Western Animation / NIMONA (2023)

aka: Nimona

"The world kicks you around sometimes. But together... we can kick it back."

Nimona: Here's the thing. When we clear your name, then I am your official sidekick forever and ever. No take-backsies. Deal?
Ballister: I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.
Nimona: Don't overthink it.

NIMONA is a 2023 computer-animated science fantasy comedy film based upon the webcomic-turned-graphic novel of the same name by ND Stevenson. The film began (and nearly ended) life as the initially-unfinished final project from Blue Sky Studios; it was 75% complete when Disney shuttered the studio in April 2021, but was rescued by Annapurna Pictures in 2022 as the first film from their new animation division, with the animation being completed by DNEG's feature animation branch, working with several ex-Blue Sky employees. The completed film is helmed by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane (directors of Blue Sky's final released film, Spies in Disguise), with the voice talents of Chloë Grace Moretz, Riz Ahmed, Eugene Lee Yang, Frances Conroy, Ru Paul, Beck Bennett, Indya Moore, Julio Torres, Sarah Sherman, and Lorraine Toussaint.

The story follows Ballister Boldheart (Ahmed), a knight-in-training in a medieval/sci-fi universe who must team up with a spunky shapeshifter named Nimona (Moretz) to prove his innocence when he is publicly framed for murdering the Queen (Toussaint). It soon becomes apparent to Ballister that his new companion might be the very creature he is sworn to destroy — but with everyone out to get him, she's the best shot he has at clearing his name.

The film premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival June 14, 2023. It had a limited theatrical run on June 23 before finally launching on Netflix June 30. It would later be uploaded to Netflix's official YouTube account to be watched for free for a week on February 19th-26th of the following year (apparently to help it reach a wider audience).

Previews: Teaser, Trailer

---

NIMONA contains examples of:

• Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards: The Institute guarding the Citadel City is an elite group of knights that draws its membership solely from noble families, all of them descended from the fighting force established by the legendary hero Gloreth to protect the kingdom from the monsters lurking beyond the wall. As such, controversy ensues when Ballister Boldheart - a commoner - is allowed to undergo the trials and become a knight of the Institute, facing discrimination not only from within the Institute but also from without, with numerous citizens claiming that his ascent is "not what Gloreth wanted." In the face of Ballister's success, the Queen decides to dissolve the Institute's restrictions on membership... only to be assassinated in such a way that Ballister ends up getting the blame. The culprit is none other than the Institute's Director. Later in the film, it's revealed that Gloreth herself was just a peasant girl who actually befriended one of the so-called monsters before circumstances drove them apart, drawing the validity of the Institute's purpose and membership even deeper into question.
• Actor Allusion: Nimona's fight as Kwispy Dwagon, and the preceding commercials she got the idea from, use the The Banana Splits theme to accompany them. Another Chloë Grace Moretz character, Hit Girl, similarly fought to this music in Kick-Ass.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed with the Institute, as they're still an elitist antagonistic organization that upholds the Kingdom's xenophobic propaganda. However, a number of examples of their corruption from the graphic novel such as mistreating the homeless, attacking rioters, stockpiling Jaderoot despite being the ones to make it illegal, experimenting on Nimona on two separate occasions and their ableism are Adapted Out. Overall, the Director appears to work alone for most of her crimes in the movie. And unlike in the graphic novel where the Institution's rank and file are loyal to her and consider Ambrosius a traitor, in the movie, Ambrosius is at multiple points able to convince Institute guards to side with him against her.
• Adaptational Mundanity: A minor example: while the film keeps the Arthurian sci-fi technology, only Nimona herself is explicitly supernatural. In the comic, magic is a known (but esoteric) phenomenon, shapeshifters aren't unheard of (though none with Nimona's capabilities) and fantastical creatures like goblins and dragons exist.
• Adaptation Deviation:
  • In the comic, Ballister lost his arm when Ambrosius fired at him with a rigged lance after losing a jousting match. In the movie, Ambrosius cuts off Ballister's arm after witnessing him seemingly kill the queen, though more to disarm him (no pun intended) before the laser coming out of Ballister's sword hilt caused any more damage rather than anger.
  • In the comic, Nimona's final, climactic rampage was caused by her being broken by the combination of Ballister rejecting her and being captured and tortured by the Institute, making her decide to embrace being the monster everyone saw her as and using her drawn blood sample to transform into a dragon. Here, while Ballister's rejection certainly did her no favors, it's remembering how Gloreth turned on her and founded an entire civilization based on vilifying her that drives her over the edge and makes her transform into her Kaiju form.
  • The comic ends with Nimona seemingly being destroyed during her monstrous rampage, with none but Ballister and his friends knowing her hidden kindly side, and reconciling with her in secret while she leaves to unknown lands. In the film, Nimona seemingly dies in a Heroic Sacrifice, resulting in the kingdom's people seeing her as a hero instead of a monster. Thus the reveal that she survived implies she'll stay with Ballister and won't have to hide in secret anymore.
• Adaptation Expansion: The comic never actually addresses Nimona's true origins (there are several possibilities, any of which may be various degrees of true), but in the film's backstory, she was a shapeshifting being who, in her search for a place to belong, befriended a human girl who later turned on her due to fear.
• Adapted Out: Dr. Meredith Blitzmeyer, a scientist that studies magic who Ballister befriends, is absent from the movie and the role of her Magitek that serves as a Kryptonite Factor for Nimona is cut entirely.
• Advertising by Association: The main trailer boasts that the film is from the writer of Big Hero 6 and Monsters University.
• Aerith and Bob: Most of the characters have typically unreal fantasy names (Nimona, Valerin, etc.). Then there's... Todd. Downplayed since his full name is the equally fantastic-sounding "Thoddeus". "Diego" is also a common real-world given name, albeit a Spanish one. "Ambrosius" is Latin, meaning divine or immortal. And "Ballister" is an old Saxon name, mostly used as a surname today, meaning crossbow.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Nose: Mocking variant. When Ballister tells Nimona to reveal herself, she starts by turning into a gorilla and roaring at Ambrosius and The Director. While they stand frozen in shock and disarray, Nimona playfully touches Ambrosius on the nose.
  Nimona: Boop!
• Affectionate Nickname: Ambrosius calls Ballister "Bal". It's so in-grained that he has to correct himself when he accidentally continues to call him that when making a request to the Director to personally arrest Ballister.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Even before he got framed, Ballister was not well-liked by his fellow knights or even the public, with the exception of Ambrosius, due to him having come from a vagrant background. Nimona was similarly persecuted by villagers just because she was a shapeshifter.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: All of the creatures Nimona transforms into (apes, rhinos, whales) are all colored pink. All except her Kaiju form, which is pitch black.
• Ambiguously Human: While in her human form, Nimona appears to be a teenaged girl. However, her legs are shapeless, her hair is an odd shade of pink, and her canines are pronounced. When she gives a Slasher Smile her teeth are triangular like exaggerated shark teeth. When she's excited her eyes glow red.
• Ambiguous Gender Identity: Nimona's favorite forms in the movie appear to be female, she answers to she/her pronouns, and describes herself as a "girl". However, she can shift into a male form at will.^note It's not clear that gender is even relevant for a presumably one-of-a-kind non-human.
  Nimona: You want me to shift. You don't want me to shift. Pick a lane.
  Ballister: And now you're a boy.
  Nimona: I am today.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack:
  • When Ballister tries to start a hijacked car, the car's radio plays Judas Priest's "Breaking the Law", in an otherwise medieval/sci-fi setting.
  • A busker on the subway is also playing "Careless Whisper" on saxophone.
• Animorphism: Nimona is a shapeshifter who primarily turns into animals, though she can perfectly imitate humans and can take other, more abstract forms if she needs to.
• Annoying Arrows: Nimona is shot in the leg by one of the high-tech crossbows and treats it as an annoyance, despite Ballister freaking out and insisting on treating her. She compares it to a splinter that will be forced out on its own.
• Answer Cut: Nimona's comic in the teaser ends with a citizen asking "who would do such a thing" (destroying their kingdom), before cutting to Nimona making the comic, saying "me" to the camera, and growing dragon wings.
• Armor Is Useless: Ambrosius cuts through Ballister's arm with ease despite him being in full plate armour.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Nimona, after a child calls her a monster, asks Ballister why she's the monster when the entire kingdom is ready at a moment's notice to destroy anything or anyone deemed different. He has no good response, and he then admits that it might be best to leave the city and try to find a place where the two of them can be safe.
• Arrow Catch: While making Ballister insist that he won't freak out about the shapeshifting she's about to use to save him, Nimona casually catches an arrow that would have hit her in the face without even interrupting their conversation.
• Arson, Murder, and Admiration: The Town Crier news anchor refers to Ballister as a murderer and a monster. Nimona, listening in, gives a Slasher Smile and says he's perfect.
• Artificial Limbs: Just like in the webcomic, Ballister has a robotic arm, much to Nimona's delight.
• Art Shift: Nimona's account of how she gained her powers is animated in a 2D mosaic style resembling the tile patterns on the wall of the subway.
• Ascended Extra: Gloreth. While she does feature in the comic as an important historical figure, her role in the history of this world is greatly expanded in the film. She founds and builds the Kingdom and creates the order of knights that protect it from monsters. She is essentially worshiped as a Messiah figure in their culture. She was also Nimona's first human friend, who ultimately betrayed her and used her existence to justify isolating humanity behind a wall in fear of monsters like her.
• Bad Cop/Incompetent Cop:
  • The Knights are the setting's equivalent to cops, and are all somewhere on the spectrum between incompetent to evil. In the best of cases, they are well-meaning but deeply indoctrinated into a system that reacts to anything threatening or unfamiliar with lethal force, like Ambrosius and (initially) Ballister. At worst, they are actively willing to do horrible things to uphold that system out of a stubborn fundamentalist refusal to see its flaws, like the Director. And some, like Thoddius, are both incompetent and assholes.
  • When interrogating the Squire, Ballister tries to intimidate him into fessing up what he knows while Nimona... makes him the Good Cop by threatening him with murder.
• Bait-and-Switch: After the Engineered Public Confession, Ambrosius arranges a meeting with Ballister and assures him that he knows him to be innocent and believes his story. Except Ambrosius believes that it was Nimona who arranged the assassination by assuming the Director's form without Ballister's knowledge, to make him into a villain like her.
• Beat Without a "But": Before Ballister's knighting in the beginning of the film, Todd talks to him, appearing like he's going to give him a heartfelt apology for the horrible way he's treated him over the years, but he's not, and just continues to insult him.
  Todd: Hey Ballister, listen man. I just wanted to say, I know I've always been tough on you, and I never thought you belonged here...
  Ballister: ...And?
  Todd: And what? Did you think I was gonna keep going, or did you think I was gonna apologize for how I treated you? Oh, my God! That's hilarious. You're so stupid, I love it.
• Befriending the Bullied: The film's introduction reveals that, due to being the only knight in his class who wasn't born a noble, Ballister was teased by nearly every other knight in training. The one exception was Ambrosius, who went out of his way to befriend him (which led to them becoming a couple).
• Beneath the Mask: Ambrosius is dignified on the surface, but his Imagine Spot reveals that he's actually cracking under the pressure of being Gloreth's descendant, which is a position he never asked for.
• Berserk Button: The only thing that can get Nimona seriously angry is being called a monster.
• Blatant Lies: Twice Nimona claims a pile of guards were like that when she found them, even when they weren't like that a moment ago.
• Bloodless Carnage: There isn't a single drop of blood spilt when Ambrosius cuts off Ballister's arm. Similarly, there is no blood to be found when the Director stabs Nimona-disguised-as-Ambrosius in the stomach, although she could have made a safe opening for the sword. Averted when Nimona gets shot with an arrow, though, as some blood visibly splurts out at Ballister when he tries to remove it. However, when he does remove it, the visible arrowhead that was stuck in the bleeding wound not seconds ago is utterly untarnished by any blood splatter.
• Bottomless Magazines: The energy crossbows used by the knights shoot physical bolts, yet are able to fire them rapidly enough to pincushion a car with no need to reload.
• Breath Weapon: Nimona has the ability to breathe fire like a dragon or giant pieces of cereal like the in-universe cereal mascot Kwispy Dragon.
• Brick Joke:
  • During Nimona's initial rampage she chews on one guard's arm as an otter, with another guard asking the bitten guard which kind. They can't seem to figure it out. Later, she runs into the duo and the second guard notes that they can see why the first was confused, as Nimona's form has traits from two different otter species.
  • Nimona transforms into a shark to seal her deal with Ballister, then offers to let him put his head in her mouth. During their party after uploading the Director's Engineered Public Confession, one of the photos they take is of Ballister doing precisely that.
• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, the titular character is voiced by Ryōko Shiraishi, who previously voiced another shape-shifter.
• Central Theme:
  • People shouldn't be judged by what they are on the surface, and those who are wronged don't have to become what other people assume they are.
  • Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship.
  • It's important to embrace change and not let fear control you.
  • To base your entire culture on staying walled off from everything outside it, fight off anything from outside that dares to show its face, and to idolize the people in charge of that, is a bad idea.
• Citadel City: The entire kingdom is surrounded by giant walls armed with laser cannons to defend against giant monsters. It is stated that nobody in the kingdom has ever gone outside the walls or even knows what is out there. After Nimona and the Director's final clash, a huge chunk of wall is destroyed revealing a peaceful landscape beyond. In the aftermath, a park is built on top of the wall, the cannons are removed, and people begin traveling beyond the kingdom's borders.
• Clear My Name: Ballister is framed for the Queen's murder at the beginning of the movie, with a majority of the rest of the movie being him trying to find out who was actually responsible so he can clear his name.
• Clip-Art Animation: Nimona's fairy tale in the trailer has a princess comprised and animated from what appear to be magazine clippings. Nimona in the same comic is a sketch clearly cut out from a notebook and there is a moment of dialogue comprised of a Cut-and-Paste Note.
• Commonality Connection: The reason why Nimona chooses Ballister as the perfect candidate to serve him as a sidekick (a.k.a. to befriend him) is because both of them are wrongly accused of being 'villainous monsters' for reasons beyond their control (Ballister was framed up by the Director for being a commoner knight and Nimona for being a shapeshifter).
• Company Cross References: A variation. During the credits, there is a special section for Blue Sky Studios, the company in charge of the film before it was closed. An illustration of a squirrel, a nod to Scrat from Ice Age, Blue Sky's flagship franchise, as well as several of Scrat's acorns, can be seen alongside this section.
• Complete Immortality: Nimona is able to survive wounds that would kill anyone else, like being run through with a sword or being vaporized into particles by a point-blank hit with a Wave-Motion Gun. Not only that, but she seemingly hasn't aged since the thousand-year period between her time with Gloreth and the present day.
• Composite Character: Todd seems to be a combination of Ambrosius' more negative traits from the comic that were omitted here (namely being a thickheaded Glory Hound) and Rudy, the Director's bumbling assistant from the comic.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Ambrosius' judgment is hindered when he finds Ballister running around with Nimona, fearing that he's been replaced as Ballister's best friend.
• Creative Closing Credits: The end credits are accompanied by animated versions of Nimona's drawings dancing around.
• Creator Cameo: ND Stevenson provides the voice of Kwispy Dwagon, an in-universe cereal mascot.
• Crowd Panic: This happens during Nimona's rampage as a Kaiju monster, and intensifies as The Director turns the Wave-Motion Gun on the city.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: The Insitute is ultimately defeated in the rooftop battle with Ballister and Nimona, but they still manage to put up enough of a fight to give the heroes a challenge for the first time in the film, to the point that Nimona ends up pinned down by the Institute's Lightning Guns and left frantically struggling to find a form that can escape the onslaught.
• Curse Cut Short: The film ends on this; as Ballister sees Nimona still alive, he lets out a joyful "Holy sh-" before the film smash cuts to the title.
• Cute Little Fangs: Nimona has tiny pointy fangs even when in human form (which get bigger when she does a Slasher Smile).
• Cute Monster Girl: Subverted. Nimona's human shape isn't her default. Ballister's insistence that she 'just be normal' i.e. remain in human form, doesn't go over well.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Nimona was once a lonely shapeshifter who befriended a young girl and formed quite the bond with her before the girl's parents turned her against her and she and an angry mob drove her away. That girl would go on to become the founder of the Institute and Nimona would live in the kingdom in secret, always reminded that the world sees her as a monster.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Ballister wears black armor in contrast to the white and gold armor that the other knights wear, and he is a legitimately nice guy who got framed for a crime he never committed.
• Daydream Surprise: Goldenloin has one while riding with the Director, where he vents to her about his turmoil over having to hunt down his former lover before his rant smash cuts to him sitting quietly.
• Death Glare:
  • Ballister gives Nimona an amazing one after the fight in the marketplace, when she says "I hate to say it, but you make a pretty good bad guy."
  • Earlier, before the knighting ceremony, Ambrosius gives a more subdued one to Todd and has to be held back by Ballister after Todd mocks Ballister's origins and worthiness to be a knight.
• Death Seeker: Nimona admits to Ballister that a part of her wants to be killed so she doesn't have to deal with the pain of being hated and feared by everyone anymore. During her emotional breakdown at the end, exhausted from her brief rampage as a monstrous Kaiju, she exposes her heart with the intention of ramming it through the outstretched sword of Gloreth's statue.
• Deconstruction: Of what a world centered around a fairy tale legend would look like in the long run. In a world that is insular and obsesses over a legend to the point of statically pinning their entire culture around it, civilization would still progress because of the enhanced needs of keeping themselves socially and geographically stunted. Nobody stops to question the monster hunter myth, making everyone subservient to the Knights' Institute. The knights themselves have spent all their training preparing for the supposed return of a Kaiju-class monster, and they're barely competent at catching regular criminals or even standard-sized monsters.
• Destruction Equals Off-Switch: Nimona's solution to opening Ballister's cell is punching the console next to it.
• Destructive Savior: Deconstructed. After Nimona reappears as a monstrous Kaiju, the knights scramble to kill her, only to arguably cause even more destruction than she did by knocking her into buildings and generally getting civilians caught in their panicked friendly fire. Having to rescue civilians from the destruction caused by his fellow knights causes Ambrosius to question if they're even the good guys in the situation.
• Didn't Think This Through: While the plan to trick the Director into confessing works brilliantly, Ballister and Nimona leave out the part where she was disguised as Ambrosius during the whole thing, allowing the Director to claim that the whole video was Nimona shapeshifted as her.
• Diegetic Switch: "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest is first heard inside the car Ballister hijacked. It then becomes background music during the fallout of the Director's Engineered Public Confession.
• Diligent Hero, Slothful Villain: Sir Ballister Boldheart is a serious, mature, hardworking professional who earned knighthood despite the Institute's Absurdly Exclusive Recruiting Standards. His rival throughout the film, Sir Thoddeus "Todd" Sureblade, is a classist Manchild recruited from the noble families, and thanks to this privileged background, he's both physically and intellectually lazy. Among other things, Todd prefers to trade immature quips and showboat instead of treating his job seriously, takes Nimona's bait and disparages Ambrosius for being more diligent in reviewing security footage, only achieves a brief victory against the heroes by ganging up on them, and unlike both Ballister and Ambrosius, proudly refuses to learn anything.
• Disney Death: Nimona seems to perish after she sacrifices herself to stop the Director from firing one of the wall's cannons into the kingdom, but she reappears at the end of the movie, to Ballister's joy.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Ambrosius disarms Ballister by literally cutting his arm off, when he could have just knocked away the sword, which Ballister claims was how they were trained. It's all heavily reminiscent of police being trained to use lethal force even in circumstances that don't require it.
  • Several conversations between Nimona and Ballister sound similar to a person asking their queer friend questions about themselves. ^note  Made especially clear when one remembers that the original graphic novel's creator, ND Stevenson, has confirmed Nimona to be genderfluid with no set gender or sexuality
  • An Engineered Public Confession that is broadcasted via loading the video online after the fact gets countered by the incriminated person claiming that the person on the video is actually Nimona shapeshifting as them. At the time the movie came out, a lot of awareness was being raised about image and video alteration technology that had become advanced enough for a much bigger pool of people than before to have the means to create similar situations in real life.
• Doom Doors: When Ballister and Nimona flee the knights in a badly damaged flying car, it breaks down with this sound.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: The Director has recurring nightmares of a great destructive force attacking the kingdom and destroying the walls that have protected it for the past thousand years, and all her villainy is out of a desire to prevent this from happening. When Nimona goes berserk and rampages on the kingdom in her Kaiju form, the Director quietly panics as her dreams are coming to pass.
  • Ironically though, in the final battle the Director herself has become the malicious force that threatens the city, while the actual destruction of the wall turns out to be a neutral to positive development for everyone, and a side effect of stopping the threat.
• DreamWorks Face: Nimona sports a very cocky face in most of the promotional posters advertising the film.
• Driven to Suicide: Nimona initially expresses after encountering a child who labeled her as a "monster" that sometimes she wishes those who demonize her could put her out of her suffering. She takes matters into her own hands after her argument with Ballister during the third act, where she attempts to take her own life by impaling herself into the statue of Gloreth.
  Nimona: I don't know what's scarier. The fact that everyone in this kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart... Or that sometimes I just wanna let 'em.
• Dungeon Punk: The Kingdom still operates under the Feudal system, with Knights that protect it being from noble families and the entire setting holds an aesthetic resemblance to The Middle Ages. It also has touchscreen-technology, the internet, breakfast cereal, holograms, combustion vehicles (both on wheels and hover-based), Punk Rock and Heavy Metal, home appliances, public trains, mechanical prosthetics, board games, pizza and so on. Unlike in the graphic novel however, Nimona is the only explicitly supernatural thing in the setting, with no mention of any other kind of monster or magic existing outside of In-Universe fiction.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Ballister spends a long time on the run, and Nimona has spent even longer being hated and feared by everyone for what she is. In the end, not only is Ballister exonerated, but Nimona sacrificing herself to stop the Director from firing the wall cannon on her own people completely changes the public's perception of her. The sacrifice also ends up destroying the wall, revealing to the public that there was nothing to fear outside of it. After a time jump, Ballister is happily back together with Ambrosius, the people are now free to leave the kingdom to explore the wider world, Nimona is memorialized as a hero instead of as the monster she was falsely accused of being for 1000 years, and it turns out that Nimona survived her Heroic Sacrifice, to Ballister's joy.
• Easily Forgiven: Ballister never holds Ambrosius cutting off his arm against him, much to Nimona's surprise, saying that Ambrosius was just following his training and stopping a weapon. However, he does not take Ambrosius choosing the Director over him the same way, and is cold to him for the rest of the movie. They only reconcile in the epilogue.
• Eats Babies: As part of Ballister's Hero with Bad Publicity status, when he's seen in public at the market working with a "demon baby" one person shouts they thought he eats babies.
• Energy Bow: Befitting the "medieval sci fi" aesthetic, the guards are armed with energy crossbows that shoot glowing mechanical bolts.
• Engineered Public Confession: Nimona and Ballister pull this on the Director when Nimona pretends to be Ambrosius, even managing to avoid any tell-tale give-aways to the audience before "Goldenloin" starts an over-dramatic death scene upon getting impaled clean through. Unfortunately, this makes it likewise possible for the Director to turn the same tactic back on them, making a public announcement that the "her" that confessed was actually a disguised Nimona, using footage of her shapeshifting to further drive fear and suspicion amongst the populace and utterly derailing the duo's plans. It's implied that she also used this same claim to convince Ambrosius of her "innocence" after finding ancient proof that Nimona was Gloreth's monster to convince him of her "evil plans".
• Et Tu, Brute?: When it becomes clear that Ambrosius believes that Ballister is responsible for the Queen's death, Ballister is devastated, and becomes bitter and cold towards Ambrosius for the rest of the movie. The epilogue, however, shows they were able to patch things up.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Just like in the original comic, the Director is never referred to by name, only "the Director".
• Evil All Along: Although the Director is initially portrayed as the stoic and altruistic head of the kingdom, she's later shown to be a sinister authoritarian who framed Ballister and is hellbent on maintaining the kingdom's status quo, willing to take even the most morally bankrupt measures in doing so.
• Evil Gloating: A very subtle version only noticeable in hindsight. The Director's comments to Ballister about how the public "will see [him] for who [he] truly is" prior to his knighting ceremony are actually referring to how she intends to have them see him as she does; a disruptive villain who is a threat to their very order. Likewise, when she confronts him in prison after he's initially arrested, she words her dialogue to him in such a way that it seems like she's Disappointed in You, but is actually doing this to Ballister underneath that, like telling him that no-one will be listening to him anymore. This seems to be her maintaining Plausible Deniability and maintaining her good image to avoid any suspicions being cast on her, whilst also letting her true opinions be known in double-speak.
• Evil Is Hammy: Nimona has a blast when she assumes Ballister's form as a distraction and invokes this, playing him as a cackling Card-Carrying Villain who proclaims he hates smiles and cupcakes and thinks babies are ugly.
• Evil Plan: The story begins with The Director framing Ballister for regicide and then hunting him down, simply because he was a commoner trying to be a knight, which offended her sense of the kingdom's status quo. She seeks to make an example of him so no one will try again.
• Evil Reactionary: The Director fits this to a tee, with a lot of her presence dedicated to fear-mongering her constituents regarding Ballister and Nimona despite neither posing any real threat to the kingdom.
• Exact Words: When handing him his sword of the knighting ceremony, the Director tells Ballister that the kingdom "will see [him] for who [he] truly is". She wasn't talking about what Ballister saw himself as but what she thought he was. The sword she had handed him was rigged with a laser that would kill the queen, thus "confirming" the bias of everyone that thought the queen was wrong to trust him.
• Faceless Goons: All the knights except Ballister, Ambrosius, and Todd are always wearing helmets or facing away from the camera.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing:
  • When the Squire gives Ballister his sword, he is seemingly confused, inquisitively holding it as if it feels wrong somehow. The Squire tries to show him something on his phone, but the ceremony begins and he's forced to leave, so Ballister puts it out of his mind. A couple of minutes later, the sword turns out to be rigged to kill the Queen (Ballister could sense that the weight and balance was off), and the Squire wanted to show him how the Director was the one that rigged the sword.
  • A hybrid example between this and Rewatch Bonus occurs after Ballister gets thrown in jail. Just before the Director leaves him, if you look along the bottom edge of the left wall (the same wall Ballister's cell is on), you can spot a rat coming toward Ballister that appears to be an odd shade of pink just before Nimona appears in his cell. Anyone familiar with Nimona's shapeshifting will immediately realize that said rat is also Nimona, justifying how she was able to not just sneak in, but fit through the bars.
  • When the Director stabs Ambrosius, his dying spasms seem less realistic and more like someone overacting their own death. Because he's actually Nimona in disguise.
• Floorboard Failure: When escaping from the castle, Nimona transforms into a whale. She notes the floor is surprisingly stable right before crashing through several floors. Ballister accuses her of doing it on purpose, which she doesn't deny.
• Flying Car: As part of the Science Fantasy motif, flying cars and carriages are common in the film's world.
• Foil: Nimona and Ambrosius serve as clear foils to one another:
  • Visually, Nimona is a short red/pink girl with a punk theme, while Ambrosius is a golden, well kempt Knight In Shining Armour.
  • They also represent two sides of the film's theme of unjust systems; Nimona is an outsider who was rejected as a monster and feels alone and ostracized, while Ambrosius is very high in its hierarchy, but feels isolated and confined by it. Nimona is drawn to Ballister as a fellow reject, when he's labelled a criminal, while Ambrosius's connection to Ballister makes him question the state of things.
  • Both also misunderstand the other's relationship with Ballister and compete for his favour (Nimona labels Ambrosius his nemesis, while Ambrosius believes Nimona is corrupting him), while technically being correct (as Ambrosius is the one trying to hunt Ballister down, while Nimona is very much trying to convince Ballister the system is beyond saving - they both just put the worst possible spin on it).
• Foreshadowing:
  • The illustrated narration of the monster attacking the land in the film's beginning has Gloreth appear and heroically stab it in the heart with her sword to vanquish it. Upon Nimona remembering how the events actually happened, it becomes clear that it was a visual metaphor for how Gloreth broke Nimona's heart by turning on her at the behest of the fearful adults around them. By the film's climax, a suicidal Nimona, lost in the form of the monster everybody believes her to be, is ready to fulfill the "role" of the villainous monster of the story by impaling her heart upon the sword of Gloreth's statue, before Ballister stops her.
  • In the locker room, the Squire looks visibly concerned while handing Ballister his sword and tries to show him something on his phone, but then Todd interrupts him with his showboating. This distracts everyone enough for the Director to enter the room, causing the Squire to quickly run away at the sight of her. Turns out he inadvertently got footage of the Director switching Ballister's sword, and was trying to show it to him, but was too afraid to openly speak up in front of her.
  • When Nimona first arrives at Ballister's hideout, she casually puts her arm on a spinning saw blade, which stops without causing her any apparent harm. While Ballister is too distracted to notice at the time, this is a clear sign that she's more durable than she appears.^note Though given that even modern tablesaws have automatic stop safety features, Ballister and the audience could be forgiven for assuming that Nimona was simply an overconfident kid with workshop experience.
  • After Ballister gets thrown in jail, Nimona can be seen in the same cell, seemingly having been arrested as well, with her little "once everyone sees you as a villain" speech and the regret in her voice when she says it implying she's had some history with said topic. The rest of the movie not-so-subtly implies that damn near everyone sees her as a literal monster - a freak of nature that must be slain - just for being "different." She basically just gave him her entire backstory in just one sentence.
  • After remembering Nimona's shapeshifting powers, Ballister instinctively reaches for his absent sword, forgetting it's not there, and Nimona shows genuine anger for the first time when he calls her a "monster." In the third act, when Ballister finds out Nimona was the "legendary evil" Gloreth faced 1000 years ago, Ballister confronts Nimona and nearly calls her a "monster" again. When Nimona angrily demands he actually say the word out loud and begins to shapeshift, Ballister instinctively draws his newly returned sword. This time it causes Nimona to cross the Despair Event Horizon and flee.
  • While riding the subway, Ballister tries to get Nimona to tell him her origins, in the hopes of finding out more about her power. She gets sentimental and talks about how she was a little girl playing with the birds, fish and deer before hearing singing coming from a wishing well. Then she spins the entire thing into a joke by saying her wish was to be trapped on a subway with an uptight knight asking small-minded questions. After falling out with Ballister, a flashback to Nimona's childhood reveals she was partially telling the truth about everything up to making a wish. The only difference was instead of being a human girl like depicted in the flashback, she first appears as a shapeshifting being who takes the form of a bird, then a fish, then a deer, to try to fit in with each kind of animal only to be rejected by each of them when they sense her "otherness." Nimona only turned into a human girl after she found a little girl singing by a well and transformed to befriend her. Considering the girl she befriended was Gloreth, Nimona did tell Ballister her origin, except it was the origin of what mattered, not her powers but how she became the person she is today.
  • Nimona argues with Ballister over his decision to only show the evidence of him being framed to Ambrosius instead of releasing it publicly, saying she "gets" what he feels being betrayed by a friend, but that he should release the information so he and everyone can start questioning everything they know about the Institute, the kingdom and Gloreth. Nimona knows firsthand that the Institute and the kingdom were founded on lies because Gloreth was just a little girl who befriended Nimona then turned on her out of fear. People then used that encounter to prop Gloreth up as a savior and use imaginary monsters like Nimona as an excuse to isolate themselves behind the walls of the kingdom.
  • When shooting out ideas for what villainous plans she and Ballister could perform on their first meeting, one of Nimona's suggestions is destroying a village, laying low until they're almost forgotten about, then rising like a fiery phoenix from the ashes to overthrow the government. To stop the Director from firing a Wave-Motion Gun that would destroy countless innocents, Nimona shape-shifts into a massive birdlike creature made of fire to charge into the weapon and blow both of them up, seemingly sacrificing herself in the process. In the film's epilogue, after the corrupt institution has been overthrown and the people are beginning to move away for their fear-driven teachings, Nimona makes her survival known to Ballister, revealing that the flaming bird was actually a Phoenix.
  • Whenever she is stressed, or in a dangerous situation (or both), the Director clutches her scepter tightly in both hands. In the finale, it's revealed that it contains a Ray Gun like the one that killed the Queen, and the Director shows little hesitation in using it once the chips are down.
  • Nimona's friend from the past is introduced playing with a toy sword, hinting at her identity before her name is revealed.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: The trailer opens with a story by Nimona about a princess in a tower who insults Nimona in her bird form, only for Nimona to set her on fire and destroy her kingdom.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • If one pauses at the right time during the trailer, one can see a dilapidated billboard reading "Blue Sky" with graffiti reading "never dies".
  • The text on the scroll in the opening scene tells the tale of a prosperous kingdom that lived in the embrace of "Blue Skies," and was ultimately engulfed in darkness by another kingdom that lived in "blis[sful] ignorance" where "rod[ents] of the foulest hearts skitter [and] scream".
  • In multiple points of the film, the various pride flags can be seen on neon signs scattered throughout the city.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: When Ballister, who suspects that Todd was the one who set him up, accuses the Squire of covering for him, the Squire indignantly exclaims, "Who would protect Todd?"
• From Nobody to Nightmare:
  • In-universe, this is how The Director paints Ballister after the Queen is killed: he was a commoner, and now has become the greatest villain in the kingdom.
  • In the past, Nimona was this: she only wanted a place to belong, and once she thought she'd found it, was persecuted and driven out by the people she thought had accepted her, leading her to adopt a mindset of Then Let Me Be Evil.
• Fugitive Arc: Ballister is sworn to protect the kingdom from Villains and Monsters. Yet, framed as a Villain, he goes on the lam, searches for the real culprit, and reluctantly teams up with a Monster.
• Getting Eaten Is Harmless: At one point Nimona swallows a group of guards as a whale, then shoots them out of her blowhole before shifting again.
• Gilligan Cut: After refusing Nimona's help during their first encounter, Ballister insists he isn't going to get arrested before he storms out to prove his innocence. Cut to him getting tossed in prison.
• Glowing Eyes: Nimona's eyes glow a pinkish white whenever she uses her powers. She also seems to have tapetum lucidum. During the prison break, her eyes glow red in sync with the flashing alarm. During the scene when Ballister is begging Goldenloin to believe that he wouldn't kill the queen, a stray searchlight hits her face and her eyes light up, causing Goldenloin to visibly recoil.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: When he hears Nimona knocking on his door, Ballister goes for the first weapon he can find, which is an already-broken bottle. Naturally, Nimona isn't impressed.
• Groin Attack: Ballister pitches Nimona in armadillo form into the crotch of a knight, causing him to double over in pain.
• Have You Tried Not Being a Monster?: Ballister's attitude towards Nimona basically (and more-or-less literally) amounts to this for the first half of the movie, telling her not to shapeshift and just stay in her girl form.
• Heel Realization: During the final fight, Ambrosius and the other knights see Ballister stop Nimona by simply being kind to her, and getting her to return to a human form. They realize that she didn't actually attack the city; all of the damage was done by them firing at her and knocking her into buildings. They then all turn on the Director when she insists they fire a cannon on Nimona, despite the damage that would do and the knowledge that Nimona's no longer a danger.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: All of the knights wear face-concealing helmets, except for Todd.
• Hero Antagonist: Though some of the knights can be huge jerks, especially Todd, they are ultimately just hunting for Ballister because they believe he killed the queen and later only try to hunt down Nimona because they were told that she was the monster that Gloreth defeated. The moment they realize that Nimona isn't a threat to the kingdom, they refuse the Director's orders to fire the wall cannon at her.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Nimona seemingly sacrifices herself to kill the Director and stop her from blowing up half the city in her attempt to kill her. Subverted as the very last scene of the movie shows she survived.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Coupled with Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, in her drive to prevent her nightmares of the kingdom's apparent collapse from coming to pass, the Director ends up becoming that very threat, not only slaying the Queen for violating the status quo but eventually turning one of the wall's cannons against the citizens in her fervent attempt to kill Nimona.
• The High Queen: The Queen broke a thousand-year-old tradition to let Ballister become a knight, speaking glowingly of him and of her plans to let all people, common or noble, try for the knighthood. Unfortunately, the paranoid Director killed her for it and framed Ballister at the same time.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In the modern day, Gloreth is cheered as a brave hero and the founder of a great group of knights. She was actually just a little girl who befriended Nimona, only to turn on her after the townspeople freaked out at Nimona's powers and the town caught fire in the riots.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: All Nimona did in the past was befriend Gloreth, but then she accidentally freaked out the adults with her shapeshifting, which caused one them to throw a torch that bounced off her back and caused a fire. A thousand years later, Nimona is remembered for supposedly having tried to exterminate humanity before being "slain" by Gloreth.
• Hope Spot:
  • After the Director's Engineered Public Confession, it looks like Ballister and Nimona have won and everything's going to work out fine. Then the Director discovers the scroll detailing Nimona's origins, and uses it to deflect blame from herself and to drum up hatred of Nimona.
  • In Nimona's backstory, she finally found a friend in Gloreth, and Gloreth accepts her shapeshifting as well. Then the villagers find and attack her, and Gloreth gives in to the pressure and condemns Nimona as a monster.
• The Horseshoe Effect: The Director pursues an insanely harsh and fundamentalist interpretation of justice, law, order and control. Despite her self-proclaimed virtue, she is incredibly guilty of many sins while trying to do "Gloreth's will", including pride. By the end of the movie she's trying to destroy half the kingdom, becoming the villain she claimed to oppose.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: As much as Nimona tries to pretend to be a Card-Carrying Villain, all she really is is a scared, lonely child who embraced a label that was forced upon her. The Kingdom, however, seems to have embraced a cultural identity of monster-slaying, despite no one having encountered a monster in a thousand years, with everyone's first instinct when they see Nimona is to declare her a threat. They are also neck-deep in Feudalistic ideas of class, with the Queen wishing to make knighthood a profession based on merit being considered so radical an idea that the Director has her assassinated because she saw this break in tradition as an existential threat to their entire society, making Ballister her patsy in order to delegitimize the idea to the public at large.
• Humanshifting: As a gag, Nimona uses a variant on the "who has two thumbs" statement by claiming to have four thumbs, a fact she then demonstrates by shifting an extra thumb on each hand. She also turns into Ballister to distract some knights, a small child to try and lure a squire into a dark alley (and an Enfant Terrible when he doesn't take the bait), and Ambrosius to get an Engineered Public Confession out of the Director. But then the Director claims Nimona was impersonating her.
• Idiot Ball: You'd think that Ballister would have the sense to make a copy of the Squire's evidence.
• Imagine Spot: After Ballister and Nimona kidnap the Squire in the market, when the Director checks in on Ambrosius, he has a Freak Out about his conflicting thoughts regarding his lingering feelings for Ballister and his duty to arrest him. It then turns out that the outburst was all in his head and he quietly assures the Director he's fine.
• Impact Silhouette: Nimona crashes through the floors of the Institute in the form of a whale. When the Director surveys the damage, she looks up and the holes in the floors are perfectly shaped like a whale, fins included.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: While surveying security footage of Boldheart's distraction, Ambrosius notes (among many giveaways) that Boldheart 'hates freestyle jazz'. This clue leads him to demand they keep the footage rolling, eventually revealing the real Boldheart.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Ballister attempts to defend Nimona to Ambrosius by describing her as "smart, kind, and sophisticated." Cue Nimona in otter form laughing at a guard for wetting himself.
• Interrupted Suicide: Having crossed the Despair Event Horizon after Ballister's apparent rejection of her, Nimona attempts to stab herself through the heart with the statue of Gloreth's sword. Ballister stops her just in time.
• Ironic Echo: The Director's last words before Nimona destroys the cannon with her still inside are word for word what Gloreth had said to Nimona a thousand years ago when she betrayed her. Its repetition a few times throughout the film in the "heroic" recounting of the event and by a child attacking a bunch of holographic monsters implies that the phrase had become Gloreth's Catchphrase over the centuries, implying that the Director was intentionally trying to compare herself to the heroic figure of legend. Instead, it merely showcases that she herself has become the dangerous monster threatening others, the logical end point of the same fear that turned Gloreth against Nimona in the first place.
  GO BACK TO THE SHADOWS FROM WHENCE YOU CAME!!
• I Reject Your Reality: Even after seeing the emotional embrace between Nimona and Ballister, the Director stubbornly refuses to see Nimona as anything but a monster.
  • Perhaps not surprising, considering that her years of first-hand experience with Ballister's nobility of heart completely failed to shake her belief that knighting even one commoner would destroy the entire kingdom.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: "It" is also the pronoun that the Director refers to Nimona by.
• Jerk Jock: Up until the very end of the film, Todd is portrayed as an arrogant, stubborn, and self-obsessed bully who only cares about himself and his image, thus explaining why he's more willing to go after Ballister.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While Nimona is playfully murderous, she does have a kind side to her, as she empathizes with Ballister on being seen as both a monster and a villain since she's been through that sort of thing.
• Kaiju:
  • Nimona during the climax. The form she takes bears a resemblance to some fan reinterpretations of Godzilla, with a little Hedorah thrown in for the amorphous, smoky texture, and the Throat Light and Extra Eyes of a Anteversal kaiju.
  • Her giant phoenix form at the very end also qualifies, this time invoking Rodan due to being a firebird. It also invokes a little bit of the 2019 Mothra due to it shedding light everywhere, being viewed in awe, and also being shot to ashes by a beam during a Heroic Sacrifice.
• The Kingslayer: The inciting incident is Ballister being framed for murdering the Queen. In reality, it was the Director who was responsible.
• Killer Gorilla: One of Nimona's forms is a large silverback gorilla, and like most of her forms, she is quite capable of causing mayhem.
• Knight's Armor Hideout: This is how Diego the Squire went undetected by someone who thought they were the only person in the room. He was trying on full armor right next to its proper storage space and would get in trouble if caught, so he responded to hearing someone approach by going to stand in the storage space while still wearing the armor.
• Knight Templar: The Director believes in maintaining the current status quo to the letter, to the extent that she was willing to murder her queen and frame the knight the queen had chosen just because said knight was a commoner.
• Lack of Empathy:
  • Played for Laughs with the Squire Ballister and Nimona target for kidnapping, with Nimona attempting to lure him into an alleyway by pretending to be a lost little boy looking for his mother, even hitting him with Puppy-Dog Eyes. The Squire doesn't even entertain the idea of helping himself.
    Squire: (Insincerely) Oh no! Let me go ahead and pass this problem onto someone else.
  • More seriously, the Director is completely unmoving when she orders one of the wall's cannons to be aimed at the kingdom in order to destroy Nimona, and only coldly repeats her order when told that the cannon will harm the civilians there.
• Lame Pun Reaction: When Ballister asks Nimona if she sees a way out of the battle with the knights, she responds "Of horse I do" before shifting into a horse beneath him and carrying him off.
  Ballister: Okay, that was terrible.
• Land, Sea, Sky: In flashback, Nimona's loneliness and ostracization is demonstrated when she attempts to befriend a deer, a fish, and a bird by shapeshifting into each one in turn, but they all run away from her.
• Large Ham: Nimona is in general bombastic and over the top. Chloe Grace Moretz sounds like she's having an absolute blast.
  Nimona: Sick arm! Did it bleed a lot? (*rotating her head like Regan in The Exorcist while sporting a Slasher Smile*) Did they let you keep the old one?
• Laser Sight: Played for Laughs at the end of the subway sequence when the knights are waiting at the station. When Ballister asks if Nimona thinks the knights have noticed them, she sticks her head up and stares at them for a couple seconds, during which all the knights aim their crossbows at her forehead.
  Nimona: Yes.
• Last-Second Word Swap: When Ballister realizes the Squire must know something, Nimona immediately hits on this line of thinking.
  Nimona: Let's go kill—Get him. Let's go get him.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Ballister formerly being in a relationship with Ambrosius was a twist revealed later in the original webcomic, while it's established in the movie from the first moment the two of them are on screen together that they're a thing.
• Left the Background Music On: Ballister making a new mechanical arm and Nimona seeking him out is set to "Grrrl Like" by Dope Saint Jude. Then someone knocks on Ballister's door, and Ballister turns the radio off.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Ballister spends a good chunk of the first half of the movie seemingly less competent than his comic-book version, who had evaded capture in the kingdom for years whilst concocting his "villainous" plans. Movie!Ballister immediately gets tossed in jail within a day of trying to plead his innocence and is apparently dependant on Nimona to deal with the Knights constantly pursuing him. However, it later becomes clear that this was because he was still trying to prove his innocence by sticking to legal means and avoided attacking his fellow knights because it would only escalate his situation. Upon Ambrosius publicly siding with the Director against him, Ballister hits his Rage Breaking Point and decides he's had enough. He cuts loose on the surrounding knights, more than holding his own against them alongside Nimona's chaotic shapeshifting, and later tricks the Director into an Engineered Public Confession by exploiting Nimona's shapeshifting, ability to survive lethal wounds and the Director's own character flaws in a plan worthy of his comic counterpart. The only difference between them is that Comic!Ballister had long since come to accept his situation and decided to work with it to achieve his goals regardless.
• Lifesaving Misfortune: A variant wherein the one committing the mistake and the life saved as a result are two different people. Ballister tricks the Director into giving an Engineered Public Confession to someone who she thinks is Ambrosius (actually a disguised Nimona, who can't be harmed), banking on the fact that the Director will admit her true feelings if she thinks there's no chance anybody else will hear. Sure enough, the Director gives a Motive Rant after stabbing "Ambrosius" without regret, giving the duo exactly what they need to damage the public's faith in the Institute. Seconds after they leave, the actual Ambrosius storms into the room the exact same way, only to be met with an angry growl from the Director before he can apparently ask the same question, greatly implying that if they hadn't put their plan into action first, Ambrosius would have died for real.
• Light Is Not Good: The Director wears all white and turns out to be a deeply prejudiced Knight Templar willing to murder her queen just so the kingdom will play along to her biases.
• Lighter and Softer: The film is this compared to the original webcomic. While the film deals with heavy themes of prejudice and self-doubt, several characters are more heroic, there's less violence and the film has a straightforwardly happy ending as opposed to the comic's Bittersweet Ending. The difference is best exemplified in Nimona herself: while both versions are Card Carrying Villains, movie Nimona is more of a rebellious teenager with a morbid sense of humour whose bark is worse than her bite, preferring to humiliate her enemies rather than actually kill them, and is really a Not Evil, Just Misunderstood Jerk with a Heart of Gold who just wants to be loved. Comic Nimona, meanwhile, is an actually murderous Tragic Villain who ultimately embraces being the monster everyone thought she was.
• Love Hurts: Ballister and Ambrosius used to be a thing before Ballister was framed for murder and Ambrosius believed it. Throughout the film, it is clear that the two still hold feelings for one another. At the end of the film, with Ballister exonerated and Ambrosius having realized the Director's duplicity, the two finally get back together.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Nimona gets an arrow in her leg at one point and doesn't even register it's there until Ballister worriedly points it out. She doesn't even scream after he pulls it out. She reasons that it's because she's been hit with a lot worse. It turns out to be a side-effect of her shapeshifting, apparently giving her either a Healing Factor or Complete Immortality, as she later likewise seems unperturbed by getting a sword through the stomach when disguised as Ambrosius. When she says that she's been hurt worse before, she means emotionally rather that physically.
• Meaningful Echo: After running into Ambrosius, Ballister panicks and exclaims "Did you see the way he looked at me!?", worried that his boyfriend believes he's guilty of regicide. Later, Nimona repeats it pronouns notwithstanding in regards to a little girl who responds to seeing her by grabbing a sword and threatening her.
• Missing Steps Plan:
  • Nimona's plan to get Ballister out of jail is literally "I break you out, chaos, destruction, something, something, something, we win." (Though, to be fair, it works.)
    Ballister: The old "something, something, something, we win." Terrible plan.
  • ...which gets an Ironic Echo later, when the two agree to move against the Director. This is actually more of an Unspoken Plan Guarantee, however, as they clearly thought out the particulars off-screen.
    Nimona: So, you got a plan?
    Ballister: 'Course I got a plan. Something, something, something... we win.
• Mistaken Age: During their first meeting, Nimona takes some offense to being called a little girl by Ballister. Made even funnier when it's revealed she's over a thousand years old and simply chooses the form of a teenager.
  Nimona: Okay, how old do you think I am?
  Ballister: I dunno. Ten?
  (Nimona shoots him a "seriously" look)
  Ballister: Alright, help me out. More or less than ten?
• Mix-and-Match Critters: When Nimona transforms into an otter, one of the knights she's fighting points out she's using parts from two different species of otter.
• Morphic Resonance: Nimona's animalistic forms are all coloured various similar shades of pink, like her hair. Even when she shapeshifts into humans with much greater accuracy, like Ballister himself as a distraction or a young boy to lure Diego into an alleyway, there's a streak a pink left in "Ballister's" hair and the boy has pink irises. However, she can turn this off with effort, as shown by her utterly assuming Ambrosius' form with no external signs that it's really her until "Ambrosius" starts having an over-dramatic death scene upon being stabbed. This likewise makes it plausible for the Director to counteract the Engineered Public Confession she was tricked into giving by claiming that it was simply Nimona disguised as her instead, something that is actually possible for Nimona to do.
• My God, You Are Serious!: When they meet each other for the first time in his hideout, Ballister makes it perfectly clear to Nimona that, not only he is he not a villan, but that he is also going to ask someone to help him to find the true culprit, without her. When she sarcastically asks him if that person is the same one who cut off his arm (Ambrosius), he stops himself from reaching the door, confirming her suspicion, much to her disbelief. Ballister tries to justify himself, by telling her that "it's complicated".
• My God, What Have I Done?: When he witnesses Nimona in her out of control Kaijuform being bombarded by lasers from the knights, Ballister says this almost word-for-word, realizing that his rejection of Nimona caused her to go berserk.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the posters for the film resembles the webcomic's cover, which features Nimona on the center and Ambrosius and Ballister beside her, albeit swapped.
  • The central picture of Nimona on the remembrance wall in the finale is a drawing of her in the style of the original webcomic.
  • In the webcomic, Nimona's forms are still usually pink, but when shifting between them she becomes a shadowy black and white mass for a moment. This isn't present for most of the film as her changes are usually instantaneous, but in the climax her monstrous Kaiju form has the same shadowy appearance as her in-between state from the original.
• Myth Prologue: The film begins with Nimona telling the story of the great heroine Gloreth, who slayed a monstrous evil and founded an order of knightly protectors. The story then jumps a thousand years to a high-tech society that worships Gloreth and tries to uphold her ideals of protection.
• Never My Fault: The fires that destroyed the kingdom in the past were not Nimona's fault. Rather, a bunch of villagers surrounded her and threw a torch at her, which bounced off her back and set the town on fire. The villagers then blamed Nimona for it, rewriting history to depict her as a monstrous dragon burning the kingdom to ash.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: During their first meeting, Nimona hands Ballister a bunch of her art as part of an "application" to be his sidekick. There is an abundance of blood.
  Ballister: (Looking through the art) This is just a bunch of drawings. (Shot of the drawings - Nimona as a gorilla and an octopus murdering guards) Very disturbing drawings. Oh, look! It's me! On a rhinoceros, skewering several guards like a human kebab! (Angrily shows Nimona the drawing)
  Nimona: (Inappropriately excited) Yeah! Do you like it?
• Nobody Poops: Averted as a gag when Nimona points out that Ballister's cell has no toilet.
• No Escape but Down: As Ballister lampshades, escaping with Nimona frequently seems to involve falling from (or through) high places to the ground below. When you're invulnerable and can fly, it certainly makes for a quick escape.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Although the Director claims to simply desire to keep the citizens "safe", it's clear upon further inspection that she's merely acting on her own paranoia and fear of losing control (with her recurring nightmare about the wall falling being a key example), believing that deviating from Gloreth's teachings for any reason will result in the kingdom being destroyed. As a result she murders the Queen to keep her from making knighthood something based on merit instead of merely blood, turns against her knights for suggesting that Gloreth's teachings could possibly be wrong, and tries to destroy Nimona even though it would result in potentially thousands of casualties among the civilians she's supposedly fighting for.
• Obliviously Evil: Given that her actions cause more harm than good, the Director of the Institute is hardly the righteous woman she claims to be.
• Offhand Backhand: When the alarm is sounded during their escape from the Institute, Nimona casually chucks an axe across the courtyard to the other side and nails a knight in the head while in the middle of an argument with Ballister.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Nimona frequently uses her powers to just appear in different places when people aren't paying attention, which just so happens to be when the camera pans away from her.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Ambrosius and Ballister have a conversation about taking "her" down. Ballister assumes he's talking about the villain, but he actually means Nimona.
• One-Winged Angel: Nimona's transformation at the climax of the movie, into a massive black monster with glowing white eyes, although more sympathetic than most examples in that the transformation is motivated mostly by frustration and hurt from being rejected for a thousand years. Also, while her rampage through the city causes a bit of collateral damage, she doesn't intend to hurt anyone but herself.
• One-Woman Wail: Nimona's leitmotif is a gentle theme accompanied by a woman softly vocalizing.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Played for laughs. Nimona's impression of Ballister is a cackling, hammy villain who hates smiles, thinks babies are ugly and plays freestyle jazz. Ambrosius manages to see through this ridiculous farce of his ex...because Ballister hates freestyle jazz.
• Outside-Context Problem:
  • A variant in that they do have context, but not even said context really helps clarify what the problem actually is. The Science Fantasy kingdom has long built itself upon the threat of unknown evil monsters lurking in the outside world, capable of destroying their land with ease given the chance. This legend is revealed to have originated from Nimona herself, with early villagers having been frightened by her shapeshifting and having demonised her for the fires they caused trying to drive her out. Other than Nimona herself, there are no fantastical or magical abilities demonstrated in the story. Even when Ballister tries to get Nimona to clarify who or what she is, her only response is that She is Nimona, she just is.
  • More specifically, the Director's plans to frame Ballister for the Queen's assassination would have gone off without a hitch had Nimona not intruded, as the Director was not prepared to handle the involvement of a nigh-immortal, seemingly-unkillable shapeshifter appearing from within their Kingdom to side with Ballister when he'd been isolated from all other allies. This leads to her getting tricked into giving an Engineered Public Confession to what she thinks is a dying Ambrosius before Nimona reveals the con and leaves her in Stunned Silence. Granted, when she does discover what scarce context they have on Nimona, she rallies impressively well with it to turn the tables on the heroes yet again despite her unfavourable position.
• Our Dragons Are Different: One of Nimona's forms is a dragon. Specifically, the Kwispy Dragon mascot which can breathe cereal pieces.
• Painted CGI: The film has a very cel-shaded look to it. A good comparison would be the Disney short film Feast, whose director, Patrick Osborne, was attached to the film early in its development. Its art style could also be compared to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or RWBY, with them also combining futuristic technology in a medieval kingdom.
• Perpetually Protean: Once she quits hiding her powers, Nimona is very casual about her shapeshifting abilities, and shifts between six animals in about ten seconds at one point. She even tells Ballister that not doing so causes her discomfort, like holding in a sneeze.
• Pet the Dog: Despite having spent the entire movie as an arrogant, aggressive, glory-obsessed Jerk Jock, Todd is seen honoring Nimona at her memorial in the ending.
• The Phoenix: At first mentioned by Nimona in a metaphorical manner, before becoming literal in the finale.
• Pineapple Ruins Pizza: While Nimona, disguised as a little child, tries to kidnap the squire Diego as part of her and Ballister's plan to get evidence of his innocence, he throws many objects at Nimona's face ranging from saucepans to a live chicken, which completely fail to get any reaction out of her. Then he grabs a nearby bystander's lunch of a slice of pineapple pizza and slaps her in the face with it, which makes her gag.
• Playful Otter: One of Nimona's forms, as she is quite playful... in an arson-happy kind of way.
• Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure: Just before the third act, Ballister confronts Nimona over the discovery that she is Gloreth's Monster, the mythical abomination the knights, and even their whole society, have been trained to fear. This spirals into an argument that results in Ballister being arrested by Todd, and Nimona feeling so unloved she transforms into a Kaiju and causes panic in the city.
• Police Brutality: Todd beats Ballister up after finding him at his hideout.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The Director is a hardcore elitist who framed Ballister for murdering the Queen because she saw the Queen's desire to allow commoners to join the ranks of the knights (Ballister being the first) as an existential threat to the Kingdom that would ruin the kingdom through Slippery-Slope logic. She also seems to see the Kingdom's citizens as necessary casualties when Nimona starts rampaging through the city in the climax.
• Poke the Poodle:
  • Chafing under Ballister's order not to go about smashing things, Nimona settles for tipping over everything in arm's reach and pouring coffee over a security terminal to short it out. She also rips out the power cord to a child's game on the street just because she can.
  • When disguised as Ballister, Nimona boasts that she's "loitering and littering" as she chucks garbage at the knights.
• Public Service Announcement:
  • In-universe, there are a number of advertisements reminding the people of the kingdom that if they "see something", they should "slay something".
  • Out of universe. With Nimona almost attempting suicide in the climax of the film, a title card is placed after the credits directing viewers to WannaTalkAboutIt.Com, a website run by Netflix with links to various resources for individuals suffering from sexual abuse, mental health issues, and suicidal ideation.
• Punk in the Trunk: Ballister and Nimona kidnap Diego the Squire for interrogation by stuffing him in the trunk of a stolen hover-car. Comes complete with Trunk Shot. Nimona even uses that exact language.
  Nimona: Let's go dunk on the punk in the trunk.
• Punny Name: When Ballister comes to after being knocked out, he finds himself in his hideout with Nimona making breakfast tacos. While he's gathering his wits, she explains all the ways she has "improved" the hideout, making it "more evil lair-y." She then decides that "Evil Larry" is a great nickname and that Ballister should adopt it, but he refuses. Nonetheless, Nimona refers to him as "Evil Larry" several times afterwards.
• Race Lift: In the original comics, Ballister was East Asian and Ambrosius was Caucasian; their designs were altered in the movie to reflect their respective voice actors' nationalities (Indo-Pakistani and South Korean respectively).
• Rage Breaking Point: After Ballister's attempt to provide proof that the Director framed him for the Queen's murder is foiled, he still tries to argue to Ambrosius that he shouldn't need proof to convince him, that he should know him well enough to know Ballister would never do the things he's accused of. When Ambrosius still decides to fulfill his duty and go through with arresting the duo (partly because he also realises Nimona is something other than human) Ballister officially hits this. Having spent most of their time together trying to reign in Nimona's suggestions of chaotic destruction and chronic villainy and getting her to tone down her shapeshifting to be more inconspicuous, Ballister lets her go all-out on using her various forms to beat the snot out of a small army of Knights surrounding them. Having avoided fighting his former allies himself up to that point, Ballister grabs a blade and works in tandem with her, revelling in the chaotic brawl whilst also laying into Ambrosius for his Blind Obedience.
  Ballister: You wanna know who the kid is?
  Nimona: Oh, I like where this is going!
  Ballister: You wanna show em?
  Nimona: I'd love to!
  Ballister: Let's break stuff.
  Nimona: Metal!!
• Really 700 Years Old: Nimona happens to be the monster Gloreth is said to have faced 1000 years in the past.
• Redemption Equals Severe Injuries: Todd has been nothing but a Jerk Jock the whole movie, teasing and hating Ballister even before he was framed and continuing that attitude for most of the film. After being thrown into a billboard during the final fight and seeing Nimona sacrifice herself to save the city from the Director, he clearly has a change of heart, and is seen (in a cast) leaving flowers at her memorial.
• Redemption Rejection: During the finale, Ambrosius tries to reason with the Director that maybe Gloreth's teachings were wrong. It actually seems like she may be coming around...then she activates her scepter.
• Reflexive Response: Ballister defends Ambrosius chopping his arm off because that is how they're trained to deal with potential threats. Ambrosius, in an Imagine Spot, even uses the same rationale despite feeling he shouldn't have done so.
• Rhino Rampage: One of Nimona's forms, and boy, does she know how to cause two things with said form, those being chaos and destruction.
• Riddle for the Ages: The actual source of Nimona's shapeshifting abilities and what her original form even was are never revealed, even when her backstory is shown.
• Right Place, Right Time, Wrong Reason: A piece of evidence that can prove Ballister's innocence in the crime he's accused of only exists because of someone engaging in Loony Fan behavior.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: An in-universe example: a cereal commercial features a pair of live action (really CG) children interacting with a hand-drawn dragon.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • Much like in the webcomic, this is why ND Stevenson chose a Sci-Fi Medieval setting as an allegory of how he views our society: no matter how much technology is evolving and bettering our lives, humans are still stubbornly stuck in their old fashioned “witch hunting” paranoia, always ready to quickly point their finger (or weapon) against the first person who they deem as a threat for being different by society standards (whether for race, sexual orientation, different backgrounds…), without even bothering themselves to actually know them firsthand, and creating narratives for themselves to justify their actions and biases and forcing other people to buy them through fear and brainwashing propaganda.
  • At one point, Nimona flies past a mural depicting Gloreth's defeat of the monster. Only this time, the mural is laterally flipped so it's Nimona as the heroic "knight" slaying the "monster" threatening the citizens, that being the Director.
• Running Gag: Until Nimona reveals her shapeshifting ability to a crowd, the guards (namely Todd) keep calling her "Ballister's whale".
• Schizo Tech: The film's world is initially presented as a classic fairytale kingdom with princesses and knights, only for more contemporary and futuristic elements such as lasers, flying vehicles, holographic displays, television sets, and wireless headphones to be introduced.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Everything the Director does to prevent her nightmare of the kingdom's walls collapsing, letting in the monster horde, ultimately brings it to pass. She drives Ballister to Nimona, sowing the seeds of their friendship. When she turns the kingdom's perimeter defenses inward in a last-ditch attempt to kill Nimona, Nimona ultimately sacrifices herself to absorb the blast, blowing a giant hole in the wall and opening up the kingdom to the outside world. Except it turns out that her paranoia was completely unjustified the entire time, as there was only ever Nimona, and what lies beyond the wall is untouched nature.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Two guards keep talking about an otter (Nimona) that bit him, and the other keeps asking if it was a river otter or a sea otter, and explaining the difference between the two. ^note It's the swallows all over again.
• Shaped Like Itself: Nimona responds to every question about what she is with "I am Nimona." This is because even she doesn't know; she just is.
• Shapeshifter Struggles: The title character is a powerful shapeshifter capable of assuming almost any form... but is unable to connect with anyone as a result. Animals instinctively reject her, humans accuse her of being a monster, and even Ballister spends most of their early interactions asking her to be "normal" - not realizing that Nimona's shapeshifting is an integral part of her being and that not transforming is unbearable for her. In the finale, all these rejections and more drive Nimona to a suicide attempt - though Ballister thankfully saves her at the last moment.
• Shapeshifting: As in the comics, Nimona is shown to be able to turn into all manner of creatures and even other humans.
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: Invoked. When Ballister tries to hand Ambrosius the evidence that the Director killed the Queen and framed him, the Director yells that he's pulling out a weapon and Todd shoots it, destroying the evidence.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Banana Splits theme song is used as the jingle for an in-universe cereal commercial, and plays over the confrontation where Nimona turns into Kwispy Dwagon the cereal mascot. It also happens to have been the soundtrack in Kick-Ass when Hit-Girl (played by Chloe Grace Moretz, who voices Nimona) also goes on a rampage against antagonists.
  • A PSA in the kingdom instructs citizens that if they "see something", they should "slay something" - a nod to real-life anti-terrorism PSAs.
  • One of Nimona's transformations is a rat dragging a slice of pizza, in reference to the real-life viral photo.
  • When Ballister comes just in time to save Nimona from stabbing herself with the sword on the Gloreth statue, he tells her “I see you” as he comes to terms with her and finally calms her down. It may technically be a reference to the Avatar movies.
• Slasher Smile: Nimona flashes a wide, maniacal grin to the audience in the teaser when it's revealed she's the one making the comic.
• Slippery Slope Fallacy: This is the reason that The Director framed Ballister for killing the Queen. She firmly believes that Gloreth's teachings must be followed to the letter at all costs, and that the Queen making Ballister, a non-noble, a knight on merit instead of birthright would cause a chain of events that would destroy the whole kingdom.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • Todd winds up aiding in Ballister's frame-up by complete accident twice: firstly by interrupting Diego just as he was about to show him the footage of the Director swapping out his sword, allowing the Queen's assassination to happen unopposed, and then by shooting the phone with said footage out of his hand when the Director claims Ballister is reaching for a weapon instead, destroying it and the proof of his innocence.
  • Diego the Squire is a Downplayed case for the Queen-Killer. He accidentally recorded proof of the Director's duplicity prior to the assassination, but was too scared to openly speak up and show it to defend Ballister, and quickly backed down from trying to warn him when the Director herself entered the room. Even when showing said footage to Ballister, it gets destroyed by Todd before it can be shown to anybody else, and likewise the Director is able to deflect her later similar Engineered Public Confession by claiming it was a shapeshifted Nimona instead. Ultimately his actions only served to show Ballister and Nimona who their real enemy was, but actually proving that to others was a far more difficult task.
  • Ballister himself is a long-term example by complete accident. His appointment as a Knight from a commoner background was so against the Director's beliefs about the will of Gloreth and how the kingdom should be run that she went to the extremes of killing the Queen and framing him for it to dissuade any further appointments. This resulted in Ballister becoming Hated by All in the kingdom, resulting in Nimona realizing she finally had an ally in her lonely existence, leading to her seeking him out and eventually aiding him in proving his innocence. This sparks a chain of events that eventually leads to the destruction of the walls around the kingdom and the end of the centuries long bigoted fear of the outside world that put the Institute in power, and has the populace come to see Nimona as a heroic figure rather than the legendary monster she'd long been demonized as.
• Straight Gay: Ballister and Ambrosius are two men in a relationship who don't display any stereotypical effeminate qualities. This is actually in contrast to the comic, where they formerly had a Masculine–Feminine Gay Couple dynamic, with Ambrosius being overtly flamboyant.
• Standard Snippet: A punk-rock cover of "Flight of the Bumblebee" plays as Nimona kidnaps Diego the Squire from the market.
• The Stinger: At the end of the credits, Nimona's hand is seen spray-painting the Anarchy Heart on a wall.
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • When Ballister insists on handing over the proof that the Director had framed him to Ambrosius, the man who cut off his arm, Nimona snarks that "arm chopping is not a love language". During his inner Freak Out, Ambrosius word-for-word shouts the same thing.
  • Later on, Ballister and Nimona expose the Director by having Nimona shapeshift into Ambrosius, storm into the Director's office, and demand to know why Ballister had accused her of all people of being the Queen's real killer. After the deed is done and the duo escape, the real Ambrosius storms into the office, clearly prepared to do exactly what Nimona did.
• Stock Sound Effects: When Nimona and Ballister's arrow-riddled car finally breaks down, it makes the iconic Doom door opening sound.
• String Theory: Ballister has a corkboard of suspects connected by strings when Nimona meets him, which she calls a "murder wall," and then expands while he's unconscious.
• Supporting Protagonist: Just like in the webcomic, the story is really about Ballister Boldheart, with Nimona being his self-appointed henchwoman. However this only really applies to the first two acts, as once the third starts the story switches from Ballister's attempt to clear his name to an exploration of Nimona's Dark and Troubled Past and the centuries of deep seeded trauma and heart break it left her with.
• Swallowed Whole: During their second escape from the castle, Nimona turns into a whale while falling and swallows some guards on flying bikes whole, before expelling them through her blowhole.
• Symbolic Distance: During Nimona's climactic flashback, she and her human friend Gloreth are almost inseparable even after the former's shapeshifting powers are revealed. So, when the little girl's parents force the two of them apart, resulting in the village being accidentally burned to the ground by the angry mob they stirred up, the collapse of the friendship between Nimona and her friend is immediately demonstrated by the fact that the two of them are now eight feet apart. Back in the present, Nimona is in a park several miles from the colossal statue of Gloreth at the heart of the city, driving home both the broken friendship and Nimona's all-consuming loneliness.
• Talking Down the Suicidal: Ballister arrives just in time to stop Nimona from running herself through with the sword of Gloreth's statue, apologizing for inferring that she was a monster and assuring her that she isn't alone.
• Taught to Hate: The legend of Gloreth claims that she was a valiant knight who defeated an evil monster. In actuality, the monster was Nimona, who became friends with Gloreth while the young human was a child. Gloreth initially had no fear of her friend's magical shapeshifting, but when her village found out they stoked fear of Nimona and burned down their own homes in an attempt to attack her, while Gloreth sided with them and turned on her former friend.
• Technologically Blind Elders: The Stinger of the main trailer shows Ballister struggling to understand the concept of "likes" in the setting's version of Facebook, while Nimona tries to guide him through it. In the film itself, however, Ballister shows no such issues, having built and installed his prosthetic arm himself from scavenged parts and workshop supplies and is the one to upload the Director's confession.
• Teeny Weenie: During the escape from the Institute's headquarters, Nimona, in whale form, crashes through the ceiling of a locker room where Todd is admiring himself in the mirror while mostly naked. Nimona's giant eye takes a look at his groin and asks if it's "cold in here", to Todd's embarrassment.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: A major part of Nimona's backstory: after being rejected by society due to her shapeshifting powers, she adopted a sociopathic mindset, wreaking havoc and talking a lot about murdering people (though she never murders anyone on-screen). Then, in the film's climax, after Ballister rejects her, Nimona suffers an emotional breakdown and decides to become the destructive monster everyone sees her as, assuming a kaiju form and rampaging through the city before trying to kill herself. It takes Ballister stopping her with his bare hands and apologising to make her re-assume her human form.
• This Is the Part Where...:
  • After turning into a dragon in her comic in the trailer, Nimona tells the princess and her guards that this is the part where they run.
  • She repeats this in the main film when she turns into a rhino to attack some guards.
• Tired of Running: When his first attempt to prove his innocence fails, Ballister decides to flee with Nimona over the wall, as the kingdom holds nothing for them. Nimona, however, sees hope in the fact that Ballister changed and accepted her, and feels that the true culprit shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.
• Torches and Pitchforks: In a flashback, young Nimona is assaulted by an angry mob wielding torches and pitchforks when she reveals her true nature.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Well, kingdom in this case. It's initially established that the Kingdom was founded by the legendary, noble heroine Gloreth, who, a thousand years ago, vanquished a "Great Black Monster" and enclosed the kingdom with a giant wall to protect it from the outside world. However, unbeknownst to everyone except Nimona herself, this is a giant pile of lies. In reality, when she was just a child commoner, Gloreth actually befriended said monster, which is revealed to be Nimona, and even accepted the latter's shapeshifting abilities. However, once the grownups of Gloreth's village discovered their relationship and her powers, they immediately attacked Nimona out of fear of a being they didn't understand, and they accidentaly caused a fire that burned the entire village in the middle of the riot. When Nimona tried to reach out her friend, Gloreth, who had accepted her parents' hateful biases, betrayed her by picking up her wooden sword and pointing it at Nimona, banishing her by saying "Go back to the shadows from whence you came."
• Trauma Button: While being called a monster normally enrages Nimona, being called such by a child is shown to deeply affect her, as it reminds her of how Gloreth betrayed her.
• Transformation Discretion Shot:
  • Initially, Nimona's true nature is hidden by concealing her transformations with cuts, with her shifting into a new form off-screen and back again in order to get around Ballister's hideout in a hurry. Consequently, it looks if she's using Offscreen Teleportation at first.
  • During the big reveal of her shapeshifting powers in the broom closet, Nimona is briefly seen glowing and getting taller, only for the camera to abruptly cut to a POV shot of Ballister's stunned expression as Nimona's perspective lurches upwards. Cut to the corridor outside as Nimona's rhino form explodes out of the closet and through the waiting guards. For good measure, as the ensuing chase sequence demonstrates, all subsequent shapeshifts occur in full view of the camera.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Ballister echoes Nimona's "something, something, something, we win" idea from previously in the film when they plan to move against the Director, and we only see the actual plan after they've successfully pulled it off.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: The Director has no problem with murdering her ruler, attacking her loyal knights, or causing the deaths of thousands of people if it will allow her to keep the kingdom 'safe'.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey:
  • While the Director is just as dark, if not moreso then she was in the comic, Todd is a dense Jerk Jock whose desire to upstage Ambrosius and be the one to capture Ballister is the source of much of the film's slapstick.
  • In general, the Institution knights are portrayed as far more goofy and ineffectual than the Director. Their attempts to capture Ballister and Nimona constantly fail and end up getting them beaten down and humiliated, neither Ballister or Nimona see them as real threats, and they're rarely taken nearly as seriously as the Director is. Even their more serious moments, such as Todd cornering and interrogating Ballister near the end, are swiftly undercut by their own comedic antics.
• Villainous Breakdown: By the end, the Director is reduced to a ranting mess, furiously screaming for her knights to fire on Nimona even after Ballister gets through to her.
• Villain Protagonist: In the June 2023 Netflix preview, Nimona proudly declares herself Boldheart's sidekick due to believing him to be a villain. Boldheart is quick to refute this claim. Downplayed in the movie itself, as, while Nimona loves causing mayhem, she isn't shown actively killing anyone but just loves to frighten people with the threat of it. In other words she's less this trope and more a rebellious teenager angry at the world, who hides her good if broken heart under an incredibly morbid sense of humor.
• The Wall Around the World: The kingdom, which mostly consists of a Citadel City and some wilderness, is completely surrounded by a massive wall that no one has crossed in centuries, to the point that no one really seems to know what's out there anymore. A hole is blown in it when Nimona sacrifices herself to stop the Director from firing one of the wall's cannons on the kingdom's people, revealing a scenic natural landscape.
• "Wanted!" Poster: Nimona first learns of Ballister from his holographic wanted posters in town, and gets her own once she teams up with him.
• Weredragon: Nimona transforms into (among other things) a dragon in her comic at the start of the teaser. After cutting to her in real life, she sprouts an actual pair of dragon wings. She later turns into a dragon mascot from a children's cereal ad to protect Ballister.
• Wham Line: Near the tail end of Nimona's flashback, one word said to the girl she tried to befriend completely recontextualizes the entire scene:
  Nimona: Gloreth...!?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite playing an important role in Ballister discovering he was framed, the Squire doesn't reappear after Nimona and Ballister let him go. Considering how he might have been punished if the Director learned that he knew, he might have gone into hiding.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Nimona in the film's climax becomes a subversion of this trope. Despite turning into a giant kaiju out of grief, she isn't actually that concerned with hurting people and is just looking to finally die. The real threat comes from the Institute's own forces, who end up putting people in harm's way with their reckless attempts to kill Nimona.
• Written by the Winners: The official history of the kingdom was that Gloreth, a mighty knight, defended her village from a wicked monster before founding the Institute. In truth, Gloreth was just a child who befriended the monster, Nimona, before the adults turned on her for her shapeshifting. After the village was accidentally set ablaze in the riot, Gloreth simply told Nimona to leave, ending their friendship.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: The Director is exposed on a recording admitting that she framed Ballister and arranged the Queen's death herself. While this initially looks like it will bring her down, she quickly realizes that she can use the video (which seems to only be her confession itself, and not her trying to kill Nimona disguised as Ambrosius) and footage of Nimona transforming from a dragon into an innocent-looking child to shift attention onto the shapeshifter. And of course, it works.
• You Are Not Alone: Ballister says this to Nimona while trying to stop her from committing suicide.
• You Know Too Much: The Director tries to pull this on someone who she thinks is Ambrosius after revealing to him that she was the one who killed the queen. Unfortunately for her, "Ambrosius" was actually Nimona in disguise, with the whole thing being a setup for the Director's Engineered Public Confession.

---

♫ Can't stop me now... ♫

---