Western Animation / How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

"It's you and me, bud. Always."

"With love comes loss, son. It's part of the deal. Sometimes it hurts, but, in the end, it's all worth it. There's no greater gift than love."

— Stoick

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is the 2019 sequel to How to Train Your Dragon 2 and the final installment of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy. It was written and directed by Dean DeBlois (writer and director of the first two films), and was the first film by DreamWorks Animation to be distributed by Universal.

What began as an unlikely friendship between an adolescent Viking and a fearsome Night Fury dragon has become an epic trilogy spanning their lives. In this next chapter, Hiccup and Toothless will finally discover their true destinies: the village chief as ruler of Berk alongside Astrid, and the dragon as leader of his own kind. As both ascend, the darkest threat they've yet faced—as well as the appearance of a female Light Fury—will test the bonds of their relationship like never before.

The film was followed by a second Dragons Holiday special following the events of the film's Distant Finale titled How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming.

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How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World contains examples of:

• Aborted Arc: The idea of Hiccup using his father's notes to find The Hidden World is abandoned once the vikings have left Berk. While Hiccup and Astrid end up finding it anyway, it is the result of unrelated circumstances and not thanks to Hiccup's original plan.
• Action Prologue: The film opens with Hiccup, his friends and Valka raiding dragon trappers, apparently being a common occupation for them now.
• Adaptation Expansion: The original quote from the book series stated that "no one" knew why the dragons were disappearing. The quote from the film's trailer starts out identical to the book ("There were dragons, when I was a boy"), but goes on to say that "only a few know" where they went. The film gives an explanation for their disappearance that differs to the book in that the people of and descendants of the Hooligans and Berk keep the dragon's secret safe until man is ready to accept them again, while in the book King Hiccup orders Fishlegs and other bards to spread rumors and stories to all people that dragons were just a myth once they start leaving the human world to hide in the depths and cold wastes, meaning nobody after them will know where or why they left or that they existed at all until the "discovery" of Hiccup's memoirs.
• All There in the Manual: According to one of the bonus features for the home video release, the offspring of Toothless (Night Fury) and the Light Fury are known as "Night Lights."
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: In the dubbing into Latin American and Castilian Spanish, during the credits you can hear the song "El Cielo Nunca Cambiará" by the singer Melendi
• Amazing Technicolor World: The Hidden World holds many brightly colored crystals, coral, and fungi adorning the place. Some of the structures covered with fungi even glow in the dark to better illuminate their colors.
• Animal Motifs:
  • The Light Fury has behaviors very similar to a cat, in contrast to Toothless' dog-like loyalty (though he has quite a lot of feline traits as well.) This theme carries over to their hybrid offspring, which have markings similar to tuxedo kittens.
  • The Deathgrippers have features of scorpions and pincer-like claws reminiscent of a praying mantis, playing on the nightmarish factor of Big Creepy-Crawlies.
  • There is also one dragon, the Crimson Goregutter, bearing a resemblance to a moose.
• Armor-Piercing Response: During Grimmel's visit to Hiccup's home.
  Grimmel: [Stoick] had it right, you know? Making it his mission to destroy the beast so that you could grow up in a better world.
  Hiccup: He changed his mind.
  Grimmel: And look where that got him.
• Art Evolution: The new animation quality the animators developed here is smoother and more detailed with finer gesturing with the characters.
• Artistic License – Medicine: Even assuming Hiccup's craftmanship is capable of holding up for 10 years, prosthetics can't be worn for an indefinite amount of time. They need to be cleaned and removed from time to time because even the best ones rub and chafe, and without Hiccup or any other humans around to do this for him, Toothless's situation would have realistically gotten very gruesome very fast.
• Babies Ever After: The epilogue shows Hiccup and Astrid bringing their son and daughter to see Toothless and the Light Fury, who have three hatchlings of their own.
• Battle Couple: Astrid and Hiccup are this as they fight together to save dragons and later defeat Grimmel.
• Bear Trap: Grimmel tries to capture Toothless in one of these using The Light Fury as bait. The plan gets foiled by Hiccup who smells the trap.
• Berserk Button: Tuffnut, when his "beard" was cut by one of the Warlords during the final battle, causes him to yell in rage as he chases the terrified foe off.
• Big Damn Heroes: The Light Fury saving Hiccup from falling to his death in the climax, catching him midair right before hitting the surface of the water.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Astrid and Hiccup's kiss at the end during their wedding marks the beginning of their marriage.
• Bioluminescence Is Cool: Much of the Hidden World is illuminated by glowing algae and lichen, where it's not lit by luminous crystals. Under the radiance of these light sources, many dragon species that appear solid-colored on the surface (including Stormfly!) are revealed to have elaborate bioluminescent markings.
• Bittersweet Ending: Though the village and the dragons are saved from Grimmel and are still thriving until the rest of the world is ready to live in harmony with them, the dragons retreat to live in the Hidden World. Years later, when both have families of their own, Hiccup and Toothless reunite.
• Breaking Old Trends: This is the first installment in the series to not have the Book Ends of starting with "This is Berk" as the first words spoken in the beginning and have it again near the end in a monologue about Berk, and also the first movie to not end with the words "our dragons".
• Broken Aesop: Hiccup decides that dragons and Vikings should be separate for their safety, and the dragons can return when humans "deserve" them. This is meant to be a hard choice made for the greater good demonstrating what love is. But the movie never really demonstrates exactly why this choice needs to be made. There are antagonistic figures like Grimmel and the warlords, but they are defeated, and aside from them, it's not shown what the world at large thinks about dragons. This gets even worse in the follow-up special How to Train Your Dragon: Homecoming, which shows the next generation of Vikings have grown fearful and superstitious of dragons, specifically because of their absence. Hiccup tries to make a pageant to convince them otherwise, but this ends up a near-disaster, and in the end, it only succeeds because Toothless returned. So the separation between Vikings and dragons is shown to be the wrong choice, which has deepened the divide, and only the dragons' return fixed that divide.
• Call-Back: Hiccup makes Toothless an automatic tail fin so he can fly on his own which makes Astrid reference Gift of the Night Fury, questioning that he made Toothless one before and he didn't want it then. Hiccup answers that Toothless didn't have a reason at that time, but he does now; he wants to follow and court the Light Fury.
• Cape Snag: A Running Gag has the cape to Snotlout's rider suit getting snagged during missions.
• Casting Gag: The warlord Ragnar is voiced by Icelandic actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who had previously voiced Stoick the Vast in the Icelandic dubs of the previous two films. Ragnar shares a body model with Stoick.
• Central Theme: The Power of Love. Toothless falls in love with the Light Fury and spends the whole movie hoping to impress her. Hiccup's love for Toothless and dragon-kind has always been a motivating factor for him. Hiccup believes that fighting to keep Toothless and the dragons is a way of expressing that love, but eventually realizes that loving him means letting him go and allows him and the dragons to leave to the safety of the Hidden World. As Hiccup's Foil, the antagonist Grimmel the Grisly believes that Hiccup's love for them is weakness, his own desire for Toothless and the Light Fury purely selfish in nature. In the Darkest Hour, Grimmel is proven wrong. Hiccup's willingness to let go (freeing the Light Fury at the cost of his own life so that she could save Toothless) leads to the Light Fury saving him while Grimmel, who has no one, to plummet to his death.
  • Throughout the movie, the prospect of Hiccup and Astrid getting married is brought up multiple times by Gobber and Tuffnut, with the film ending with the two getting married and a Babies Ever After "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue.
• Cerebus Call-Back: When Hiccup makes the new automatic tail fin for Toothless, Toothless rears up on his back legs to lick at his face and pull him into a hug. Before taking the dragons away to the Hidden World, he hugs a crying Hiccup in the same way, and this time, it's the furthest thing from humorous.
• Chandelier Swing: Fishlegs pulls this stunt during the Final Battle, taking out seven mooks like bowling pins.
• Chekhov's Skill: Early on in the film, Hiccup is shown easily detaching his prosthetic leg so that Toothless can play with it. When Grimmel grabs onto his prosthetic during the climax, Hiccup unhooks it again and allows Grimmel to fall to his death.
• Childhood Friend Romance: At the film's end, Hiccup and Astrid finally tie the knot after all their years as friends and lovers. Also during the wedding, Ruffnut ends up choosing Fishlegs as her love interest.
• Combat Parkour: Astrid gives one of the Deathgrippers a powerful kick in the face while swinging on its tail, and then pushes off of its tail with her feet, causing it to be released from the rock wall.
• Commitment Issues: While Hiccup and Astrid are still dating, it is very clear that everyone is expecting the two of them to eventually marry. Both are a little apprehensive at this, Astrid especially. Notably they don't necessarily act like they don't plan to marry each other, their apprehension is more about when to do it. They eventually do get married the following winter, followed by the Babies Ever After epilogue.
• Continuity Nod:
  • A Freeze-Frame Bonus when the Riders return to Berk shows that one of the statues at the front of the island now has a different head, because Drago's Bewilderbeast destroyed it during the invasion of Berk in the second film.
  • Some dragon species like the Dramillion and Singetail from the Race to the Edge tv series can be seen on Hiccup’s map.
  • One of the descriptions Hiccup read of the Night Fury in the first film was "the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself...". This film shows a literal evidence for this by having Toothless channel lightning.
  • In the second movie, Hiccup irritatedly brings up that Toothless' saliva 'doesn't wash out' when the latter licks him. Turns out it makes a very effective colored glue/fireproof coating when mixed with crushed dragon scales for the riders' armored flight-suits/Toothless' new tail.
  • Astrid once again asks Hiccup an Armor-Piercing Question she asked in the first movie; "So what are you gonna do about it?", to which he responds "Probably something stupid."
  • When Hiccup is putting the finishing touches to Toothless's new tail fin that would allow him to fly without him, Astrid acknowledges that he got rid of the first one he made, only for Hiccup to point out that he did not have a reason for it until now.
  • The most tragic moment of the previous film is referenced for the sake of a punchline when Snotlout angrily questions one of Hiccup's decisions by asking "Who died and made you chief?" Everyone else in the crowd immediately groans at him for being so insensitive.
  • While trying to court the Light Fury, Toothless eventually decides to draw for her which gets her attention as he draws her face. He then growls at her when she steps at a line of his drawing. Also, as he draws a very good image of the Light Fury's face, Hiccup comments, "Oh, now you can draw?"
  • At the end of the movie, as they are going their separate ways, Hiccup touches Toothless' snout in the exact same way he did at their first meeting.
  • In the epilogue, Hiccup introduces his and Astrid's two children to Toothless, and they greet him by touching his snout with their hands.
  • After Hiccup and his gang bring a Crimson Goregutter on the island, it begins to play with a baby Gronckle Fishlegs is taking care of and accidentally knocks over some pole, producing Disaster Dominoes knocking over few buildings, just like at the beginning of the first movie after Hiccup shoots down Toothless.
  • The Light Fury's rescue of Hiccup is framed in exactly the same way as Toothless's rescue of Astrid in the first movie was: the human is tumbling through the air, gets caught, and then looks up to see the dragon ducking its head down to smile at them.
  • While being held prisoner by Grimmel, Ruffnut references her crush on Eret in the second movie (saying that that ship has sailed and she's over him now), and also mentions Fishlegs and Snotlout fighting over her while expressing her misgivings about both of them.
  • Hiccup kills Grimmel in a similar manner to how he tried to kill Krogan during their first encounter (i.e. untying his prosthetic leg).
  • In the epilogue Astrid rushes past Hiccup on Stormfly and looks back, silently challenging him to a race. It's the same interaction they had at the end of the second film, and Hiccup even gives his son a look as if to say: "some things never change."
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: While both Drago Bludvist and Grimmel the Grisly have various qualities that make them Foils and Evil Counterparts to Hiccup himself, they both have various things that contrast one from the other.
  • While Drago was a Hades Shaded Brute, Grimmel is Lean and Mean with an Undeathly Pallor.
  • While both used morally irreprehensible means of controlling dragons, Drago relies on breaking their wills and using an enslaved apex predator dragon to command them while Grimmel skips a few steps and uses venom to make them slaves to his suggestions.
  • While Drago was the leader of the Warlords, the warlords in turn hired Grimmel to help take down Hiccup.
  • Drago is the kind of guy who would throw an army and his Bewilderbeast at a problem, Grimmel is a Chessmaster, outthinking his opponents several moves ahead with the help of his comparatively smaller group of Deathgrippers.
  • Drago wanted to enslave dragon-kind so that he could later move to conquering humanity, while Grimmel is an Egomaniac Hunter that would prefer killing all dragons, starting with the Night Fury dragons.
  • While Drago shared Hiccup's physical distinction of being an amputee, Grimmel shares Hiccup's intellectual distinction of being an inventor of cunning dragon-handling gadgets and traps.
• Contrived Coincidence: The time skip at the end of the film has Hiccup and his family traveling to find Toothless. Despite Toothless having moved to the hidden world, Hiccup finds him, the Light Fury, and their hatchlings chilling on some rocks on the surface at the same time they decide to search for them.
• Costume Evolution: Like Hiccup's wingsuit from the second film, the Riders now wear flight suits and helmets that are coloured and customised to resemble their respective dragons. Most likely due to the improvements in animation quality, these armors are incredibly detailed with the dragons' own scales.
• Crafted from Animals: Hiccup and the gang all have armor made from their dragon's scales, which serves the dual purpose of giving them a resemblance to their dragons and allowing them to walk through fire.
• Creative Closing Credits: Features a Good-Times Montage of Hiccup and Toothless together from all three movies. Later, the headings for different sections/departments in the credits are animated with 2D Vikings acting out something related to the section's title (for example, for "modeling", a short animation shows two Vikings chipping away at a block to make a statue).
• Cry into Chest: Invoked by Tuffnut who presses Hiccup's head into his "beardy" chest at one point.
• Deadly Dodging: In the opening fight sequence, Fishlegs bends forward to reach for his pet dragon which makes a mook swinging at him hit another mook instead.
• Disney Villain Death: Grimmel plummets to his death into the ocean below, Hiccup dislodging his prosthetic foot as the Light Fury catches him.
• Distant Epilogue: The epilogue takes place nine years after the main narrative, with a now married, 30-year-old Astrid and Hiccup bringing their two young children to meet Toothless.
• Door Dumb: Ruffnut in the Action Prologue. Astrid shows her how the gate opens.
• Dude, Not Funny!: Gothi certainly thinks this of Snotlout after he asks Hiccup "Who died and made you Chief?". She gives him a nice whack with her staff for this idiotic comment.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Hiccup gets this in two forms in the movie:
  • Despite being the Chief of Berk, riding a Night Fury that was declared an Alpha in the previous movie, saving the townspeople from certain death at least twice, and dating one of the biggest badasses in the village, Tuffnut still feels the need to give Hiccup "dating advice" and constantly points out his flaws as if he was the same clumsy boy from the beginning of the first movie.
  • While they'll praise him if they feel it's warranted, the denizens of Berk in general seem to have no problem telling Hiccup that his plans are bad, his dreams of the Hidden World half-cocked, and that his dragon is probably never coming back.
• End of an Era: The movie's ending parallels the books in explaining why there are no more dragons.
• Enemy Eats Your Lunch: Grimmel's first encounter with Hiccup at Berk shows him helping himself to a cup of Hiccup's wine without permission.
• Explosive Breeder: According to The Art of How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, this is the reason why more and more hobgobblers keep popping up, "They're big as beach balls and have a very specific ability: they reproduce really quickly."
• Facial Dialogue: When he and Astrid watch Toothless' coronation and mating dance with the Light Fury in the Hidden World, Hiccup's awe-turned-sadness writes itself all over his face, as he fully confronts the possibility of having to let Toothless go for good.
• Failed Attempt at Drama: Snotlout in the Action Prologue when his dramatic entry gets interrupted by his butt getting set aflame.
• Fantastic Racism: Grimmel wants to exterminate all dragons, considering them vermin.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Grimmel hates Hiccup and Berk so much because he despises dragons, and views a society where humans and dragons live in harmony as a personal injustice.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: Behaviorwise, Toothless has always been an amalgamation of various animals, with dog and cat featuring in more or less equal measures. The Light Fury, however, is basically all cat.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: At least once does Astrid finish Hiccup's sentence.
• Flaming Sword: Hiccup still wields his flaming retractable sword, Inferno.
• Flanderization:
  • Toothless's doglike mannerisms are much more pronounced here, and his snark and intelligence are less prominent. Hiccup even speaks to him in a baby voice, the way people often do when speaking to their pets — something he rarely did in previous films.
  • Ruffnut's general lack of good sense and thoughtlessness has been exaggerated to the point she reveals the location of New Berk to Grimmel by mistake and she doesn't even care to control if she is followed or not while going back to the island.
• Flashback: Stoick appears in two of them. The first is one where he shows a younger Hiccup the village of Berk from a distance and tells him the myths about the Hidden World. In the second one, young Hiccup finds Stoick grieving over Valka, and he tells Hiccup how love comes with loss, words going through Hiccup's mind as he wonders if he has to let Toothless go.
• Flaunting Your Fleets: Grimmel is shown to have command over a massive armada of ships (the insignia on the ships' sails led to the assumptions that he took over Drago Bludvist's fleet following the latter's defeat in the second film). The movie reveals that the fleet isn't really his. Drago's lieutenants are in charge and are simply working with Grimmel to get their hands on the dragons.
• Flight of Romance: Toothless and the Light Fury engage in one after the former gets his fin fixed. Since the movie is set in the Grim Up North, the flight doesn't miss to include a romantic Wintry Auroral Sky.
• Flirting Under Fire: Astrid and Hiccup do this during the final battle, during which Astrid throws a canister of Zippleback gas for which Hiccup lights up with his sword.
• Food Fight: One breaks out at Berk's feasting spot, initiated by Snotlout.
• Friend Versus Lover: Toothless is put to the test several times. At one point he has to choose to follow the Light Fury or save Hiccup from falling out of the sky. He takes a moment but eventually goes for Hiccup.
• Furry Reminder: Toothless' intelligence almost makes you forget he's an animal, so he thinks like one despite being sapient. His mating dance is a very animalistic behavior to remind the audience of this.
• Giving Them the Strip: When Hiccup and Grimmel plunge off the Light Fury, Grimmel tears off Hiccup's wingsuit to prevent him from gliding to safety. During their struggle, Grimmel latches onto Hiccup's prosthetic leg, which Hiccup disconnects as the Light Fury comes to rescue him, allowing Grimmel to fall to his death.
• Good Taming, Evil Taming: While Hiccup tames dragons with patience and a gentle hand and Drago tames them by breaking their wills and mind control, Grimmel skips a few steps and drugs them with Deathgripper venom (including the Deathgrippers themselves) to make them mentally vulnerable to his commands.
• Good-Times Montage: Featured in the credits, showing heartwarming scenes of Hiccup and Toothless together, starting from the first movie and making its way up to this one.
• Grand Finale: This is the final film of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, as well as (presumably) the franchise as a whole.
• Happily Married: Astrid and Hiccup at the end of the film, being shown ten years after their wedding with two kids.
• Headbutt of Love: Hiccup and Astrid share one after the final battle.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hiccup tells the Light Fury to let him go and save a critically wounded Toothless instead.
• Holding Hands: Astrid and Hiccup do this during their wedding. It is a hand-fasting, after all.
• Hollow Earth: This is what the Hidden World turns out to be, a massive hole in the open sea surrounded by walls just short enough to allow water to flow in as a constant waterfall but not so much water as to fill the hole. The hole leads to a massive underground space large enough to be considered a world in its own right, a world lit by various bioluminescent life and crystals. It is the ancestral home of all dragons, and where the surviving dragons end up retreating when humanity proves too powerful and dangerous to survive with. The people of New Berk become the guardians of the secret of the Hidden World, hoping one day humans and dragons can live alongside each other again.
• Hollywood Acid: The Deathgrippers spy acid that easily melts metal.
• Hollywood Kiss: Astrid and Hiccup's kiss during their wedding is this.
• Honey Trap: Grimmel uses the Light Fury as this. Subverted since she does not serve as the trap on her own accord and given the chance she flies away with Toothless into the Hidden World.
• Hordes from the East: One of the warlords is Chagatai Khan, who is implied to be Mongolian.
• Hotter and Sexier: This film has a lot more emphasis on romance compared to the previous films and with more blatant innuendos shown. Examples include Tuffnut having his "boy talks" with Hiccup on wedded bliss. The costume designs of some of the characters (such as Hiccup's form-fitting dragon armor and Astrid's top with a lower neckline) are more suggestive than before.
  • There are two scenes where Hiccup literally gets smacked in the butt twice by Snotlout and Tuffnut respectively, and it's not subtle.
  • Then there is a moment with Hiccup and Astrid openly flirting while battling on a ship with Astrid throwing one of Hiccup's gas cylinders at some Mooks, followed by Hiccup throwing his flaming sword that causes a huge ball of fire to ignite in the background while the two gaze lovingly at each other.
• Hypocrisy Nod:
  • When Grimmel chastises Hiccup for the love he has for dragons, Hiccup is quick to point out that he himself has dragon minions. Grimmel defies this by retorting that he had not tamed his Deathgrippers so much as drugged them with their own venom, and he would not be upset should anything happen to them.
  • While a captured Ruffnut mocks Grimmel for his "long face", she acknowledges that she also has vertical facial features before mocking him for being much longer.
• Hypocrite: Grimmel wants to destroy Berk and kill all the dragons there, but is perfectly willing to use the Deathgrippers he's managed to train to aid in said goal. Hiccup actually points this out, but Grimmel just counters that his dragons are drugged-up slaves he has no personal attachment to.
• I Have Your Wife: Grimmel controls Toothless by taking his love interest hostage.
• Instant Sedation: Grimmel's tranquilizer crossbow drops dragons on the spot.
• Insult of Endearment: As all the Vikings are preparing to say goodbye to their dragons, Eret refers to his dragon Skullcrusher as "big ugly beast".
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Hiccup comes to the platonic version of this with Toothless. When Toothless successfully woos the Light Fury and is taken to the Hidden World, Hiccup becomes restlessly worried when he does not come back. When he, Astrid, and Stormfly find him, seeing that he is perfectly at home in the Hidden World with the Light Fury, he mournfully realizes that he would be happier there than he would be with him and decides to leave. He tells Toothless that he should go back when he brings them back to New Berk, and after they successfully defeat Grimmel and the warlords, Hiccup says his goodbyes to Toothless, knowing that he and the other dragons would be safer there than with him and his tribe.
• Last-Minute Hookup: After having spent the previous film being pursued by both Fishlegs and Snotlout, Ruffnut finally settles on Fishlegs during Hiccup and Astrid's wedding, claiming she likes sensitive guys.
• The Legend of Chekhov: Stoick's mariners' myth about the Hidden World turns out to be true.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: At one point, the Light Fury gleefully knocks Hiccup off of Toothless, who then swoops down to save him. When next we see Hiccup:
  Hiccup: (as his companions snicker in the background) Not a word.
• Lighter and Softer: Although it has its darker and more emotional moments, particularly with the dragons leaving, the film is much more humorous and laid-back than the second film. The film has no major character deaths, and even its villains are much more Laughably Evil compared to the near-completely humorless Drago (even if Grimmel is a pretty dark villain, he does have a few comedic interactions to keep him from being too grim).
• Living Emotional Crutch: Hiccup admits that without Toothless, he feels like The Millstone that he was before he met him. The big lesson he learns is how to stand tall without Toothless and to let his dragon make his own life.
• Mating Dance: The Light Fury initiates one with Toothless, who makes a complete mess of himself as he's trying to adapt the mating practices of various other dragons due to him not actually knowing how Furies mate with each other.
• Miming the Cues: Hiccup mimes a few courting methods to Toothless so the latter can keep up with the Light Fury and impress her, and ultimately not to shake a branch she's hanging from. The results are... mixed.
• Mirrored Confrontation Shot: The poster shows Toothless and the Light Fury confronting each other.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Hiccup's clearly feeling some shades of this during and shortly after landing from the flight from the Hidden World. It's not just the fact that he found out the Hidden World is not a viable option for Berk or any of its humans... but the flashback with Stoick also makes it clear how much he values love and relationships... and he just forced Toothless to get him out of a very dangerous spot, separating the dragon from the one he loves. He does brighten up though when he realizes the Light Fury followed them home.
• Mythology Gag: In the epilogue where Hiccup and Astrid bring their children to the Hidden World, the conclusion to the story he's telling them is taken word-for-word from the start of the original book.
  Hiccup: There were dragons, when I was a boy. There were great, grim sky dragons that nested on the cliff-tops like gigantic, scary birds. Little brown, scuttly dragons that hunted down the mice and rats in organized packs. Preposterously huge sea dragons that were twenty times as big as the big blue whale.
• The Napoleon: When Snotlout is trying to intimidate Eret, he steps onto a crate and then on a barrel just to reach his height.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Due to the movie being rushed out, a very substantial portion of the first trailer is made up of cobbled together scenes that outright didn't happen in the film. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Hiccup rallying the Berkians on a cliff.
  • The Light Fury growling in a cage.
  • Toothless and the Light Fury meeting in a clearing.
  • Hiccup affectionately telling Toothless that, "It's you and me, bud...always."
  • There's even a clip of Hiccup expressing astonishment that Toothless isn't the only Night Fury, although in the movie proper, he is.
• New Neo City: The new settlement is called New Berk.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Grimmel heard Ruffnut babble about the tribe's new island settlement and followed her back to the island after she escaped. When she got back to the island, she hasn't realized she told Grimmel about where Hiccup, Astrid and the Berkians are before she left. Hiccup asked Ruffnut, then finds out she was followed by Grimmel and his armada to the island, jeopardizing the Berkians and dragons' safety. Even the tone of voice she does when answering to Hiccup if she was followed ALMOST sounded like if she betrayed her own friends, but never did.
  Hiccup: (cautious) Ruffnut, focus. Were you followed?
  Ruffnut: I never look back, Hiccup.
• Official Kiss: Astrid and Hiccup's kiss during the wedding is this as it marks the beginning of married life for them.
• Out of the Inferno: Hiccup, wearing fireproof armor made from dragon scales, and Toothless walk through a blazing fire side-by-side with no signs of flinching.
• Overpopulation Crisis: While Berk is not in a crisis, Gobber does criticize Hiccup for allowing so many dragons to stay on Berk. Gobbler’s point is made clear as the rather small isle of Berk now has loads of dragon house towers built on top of each other with many huge dragons flying and walking all over the place. While it is shown the dragons and vikings have enough resources, the real problem comes from finding enough room to support another rescued group of dragons.
• Pale Females, Dark Males: The Light Fury is white, whereas Toothless is black. Averted with the Light Fury species as a whole; we see a few standing around and they're all as white as one another.
• Patchwork Kids: Two sets:
  • Hiccup and Astrid's kids: The girl looks very much like her mother, but with her father's hair color, and vice versa for the boy. He in particular looks so much like his father in the flashbacks that the same model was probably used for both characters.
  • Toothless and the Light Fury's hatchlings: All of them share the primary scale and eye color of one parent, but with spots of the other parent's color.
• Pin-Pulling Teeth: Astrid does this with one of Hiccup's dragon gas grenades on board of Grimmel's ship.
• Pity the Kidnapper: Ruffnut annoys Grimmel with her incessant talking (including her annoying twin brother, her love life, and her hair braids) until he snaps, releases her, gives her a dragon fledgling to ride and tells her to just get out. Tuffnut even says he feels sorry for the kidnappers who got stuck with her. Unfortunately, she's not nearly as clever as she thinks; Grimmel also heard her babbling about the tribe's new island base and had her followed back to them.
• Playing Cyrano: Hiccup helps Toothless with his first date via Miming the Cues.
• Precision F-Strike: Gobber at one point says "bloody hobgobblers".
• Properly Paranoid: The Light Fury is deeply distrusting of humans, and will either attack or flee if she spots one. Considering her introduction to the plot involves being captured by trappers, given to Grimmel, drugged, and left in a clearing for Toothless to find, this is a very fair and reasonable reaction.
• Riding into the Sunset: Much like the first movie, The Hidden World ends with Hiccup and Toothless flying off into the sky towards the sun. This time, however, they are joined by their respective significant others and offspring (and also Stormfly).
• Rousing Speech: Hiccup delivers one to the community in order to prepare them for the evacuation of the hometown.
• Ruling Couple: With Hiccup being Chief of Berk, Astrid and Hiccup become this when they get married near the end of the film
  • Implied Toothless, still an alpha dragon, and the Light Fury are this for the Hidden World.
• Sadistic Choice: Grimmel seems to have a habit for this:
  • First, he proposes to Hiccup to either give up Toothless, or he will raze Berk. Hiccup tries to Take a Third Option and moves his village away, which would have worked if not for botched kidnapping mission (although it's made clear that Grimmel knows the direction they went, so he would have found them eventually anyways).
  • Later, he also forces a bound Toothless to choose between his flock of dragons or the Light Fury's life. He chooses the Light Fury.
• Scary Impractical Armor: While this is generally averted in that most of the riders now have flight suits that are quite practical and protect them from fire and make them look intimidating while on missions, Snotlout's is the only one that is made more useless by it. His Badass Cape repeatedly snags whenever he tries to make a Three-Point Landing and his helmet done in Hookfang's likeness has a bad habit of being knocked at an angle, leaving him blind during fights. He also neglected to fireproof his butt.
• Sea Sinkhole: The entrance to the Hidden World is a hollowed out caldera with several waterfalls.
• Secret-Keeper: It's quite possible that Hiccup and Astrid never told any of their companions where the Hidden World was; they are the only ones that return to its entrance years later with their children.
• Shock and Awe: While flying with the Light Fury and trying to mimic her disappearance trick, Toothless finds out he can summon lightning to his body a la the Skrill, and temporarily become invisible that way.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Toothless' attempts at a Mating Dance look ridiculous, but it's based off male Bird-of-Paradise mating dances that are famous for how over-the-top and silly they look, as well as something that resembles a canopy-feeding black heron.
  • Two courting Deadly Nadders perform a dance similar to that of a Blue-footed Booby.
• Silence Is Golden: Several sequences, like Toothless trying to woo the Light Fury and their flight together afterwards, play out with little to no dialogue.
• Slow-Motion Fall: Hiccup and Grimmel falling to their death during the climax is shown in slow motion.
• The Snack Is More Interesting: Grimmel snacks on an apple while talking to one of the Warlords.
• Space Whale Aesop: Humans should get along, or else the dragons won't come back.
• Starts Stealthily, Ends Loudly: Hiccup's mission in the opening was supposed to be a stealth mission, but the others end up messing things up. Lampshaded by Astrid.
  Astrid: I thought this was supposed to be a stealth mission?
  Hiccup: Yeah, they always start that way.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: The movie has a subtitle in place of a number, unlike how the previous movie was just called How to Train Your Dragon 2.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Hiccup and Astrid's kids look a lot like the parent of the same gender; the boy in particular is his father's splitting image but with blond hair.
• Suicidal "Gotcha!": In order to escape the guards in the opening mission, Fishlegs jumps off a ridge only to reappear on the back of his dragon.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Hiccup's attempt to turn a small island like Berk into a bustling dragon utopia proves highly impractical, resulting in the island being seriously overcrowded and becoming a blatant target for their anti-dragon enemies. Even before Grimmel and the Warlords pose their threat, Hiccup is already considering moving the village to the Hidden World just so they can be more adequately accommodated.
  • Dragons are not domesticated animals and have been living with humans for around six years. As beautiful as Hiccup and Toothless's friendship is, once a suitable mate appears, Toothless's instincts take over and he starts prioritizing courting the Light Fury over almost anything else.
  • Despite Drago Bludvist's defeat and subsequent disappearance, his human army is still significantly large in numbers and has fallen under the command of several Warlords. Just because their cult-like leader is gone doesn't mean there aren't other people with authority who want or have been convinced to want the same goal.
  • On the other hand, this trope also extends to the army's mismanagement, as Drago's unexpected loss at Berk still caused internal chaos within its leadership. The Warlords now in command are not nearly as competent or organized as Drago himself was, and mostly rely on Grimmel to do the hard work until he double crosses them, by which point they're utterly powerless to do anything other than watch.
• Tag Line: The Friendship of a Lifetime. The Epic Conclusion.
• That Came Out Wrong:
  Snotlout: (to Hiccup) Who died and made you chief?'
• Theme Music Withholding: The film saves the iconic Flying theme for the moment in the climax where the Light Fury returns to save Hiccup from a fatal fall.
• Three-Point Landing: The heroes pull this move when descending from their dragons for the Final Battle.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: During the climax, Astrid throws a grenade-like canister filled with Zippleback gas onto a lower platform, and Hiccup throws Inferno down with it to ignite an explosion.
• Time Skip:
  • Downplayed with the main narrative. Unlike the five year gap between the first two films (which was bridged by the television series), The Hidden World takes place only one year after the second film, with Hiccup still struggling to cope with being chief after Stoick's death.
  • The Wedding Finale takes place in winter, presumably a couple of months after the main adventure.
• Token Aquatic Race: Berk is shown to have at least one Tidal Class dragon in its dragon population, which is a Scauldron. Fittingly, it is seen sitting half-submerged in a water tower.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • The trailer shows the Light Fury saving Toothless, though that wouldn't surprise anyone, and Toothless flying without his saddle, but with a new tail prosthetic.
  • The second trailer revealed that Drago's Bewilderbeast would return in the film, though it's only for a cameo.
  • The above trailer and a December 2018 ad for the film shows brief clips of an emotional scene where Hiccup pets and holds Toothless while he's crying, which is very obviously the scene where they say goodbye.
  • Between the trailers, TV spots, and preview pages of the books, it's possible to get a very solid picture of how the movie ends. Word of God didn't exactly help either, outright confirming in interviews long before the movie's release that the dragons were going to leave.
• The Warlord: Following Drago's death at the end of the previous movie, the survivors of his army regrouped and are now led by a Trio of Warlords, who plan to carry on his plans to capture the dragons to Take Over the World. However, lacking his leadership or intimidation factor their efforts are continually thwarted by the Hooligan Tribe, leading to them being forced to hire Grimmel the Grisly.
• Watch Out for That Tree!: When Toothless follows the Light Fury from the camp, he bumps his head into a tree while keeping his eyes on his love interest.
• Wedding Finale: The trilogy ends with Hiccup and Astrid getting married.
• We Have Become Complacent: One of the Central Themes of the film. Hiccup and his friends have become too dependent on their dragons, so when they face an Outside-Context Problem that dragons cannot or are not available to solve, they become less competent. The crux of the film is Hiccup and friends learning to stand on their own, which allows them to deal with parting ways with their dragons so they can go live in peace in the Hidden World.
• We Work Well Together: Valka acknowledges in the beginning that while the riders are impressive on their own or with their dragons, they lack any real chemistry when it comes to teamwork. They eventually get the hang of working together during the fight against the Warlord's armada. Hiccup and Astrid even get a Battle Couple moment.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After the final battle, the final fate of the warlords is never revealed.
• What Measure Is a Non-Cute?: The Deathgrippers are intimidating predators with powerful venom and scorpion tails, and thus we're not supposed to care that Grimmel is mind-controlling and abusing them or that Toothless murders them in the interest of rescuing the Light Fury — who incidentally is being controlled by the exact same substance.
• The World Is Not Ready: In the end, the dragons retreat to the Hidden World until the rest of humanity is ready to live in harmony with them.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Hiccup doubts himself after Grimmel succeeded to take all the dragons away from the tribe, Astrid delivers a pep talk to him, reminding him of how she has become the person she is because of him.

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"There were dragons, when I was a boy."