Blue Falcon appears as an unlockable lightweight kart. (Wii, 2008)
  • Mario Kart 8: Mute City and Big Blue appear as courses, and the Blue Falcon returns as a kart part. Captain Falcon makes a cameo apperance in Mute City, and a Mii Racing Costume based on him can be unlocked by scanning his amiibo. (Wii U, 2014 / Nintendo Switch, 2017)
• Wii Music: The Mute City theme appears as one of the songs that can be played in this game. (Wii, 2008)
• Nintendo Land: One of the attractions in this game is Captain Falcon's Twister Race, where the player must drive a model of the Blue Falcon through a track. Racing is done by twisting the Wii U GamePad like a steering wheel. (Wii U, 2012)
• StreetPass Mii Plaza: Captain Falcon’s helmet is one of the many hats your Mii can wear. (Nintendo 3DS, 2011)
• Super Mario Maker: Scanning a Captain Falcon amiibo will unlock a Mystery Mushroom costume based on him. (Wii U, 2015)
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Mario has a poster of the Blue Falcon in his room.

An anime series, F-Zero: GP Legend, aired in 2003, but the English dub (produced by 4Kids Entertainment) was cancelled after 15 of the 51 episodes were aired.

While the series itself laid dormant for almost 19 years following the release of Climax, Captain Falcon and other elements of the F-Zero franchise would continue to be represented in other Nintendo titles. The most notable of these being the Super Smash Bros. series, where Captain Falcon has been present as a playable fighter since the first installment, and the Mario Kart games, where Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 feature the Blue Falcon as a selectable vehicle, with the later game also featuring tracks based on Mute City and Big Blue. The release of F-Zero 99, which was a little over twenty years after GX, has proven that Nintendo is willing to revisit the series, but the future of it still remains uncertain.

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YOU GOT BOOST POWER! F-Zero contains examples of the following:

• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • Flirted with thanks to Silver Neelson, who is considering retirement (he is close to 100, after all), but is probably too fickle to go through with it.
  • Possibly Captain Falcon in X, who states that he's now retired if you beat the Grand Prix on Master, yet is back into racing by the sequel.
• A.I. Breaker: The X Cup in X sometimes generates courses with weird twists and bumps that can be handled by a cautious human player but will spell doom for AI opponents, sometimes sending all 29 of them to their deaths.
• Absurdly Short Level: Mute City Sonic Oval in AX is very short compared to other tracks, with each lap can be possibly done in sub-20 seconds. It's even worse in GX that you can finish the race ^note Assuming 3 laps, as most tracks in GX are played in 3 laps by default in just less than a minute!
• Action Girl: Jody and Lily, seeing as they're combat-machine pilot affiliated with the para-militaristic Galactic Space Federation. In particular, Jody has had an eventful and active childhood, while Lily has been training since shortly after her birth and has even seen combat in a few skirmishes. There are hints that Mrs. Arrow is also one of these, particularly of the Action Wife variety.
• Affably Evil: Black Shadow in brief flashes. He says the below line as politely and calmly as could be.
  Black Shadow: Falcon, you've come to die? I needn't have wasted time looking for you then.
• Age Lift: Dr. Stewart becomes 10 years older from the original to X. This is nowhere as bad as Pico though, who's nearly 4 times older than he was in the first game.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: Jody Summer may or may not have a crush on Captain Falcon. Possibly either played straight or subverted with the Arrows.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: They ride around in futuristic machines that float above the ground, but otherwise the Bloody Chain fit this trope.
• All Love Is Unrequited: John Tanaka harbors a crush on Jody Summer, who (if John's bonus movie in GX is anything to go by) is in love with Captain Falcon.
• All There in the Manual: Pretty much the franchise's only source of story or character info before GX.
• Alternate Timeline: Maximum Velocity is one. It really takes place a quarter of a century after the original F-Zero in 2585, with none of the original cast making an appearance. Kent Akechi believes himself to be the son of Captain Falcon and Blitz Wagner is Dr. Stewart's protégé. The game doesn't acknowledge the Big Accident from the main canon and uses the same rule set as the original F-Zero.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Somewhat inevitable seeing as aliens are involved, but several characters have alternate colors that give them even weirder skin tones.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Phantom Road in GX. Rainbow Road from X also qualifies, though it was much less technicolor than the original Mario Kart 64 version.
• Amazonian Beauty:
  • Mrs. Arrow, though only in the games and not the anime (and its derivative continuity).
  • Jody and Kate Alen are also pretty muscular in X, but both get their physique scaled down by GX.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Super Arrow is stated to have actual superpowers, but it's never explained why.
  • Black Shadow just looks like a man in a black devil costume, but also exhibits supernatural abilities and is known to have ties with figures from the netherworld.
• Ambiguously Gay: Baba. He wears an outfit with leopard prints and wails like a girl if he falls off the track in X. GX's voice acting gave Baba an effeminate voice and several... questionable comments. And then there's his bonus movie in GX... The less you know, the better.
• Amusing Alien: Octoman, Gomar & Shioh, Draq, Dai-San-Gen and PJ are all pretty comedic.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Captain Falcon... we don't need to spell this one out for you. Super Arrow's seems to be avians, while Beastman's is a dinosaur.
  • Subverted with Octoman. Instead of an octopus, he compares himself with an elephant.
  • Most characters have racing machines named after animals, which could count for this trope (Dr. Stewart = Fox, Goroh = Stingray, Jody = Cat, and so on...). This is not perfect though, as some animalistic characters like Leon (cat), Billy (monkey) and the aforementioned Octoman (octo... you get the idea) have machines named after completely different animals.
• Animal Theme Naming: Most of the racing machines are named after various animals. The rest that aren't either employ a Stellar Name or some other cool concept.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Captain Falcon, Beastman, and Phoenix fit types two (Animal Alias), one (Animal Abilities), and three (Mythical Monster Motif) respectively.
• Anime Hair: The front-runners would be James McCloud and Jack Levin in GX, the former's hair being redesigned to make his parallels with that of Fox's father more obvious. James even has white streaks going through them. Antonio Guster reveals in his interviews that he hides a mohawk under his helmet, and it's blue. Kate Alen has a pretty funky afro, but no one ever seems to talk about it.
• Announcer Chatter: From X onward, but especially in X. "YOU GOT BOOST POWER!" "WATCH YOUR BACK!" "TOO BAD. YOU LOST YOUR MACHINE." "OFF COURSE! RETIRED."
  • "YEAH! THE FINAL LAP!" "POUR IT ON! YOU'RE WAY OUT IN FRONT!"
• Arch-Enemy: Captain Falcon and Black Shadow, the Arrows and Zoda, Beastman and Bio Rex.
• Arrange Mode: X has the X-Cup, a cup consisting entirely of Randomly Generated Levels.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • According to Bio Rex: "Everyone you meet is food. Eat all the food put in front of you. And brush your teeth properly."
  • Mr. EAD's A.I. testing apparently included combat situations, spying and college exams.
• Artificial Gravity: Many of the tracks are hovering in the skies above the planet's they are on. In later games some tracks actually overlap with themselves with the two tracks being face-to-face.
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • Draq was mostly a rather over-enthusiastic F-Zero fan, until one day his shipping company received two racers with no destination or return address; when this happened, Draq immediately jumped in one of the racers, entered the league, and now he's running to use the prize money to buy his own racer and start an F-Zero museum. His buddy Roger Buster, while also an F-Zero fan, is more the casual fan type (i.e. not an F-Zero nerd like Draq). In fact, the only reason Roger Buster is racing is in the hopes that the intended recipient of the unmarked machines will recognize them and allow him to finish the delivery.
  • Mrs. Arrow, who started as a circuit model and then became a racer herself.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: When Mr. Zero asks Beastman to describe his racing style, these are his exact words.
• Author Avatar: The Creators are symbolic stand-ins for the creators of the game, and not just in a metaphorical sense either: you have to race their staff ghost in what is essentially a glorified Time Trial.
• Awesome, but Impractical: In GX, using the custom machine maker to make a machine with A-rank in body (making it extremely durable), boost (huge punch of speed from the boost), and grip (no loss of speed when cornering) may seem like the logically best idea given that those three stats along with machine weight are the only practical information shown in machine select...until you try the machine out for yourself, and discover that your "A-A-A" machine handles and accelerates like a giant boulder. The customization interface in fact has a four-point radar graph detailing additional details about your machine's performance, and the parts that optimize aspects of this radar are not necessarily ones that have the best body/boost/grip rating.
• A Wizard Did It: The Skull's backstory states that he was revived by black magic. Moreover, his race car has no turning system; he turns it by using his magic.
  • Regarding GX specifically, it may be notable that said vehicle (the Sonic Phantom) has only one engine, but when it's running it has two exhaust plumes. Also, The Skull himself moves like a marionette, as if something else is animating his corpse. Came Back Wrong, anyone?
• Ax-Crazy: Zoda. He's piloting a ballistic missile while being constantly pumped full of adrenaline and dopamine. Even in gameplay terms he has one of the fastest machines with some of the worst cornering and body rating, which is kinda nuts by itself.
• A Winner Is You: Beating any league on Master Class in the first game nets you a overhead view of your racer driving through Silence, White land 2, or Fire Field depending on the league with a text scroll, which gives you a commendation as a masterful F-Zero racer and then bids you goodbye.
• Back from the Dead: The Skull (and Deathborn, apparently), according to their profiles.
• Back That Light Up: Maximum Velocity, as one of the earliest GBA games, uses an extremely high contrast between the road and the scenery. No matter how badly you are lighted, you can always see the road.
• Badass Boast: Many characters get this in their post-race interviews. Deathborn gets a sinister (and extremely long) one in the penultimate chapter of Story Mode. Falcon then one-ups everyone when he tells off the creators of his universe.
  Deathborn: Falcon, shall I tell you something before you die? Dark and Light — the two great forces which make up our universe. These two forces are condensed in each of our belts. Didn't you know? At the moment when these forces become one — it is possible to seize that power. Then, I can turn this whole galaxy into a pile of ashes in an INSTANT! How I've waited for this moment! The world will fall into total darkness.
  Captain Falcon: Not if I can help it. I'll destroy you yet!
  • Captain Falcon finds the suggestion that even the lords of all creation can best him on the track absolutely ridiculous. And to back his bravado, he wins.
  Captain Falcon: Come off it... You think YOU can beat ME? NO WAY!
• Badass Cape: Super Arrow, Phoenix, Black Shadow, and Deathborn.
• Badass Driver: Virtually everyone.
• Badass Normal:
  • Dr. Stewart is the only non-combatant racer of the original game.
  • Kate Alen and Jack Levin are literally just pop stars among a roster of aliens, warriors, scientists and supervillains. Roger Buster is also nothing more than a truck delivery man.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick: This trope is done in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity with the initial four vehicles. The Hot Violet is meant to be the balanced vehicle, but each of its few advantages it has are almost completely outweighed by some significant disadvantage (e.g. its high boost speed is almost always nullified by this vehicle's rotten acceleration for a boost mode except when the boost mode is activated when it has leftover speed from running over a dash plate). This makes this vehicle probably the worst overall vehicle in the game even though other vehicles may be worse than this one in certain situations. The Fire Ball has high top speed, good armor, good traction, a decent boost, and mediocre acceleration, making it the power vehicle of the initial four. The Wind Walker (a.k.a. Crazy Horse) has good acceleration and the best turning speed that can make short work of corners when properly exploited, but this vehicle is the most fragile vehicle in the game and has the worst traction that makes dodging sudden obstacles a real problem. These facts makes this vehicle the one that requires the most skill to drive in the game. The J. B. Crystal is notable for its maximum traction that makes cornering and dodging easy and for its long boost time at decent speeds, but pays for these with a low normal top speed, making it a gimmick vehicle that makes it the best beginner's vehicle of this game. This gimmick must be exploited to shorten the required travel distance in order to place competitively in the higher difficulty modes.
• Battle Couple: The Arrows. Mrs. Arrow's comments in GX imply that the two routinely fight crime on and off the track.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Port Town in the original. While the track itself is not particularly scary, the music begins with a spooky, quiet tone to it which matches the stage's perpetual twilight. Not helping matters are structures in the horizon that resemble gaping mouths.
• Big "NO!": Most of the racers have this mixed in with a Death Cry Echo in X. Deathborn pulls one during his Villainous Breakdown after Captain Falcon wins against him. He then drives off of the course and blows up in a sea of lava.
  Deathborn: AAAAAAaaaaaaargh! No, it can't be! How can I lose!? Nooooooooooooo!
• The Big Race: Most of GX's Story Mode chapters involves racing by nature, but the Grand Prix is the standout example, acting like the game's equivalent of a Climax Boss.
• Bland-Name Product: Captain Falcon's GX Master Class video features a speeding locomotive belonging to Amtrain.
• Blood Knight: The lyrics to Captain Falcon's theme song in F-Zero GX seems to be from the point of view of one who idolizes Captain Falcon.
  • The Skull is an in-game example, as he defied death itself to race in F-Zero.
  • It's hinted that Black Shadow and Blood Falcon love to destroy other machines at a whim. Pico is no better. Several times, has he been called one of the more violent and bloodthirsty racers. He's also widely believed to be responsible for the big accident several years ago that caused the races to amp up its safety measure solely for his aggressive nature on the track, regardless of whether or not he was guilty.
• Blood Sport: A relatively tame example. There are crashes, but no one actually dies during races. Not on screen anyway.
• Boring, but Practical: In GX, The Astro Robin. It has the best acceleration and is unusually sturdy, making it very easy to drive.
• Bounty Hunter: Captain Falcon and Samurai Goroh double as these outside of the races. The only time Falcon is ever seen on the job is in a short comic included with the original F-Zero. This comic, to date, is the only time that Falcon uses his gun. Ever.
• Bowdlerise: Several, but the more prominent ones are changing the name of Blood Falcon's Hell Hawk to the Blood Hawk and renaming Miss Killer as Luna Ryder. The latter actually works to a degree, considering that Miss Killer drives the Moon Shadow, but it's also a case of Never Say "Die".
  • Several F-Zero TV interviews were modified or outright censored in western releases of GX for various reasons, such as Digi-Boy espousing atheist beliefs, Black Shadow's threatening to send Captain Falcon to hell, Baba mentioning dressing in drag, and Pico making a reference to Superman
• Boy Band: Jack Levin was once a part of one before joining the F-Zero races.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The normally monotone and calm Mr. Zero is scared witless if he has to interview certain creepy, menacing, or downright evil characters.
  • Still, some fans see Mr. Zero as a badass simply for having the guts to interview said characters. Black Shadow himself is also impressed, and even offers Mr. Zero the chance to work for him. Whether or not this counts as Badass Unintentional or Mistaken for Badass is up to you.
• Broad Strokes: The Legend of Falcon sub-series is an exceptional case that's very different from the rest of the franchise. It's especially confusing because the anime and games in this series both compliment each other and seem to contradict each other at the same time. Maximum Velocity is the only entry that doesn't contradict another game in the series, as it takes place in the immediate future of at least one of the three core games (original, X or GX/AX), but is rarely acknowledged.
• But Not Too Foreign: Samurai Goroh is Japanese-American. Presumably, his son is also mixed.
• Butt-Monkey: Samurai Goroh seems to be one in GX. He's caught in the explosion of his Fire Stingray, is booed by the crowd at the GP, and few racers appear to like him outside of his son and Princia, who has oddly taken a fancy to him.
• The Cameo: A giant-sized R.O.B. appears on the Port Town courses, most notably Port Town: Aero Drive.
• Camp: GX embraces the series' ridiculous characters, making them hammy, flashy and bouncy. The game's Story Mode in particular is filled with Narm, even more than your typical superhero story.
• Car Fu: First introduced in F-Zero X, the Spin Attack is an offensive technique that is used to damage and destroy other racers. Very useful for thinning out the pack when things get crowded and pushing opponents out of the way or off your tail.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Whoever is labeled a "villain" in the games will carry not a card, but a poster. Just check out the interviews Deathborn and Black Shadow give to Mr. Zero in GX.
• Casino Park: Casino Palace (called "Vegas Palace" in Japan). Betting races are popular there too.
• Cast from Hit Points: The boost feature from X onward.
• Chess Motifs:
  • The cups in the original F-Zero are named Knight, Queen, and King - all coincidentally sharing a name with a chess piece. Oddly enough, in the Japan-exclusive BS F-Zero Grand Prix, the newly-added 4th cup does not share this motif, but instead takes from Playing Card Motifs as it's named the Ace league.
  • It's also present in Maximum Velocity, as the name of the cups in this game are in order: Pawn, Knight, Bishop, and Queen (strangely enough, King is left out).
• Clothing Damage: A male example comes from Captain Falcon's GX ending movie. After saving Mrs. Arrow's baby from a speeding locomotive, his pants rip, revealing his Goofy Print Underwear. This leaves Falcon in an awkward and compromising position as Mrs. Arrow chuckles at his misfortune.
• Collision Damage: And it shows on your vehicle. Sorta.
• Color Animal Codename: The vehicles are mostly named after animals or animal appendages, and many of them also combine it with a color. This includes the Blue Falcon (piloted by none other than Captain Falcon himself), the Golden Fox, the Red Gazelle, the White Cat, the Green Panther, and the Black Bull (piloted by Black Shadow himself). GX also includes the Silver Rat, the Pink Spider and the Rainbow Phoenix.
• Color-Coded Stones: In F-Zero GX, the four racing cups are Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald and Diamond. Red, Blue, Green and a pale Yellow respectively.
• Competitive Balance: There are four cars to play as in the original F-Zero. The Golden Fox has the best acceleration and turning speed but is fragile, has the worst top speed, and has the worst traction, making it a gimmicky vehicle to drive that requires a very skillful pilot to exploit its high turning speed. The Blue Falcon has high acceleration and turning speed; but has bad traction, a mediocre top speed, and is somewhat fragile. The Wild Goose has maximum durability, has mediocre acceleration, has a mediocre turn speed, has a high top speed, and has good traction; making this a balanced vehicle. The Fire Stingray has the maximum top speed, good durability, the worst acceleration, the worst turning speed, and maximum traction of the four, with the last attribute making it the best beginner's vehicle in this game. This vehicle is also very powerful, but requires a lot of skill and planning to exploit its maximum normal top speed by properly planning where you use your boost to bypass the Fire Stingray's poor acceleration and then maintain your normal top speed for as long as possible after your boost expired.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Hoo boy!
  • This is the case in the original F-Zero where the other racer car could not die even when falling out track and in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity on Master Difficulty, where a machine that tops at 410km/h can keep up with your machine at 450km/h. Both will have the tendency to always have someone on your tail no matter how good you do. There's also the issue of the A.I. breaking the laws of physics and momentum. On easier difficulties, opponents can get slowed down if you ram into them at a certain angle. On Expert and Master, the A.I will never slow down if you hit them and a simple tap from behind is enough to send you veering sideways, losing a lot of speed in the process.
  • GX is mostly fair in GP Mode, at least on the lower three difficulties, and even at the hardest level, it's still beatable if you know what you're doing. Story Mode, on the other hand, is an experiment in ultimate insanity. The computer opponents go faster than a mass-accelerator round, turn on a dime, have extra Hit Points (which translates to extra speed, since your speed boost is Cast from Hit Points) and never crash, unless you force them, which sometimes doesn't work. Because it's a story mode, you're required to play Captain Falcon, the Master of None whose handling characteristics may or may not be anything like those of the vehicles you're good at.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: According to this fan guide for GX, a lot of the machine stats given in-game or in the manual do not accurately reflect how the racers perform. The stats might have been correct when they were first given in X, but it appears the Grandfather Clause didn't reach the actual gameplay aspect.
• Continuity Nod: A sly one. Chapter 3 in the Story Mode of GX sees Falcon, in a goofy disguise and under the alias of "Famicom," entering a bet race at the behest of Silver. Falcon's odds in that race are 2560:1. 2560 is, canonically speaking, the year that the original F-Zero took place.
• Cool Car: Pretty much every vehicle, although some are cooler than others. They are all capable of traveling at incredible speeds and hovering slightly above the ground. In the manual to the original F-Zero, it states that the machines uses magnetic repulsion to hover above the track, not unlike modern day Maglev trains. In later games the machines instead used G-Diffusors, sophisticated anti-gravity devices.
• Cool Helmet: A good deal of characters have 'em.
• Cool Mask: Several characters have one, but the prime example would have to be Super Arrow, a bona-fide superhero.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Despite being a bit cranky in his old age, Silver Neelson is considered a great mentor. With just the aid of a few drinks, racers could get a year's worth of racing advice in a single evening.
  • Dr. Clash, who is a F-Zero machine engineer.
• Cool Shades:
  • James McCloud, Samurai Goroh, Antonio Guster, Mrs. Arrow, and Michael Chain all have them. James, Mrs. Arrow, and Michael Chain lose 'em in their X endings, and Mrs. Arrow's are missing completely in GX save for her bonus movie.
  • Jody Summer has a pair while riding in the Super Cat.
• Critical Annoyance: The ranking system in the original F-Zero: Fall below a certain position and the game's beeping will blare in your ear 'til you make it back to an acceptable spot. Or fail to do so and explode.
• Critical Existence Failure: If you so much as rub paint with another machine when you're at critically low health, your machine a splode.
• Cursed with Awesome: Machines with E-ranked grip aren't as bad as the vehicle parameter system tells you. In fact, these machines are able to exploit several Game Breakers, allowing them to take massive shortcuts and gain ridiculous bursts of speed.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Played straight with Deathborn, who is believed to have had his humanity eroded by the tinkerings of The Creators. Their dialogue implies that they were going to rip out Captain Falcon's soul if they won and transform him into Deathborn's successor.
• Cyber Punk Is Techno: In a toss-up from X's rock-heavy soundtrack, the majority of the songs found in GX are techno, electronic rock and industrial metal.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In the pseudo-3D games, including the original, holding down while airborne reduces your vertical descent speed and allows your machine to land softly, as opposed to smacking back down on the track with a considerable loss in speed. Making these longer glides and softer landings allows you to take shortcuts at corners and gain speed boosts In the 3D games F-Zero X, GX, and AX, it's the complete opposite; staying airborne and pointing your machine's nose up causes you to lose speed instead, so you are advised instead to land your machine as quickly as possible.
• Damsel in Distress: Jody becomes one in Chapter 5 of GX's Story Mode.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being undead and using black magic to steer his machine, which is itself powered by drawing the energy of living things, there's no real evidence that The Skull is evil. Mr. Zero isn't afraid of him, and his only motive appears to be a desire to race forever.
• Darker and Edgier: X utilizes an artstyle that's more reminiscent of The Dark Age of Comic Books in contrast to the more old-school style used in the original SNES entry, and its soundtrack almost entirely consists of rock and heavy metal. GX subverts this with a Campier approach, employing more color and techno.
• Deadly Walls: Some scenery objects in GX will cause your machine to explode instantaneously upon contact. Even if you're only going 10 km/h.
• Death Mountain: Red Canyon, especially the track that you race Samurai Goroh on during GX's Story Mode.
• Dem Bones: The Skull, with added technological and necromantic flair.
• Demoted to Extra: Since GX cups are relegated to five courses each, AX's Sonic Oval got this treatment, dropped from the AX Cup and can only be played in the other game modes.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: This can happen to the player if they're not careful; one wrong move while attacking the CPU-controlled racers, and you could find yourself careening off of the track.
  • In X, attacking bleeds off speed even if you don't hit anything — not to mention that the surest way to take out an opposing machine is to shoulder-check it into the boards, which can bleed off a lot of speed, especially if you miss. And if you do miss, and end up ahead of the target, said target will often slow way down in order to avoid another attack. A burning vendetta against a particular driver can easily cost you a race.
    • GX modified the side tackle significantly, removing the speed penalty and changing the control input. This resulted in it being both easier to spam and easier to toss yourself over the edge with.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In the final Story mission of GX, you must defeat The Creators of the entire universe (who seem to be evil)... in a F-Zero race, of course.
• Difficult, but Awesome: It goes both ways: in-universe, the racers must be extremely skilled to be able to place well in the circuits without crashing. In-game, players must be able to handle the extreme speeds the game wants you to race at. However, if you're good enough, the challenge and thrill will make it all worth the skill required.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Not actually necessary, because Captain Falcon clone Blood Falcon already plays entirely different from him. The scientists working for Black Shadow realized that they wouldn't be able to beat Captain Falcon using an identical machine.
  • This is actually inverted with the original four characters in regards to the increasing amount of newcomers (see Jack of All Stats below).
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Players doing full-game speedruns of Maximum Velocity will often intentionally place second or third, to avoid the victory animation. The rubber-band A.I. makes this relatively easy to do while still achieving record-level times.
• Dogged Nice Guy: John Tanaka to Jody Summer. May also cross over with Stalker with a Crush, considering that he's at F-Zero solely in order to protect her (and propose to her if he wins).
• Double Unlock: How GX works, up to and including the AX stuff if you unlock them the very hard way. Luckily, currency is easy to come by.
• Down to the Last Play: In X and onward, there can be some pretty thrilling moments in the last straightaway as everyone who is playing to win uses up every last drop of their energy to boost past the competition, knowing full well that one scratch = dead after doing that (in some games, your blown-up machine can still drift past the finish line).
• The Dragon: Blood Falcon to Black Shadow, and Black Shadow to Deathborn.
• Dramatic Wind: For some reason, most of the cape-wearing characters get it at the Settings screen in GX/AX.
• Drives Like Crazy: Go fast enough, and you will be doing this.
• Drugs Are Bad: Zoda, whose body is pumped full of adrenaline and dopamine. It's part of the reason he's so darned unhinged.
• Duels Decide Everything: In GX, both Samurai Goroh and Deathborn force Falcon to race against them one-on-one for the Blue Falcon/fate of the universe. The Creators also do the same. Black Shadow somewhat attempts to kill Falcon before the Grand Prix, but his trap ends up failing, leading to a race anyway.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: From the very first game in particular:
  • Only four playable racers with not much personality to go on besides the manual's mini-comic.
  • The machines are noticably slower than in later games, with top speeds of only 438-478 km/h without boost. Later games push top speeds to around 700 km/h at the minimum.
  • CPU racers are portrayed as generic recoloured vehicles.
  • The tracks are all flat with no loops to speak of.
  • The boost feature here rewards a boost each time you finished a lap instead of being Cast from Hit Points.
  • The game also has every race set at 5 laps since the tracks are pretty small and quick to complete.
  • Vehicular combat, while implied in the manual/story, isn't encouraged; you'd cause more harm to yourself trying to ram other racers and the CPUs have infinite health anyway (save for the few that are rigged to explode on contact).
  • There is no multiplayer.
  • There is a Practice mode that serves as the game's Time Trial mode, but it still puts one opponent (of your choosing) on the track and only certain courses are available.
  • There is no option to let players set their preferred balance between maximum speed and acceleration.
  • Unlike the other games in the series, the first game requires you to be at a "safe" rank per lap (up to third in the final lap) and failing to meet that safe rank (or even falling too far behind) will disqualify you.
  • CPU opponents do not necessarily have an absolute position on the track. Notably, the opponent immediately behind you is never more than a few seconds behind, no matter how fast you're going. This is most notable when exploiting (shortcuts: Take the normal route and the CPU will follow closely and not take the shortcut, but take the shortcut and the CPU will follow suit.
  • You earn an extra life literally Every 10,000 Points, and points are earned based on your position at the end of each lap. In later games, you earn extra lives by destroying opponents and the arcade-style scoring system was dropped in favor of points awarded towards cumulative standings.
  • In Grand Prix mode, there's no concept of overall standings. As long as you finish each race (which requires meeting the Safe Rank at the end of each lap and not crashing out), the game counts it as a win.
  • The "You Lost" jingle only plays if you Rank Out, not if you Crash Out. Subsequent games play the failure jingle or theme if you are retired out through circumstances besides restarting or quitting, including in the game's battle royale remake F-Zero 99.
  • In the instruction manual comic, the Blue Falcon's entrant number is 111, whereas X changes it to 7 and GX reformats it to 07 (and similarly so with the other one-digit machines from X). Three digit machine numbers don't even exist at all in those later games; all of the machines are sequentially numbered.
  • Interestingly, Maximum Velocity temporarily brought the series back to this gameplay scheme - presumably due to the impracticality of implementing all of the new features into the GBA (the GP Legend games found a middle ground by making tracks with more complicated layouts in lieu of X and GX's rollercoasters).
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe:
  • Not quite. Several planets in the game are of good importance, but Mute City is regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated city in the universe, thus making it a very populated center of trade and commerce. All of GX's Story Mode appears to transpire on Earth.
  • In Maximum Velocity, Bianca City is said to have taken over Mute City as the most important city in the galaxy. It is also located on Earth.
• Emergency Transformation: How Mighty Gazelle came to be.
• Eternal Engine: Lightning, coupled up with perpetual thunderstorms as Epileptic Flashing Lights!
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Yes, even in the future.
• Every 10,000 Points: F-Zero has an unusual racing game example: As you cross the checkpoint, you gain points in proportion to your standing. You get an extra life every 10,000 points.
  • F-Zero X changed this so that you got an extra life for every five kills you score in a single race. GX changes this again to only the first five kills per race.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Samurai Goroh, the samurai racing pilot.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Skull, the skeleton racing pilot.
• Evil Knockoff: Blood Falcon. Obviously, he's the Shadow Archetype to Captain Falcon.
• Evil Is Hammy: Subverted in that the the heroes are just as capable at chewing the scenery as the villains are.
• Evil Gloating: Black Shadow, Blood Falcon, and Deathborn love this trope.
• Evil Laugh: The villains and dregs of society. Sometimes comes across as Narm, especially in GX (courtesy of Black Shadow's less-than-imposing voice).
• Excuse Plot:
  • There is a big race going down and your character aims to win it. Everything else is just flavor text.
  • GX subverts it a bit by featuring a slightly more elaborate story, although far from groundbreaking.
• Expansion Pack: X had one exclusive to Japan on the failed Nintendo 64DD add-on, which included 2 new GP cups, 5 new music tracks, a track editor, a car editor, and expanded time trial ghost storage.
• Eyes Always Shut: Dr. Stewart and John Tanaka from X onward (John has the excuse of being Asian at least, whereas Stewart only has those as a nod to his fox theme). Dai San Gen in GX also count since they're Chinese caricatures.
• The Faceless: Several characters hide their real faces behind a mask or helmet. Captain Falcon is a subversion since we do see how he looks like in X.
• Fake Difficulty: Usually because The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • There is some of this in the original, at Master Level. The CPU Golden Fox cruises at 478 kph. The player controlled Golden Fox maxes out at 438 kph.
  • There are generic cars in the original that are below the top four 'unique' racers; they're just there to get blown up. They do have positions (4-30), but unless you're aiming to lose, you only see them when you're far enough ahead to start lapping them. Was it also mentioned that the opponents slip right through them?
• Fanservice: Beating the Grand Prix on Master difficulty in X or beating Story Mode in GX nets you a quick shot of Captain Falcon without his helmet. Several of the mini-movies unlocked by beating the GP on Master in GX count as well, of both the sexual and non-sexual varieties.
• Fanservice Extra: The circuit models in X who appear in the main menu. They're a group of busty, purple-haired, masked beauties in midriff-barring tops (with "F-Zero" conveniently written in bold, uppercase letters to guide your eyes right back to their chests) and bikini bottoms. Should you win the Joker Cup on Expert or Master, two of them will strike a Boobs-and-Butt Pose at the end of the staff roll.
• Fat Bastard: Samurai Goroh and Don Genie. The latter is definitely much worse whereas the former is just unpleasant at worst.
• The Federation: The Galactic Federation, of which Jody Summer and John Tanaka are members. There's also a Milky Way Federation, who aren't the nicest people judging from Octoman's backstory. A third group called the Galactic Space Allies are mentioned solely in Antonio Guster's profile.
• Fiction 500: Don Genie fits, considering that he's extremely rich due to his position as the head mogul of an universal trading system. He also happens to be a narcissistic Corrupt Corporate Executive who illegally sells energy resources and weapons and is believed to have ties to Black Shadow. He's apparently so rich that whenever he's arrested, he gets off scot-free by paying an exorbitantly large fee that might as well be nothing to him.
  • There's also Lord Cyber from Maximum Velocity, a wealthy baron. Sadly, that's pretty much all we know about him. On a very ambiguous note, Black Shadow might count. He's shown to have power and influence in the underground and he remarks that the prize money earned from winning the F-Zero GP (one billion space credits) is a paltry sum.
• Fictional Sport: F-Zero is floating rally racing, or perhaps Formula 1.
• Floating Head Syndrome: The Japanese covers for the first game and X, which is particularly intense.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Given all of that spandex and latex, it applies to almost all of the racers. In most cases, it could be seen as Fanservice given how fit just about everyone is, but a handful of racers go in the opposite direction. Considering the sort of outfits NASCAR racers wear today, though, this may be justified.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Many of them, with varying degrees of fragility and speediness.
  • Subverted with heavier machines, which tend to be faster and more capable of bullying opponents. As is standard with racing games, the heavier machines do tend to have worse acceleration, but once they get going, watch out.
• Fun Personified: Billy is probably the closest fit, although Gomar and Shioh are also somewhat like this.
• Future Spandex: Played with. While a large percentage of the cast is decked out in skin-tight spandex and latex, more than a handful of characters are instead shown wearing sleek armor (if not both). Others sport attire not too different from present-day fashion trends.
• Gadgeteer Genius:
  • Dr. Clash, who's responsible for a great deal of the technology that is seen in the present-day F-Zero machines.
  • Digi-Boy claims that he can use any modern piece of technology adeptly and has even created a few gizmos of his own. Suffice to say, he's extremely arrogant.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: X has a hidden "rival" system that supplements the Rival marker you see on the racer who places closest to you. Each racer has about three to five other characters who all start near the back where the player is and who possess better than normal A.I. and skill for that Grand Prix. Often, the characters have some sort of adversarial relationship, or at least a friendly rivalry. Examples include:
  • Captain Falcon and each of his nemeses, Black Shadow, Blood Falcon and Samurai Goroh.
  • Goroh, in addition to Captain Falcon, has Antonio Guster, on account of betraying him in the past.
  • Both of the Arrows are rivals with each other and Zoda.
  • Jody is scared of octopi, so the usually lackluster Octoman will do perform far better than normal if you play as her.
  • Between the three female characters (Jody Summer, Mrs. Arrow, Kate Alen), the other female characters act as rivals to the player's character.
  • Beastman has the most, as every non-human or human-like racer plus Baba will try their hardest to go after you.
  • Black Shadow, naturally, will have every explicitly heroic racer attempting to ensure he can't win (especially Captain Falcon).
  • Aside from of the rival system examples, fitting with his personality, Billy will always do a quick spin every time he gets air.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The story for F-Zero X says that F-Zero was discontinued for years after a huge near-fatal crash involving 14 racers. In-game, particularly aggressive players will take out more than that many machines in a single race. Now, if we're looking for a way to explain this, the crashes are never fatal in-game despite blowing up the machine, so in the future, it's really hard to die. Evidently the big crash somehow caused an even more spectacular explosion than you can cause in-game. (Normal) crashes in the game must be non-fatal, since if you blow up an opponent's machine, they come back next race.
  • Captain Falcon is regularly said to be the best F-Zero pilot in the universe, but in the Grand Prix, if he's not the player character he is rarely better than the other CPU racers, and constantly places in excess of 10th out of 30.
• Gangbangers: Michael Chain's gang, the Bloody Chain. At one point in F-Zero GX they try to run Captain Falcon off the road.
• Gemstone Motifs: The name of (most of) the cups in F-Zero GX are named after gemstones: Ruby cup, Sapphire cup, Emerald cup, and Diamond cup, all with their respective gemstones in their logo). Then there's AX cup as the odd one out, which has a dark matter-esque sphere in place of a gemstone.
• Generation Xerox: Dai Goroh very much takes after his father, to the point that he shares his dad's rivalry with Captain Falcon. Slight subversion, as he doesn't follow his father in all respects; his Silver Rat was modeled after Antonio Guster's Green Panther, and Dai plans to spend the money on himself if he wins the F-Zero GP.
• Genius Bruiser: Bio Rex, mainly because he was genetically engineered to be one. The "Genius" part usually doesn't show.
• Global Currency: In the comic that came in the original F-Zero manual, Falcon states a bounty is worth 500,000 "Galactic Credits." However, in one of GX's story mode cutscenes, the currency seems to be "space credits," and the prize for winning an expert class grand prix is one billion space credits.
• Go Fast or Go Boom: In Chapter 6 of F-Zero GX, "Black Shadow's Trap", Blood Falcon attaches a bomb to the Blue Falcon that'll detonate if Captain Falcon's speed drops below a certain limit, which varies based on the difficulty level. On Normal difficulty, the speed limit is 700 km/h, on Hard, it's 750, and on Very Hard, it's 800. Regardless, the chapter requires the player to complete the course without letting their speed drop to the specified level, otherwise the Blue Falcon will explode, instantly failing the mission.
• The Good Captain: Three guesses.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Captain Falcon has a single scar located above his left eye. Leon has a scar running over his left eye, giving him a passing resemblance to Wolf. Don Genie's right eye (the one with the monocle) also has a vertical scar. He's evil, or at least highly greedy.
• Goofy Print Underwear: In the character videos in GX:
  • Captain Falcon: Red polka dots.
  • Antonio Guster: Camouflage.
  • Blood Falcon: Pink with some sort of pattern.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Several characters wear goggles for no reason other than Rule of Cool.
• Gratuitous Disco Sequence: James McCloud's bonus movie from GX. He tried a somersault when he should have done a barrel roll. ^note Ha ha, get it?
• Green Hill Zone: Green Plant: Mobius Hill, despite being the third course of the second cup.
• Grumpy Old Man: "Ironman" Silver Neelson is this with added "crotchediness." Despite his years and years of experience, he seems to be a bit loopy when it comes to new-fangled machines. Most of the other racers try to ignore him. Falcon isn't so lucky in Chapter 3 of GX's Story Mode.
• Gusty Glade: The Death Wind courses, where winds keep your machine drifting in one direction so long as you're moving.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Implied with Bio Rex since his physiology is rather humanoid for a supposed dinosaur.
• Handsome Lech: Jack, who says that all of his female fans are his girlfriends. Surprisingly, he doesn't pursue the handful of single ladies in the games.
  • The comic included with the manual of F-Zero paints Dr. Stewart in this light. This element of his personality was either subsequently dropped, retconned out of existence, or Stewart simply mellowed out (the Huge Accident and/or the death of his father may have had something to do with it).
• Happily Married: The Arrows, as well as Octoman. Octoman has several children, and the Arrows may have a child if GX's bonus endings are indeed canon. Ditto with James, who has a wife and son.
• Have a Nice Death:
  • In X: "Too bad! You lost your machine."
  • In GX: "OFF COURSE! RETIRE" and "BROKEN DOWN! RETIRE."
• Hero of Another Story: Almost everyone in the cast qualifies. Each racer gets an extensive biography in the manual, but the actual story centers around the series' mascot, Captain Falcon, and his circle of friends and enemies. There are genetic experiments, sorcerers, superheroes, detectives, assassins, monsters, and all kinds of cool characters that are relegated to the sidelines in every game.
• Heroic Build: About 80% of the cast falls into this trope.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Gomar and Shioh are from an alien race who all live this way. Their backstory in GX even points out that they are close to retirement since they're about to get married (and thus, leave each other's side).
  • Presumably, the same could be said about Roger Buster and Draq. At the very least, it's an Odd Friendship between a straight-laced intergalactic delivery man and his F-Zero fanatic of an alien buddy. Bonus points: their friendship doubles as an Intergenerational Friendship, considering that Roger is 41 while Draq is 137.
• Hired Guns: Pico is a hitman. Captain Falcon and Samurai Goroh are bounty hunters, while Beastman is the beast-hunting equivalent of that.
• Homage:
  • Captain Falcon's costume rather resembles that of Judge Dredd.
  • Black Shadow is clearly designed after Batman, which is unsurprising since Tim Burton's Batman was the primary inspiration for the series.
  • The designer of James McCloud's Little Wvyern? Space Dynamics, the same corporation that created the Arwings from Star Fox. In turn, James is the leader of Galaxy Dog, a group of mercenaries, and races to support his wife and child.
    • James McCloud's name obviously comes from the name of Fox's father, and he even sports sunglasses. Also, in X he had a simple haircut, but in GX he has fox-ear style hair, and has white hair down the middle like the headpiece Fox and his father had in Star Fox 64.
  • Mr. EAD vaguely resembles a certain Italian plumber, wears a Starman on his belt, calls his vehicle his brother, eats lots of cake in his movie, and was created by Shiggs Mapone. Hmm...
• I Am the Trope
  Super Arrow: "I am Champion! I am Justice! I am SUPER ARROW!"
• Idle Animation: Each character was given three in the Settings screen in GX/AX: a basic standing pose, as well as two other character-specific actions that they'd break into from time to time.
• Idol Singer: Kate Alen was one (or at least the American pop star/diva equivalent of it) before striking out into F-Zero. Jack Levin is a male version of this trope.
• I Don't Know Mortal Kombat: In Draq's GX ending, he's playing the game itself and suffers a humiliating defeat. See Painting the Medium below.
• I Know Mortal Kombat: However, in Draq's post-win interview in GX, he reveals he trained for the race by playing the F-Zero computer game.
• Image Song: Every character gets one in GX, and quite a few have lyrics. Unfortunately, they only ever show up in the character profiles and during replays.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Mrs. Arrow (who somehow has a six-pack too) and Princia.
• Improbable Age: Digi-Boy, Princia, Lily and Dai Goroh are all minors, and yet are allowed to race in this incredibly deadly sport that even the most well-trained adults have trouble surviving. Digi-Boy himself might be the worst case since he's also an university student (despite being only 8).
• Inertial Dampening: The G-Diffusor System found on every vehicle. This system is vital for the safety of the drivers.
• Informed Ability: The top speeds of the machines, possibly. In-game, 1,000 km/h seems more like about 300-350. This may be because of the relative scale of the machines and the track. Even Cosmo Terminal's freakishly narrow-feeling split ribbons are actually fairly wide if you compare them to the vehicles.
• Irisless Eye Mask Of Mystery: All over the place, what with the cast largely being one great big homage to comic book superheroes. Captain Falcon, Baba, Beastman, Super Arrow, Phoenix, Black Shadow and Blood Falcon all feature it. Deathborn may too, although it's unknown if he's even wearing a mask in the first place.
• Jack of All Stats: All four characters from the original game are now Jacks due to the vast amount of Fragile Speedsters and Mighty Glaciers.
  • More precisely, the Blue Falcon is the Jack of All Stats, and has been designed as such from the beginning. Even in GX, the Golden Fox merits the best Boost rating in the game, the Wild Goose has some of the best impact resistance in the game, and the Fire Stingray is faster (and heavier) than all but a handful of machines (except for Beastman, you pretty much have to be evil to be faster than Goroh). The GX version of the Wild Goose deserves further discussion. It has the shortest Boost in the game, along with some seriously weird handling — its control hysteresis is in the same range as the Mad Wolf, worse than any other vehicle, which combined with the unusual Boost strength and duration makes driving it a fairly interesting experience.
  • The Deep Claw is the biggest example of this in GX, as it supposedly possesses medium stats for every single one of its attributes.
• Joke Character: Mr. EAD, who's not only the most ridiculous design in the cast, but also possesses the strangest vehicle settings. Also a case of Self-Deprecation since this EAD appears to be the future/alternate version of EAD, which is (was) Nintendo's largest division.
• Justice Will Prevail:
  • This is essentially Super Arrow's Catchphrase (at least by X's standards), although he does put a spin on it by saying, "Justice ALWAYS prevails." Mrs. Arrow is pretty much the same as her husband, despite the fact that she has no inherent superpowers.
    • In GX, one of his post-race interviews has him say, "Justice always wins in the end."
  • Both Captain Falcon and Phoenix are also big followers of this mindset.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Samurai Goroh is obviously a standout here. Dai Goroh too, as his profile even states that he takes after his father and loves to take out his katana and whip it around.
• Legacy Character: Kent Akechi from Maximum Velocity believes himself to be one to Captain Falcon, since he's under the impression that Falcon is his father. He even wears a similar outfit and drives a vehicle known as the Falcon Mk-II.
• Leitmotif: There's a reason the themes for Big Blue and especially Mute City are so well-known, as they double as Bootstrapped Theme and Recurring Riff, appearing many times and having many different variation across the series.
• Lethal Lava Land: Fire Field. GX takes this to the logical extreme, where you actually race inside the outer crust of the planet.
• Level 1 Music Represents: The Mute City's theme, which is the first track in the original game, is largely iconic as a representation of the theme, and is featured in most F-Zero and related installments (including Super Smash Bros. series). And to a lesser extent, Big Blue's theme is the second most popular music theme in the series and is also featured both in and out of franchise much like Mute City.
• The Lost Woods: The Devil's Forest in X. Possibly Green Plant in GX, even though that's more of a greenhouse.
• Ludicrous Speed: The speeds can exceed 2,000kph. If you're not careful, you may even hit escape velocity and go soaring off the track.
• Mad Scientist: Zoda appears to be one in GX, as his mini-movie has him constructing a version of Mr. EAD in his image while letting out a mad fit of laughter. Not to mention that he's inside a creepy-looking lab while Dramatic Thunder brings his creation to life in a manner similar to that of Frankenstein's monster.
• Male Gaze:
  • The endings for Mrs. Arrow and Princia has the camera focus on their lovely assets and fine-looking rears a decent chunk of the time.
  • If you're playing as Jody in GX, she turns around to show off her ass once you confirm your speed setting.
  • The circuit models in X, as mentioned above.
• The Man Behind the Man:
  • Deathborn is behind Black Shadow in GX.
  • Taken a step further with The Creators, who are implied to have made Deathborn into what he is today.
• Marathon Level: Most of the tracks from the AX Cup suffer from this. This makes sense as it helps extend the playtime on the arcade machines. The most notable exception is Sonic Oval, but it isn't a part of the AX Cup Grand Prix, unfortunately.
• May–December Romance:
  • The Arrows, possibly. He's eight years her senior (as of GX, he's 35 and she's 27), but it's unknown when they first met. (So, May-September Romance?)
  • Judging by GX, Princia is trying to attempt this with Goroh of all people. Keep in mind that she's 16 and he's 28 years older than her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Mr. EAD's machine stats are graded E-A-D. Even more meaningful when you realize his name was the name of Nintendo's main in-house development studio, headed by Shigeru Miyamoto at the time. Mr. EAD's creator's name? Shiggs.
  • Octoman is a humanoid octopus. Bio Rex is a bioengineered dinosaur man.
  • The title itself might be one, considering that the series is a futuristic version of Formula One, and may in fact be that sport's successor (think "Formula Zero").
• Metropolis Level: Mute City, which is usually the first venue raced on in the games. Aeropolis is another example, being more akin to a Skyscraper City.
• Mighty Glacier: In typical racing game fashion, heavier machines have low acceleration (but in many cases high top speeds) and are well-suited to bullying smaller opponents.
• Model Museum: F-Zero GX allows you to admire the machine of every racer you have bought in the in-game store.
• Modesty Towel: Lily Flyer bonus movie in GX has her clad in a towel as she washes all her clothes at a laundromat.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • In the original F-Zero, Master difficulty ramps the top speed of every machine to 478km/h and gives them insane cornering ability.
  • Also in the Original F-Zero, there is a lap elimination system. Anyone below 15th is eliminated at the end of lap 1, then 10th for lap 2, 7th for lap 3, 5th for lap 4, and finally only the top 3 can finish. Except it only works on the player. You can easily stop on any lap other than the first and let AI that should've been eliminated keep passing you.
  • In games after the first one, if a CPU opponent is eliminated in GP mode, they come back for the next round just fine (assuming it is not the final round of the cup), with the only penalty being that they take 0 points for the round they crashed in. If you get eliminated, you have to use up one of your spare machines and try again, or retire out of the cup completely if you have no spares left.
• Mysterious Protector: Subverted. Captain Falcon is veiled in mystery and appears to aid those in need, but he's also The Hero of the series.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • In order of ascending villainy: Blood Falcon, Black Shadow, Deathborn.
  • If you are an evil villain/lawbreaker, then you'd most certainly want to run away from Captain Falcon himself.
  • Some of the vehicles. Do you think you can take on the "Big Fang"? Or the "Death Anchor"? Or the "Dark Schneider"?
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Black Shadow's eponymous "Black Shadow Group". Zoda may also be part of one ("Deathriddle"), although there's barely any info about it.
• Never Say "Die": Zigzagged. You've got straight examples like "Miss Killer" becoming "Luna Ryder" and Blood Falcon's machine "Hell Hawk" being renamed to "Blood Hawk", but even at the height of Nintendo's censorship policies, the first game's Death Wind courses made it through localization unscathed. And then there's GX and Deathborn...
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: To be honest, everyone (to some degree or another) falls under this trope since they're all F-Zero pilots that have some other occupation or are an alien.
  • Captain Falcon is part racecar driver, part bounty hunter, 100% badass.
  • Samurai Goroh is a samurai bounty hunter who leads a group of bandits and partakes in the F-Zero GP.
  • Bio-Rex is a beer-drinking dinosaur racecar driver. Billy is a money-obsessed chimpanzee racecar driver.
• Nintendo Hard: What else do you expect from a game centered around post-Mach 1 racing? What makes the series very difficult is (unlike most racing games) once your machine explodes or falls off the track, that's it. You're out. Makes it even worse in multiplayer where you can easily be eliminated on the first lap if your friends were dickish enough to make you crash early. GX has a respawn option for multiplayer, but usually by the time you respawn, you've fallen too far behind to catch up.
  • GX's Story Mode is brutally difficult, even on Normal difficulty. And there's still two more difficulty levels above that. Very Hard mode requires no less than absolute perfection (and some luck) most of the time.
  • GX's Arcade Mode on Master difficulty is not joking around. While it is not quite as difficult as Story Mode, it still requires you to run near-perfect races while using every last ounce of health as fuel for your speed boost to even stand a chance.
  • The original F-Zero and Maximum Velocity both have a "Safe" ranking mechanic that determines whether you advance to the next lap or round: If by the end of the lap you are not at the target position or higher, you are "Ranked Out", lose a life, and have to retry. On the first lap you generously have a Safe rank of 15, but by the final lap you need to be in the top 3 to finish. Depending on the difficulty level, a single bump near the end can plunge you down to fourth place or worse, undoing all your efforts.
  • F-Zero Maximum Velocity has a Master difficulty setting, making most machines MUCH faster than you, and have infinite stamina. Just TRY beating Cloud Carpet or Synobazz on Master with the Fire Ball. I dare you.
  • The series is famous for having UNFORGIVING AI. on higher difficulties, other players will sacrifice a first or second place ranking just to drive you off the road, and enemies make a beeline for you if you are anywhere near a pit. This gets incredibly frustrating on Illusion in F-Zero GP Legend, where there are no barriers and one bump can kill you instantly. And there are ten guys out for your blood. Not good.
• Nitro Boost:
  • "You got boost power!" This was changed from the SNES version, where the boost was a separate item. You got one at the start of every lap after the first, but you could only store 3 at a time. On the other hand, the item boost effect lasted for about 5 seconds per boost, instead of the "however long you hold the boost button" that happens with the Cast from HP version.
  • Climax introduced the Boost Fire technique, inspired by the technique seen in the GP Legend anime. By using a Boost during a Boost, you will activate Boost Fire (Black Fire for villain characters), where the aura around your machine turns orange/black and the speed boost and duration of your Boost is increased. A Boost Fire can only be performed when you have a Booster stock, which is earned once per lap like the Boost in the original game and in Maximum Velocity. This game also introduced the ability to use your Boost while using a Spin Attack, also like the Boost Fire from the anime, and you can combine that with a Boost Fire as well.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • Taking a huge shortcut in F-Zero causes a UFO to pop up and drag you back to an earlier part of the course. Taking such a shortcut in GX simply blows your machine up.
  • In one part of Rainbow Road in F-Zero X, it looks like you can shave off a huge portion of a lap by dropping down from one part of the track to another much further down. Try it, and you fall through the track and die.
• Non-Action Guy: John Tanaka. He's a mechanic, not a fighter.
• Non-Indicative Name: The "Grip" stat in GX and AX. Unlike in X where it determines how well the machine avoids sliding on corners, instead it determines how much speed the machine loses when turning. For example, the Fat Shark with its E-rank grip slows down to comparatively turtle speeds on gentle curves, but the Hyper Speeder with its A-rank grip doesn't lose a single kilometer per hour of speed when it's turning as hard as possible without sliding.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Only in non-GP modes if retiring is disabled.
• Noodle Incident: The great accident in GX is mentioned in a number of character profiles and apparently has a role in Blood Falcon's creation, but is never explained in any more detail.
  • There's mention of a previous racing tournament, F-Max. All we know is that The Skull was its greatest driver.
• No OSHA Compliance: Fire Field in GX is basically this. In fact, many of the courses in the Diamond Cup qualify, since they mostly lack guardrails and are thus incredibly perilous to navigate.
  • Trident is notable for having long narrow roads with no guardrails on either side.
  • There's also the Outer Space track from AX, which takes place right in the middle of a meteor shower. Luckily, the space station features a force field to prevent the meteors from becoming a stage hazard.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • Port Town 2 in X is this to Port Town in the original game. Interestingly, this version of is nothing but city and streets below, while the original appeared to be a small town on the water's edge.
  • The Platinum Cup in GP Legend and Climax is made up of remakes of 8 tracks from the original game. However, they vary in faithfulness due to the limitations of the in-game engine: magnetic damage strips have been replaced with motion strips that, while they can still pull your vehicle into the hazardous walls if touched, no longer pull your machine towards them, and the anti-cheat UFO that rewinds players who pull off the Port Town II shortcut is no longer present.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Happens a lot in the original F-Zero, courtesy of the Rubber-Band A.I..
• Old Maid: Jody Summer and Kate Alen. As of GX, they are respectively 25 and 30; both are single. In contrast, the 27-year-old Mrs. Arrow is Happily Married. That said, the game's Western-inspired theme doesn't make a big deal of their status as bachelorettes.
• Ominous Fog: The Mist Flow tracks in GP Legend and Climax are raced under heavy fog, drastically reducing your line of sight and making corner entrances much more difficult.
• One Game for the Price of Two: GX was released alongside an arcade counterpart, AX, which contained a slot for you to plug in your GCN save card. Doing so would allow you to unlock AX's tracks and vehicles, plus components for the Create-A-Car function, on your save.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • AX/GX actually features two "Dais", Goroh's son and one of the Shinar triplets.
  • Two machines share the word "Wild": The Wild Goose (Pico's) and the Wild Boar (Michael Chain's). Unlike the King/Queen Meteor and the Mighty Typhoon/Hurricane, those two have no relation each other.
  • Maximum Velocity features a vehicle called "The Stingray", which has no relation to Goroh's "Fire Stingray".
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Terry "Digi-Boy" Getter. Dr. Clash may also qualify if he doesn't fit into Cool Shades above.
• Painting the Medium: In Draq's bonus clip, he gets so frustrated when he loses to the other racers that he punches the screen. It's then revealed that he's playing a video game of F-Zero and is ticked off by the computer. We don't blame him.
• Palmtree Panic: Big Blue looks a bit more resort-like in GX.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Played straight with in Chapter 3 of GX. Not only is "Famicom" driving Captain Falcon's vehicle, but Bio Rex and Dr. Clash, who were also competing, saw him put the costume on!
• Parental Abandonment: The backstory of Leon. Leon's parents died in a planetary war and was adopted by a rebel soldier named Fable (according to GX).
• Phantom Zone: Phantom Road, which is also used in an altered form for the final chapter of Story Mode.
• Planet Heck: Deathborn's underworld racetrack from Chapter 8.
• Playing Card Motifs: The name of the main playable cups in X are named after playing cards: Jack, Queen, King, and Joker. Additionally, the fourth added league from the Japanese Satellaview version of the original F-Zero has the fourth Grand Prix course, the Ace League, to follow this instead of the Chess Motifs that was established.
• Port Town: Trope Namer, although it's a space port, not a sea port.
• Professional Killer: Pico, a former mercenary, doubles as a hitman outside of the races.
• Psycho for Hire: Pico. Once a member of a special assassination unit and one of the bloodthristiest racers around. He still takes hits on the side and is shown to be a badass Cold Sniper in his clip from GX.
• Racing Ghost: Both figuratively and literally with The Creators.
• Randomly Generated Levels: The X-Cup in X.
• Rated M for Manly: A combination of heavy metal, American comic book artstyle, and emphasis on pure unadulterated speed, F-Zero is easily one of, if not, the most manly racing series out there.
• Recurring Riff: Black Shadow, Blood Falcon and Deathborn in GX have the same sinister voice (saying mostly the same things) in their theme songs.
• Really 700 Years Old: Blood Falcon's profile in GX mentions that he is technically only four, but is a clone of the 37-year-old Captain Falcon.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Captain Falcon and his evil clone Blood Falcon. Not only do they fit the bill in terms of personality, but they wear blue and red, too.
• Revenge:
  • Antonio Guster's entire reason for being at F-Zero is to enact this upon Goroh, who majorly screwed him over during a heist gone bad.
  • Black Shadow is there to deal with Captain Falcon, whose heroic acts majorly screwed up their plans; in fact, one of Black Shadow's trusted confidants was imprisoned and later executed thanks to Falcon.
    • In X, Black Shadow's reason for entering is to "kill Captain Falcon in front of billions of viewers." Whether he actually filled this out on an official form is left to the imagination of the player.
• The Rival:
  • Samurai Goroh, to Captain Falcon. Falcon may or may not take it seriously.
  • Samurai Goroh himself has Antonio Guster, his former right-hand man.
  • Jody and Octoman, due to the former being scared of octopi.
  • This even uses a bit of Gameplay and Story Integration in regards to X. Usually, your rival starting in the second race and at least one of the other characters high up on the leaderboard will have strong ties to the pilot you're racing as (for example, Falcon almost always has to tangle with Black Shadow and Blood Falcon, with Samurai Goroh frequently in the mix as well). If you're playing as one of the three women (Jody, Kate, or Mrs. Arrow), however, your main rivals will most likely end up being... the other two female pilots.
• Robot Buddy: QQQ to Phoenix, Speed Bird to Super Arrow, John Tanaka's small drone.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: The CPU loves to pull this one on you.
  • In the higher difficulties of the SNES version, it is literally impossible to get the computer off your tail; they're always right behind you Behind the Black.
    • Here's proof. The TASer glitches the hell out of the game to do laps in under 10 seconds each and the A.I. is still right behind him the entire time. And here's an even worse example, with laps in three seconds of in-game time. This is possibly the most egregious example of rubber-band A.I. in the history of video games.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Both Captain and Blood Falcon have one.
  • So does James McCloud. Given his source inspiration, it was a no-brainer.
  • Subverted with Dr. Stewart, who wears a Scarf of Friendship to symbolize his special bonds.
  • Princia, Gomar, and Shioh do have scarves... but they're probably not ones of asskicking. (In fact, Gomar and Shioh's scarves may be related to Stewart's.)
• Scary Black Man: Michael Chain would appear to be this at first, but he's not that great at leading an intergalactic gang. Inverted with Black Shadow, who is a Scary Man in Black.
• Scenery Porn: GX in spades. Even to this day, the graphics still are awe-inspiring.
  • The original F-Zero might look vanilla by today's standards, but when it was released, it definitely qualified — the backgrounds were that big of a step up from 8-bit systems.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: There are four five-star rated courses in GX (the highest ranking of difficulty) — Big Blue: Ordeal, Phantom Road: Slim-Line Slits, Lightning: Thunder Road, and Green Plant: Spiral. Of them you could really only argue that Slim-Line Slits actually deserves such a steep rating as the other three are downright tame by comparison (the only thing resembling difficulty any of them feature seems to be their length). Spiral does have a few obstacles (like slip zones) but nothing that will actually ruin your race while the other two are vanilla as ice cream (wide roads that are fully railed the entire race with nothing to really watch out for). Slim-Line Slits, on the other hand, is about as ruthless and disregards racer safety as much as you'd probably expect for such a high rating (for instance all the pit zones are located right before an unprotected dropoff). To put this in perspective the other Big Blue circuit, Drift Highway, only pulls a two-star rating yet trying to place first in this race compared to Ordeal is like night and day. It's the four-star courses like Mute City: Serial Gaps or Fire Field: Undulation that will likely test your mettle with the pedal.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Baba in X. It stopped in GX, but Baba became no less effeminate.
• Sequel Escalation: With each main sequel, the speed is bumped several notches. By the time of GX, it's reached ridiculous levels. And it's awesome.
• Series Continuity Error: During Chapter 7 of Story Mode in GX, Black Shadow is suprised to see that Captain Falcon is still alive. But it really shouldn't be too surprising since the Blue Falcon, the machine that he attemped to blow up in the previous chapter, is sitting right there in front of him.
• Serious Business: The titular races and the vehicles used seem to be how all the villains attack Falcon in GX's story. It helps that there is a massive amount of prize money involved, though.
  • Black Shadow is explicitly stated to want to blow Captain Falcon up in a race, so that his thousands of adoring fans can watch him die.
  • To quote the original F-Zero's manual, winning a race means "earning the highest honor that could be bestowed upon anyone in the Universe." Now that's Serious Business.
  • GX's Story Mode attempts to justify this as the main world and Underworld's championship belts hold the essences of light and darkness. When combined, they possess enough power to turn its wearer into a god and destroy the universe. Of course, that was just a rumor made up by The Creators to cause chaos and fighting for their entertainment.
• Shark Tunnel: Big Blue has some underwater segments in GX.
• Shifting Sand Land: Sand Ocean. GX adds a Sand Worm, but it can't get to you.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Shioh values his shorter companion Gomar for his apt decision-making abilities. Digi-Boy is also rather short since he's just a kid.
• Shout-Out: Many, most of the characters are "living" shout outs with recipients including Nintendo's EAD group (Mr. EAD), Star Fox (James McCloud), and Crazy Taxi (PJ). F-Zero X also has Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road as a track.
  • And if you're playing the Japan-only Expansion Kit for F-Zero X, Rainbow Road gets a remix of the MK64 Rainbow Road music.
  • The Star Fox series from its original inception seemed to be more subtle shout out to F-Zero. The two most prominent characters were a golden fox and a blue falcon, anthropomorphized.
    • In one of the endings of Star Fox Command, Fox and Falco blatantly turn their Arwings into F-Zero racecars (it's called G-Zero in Command, but we all know what it's referring to).
  • Jane B. Christie from Maximum Velocity is basically an Expy of Metroid heroine Samus Aran, with more Fanservice thrown in.◊ How's that possible, we'll never know.
  • A certain R.O.B has a cameo as a gigantic version of himself in GX's Port Town.
  • In the Pilot Profiles section of GX, the vehicle information for the Blood Hawk notes that its two engines pilfered from the Blue Falcon during the big crash four years ago are model BF2001, whereas the four used by the Blue Falcon are model BF2003. In 2001, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity was released; GX came out in 2003.
  • As far as additional Sega shout-outs in GX are concerned, Zoda's ending cinematic in GX shows his own Zoda-themed version of Mr. EAD sporting Eggman's shades, while Billy's belt buckle depicts AiAi.
  • In GX's Story Mode, Captain Falcon enters a bet race under the alias of Famicom.
• Shows Damage: In the original F-Zero and in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, your vehicle starts smoking and sparking when it has taken enough damage for its top speed to go down. In the original F-Zero, backmarkers that have taken enough damage to explode if your vehicle touches them flash pink. In F-Zero X and F-Zero GX, critically damaged vehicles flash red.
• Show Within a Show: F-Zero TV. It was mentioned in passing on billboards located in some of the courses in X, but was expanded into a prime time, post-race interview Talk Show in GX in order to flesh out and add more depth to the cast.
• Signature Team Transport: Every character has one, the most iconic being Captain Falcon's Blue Falcon.
• Single-Biome Planet: Most planets not named Earth.
• Sliding Scale of Villain Threat: Black Shadow presumably wants to Take Over the World. Deathborn wants to destroy the universe.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The perpetually snowy White Land.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: F-Zero GX's Story Mode features Samurai Goroh, Michael Chain, Black Shadow (and Blood Falcon), Deathborn and the Creators as antagonists, in this very order.
• Space Elevator: Cosmo Terminal is supposed to be one, but it's still unfinished for its actual purpose of transporting civilians, so a racing course was put there so it didn't end up as a waste of money for whoever invested on the idea.
• Space Zone: AX/GX has the Outer Space course, located in the middle of a meteor shower.
• Spin Attack:
  • One of the two basic combat abilities in the series introduced in X, next to the Side Attack. By using a Spin Attack, the vehicle rotates while moving, defending itself while smashing other machines in its path. Practicality varies by game; in X, it is Awesome, but Impractical since you sacrifice a lot of velocity to perform it, while in GX you lose temporary control of your vehicle, making it Difficult, but Awesome.
  • Taken to the max with "BOOSTO FAIYAA!", the awesomely awesome fusion of a boost and a spin. Ryu then outdoes himself again with a full-powered Boost Fire. Words fail us. This technique was later made playable in Climax, where you can in fact Boost while Spin Attacking just like in the anime.
• Spirited Competitor: Several racers come across as this, according to their post-GP interviews in GX. Quite a few refuse the prize money and/or give it away to charity, and others enjoy the challenge of the races and comment on trying to uphold the glory of the sport.
• The Stoic: Captain Falcon (among several others), although he somehow also manages to be a Large Ham (also among several others) in GX at the same time.
• Stout Strength: In the words of someone else, Goroh has this strange balance of fat and muscle going on. As does Mr. EAD. And Dr. Clash. And Draq, too.
• Stuff Blowing Up: If you lose your energy meter by crashing into a wall or running over a drain strip, your vehicle will explode in an overly dramatic fashion.
• Subsystem Damage: In the original F-Zero and in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, your vehicle's top speed drops significantly if you take enough damage. In this state, your vehicle starts smoking and sparking, an alarm sounds, and your Life Meter flashes. You need to get to the pit area quickly in this state in order to get repaired enough to get out of this state. In 99, this state also renders you vulnerable to getting blown up by any opponent Spin Attacking or Boosting into your machine, killing you instantly.
• Team Pet: The Arrows get one in the form of Speed Bird, a robotic bird that was presented to Super Arrow by one of his sponsors.
• Tech-Demo Game: The original was created to show of the SNES's Mode 7 graphics.
• Time Police: Phoenix. He has come from the 29th century to prevent some unspecified "disaster," but how it ties into the F-Zero Grand Prix is never explained. (Fandom believes that it has something to do with Deathborn.) Phoenix doesn't even hide the fact that he's from the future, despite refusing to tell his audience any details about said timeline. His Robot Buddy QQQ is actually his Time Machine, but can't return the pair to the future until his A.I. is repaired. Fan speculation usually pegs him as Falcon's descendant, but this is attributed more to Rule of Cool than any verifiable proof.
• Token Minority: Played with. We have several species of aliens with only one member representing them (i.e. Pico, Octoman, Draq, Leon, PJ, etc.; both Gomar & Shioh and Dai San Gen are exceptions, but this is justified), cyborgs, robots, androids, and genetically-enhanced animals. Most of the humans are presumably Caucasian, but Goroh is Japanese-American (therefore meaning that his son Dai Goroh is also mixed), Baba and Kate appears to be of African descent, Michael Chain and Alexander O'Neil (of Maximum Velocity) are black, Nichi (also from Maximum Velocity) is a Magical Native American, and characters like John Tanaka and Kumiko (again from Maximum Velocity) have names indicative of Asian ancestry.
• Transformation Sequence: Mighty Gazelle's bonus video in GX involves an epic transformation sequence into a moped.
• Truce Zone: As seen in GX, the Bet Race Diner in Mute City is this. Many a racer converges here to drink, chat, and race. Even foes like the Arrows and Zoda are shown to be somewhat more amiable towards one another here. It's a general consensus that this is one of the best scenes of the games, as it gives a brief glimpse of life off of the track.
• Twin Telepathy: The ultimate Fragile Speedster is a pair of linked aliens who say "Two drivers are better than one!". The same applies to Dai San Gen, a trio of telepathic siblings.
• Underwear of Power: Most of the female racers, and a few of the men.
• Unending End Card: F-Zero X hangs on a screen of two identical scantily-clad women with their backs turned looking and waving their hands at the player, with text saying "SEE YOU AGAIN!!" between them in the center.
• Unexplained Accent: Some of the voice acting in GX. Characters like Princia and Phoenix come across as being British for no reason whatsoever.
  • Phoenix actually sounded more like he was from Australia at times, though since it sounded like a fake accent, that could've been the actor slipping up.
  • As Magica is a desert kingdom, Princia's accent might allude to Middle Eastern lands once under British rule.
• Updated Re-release: F-Zero X Expansion Kit was intended to serve as a sort of titular Expansion Pack by requiring the original cartridge of X in conjunction with the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive add-on. However, online dumps of the game effectively combo the pair together as one file, turning likely the only way anyone will even play the game anymore into this as it contains everything in one package.
• Unimpressive Progress Reveal: Baba's character video from F-Zero GX is made up of several of these. First, we see him jump into the air, apparently leaping a great distance, only to then reveal he hoped over a small puddle of water. Next, we see him scale a cliff, only to zoom out and see the "cliff" is barely taller than he is. Finally, we see him holding up a boulder using only his finger, only to zoom out to show that the boulder is being held up by a crane.
• Vehicular Combat: Destroying other vehicles through ramming is as legitimate a victory strategy as beating them to the finish line.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Done twice in GX: Players are set up to believe that the Underworld will be the last race in Story Mode, only to play the final chapter on an ethereal racetrack against what is essentially F-Zero's God.
• Violence is the Only Option: There are some missions where you must disable a target vehicle with spin attacks and high-speed ramming maneuvers.
• Wacky Racing: Fairly tame from the racers themselves, as actions unrelated to course progression are rather limited. Most of the wackiness comes from the courses themselves, ranging from ramps to pools of lava right on the track.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Samurai Goroh in Chapter 2 from GX's Story Mode. If you don't learn how to exploit his Rubberband AI, he will always zip past you at the end and win.
• Watch It Stoned: Dr. Stewart, Jody, and Princia's bonus movies are essentially acid-trips. The first must be seen to believed.
• We Are as Mayflies: Several of the alien racers (i.e. Pico, Octoman, Draq, Gomar & Shioh) have a life expectancy exceeding that of their human contemporaries. For example, Dai San Gen look like children, but are 64 and their species has an average lifespan of 200 years.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Samurai Goroh and his son Dai Goroh wear a flag very reminiscent of the Japanese Rising Sun on their heads.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Mighty Gazelle after the Big Accident. According to the backstory, this happened to Deathborn on three occasions.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future: In the comic that came in the original F-Zero manual, Falcon states a bounty is worth 500,000 "Galactic Credits." However, in one of GX's story mode cutscenes, the currency seems to be "space credits," and the prize for winning an expert class grand prix is one billion space credits.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Jody doesn't even seem to be fazed by the fact that Black Shadow tried to kill her by stranding her in an exploding complex. Yet, she cannot stand octopi. Naturally, Jody doesn't take a shine to Octoman, who in turn believes that she should really just get over it.
• Wings Do Nothing: Phoenix's Rainbow Phoenix has wings that spread when boosting. They're just for show. Same goes for the custom machines with wings. Unless you're space flying.
• World of Badass: When you can go toe-to-toe with names such as Captain Falcon and Black Shadow without batting so much as an eye, you qualify for the mantle of badassery. Hell, even Mr. Zero, your run-of-the-mill commentator, is seen as a badass simply for having the guts to interview many of the evil/creepy characters in the series. It is should be noted that few characters have superpowers; i.e. a World of Badass Normal.
• World of Buxom: The only girls with flat chests (and justifiably so) are the 14-year-old Lily Flyer and 60+-but-looks-like-a-child San.
• World of Ham: The series becomes this way in GX. No one moves around like a normal person would, especially in the cutscenes.
• World of Silence: Silence, a planet with no life, thus nothing to produce any noise (except the F-Zero races, obviously).
• Wolverine Publicity: Falcon, Stewart, Goroh, and Pico—the original four F-Zero pilots—will always be unlocked from the start of each game they're in. Promotional art and renders for GX heavily featured all four racers (especially on the box art), as well as Black Shadow and Blood Falcon. The Story Mode also put a moderate amount of focus on Jody Summer (one of the only other racers available from the beginning of X). AX placed the spotlight on the new racers, especially Princia Ramode, Lily Flyer, and Phoenix. In SSB, Falcon, Goroh, Stewart, and Jody all receive Trophies in Melee (as well as a Trophy showcasing the vehicles of all 30 racers from X), while Falcon, Goroh, Stewart, Pico, Jody, Mr. EAD, The Skull, Blood Falcon, Black Shadow, and Zoda receive Trophies in Brawl. The fourth game again features the original four (plus their machines in the 3DS version), Jody, Mr. EAD, Zoda, The Skull, Blood Falcon, and Black Shadow as Trophies, along with James McCloud and Deathborn.
• Writer's Block: In an interview touching on the F-Zero-like aspects of Mario Kart 8, Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted to this being the reason there hasn't been any new game between 2004 and 2023, as he wasn't sure what new element(s) to add to make it worth bringing the series back.
• You Don't Look Like You: Since the in-game models in GX were developed by a team separate from the team responsible for the renders in each character's bonus movie and Story Mode in GX, quite a few racers look a tad bit different between the two mediums.
• You Have Failed Me: Deathborn in regards to Black Shadow. Somebody's getting an Agony Beam!
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In GX, Deathborn does this to Black Shadow, as you can gather from the above trope.
• Younger Than They Look:
  • Blood Falcon is technically only 4, but only because he's a clone.
  • Pico is an odd mix of this and Older Than They Look: Pico's 123, but is only an adolescent by his planet's standards.
  • "Digi-Boy" doesn't really look he's 8. Neither does Princia look 16 for that matter.
• Zeerust: Half played straight, half subverted. Although the games take place in the 26th century, complete with plasma-powered hoversleds, holograms, and all other sorts of fantastic inventions, there's still plenty of 20th/21st century items on display ranging from old-fashioned TV sets to laundromats to movie theaters...
  • In Maximum Velocity (the farthest-dated entry of the series), Jane B. Christie is said to be a fan of vintage automobiles, suggesting that older technology may remain, but are either seen as novelty goods/collector's items or included in more deliberately retro settings.

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Pour it on!! You're way out in front!

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