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* StarterMon: In addition to Mash, every new player will perform a Starter Summon, a tutorial-type 10-summon which guarantees them at least one out of ten available 4* Servant. The ten Servants are Siegfried (Saber), Chevalier d'Eon (Saber), EMIYA (Archer) Elisabeth Báthory (Lancer), Marie Antoinette (Rider), Saint Martha (Rider), Carmilla (Assassin), Stheno (Assassin), Heracles (Berserker) and Tamamo Cat (Berserker). The Caster-class is notably the only main class not covered by the ten. 5* Servants or other 4* Servants are not available for the Starter Summon. Random 3* Servants that are neither story-locked nor limited are available for the Starter Summon, thus the player is guaranteed to have at least three Servants in their party when they start out.
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*** There are several hints that the relationship between EMIYA Alter and [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] is much deeper than either would admit too. [[spoiler:Slaughtering her and her cult in one alternate timeline is what drove Emiya Shirou down this path, and Kiara when she becomes Beast III-R in the SE.RA.PH. chapter is able to bring him to her side not through force, but using said guilt to draw him over and corrupt him into a Beast Servant]].
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*** There are several hints that the relationship between EMIYA Alter and [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] [[spoiler:Sesshouin Kiara]] is much deeper than either would admit too. [[spoiler:Slaughtering her and her cult in one alternate timeline is what drove Emiya Shirou down this path, and Kiara when she becomes Beast III-R III/R in the SE.RA.PH. chapter is able to bring him to her side not through force, but using said guilt to draw him over and corrupt him into a Beast Servant]].
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* ShesAManInJapan: d'Eon and Astolfo are made explicitly female in the Chinese port of the game, and can be used in girl-exclusive events as well.
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* ShesAManInJapan: In the Japanese version, d'Eon and Astolfo are made explicitly female considered genderless and this affects them gameplaywise as far as skills go, such as gender-specific charms. They are allowed to participate in both female-only and male-only Challenge Quests regardless, and even get bonuses for being used in the {{Magical Girl}} themed crossover event. In the Chinese port of the game, version however, they are explicitly female, and can be used in girl-exclusive events are treated as well.such for all gameplay mechanics and events.
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** Hassan of the Hundred Personas' Wide Specialization has the "random effect" description with a "all card-types buff" icon. The skill's actual effect is that each card-type buff has 30% chance of activating for three turns while also giving 1-turn Evasion.
** Enkidu's Transformation skill has the most clear "random effect" description. It has guaranteed chance to increase his Buster attacks, but will also randomly either buff his Arts attacks or Quick attacks, all for one turn.
** Enkidu's Transformation skill has the most clear "random effect" description. It has guaranteed chance to increase his Buster attacks, but will also randomly either buff his Arts attacks or Quick attacks, all for one turn.
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* RandomEffectSpell: There's quite a few, to varying degrees:
** Elisabeth Bathory (Brave) has the Legend of Crimson Heroine skill, which is the most extreme case in the game due to its risk-reward. At the cost of 100% NP gauge, it gives one random buff out of five (Party-wide Invincibility/Heal/Attack Up/Gain Critical Stars ''or'' Self Buster Up). The entire gamut of possibilities is lovingly written in a block of text that is longer than her actual Noble Phantasm description.
** The Imperial Privilege line of skills, which is possessed by multiple Servants such as Nero Claudius, Romulus, and Ozymandias. The in-game description is simply "Apply random effects to yourself," but its actual effect downplays this trope: it's a guaranteed heal (as pictured by the green "healing sparkle" icon) with two separate, chance-based buffs to ATK and DEF. But at only a 60% chance to activate each buff, "random" isn't an inaccurate description.
** Scáthach's Wisdom of Dun Scaith skill shares the same terse and [[GuideDangIt unhelpful]] "random effects" description but with an Evasion icon and a different set of effects entirely: It's a guaranteed 1-turn Evasion with two separate, chance-based buffs to critical damage and Critical Star absorption. The absolute worst-case result would be to activate this skill offensively, but both 80% critical buffs fail and leave only the Evasion.
** Elisabeth Bathory (Brave) has the Legend of Crimson Heroine skill, which is the most extreme case in the game due to its risk-reward. At the cost of 100% NP gauge, it gives one random buff out of five (Party-wide Invincibility/Heal/Attack Up/Gain Critical Stars ''or'' Self Buster Up). The entire gamut of possibilities is lovingly written in a block of text that is longer than her actual Noble Phantasm description.
** The Imperial Privilege line of skills, which is possessed by multiple Servants such as Nero Claudius, Romulus, and Ozymandias. The in-game description is simply "Apply random effects to yourself," but its actual effect downplays this trope: it's a guaranteed heal (as pictured by the green "healing sparkle" icon) with two separate, chance-based buffs to ATK and DEF. But at only a 60% chance to activate each buff, "random" isn't an inaccurate description.
** Scáthach's Wisdom of Dun Scaith skill shares the same terse and [[GuideDangIt unhelpful]] "random effects" description but with an Evasion icon and a different set of effects entirely: It's a guaranteed 1-turn Evasion with two separate, chance-based buffs to critical damage and Critical Star absorption. The absolute worst-case result would be to activate this skill offensively, but both 80% critical buffs fail and leave only the Evasion.
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** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover. [[spoiler:BB, however, reveals that Chaldea ''can'' rayshift to the future under normal circumstances, it's just that the "future" as Chaldea knows it still doesn't exist despite defeating Goetia. She notes that doesn't matter for what's happening in the events of said crossover (all but stating to be due to the Alien God's interference in ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'').]]
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** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future of 2030 AD for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover. [[spoiler:BB, however, reveals that Chaldea ''can'' rayshift to the future under normal circumstances, it's just that the "future" as Chaldea knows it still doesn't exist past 20XX AD despite defeating Goetia. She notes that doesn't matter for what's happening in the events of said crossover (all but stating to be due to the Alien God's interference in ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'').]]
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** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover.
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** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover. [[spoiler:BB, however, reveals that Chaldea ''can'' rayshift to the future under normal circumstances, it's just that the "future" as Chaldea knows it still doesn't exist despite defeating Goetia. She notes that doesn't matter for what's happening in the events of said crossover (all but stating to be due to the Alien God's interference in ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'').]]
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* SelfDeprecation:
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
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* SelfDeprecation:
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
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* SentIntoHiding: Minamono-no-Yorimitsu was kept hidden for years due to her supernatural heritage as the mortal-born daughter of Kitano-Tenjin and the Gozu Tenno, giving her oni blood. But her immense talents and her mortal father's lack of an heir led him to take her back and reveal her to the world as his "son".
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* ReferenceOverdosed: As evidenced by the dozens of ShoutOut entries in its own [[ShoutOut/FateGrandOder subpage]], the writers keep on adding several pop culture references to manga, anime, video games and literature for almost every event.
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* ReferenceOverdosed: As evidenced by the dozens of ShoutOut entries in its own [[ShoutOut/FateGrandOder [[ShoutOut/FateGrandOrder subpage]], the writers keep on adding several pop culture references to manga, anime, video games and literature for almost every event.
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* {{Wutai}}: While this game's setting is not a ConstructedWorld unlike most examples of this trope are in, the Shimosa chapter was notably the only Eastern Asia-themed main story chapter so far[[note]]While Fuyuki and Shinjuku are also set in Japan, it's modern day or close enough to the point where Japanese elements aren't very prominent.[[/note]] for three years, with the introduction of SIN a year later. Both very much play up the Asian aspect, with only token Western Servants and the Chaldea crew as the only foreign aspects of the story.
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* {{Wutai}}: While this game's setting is not a ConstructedWorld unlike most examples of this trope are in, the Shimosa chapter was notably the only Eastern East Asia-themed main story chapter so far[[note]]While [[note]]While Fuyuki and Shinjuku are also set in Japan, it's modern day or close enough to the point where Japanese elements aren't very prominent.[[/note]] for three years, with the introduction of SIN a year later. Both very much play up the Asian aspect, with only a few token Western Servants and the Chaldea crew as the only foreign aspects of the story.
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* ReferenceOverdosed: As evidenced by the dozens of ShoutOut entries in its own [[ShoutOut/FateGrandOder subpage]], the writers keep on adding several pop culture references to manga, anime, video games and literature for almost every event.
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** Caster Cu uses Norse runes instead of Celtic. AuthorsSavingThrow has Scathatch explaining she taught him these because Odin likes warriors regardless of nationality and they were faster than Celtic ones.
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** Caster Cu uses Norse runes instead of Celtic. AuthorsSavingThrow has Scathatch explaining she taught him these because Odin likes warriors regardless of nationality and they were faster than Celtic ones. This even escalated into Scathach having a direct connection to the Norse Goddess Skadi.
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** Camelot is notorious for having a whole bunch of these in quick succession, despite how relatively late in the game it is. Prior to that chapter, you can pretty easy plow through the game with any team of servants as long as you respect the rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Gaiwan reduces the damage of your attacks to the point where you either need to outlast him or have an entire team dedicated to stacking buffs on each other. Mordred can shoot her noble phantasm every turn, so she'll chew through any team that can't kill her quick, seal the attack, or stack defenses against it. Tristan is weak to sabers after a wave of very high HP mooks who kill sabers, forcing you to plan your team carefully. These three enemies are the first that really require any sort of thought into team composition, warning the player that this is how all bosses are going to be from this point forward.
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** Camelot is notorious for having a whole bunch of these in quick succession, despite how relatively late in the game it is. Prior to that chapter, you can pretty easy easily plow through the game with any team of servants Servants as long as you respect the rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Gaiwan But with Camelot, Gawain reduces the damage of your attacks to the point where you either need to outlast him or have him, use an entire team dedicated to stacking buffs on each other. other, or take advantage of traits to further increase damage. Mordred can shoot use her noble phantasm Noble Phantasm every turn, so she'll chew through any team that can't kill her quick, seal the attack, quickly, block NP usage or gauge, or stack defenses defense against it. Tristan is weak to sabers Sabers after a wave of very high HP mooks who kill sabers, Archers, forcing you to plan your team carefully. These three enemies are the first that really require any sort of thought into team composition, warning the player that this is how all bosses are going to be from this point forward.forwards.
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** Camelot is notorious for having a whole bunch of these in quick succession, despite how relatively late in the game it is. Prior to that chapter, you can pretty easy plow through the game with any team of servants as long as you respect the rock-paper-scissors mechanic. Gaiwan reduces the damage of your attacks to the point where you either need to outlast him or have an entire team dedicated to stacking buffs on each other. Mordred can shoot her noble phantasm every turn, so she'll chew through any team that can't kill her quick, seal the attack, or stack defenses against it. Tristan is weak to sabers after a wave of very high HP mooks who kill sabers, forcing you to plan your team carefully. These three enemies are the first that really require any sort of thought into team composition, warning the player that this is how all bosses are going to be from this point forward.
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hides it for a while since I dont know if this is the right trope, delete it or move it to WMG if inappropriate
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%%* [[spoiler:Regarding Spartacus's HeroicSacrifice and FinalDeath in SIN Lostbelt where he took damage from saving a village from meteor strike so bad it breaks his Saint Graph and make him not resummonable anymore. However in Yu Miaoyi's Interlude which occured after the events of SIN Lostbelt, Spartacus is still present in Chaldea.]]
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** The Holy Grails you've been collecting from beating each singularity and certain events can level even a 1* Servant past their usual limit up to level 100, if you have enough. The game calls this "[[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palingenesis Palingenesis]]." It really is rare, however as of the game's two-year lifespan in Japan, only slightly more than 20 have been available through events and story quests. Since it takes 10 to max out a one-star, which Servant a player uses a Grail on is a limited and permanent decision.
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** The Holy Grails you've been collecting from beating each singularity and certain events can level even a 1* Servant past their usual limit up to level 100, if you have enough. The game calls this "[[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palingenesis Palingenesis]]." It really is rare, however as of the game's two-year lifespan in Japan, roughly only slightly more than 20 have been 10 grails are available per year through events and story quests. Since it takes 10 to max out a one-star, one-star to level 100, which Servant a player uses a Grail on is a limited and permanent decision.
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Jeanne Alter does remember, or at the very least she never says she doesn't, and considering she brings up she tried to torch Orleans with her dragon army...
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** In previous Fate works, a fairly big deal was made of Servants not remembering their past summonings and if they did, it was only a vague recollection of events; Saber (Altria) in ''F/SN'' could, but her situation was ''extremely'' specific. In ''F/GO'', however, the player-summoned Servants remember their previous summonings and will discuss them at points. It isn't completely consistent and may be limited to Chaldea-summoned Servants, however; when Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter appear in Shinjuku, they explicitly do ''not'' remember your previous meetings in Fuyuki and Orleans, and Mordred in Camelot similarly does not remember your adventures in London (to Mash's abject dismay). Other Servants summoned inside some Singularities, like Atalante and Xuanzang, both cite previous encounters with the protagonist, however. Ancillary material for the franchise explains this discrepancy, saying that a Servant's memories ''do'' always go back to the original Heroic Spirit, but the Throne of Heroes automatically adjusts what the Servant remembers for the next summoning to prevent confusion from having overlapping sets of memories. In other words, what a Servant does or does not remember is ultimately circumstantial, and if they happen to remember past events they will only remember how it played out in one timeline.
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** In previous Fate works, a fairly big deal was made of Servants not remembering their past summonings and if they did, it was only a vague recollection of events; Saber (Altria) in ''F/SN'' could, but her situation was ''extremely'' specific. In ''F/GO'', however, the player-summoned Servants remember their previous summonings and will discuss them at points. It isn't completely consistent and may be limited to Chaldea-summoned Servants, however; when Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter appear in Shinjuku, they she explicitly do tells the protagonist she does ''not'' remember your their previous meetings in Fuyuki and Orleans, Fuyuki, and Mordred in Camelot similarly does not remember your adventures in London (to Mash's abject dismay). Other Servants summoned inside some Singularities, like Atalante and Xuanzang, both cite previous encounters with the protagonist, however. Ancillary material for the franchise explains this discrepancy, saying that a Servant's memories ''do'' always go back to the original Heroic Spirit, but the Throne of Heroes automatically adjusts what the Servant remembers for the next summoning to prevent confusion from having overlapping sets of memories. In other words, what a Servant does or does not remember is ultimately circumstantial, and if they happen to remember past events they will only remember how it played out in one timeline.
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* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of Götterdämmerung Lostbelt is some sort of this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached that age, the Valkyries will take him/her to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
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* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of the Götterdämmerung Lostbelt is some sort of a variation on this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached reaches that age, the Valkyries will take him/her them to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
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Changed line(s) 248 (click to see context) from:
* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of Gotterdammerung Lostbelt is some sort of this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached that age, the Valkyries will take him/her to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
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* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of Gotterdammerung Götterdämmerung Lostbelt is some sort of this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached that age, the Valkyries will take him/her to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
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* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The Gotterdamerung trailer reveals [[spoiler:that Surtr goes on the rampage and Sigurd has to fight him, which are major plot twists for that arc.]]
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* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The Gotterdamerung Götterdämmerung trailer reveals [[spoiler:that Surtr goes on the rampage and Sigurd has to fight him, which are major plot twists for that arc.]]arc]].
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*** Sitonai from Gotterdammerung. Unique in that she only became available several months later during the Oniland event before being added to the story gacha.
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*** Sitonai from Gotterdammerung.Götterdämmerung. Unique in that she only became available several months later during the Oniland event before being added to the story gacha.
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FateGrandOrder/TropesAToC | FateGrandOrder/TropesDToI | FateGrandOrder/TropesKToP | '''Tropes S To Z''' |
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FateGrandOrder/TropesAToC | FateGrandOrder/TropesDToI | FateGrandOrder/TropesKToP | '''Tropes S Q To Z''' Y''' |
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* SupernaturallyValidatedTransPerson: Characters with AmbiguousGender (d'Eon and Enkidu) usually won't be affected with skills that target certain genders. For the Valentine and White Day events, they can both give chocolate (a feature for female Servants) and receive chocolate (a feature for male Servants).
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** A running gag throughout the game is that Roman is very enamored with Magi☆Mari, an internet idol. In other words, [[spoiler:Solomon, as he did in life, is committing ''idolatry'']].
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*** Red Hare and Yu Miaoyi from SIN. Doubly so in Yu's case [[spoiler:since she's Hinako, and she ''has'' to die at the end of SIN in order to ascend to the Throne of Heroes as a Servant.]]
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*** Red Hare Hare, Yu Miaoyi, and Yu Miaoyi Li Shuwen (Old) from SIN. Doubly so in Yu's case [[spoiler:since she's Hinako, Hinako and she ''has'' to die at the end of SIN in order to ascend to the Throne of Heroes as a Servant.]]Servant]], while Shuwen is a similar case to Sitonai in that he becomes available several months later during the New Year 2019 event.
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** The Alter form itself is also subjected to this. Originally, Altria was corrupted by The Shadow, which devoured her and turned her into a darkened version of herself, and it was made clear this was a different and unique form because of The Shadow wanting to use her to achieve its own ends. FGO changes what an Alter means entirely; no longer is the form a specific state created by a specific entity, now its a term for any Servant whose form is twisted against their normal will, or altered fundamentally. As a result, the Alter form is now an excuse for variations of existing characters normally not possible.
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*** Also during Okeanos, Euryale and Asterios have a BeastAndBeauty type relationship going on, or at least teased at. Asterios is fighting to protect her from Jason, but is badly injured when he attacks your party because he and Euryale assumed you were with the Argonauts. When this happens, she rushes out intending to sacrifice herself for him despite her usual self centered attitude. She's happy to see him again during Salomon.
to:
*** Also during Okeanos, Euryale and Asterios have a BeastAndBeauty type relationship going on, or at least teased at. Asterios is fighting to protect her from Jason, but is badly injured when he attacks your party because he and Euryale assumed you were with the Argonauts. When this happens, she rushes out intending to sacrifice herself for him despite her usual self centered attitude. She's happy to see him again during Salomon.[[spoiler:their stand in Solomon's Temple]].
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** TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Salomon]], features a lot of remixes of the title theme, the main menu theme, and even the opening theme, "Shikisai".
to:
** TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Salomon]], Solomon]], features a lot of remixes of the title theme, the main menu theme, and even the opening theme, "Shikisai".
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** Most events can only be done after beating Fuyuki, with others requiring players to go further and beat certain Singularities. To play any ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, you must clear Salomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beating Salomon Temple.
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beat Salomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beating Salomon Temple.
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beat Salomon Temple.
to:
** Most events can only be done after beating Fuyuki, with others requiring players to go further and beat certain Singularities. To play any ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, you must clear Salomon Solomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beatingSalomon Solomon Temple.
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beatSalomon Solomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beating
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beat
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** Salomon, being the GrandFinale of the first arc, drops several major bombshells. [[spoiler: The Solomon that's been acting as the BigBad is actually Beast I inhabiting his dead corpse. Mash dies using Lord Camelot to defend against Goetia's Ars Almadel Salomonis. Dr. Roman reveals that he's the actual Solomon, who was summoned by Maris Billy for the Holy Grail War and used his wish to become human, shortly before he uses Ars Nova to remove himself from the Throne of Heroes and remove Goetia's immortality. And Fou gives up his power and intellect as Beast IV to resurect Mash with a normal lifespan.]]
to:
** Salomon, Solomon, being the GrandFinale of the first arc, drops several major bombshells. [[spoiler: The Solomon that's been acting as the BigBad is actually Beast I inhabiting his dead corpse. Mash dies using Lord Camelot to defend against Goetia's Ars Almadel Salomonis. Dr. Roman reveals that he's the actual Solomon, who was summoned by Maris Billy for the Holy Grail War and used his wish to become human, shortly before he uses Ars Nova to remove himself from the Throne of Heroes and remove Goetia's immortality. And Fou gives up his power and intellect as Beast IV to resurect Mash with a normal lifespan.]]
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* RedemptionDemotion: Discussed, and slightly mocked, in Musashi's trial quest with Mysterious Heroine X's supposed Saber Ninja Technique.
--> "Though extraordinarily powerful, it's a cursed technique that becomes almost useless once its user joins your side. [[BreakingTheFourthWall I never thought such a technique would ever get implemented]]... I mean, would actually exist!"
--> "Though extraordinarily powerful, it's a cursed technique that becomes almost useless once its user joins your side. [[BreakingTheFourthWall I never thought such a technique would ever get implemented]]... I mean, would actually exist!"
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** In the final boss of part 1, [[spoiler:King of Demons Goetia]], an instrumental arrangement of the main theme Shikisai plays.
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* SympathyForTheDevil: The party sympathizes with Tiamat's extreme sorrow at having been thrown out and 'killed' after she served her purpose of creating the world and humanity in general, but still feel it was necessary for humanity to flourish. [[spoiler:They do it again with no hesitation despite Tiamat being the literal mother of two of the party.]]
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* SecretTestOfCharacter
** In Babylon, Ziusudra tests the protagonist by appearing in front of them as an old, crippled beggar clearly in need of food. The protagonist buys bread and leaves it for the old man before starting to continue on his way, only for the seemingly crippled old man to reveal that it was a test of character: He did not overlook an old man in need of help, but he also didn't leave simple coins as an empty gesture of sympathy. Instead, he brought him exactly what he needed. [[spoiler:In truth, he's probably not really Ziusudra, but the protagonist having earned their respect comes in handy at the end when he strikes down Tiamat so they have a chance to finally kill her.]]
** Quetzalcoatl sets up a few before her boss fight.
*** First, she knew the protagonist's group was hiding in the jungle outside her temple, but pretended she didn't. The protagonist could either attack her immediately or wait for her to leave for Uruk and [[spoiler:so far as they knew]] brutally kill a hundred people. She's pleased that she chose to confront her immediately despite having little chance, saying that if they'd taken the cautious approach of sabotaging her temple when she wasn't there she'd have immediately killed them all.
*** Second, she holds back during the fight to give them a chance to destroy the sun stone that is the center of the temple. There's every indication that she would really have let them do it too, but afterward would have simply killed them all despite the power nerf that would have resulted: She doesn't care about having her full Divinity because she doesn't feel she needs it. [[spoiler:Instead, the protagonist works with the party to make a massive, crazy gesture by falling out of the sky in an attempted lucha move to make her admit that she wasn't willing to kill them so they could form an alliance instead. This comes in handy later when Quetzalcoatl and her full power are actually critical in slowing Tiamat ''just'' enough to save the day at the end of the chapter.]]
** In Babylon, Ziusudra tests the protagonist by appearing in front of them as an old, crippled beggar clearly in need of food. The protagonist buys bread and leaves it for the old man before starting to continue on his way, only for the seemingly crippled old man to reveal that it was a test of character: He did not overlook an old man in need of help, but he also didn't leave simple coins as an empty gesture of sympathy. Instead, he brought him exactly what he needed. [[spoiler:In truth, he's probably not really Ziusudra, but the protagonist having earned their respect comes in handy at the end when he strikes down Tiamat so they have a chance to finally kill her.]]
** Quetzalcoatl sets up a few before her boss fight.
*** First, she knew the protagonist's group was hiding in the jungle outside her temple, but pretended she didn't. The protagonist could either attack her immediately or wait for her to leave for Uruk and [[spoiler:so far as they knew]] brutally kill a hundred people. She's pleased that she chose to confront her immediately despite having little chance, saying that if they'd taken the cautious approach of sabotaging her temple when she wasn't there she'd have immediately killed them all.
*** Second, she holds back during the fight to give them a chance to destroy the sun stone that is the center of the temple. There's every indication that she would really have let them do it too, but afterward would have simply killed them all despite the power nerf that would have resulted: She doesn't care about having her full Divinity because she doesn't feel she needs it. [[spoiler:Instead, the protagonist works with the party to make a massive, crazy gesture by falling out of the sky in an attempted lucha move to make her admit that she wasn't willing to kill them so they could form an alliance instead. This comes in handy later when Quetzalcoatl and her full power are actually critical in slowing Tiamat ''just'' enough to save the day at the end of the chapter.]]
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This page covers tropes in ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder''.
FateGrandOrder/TropesAToC | FateGrandOrder/TropesDToI | FateGrandOrder/TropesKToP | '''Tropes S To Z''' |
----
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Q-R]]
* QuintessentialBritishGentleman: Appropriately for Londinium, the storyline is filled with GentlemanAndAScholar Servants who most of the time throwing passive aggressive rhetoric before getting down to fights with so much class. Mordred, whose solution to a murder mystery is to punch the suspects until they squeal and if they're innocent, punch someone else until they cough up, is figuratively and literally out of place.
* RaceAgainstTheClock: [[spoiler:The Seraphix oil rig is sinking into the Mariana Trench and the protagonist only has ten days in SE.RA.PH to save it.]]
* RagnarokProofing: [[spoiler:Atlas Academy is doing just fine despite the incineration of Earth killing the magi inside. Holmes theorizes that the several layers of protection in place must have allowed the institution and its various installations to survive.]]
* RandomDrop: The only way to get money, EXP, Ascension materials and Servant skill items is this. During events, this is the only way to get special Craft Essences and event currency, the chance of getting more currency is either boosted by certain Servants or event [=CEs=].
* RareCandy:
** Fou cards give Servants a stat boost with a cap of 2000 for both HP and Atk, but only 4* Fou cards can be used to level that stat boost from 1001-2000.
** The Holy Grails you've been collecting from beating each singularity and certain events can level even a 1* Servant past their usual limit up to level 100, if you have enough. The game calls this "[[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palingenesis Palingenesis]]." It really is rare, however as of the game's two-year lifespan in Japan, only slightly more than 20 have been available through events and story quests. Since it takes 10 to max out a one-star, which Servant a player uses a Grail on is a limited and permanent decision.
* RareRandomDrop
** For certain events, event Craft Essences also have a chance of dropping from enemies, with the indication of it dropping being a rainbow aura around the gold chest. Craft Essence experience cards are indicated by a yellow star next to the gold chest.
** The very nature of the gacha.
*** The quartz gacha has pull rates of 40% 3*/R Servants, 3% 4*/SR and 1% 5*/SSR while for Craft Essences it's 40% R, 12% SR and 4% SSR. A ten-roll guarantees at least one SR card; but in practice, this will almost always be an SR CE if the game is forced to make a gold card appear, which generally aren't considered particularly desirable. The odds of getting a rated-up Servant or Craft Essence vary. Assuming a single rate up, [=SSRs=] have a 70% chance if you roll any SSR, [=SRs=] have a 50% chance and [=SRs=] have a mere 10% chance while for [=CEs=] it's 70%, 33% and 20% respectively. More rated up [=CEs=] and Servants at one time changes the odds. For example, if two [=SSRs=] are rated up at once, each one will have a 40% chance of appearing for a total of 80% between them, reducing the odds of a spook even though it decreases the chances of getting a particular one of them.
*** The friend point gacha, while generally of little interest to most players due to how little of value is in it, actually has the rarest drop of all. AÅ‹ra Mainiiu, the game's only 0* Servant, is a very rare FP summon-only Servant who was added during the Fate/Zero collaboration event. The official rates of pulling him are unstated but are believed to be ''far'' lower than the odds of pulling even an SSR. However, he's a JunkRare that is only as strong as a 2*/C Servant. As a nod to his rarity, he had a special line of dialogue in Christmas 2017 to acknowledge players who had actually managed to get him.
* ReadingsAreOffTheScale:
** The damage the Camelot singularity does to the timeline is unrelated to Solomon, so Chaldea has no idea what to expect; and the fact that it's becoming incredibly erratic, like the times when it literally disappeared from the map and separated from the timeline of humanity, has caused them to rank it EX in value to restoring humanity. The impossibility of the Lion King's presence is the direct cause.
** The humanity foundation value of SE.RA.PH is "CCC", which isn't quantifiable by the franchise scale.
** This is what "Saber Wars" went for - pitting you against bosses with ludicrously high HP (including the first ever enemy to break one million HP), but at the same time giving you Craft Essences to greatly multiply your Servants' attack power and overcome these foes by dealing ludicrous amounts of damage.
** The three Void Ghosts in the Incinerated Remains area from "Garden of Order" each have 6,666,666 HP, which is much higher compared to any enemy encount.
** Rashoumon has the first raid boss of the game with a ''2 trillion'' HP bar which the entire playerbase was required to attack and get rid of over the course of the event. To boost your Servants' damage, they used the system of "Saber Wars". The highest HP Ibaraki you can fight has 6 million HP, accompanied by some-hundred thousand HP GiantHandsOfDoom. This is used again for the Onigashima event.
* RecurringRiff: The melody of the title screen music, "Grand Order", is used in every Grand Battle theme and is also remixed for the title screens of ''Epic of Remnant'' and ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt''.
* ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming: Shimosa's antagonists all use an afterlife as their moniker, with Lancer "Purgatorio", Archer "Inferno", Assassin "Paraiso", Berserker "Samghata Naraka"[[note]]The "Crushing Hell" of Buddhism[[/note]], Rider "Kalasutra Naraka"[[note]]The "Hell of Black Threads" of Buddhism[[/note]], Saber "Empireo", and Caster "Limbo".
* RemixedLevel: Certain stages in later parts of the game are just altered versions of earlier and "more generic" stages like the "Babylonian forest" stage in Babylonia which is just a greener version of "Redwood Forest" stage from America, the "Subway" stage in Shinjuku which is an altered version of Camelot's "Temple" stage, and the Assassin of Nightless City's forecourt stage is a Chinese-style alteration of the "Throne Room" stage. "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld" intentionally uses this as the protagonist returns to the gloomy Babylonian underworld, only to find that there are Christmas trees and someone's strung up holiday lights all over the arches and Ereshkigal's cages.
* RenaissanceMan: [[TropeCodifier Leonardo da Vinci]] is a summonable Servant and each of Hundred Faces' personalities are said to have a different area of expertise. In addition, some Heroic Spirits can materialize in more than one class. The gold medal has to go to Heracles, who is said to be summonable in all of the standard classes [[spoiler:(and Avenger)]] barring Caster, with Geronimo having four distinct classes to his name coming in second. In-game, Medusa currently has the most classes available with three, Rider, Lancer, and Avenger.[[note]]Altria, Cu Chulainn, Elisabeth, and Jeanne have that many and in the former's case ''even more'', but only when counting gag Servants and Servants where they were put into a different class due to an external force.[[/note]]
* {{Retcon}}:
** The main plot hook of the story is that CHALDEAS gives humanity a year until the extinction event, so every adaptation dates the apocalypse depending on when it was originally made: for example, the original Japanese release of the game was in 2015, so CHALDEAS predicts humanity will be gone in 2016. The anime OVA has the end-date as 2017, and in the US version, it's 2018.
** In previous Fate works, a fairly big deal was made of Servants not remembering their past summonings and if they did, it was only a vague recollection of events; Saber (Altria) in ''F/SN'' could, but her situation was ''extremely'' specific. In ''F/GO'', however, the player-summoned Servants remember their previous summonings and will discuss them at points. It isn't completely consistent and may be limited to Chaldea-summoned Servants, however; when Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter appear in Shinjuku, they explicitly do ''not'' remember your previous meetings in Fuyuki and Orleans, and Mordred in Camelot similarly does not remember your adventures in London (to Mash's abject dismay). Other Servants summoned inside some Singularities, like Atalante and Xuanzang, both cite previous encounters with the protagonist, however. Ancillary material for the franchise explains this discrepancy, saying that a Servant's memories ''do'' always go back to the original Heroic Spirit, but the Throne of Heroes automatically adjusts what the Servant remembers for the next summoning to prevent confusion from having overlapping sets of memories. In other words, what a Servant does or does not remember is ultimately circumstantial, and if they happen to remember past events they will only remember how it played out in one timeline.
** ''GO'' also carries forward a retcon previously put forward by ''Extra'' and ''Apocrypha'' concerning Assassins. In ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', the ''only'' people who could be Assassins were explicitly members of Hashashin, preferably one of the 19 "Old Men of the Mountain". Kojirou was "Assassin", yes, but he was extraordinarily unusual because he had been summoned by another Servant and wasn't a true Servant himself. As this would really limit the options ''GO'' would have for Assassin-class Servants, though, this conceit has been abandoned entirely and now anyone with proper parameters and a talent for silent, agile killing can be an Assassin; the Hashashin now make up a ''minority'' (though still an important one) of the Class.
** Moreover, previous ''Fate'' works, particularly ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', leaned on the idea of most proper Assassins being bad at direct confrontation with even Kojirou needing a highly specialized battlefield to match the knight classes. ''GO'''s Assassins tend to have slightly lower HP totals, and a larger proportion of them are a low-rarity, but, in practical terms, Assassins can fight as well as anyone and have a typical place in a triangle. Several Assassins are counted as among the strongest units in the entire ''game''.
** There is also a minor retcon concerning "Alter" Servants and their eyes, thanks to the proliferation of Alter Servants in ''GO''. In ''F/SN'', Altria Alter's striking golden eyes are noted in her profile as being the result ''specifically'' of her dragon blood awakening. Jeanne Alter (and her related Santa Lily version), EMIYA Alter and Dark Irisviel all have identical eyes to Altria, however, and none of them have dragon traits. While there is perhaps a dragon connection with Jeanne Alter through her "Dragon Witch" skill, there is no indication she has a physical relation to dragons, and neither EMIYA Alter or Dark Irisviel have any kind of relation to dragons, period. The previous dragon connection to Altria's eyes is also not mentioned in ''GO''. This retcon was carried further into ''Anime/FatePrototype Fragments'', [[spoiler:where a number of the re-manifested Alters of Servants like Ozymandias and Brynhild have gold eyes]].
** Relatedly, somewhere between a retcon, ArcWelding and AdaptationExpansion is the game's acknowledgment of the idea of "Alter" Servants entirely. ''F/SN'' did not use the term "Alter" at all; any Servants corrupted during the third route were referred to as "blackened", Altria included. And while ''Hollow Ataraxia'' and ''Unlimited Codes'' introduced the name of Saber Alter, no other Servant was called "Alter" prior to ''GO'' and Altria's situation was treated as essentially unique. ''GO'', however, has embraced a long-running fan idea of the Alter state being a distinct mode of existence for a Servant, separate from their usual summoned state; the Shinjuku chapter, in particular, addresses the concept of Alter Servants at some length (thanks to there being no less than three of them running around), and even attaches a set of kanji to the term "Alter" (in furigana), the kanji essentially translating to "reversed".
* RevengeBeforeReason: According to Jeanne Alter, the defining characteristic of Avengers is that they have a great emptiness inside them that they try to fill through vengeance, but can never successfully cope with. For them, getting their revenge is not even about satisfaction or pleasure but just to keep going. She finds it quite pathetic even as she knows it applies to herself just as much as to Hessian Lobo, the enemy she's trying to kill or at least slow down.
* RevisitingTheRoots: The autumn 2016 event is Nero Festival, which is basically a new and improved version of 2015's Nero Festival, the first major event the game had in its history. As such, the event refrains from having even a silly plot (besides the introduction), and just pits the player and their Servants against difficult themed teams of enemy Servants, just like the original Nero Festival, and has the original Nero Medals as event currency.
* RewatchBonus: Revelations like [[spoiler: Dr. Roman being Solomon, Mash having been fused with Galahad for several years, Fou being Primate Murder and a Beast, the circumstances behind how Olga's father funded Chaldea, and Goetia's nature and endgame]] put several things in a much different light on a reread of the game's story.
* RiddleOfTheSphinx: The answer to this is one of two ways to enter Ozymandias' temple complex in Camelot.
* RidiculouslyCuteCritter:
** The boars from the Chaldea Summer event are also this, both in-universe and out. The demonic boars, not so much...
** Fou, naturally, is also this, as a mobage RPG staple. [[spoiler:He ends up having a much more important role in the plot and wider Nasuverse than anyone foresaw.]]
** Ozymandias' sphinx cubs are adored by [[NotSoAboveItAll him]] and players alike.
* RooftopConfrontation: The final two battles of the Garden of Order event take place on the rooftop of the apartment complex the event is centered around.
* RuleOfFunny: Most events and some Interludes run on this.
* RuleOfThree: A major plot point is that Chaldea had successfully summoned three Heroic Spirits before the game proper.
** The first one you encounter is the third Servant summoned, Leonardo da Vinci, who's been staying at Chaldea for a while now.
** The second is [[spoiler:Galahad who was fused with Mash ten years ago and lay dormant within her. It's noted that he was the only Heroic Spirit to respond to their fusion projects with Chaldea's designer babies, the rest refused.]]
** [[spoiler:The very first one is King Solomon, summoned before Chaldea even became the gigantic facility it is now, by Maris Billy Animusphere for the Holy Grail War in Fuyuki.]]
[[/folder]]
[[folder:S]]
* SadlyMythtaken:
** In Salem, "[[http://fategrandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Elder_Ghoul Elder Ghouls]]" have the appearance of [[http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Gug Gugs]]. Justified in the plot saying that Lovecraft dreamed the idea right, but not necessarily the particulars.
** Caster Cu uses Norse runes instead of Celtic. AuthorsSavingThrow has Scathatch explaining she taught him these because Odin likes warriors regardless of nationality and they were faster than Celtic ones.
* SaveScumming: If you force-quit the game during a battle turn then open the game again, it resets to before you picked your command cards. This can be useful if you forgot to use a skill or the RandomNumberGod ruins your plan. The effectiveness of this was decreased with a fix that let you return to the skill use section with a single button press, but would distribute stars at the beginning of the turn instead of redistributing them whenever you use a new skill. Now the only thing that changes crit chances is to use a star absorption skill or to generate more stars with a skill.
* ScoreMultiplier: Bonus Servants or event Craft Essences are used to boost the number of points gained in certain events like the Gudaguda events and Saber Wars.
* ScunthorpeProblem: The NA version introduced the messaging system in November 2018 and censors the ''entire'' message if there's any inappropriate word caught by the filter. This extends to mentioning Assassin, one of the game's seven basic classes. There's also no actual indication of censoring on the player's side, it only appears censored on friend lists.
* SelfDeprecation:
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
* SealedCastInAMultipack: In the beginning of ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'', all Servants except for da Vinci and Holmes are forcibly sent away, depriving the protagonist of any way to fight. [[spoiler:However da Vinci put all the Saint Graphs of your playable Servants in a briefcase, allowing you to bring them back with the appropriate ritual and resources.]]
* SelfImposedChallenge: Later events have the ability to rerun the most difficult fights as a way for players to challenge themselves, with no rewards for doing so after beating it the first time.
** Some of them even go one step beyond, such as Kiara in the SE.RA.PH event. Normally you buy one item to make her not use her OneWingedAngel form and then an optional amount more to remove various buffs from her humanoid form, but it's also possible to challenge her in her demon form. The most difficult version of the fight, however, is to not allow her to transform but then allow her to use the rest of her overpowered buffs, which together halve all your Arts/Quick/Buster attacks, deal a thousand damage per turn, drain 5% NP so you can never reach 100% without being at [=NP2=] or using a skill and so on.
** Another way to make fights more challenging is to not use any of the top-tier buffers (Waver, Merlin, or Mash for example), especially when fighting difficult bosses.
** Removing damage-boosting event Craft Essences is another method players do, to see whether they don't need to rely on a booster to take down bosses with several hundred thousand HP.
** ''Epic of Remnant'' chapters have themed Servants which receive double bond points for every story battles. For Shinjuku, it's Evil-aligned Servants. For Agartha, females, Astolfo, d'Eon, and Enkidu. For Shimosa Province, the Knight Classes and for Salem, Casters. For story immersion, challenge, and maximum bond point allocation, players limit themselves by using only themed Servants.
** Players can do a [[SoloCharacterRun self-imposed solo Servant fight]]. Because the game forces the player to have at least three Servants for a fight, they choose a Servant they want to do the solo fight with and pair that Servant with two other low-level CannonFodder Servants to take the first few hits for him or her (preferably Leonidas and/or Saint George since they have the Taunt skill which forces the enemy to attack them first). After the two [[CannonFodder cannon fodders]] die, only the main Servant remains to do the challenge.
** Or they can do the [[LowLevelRun low-rarity run]] where players only use 1-3 star Servants and/or 1-3 star Craft Essences. It is borderline impossible to win in stages where the opponents cheat unless players get lucky [[CriticalHit critical hits]] or the opponents skip a turn without attacking.
* SelfInflictedHell: [[spoiler: What Salem is more or less. To elaborate, Salem was created to cause as much 'pain' as possible by Räum so that Abigail, who has the ability to channel an [[{{EldritchAbomination}} Elder God]], by using her guilt on the injustices that she caused and the fact that she doesn't remember ''what'' injustice she caused. Making her incapable of forgiving herself and humanity. In doing so literally creating a Christian HellOnEarth with Räum and Abigail as joint administrator]]
* SequelEscalation: The third and final Halloween event starring Bathory goes this way, with three castles to invade instead of just Csejte Castle, two new variations of Bathory, and a more dramatic plot that isn't just about the protagonist trying to get to the castle and resolve the issue.
* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Despite the sheer sense of closure that the ending provided, with the world being saved thanks to the collective efforts of Chaldea and the sacrifice of Dr. Roman, there are still threats for Chaldea to face. Gilgamesh's speech during the climax has him imply that ''at least'' one more Beast is currently active and that once one Beast makes an attack, events accelerate to an "ultimate conclusion" of some sort, and Holmes' theory that Goetia chose 2016 to destroy humanity because a greater threat was going to do something worse in either that year or soon afterward hasn't been confirmed or denied yet. More directly, in the post-credits scene, da Vinci debriefs the protagonist and Mash saying that the Mage's Association will come knocking on their door soon, thanks to the entire ''planet'' missing a year and even the [[{{Muggles}} normies]] knowing something weird happened.]]
* SequentialBoss: The MultipleLifeBars mechanic introduced with Shinjuku has facilitated these, with a health bar depletion triggering the next phase of the fight.
** For Shinjuku, the Christine doll turns into a giant ghost.
** In SE.RA.PH's extra story, Nero turns into Nero Bride, Tamamo turns into her Lancer version, [[spoiler:and Shiki transforms into her Saber version.]]
** Certain bosses also give themselves special unremovable buffs upon health bar depletion, forcing players to switch strategies on the fly, like Saber Empireo giving himself a 100% defense shield or Suzuka Gozen draining everyone's HP every turn.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong:
** The HolyGrail has appeared in several key points in Humanity's development, and the player has to travel to them all to either destroy or retrieve the Grail in order to set history back on course and prevent its demise in the future. [[spoiler:At first the heroes assume this means that anyone who dies during a Singularity is revived once history is restored, but during Babylonia Gilgamesh replies that no, people who die stay dead, even if they didn't die in the original history. History is rewritten such that they died of some cause other than the Singularity, but the fact that they died at that specific time remains unaltered. However, the opposite is also true: anyone who lives (including those that died in the original history during that time) will survive past the point the Singularity takes place in.]]
** The Saber Wars event. Heroine X comes from the future from another planet, the Planet Servant with a dystopian future dominated by the Sabers where Lancers are extinct and Archers are deemed criminals. So she came back in time to kill all Sabers and all Servants with Saber-faces. This storyline is continued in Mysterious Heroine X Alter's trial quest.
** The ''Fate/Zero'' crossover is about Lord El-Melloi II and his determination to save the innocent lives lost to the Holy Grail.
* SevenDeadlySins:
** The theme of the Prison Tower quest bosses, with seven Servants corresponding to each sin. [[spoiler:Jeanne is the only one who doesn't actually qualify.]]
** In Babylonia, a set called the seven Evils of Humanity are brought up which are essentially disasters manifesting as Beast class Servants, brought about by humanity's beastly nature, which humanity's tasked with destroying. They don't quite match with the classical set, as the first is "Pity", the second is "Regression", the fourth is "Comparison", and another one is "Regret".
*** [[spoiler:Beast III-R invokes a somewhat more classic Evil, that being "Desire". It is somewhat broader than the [[{{Lust}} usual expression of such]], as it includes things like "desiring salvation" (though certainly, she is quite willing to exploit ''that'' kind of "Desire" as well...)]]
* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: There is a lot of female {{Fanservice}} in this game. Some of the girls know they are sexy and want others to know it to.
* ShesAManInJapan: d'Eon and Astolfo are made explicitly female in the Chinese port of the game, and can be used in girl-exclusive events as well.
* ShiftingSandLand: The first area the protagonists arrive in Camelot is this, with sandstorms, a pyramid and lots and lots of desert. It's actually the Egypt of Ozymandias' time that was twisted into the singularity when he was summoned.
* ShiningCity: The holy city of Camelot [[spoiler:built over the ashes of Jerusalem]] is this, as it stands as the last shelter in a shrinking singularity. Almost all inhabitants of the area have been attempting to get entrance into it.
* ShipTease: In a story as long as this, there's a lot of relationship teasing to go around.
** The protagonist gets the bulk of the ship tease:
*** Mash is clearly in love with the protagonist and tends to be [[ClingyJealousGirl very clingy if she sees any sign of the protagonist showing affection for other female Servants]] while as the story progresses the protagonist grows more protective and dialogue choices can show them being fond of her in return.
*** Roughly half the female Servants fall for the protagonist, though nothing much comes of this most of the time. These tend to be characters who did not have a relationship in a previous story, such as Euryale or Okita, but it does also happen to alternate versions of characters such as Swimsuit Tamamo or Nero Bride.
*** Finally, several story chapters also include a lot of romantic interactions, such as Hassan of Serenity's massive crush on the protagonist in Camelot and Ereshkigal's similar one in Babylonia (to the point Ishtar teases at a LoveTriangle forming between the protagonist, Mash, and Ereshkigal), Jeanne Alter and Saber Alter quasi-love triangle in Shinjuku, [[spoiler:not to mention Moriarty's plan literally revolves around the protagonist becoming the closest person to him]], and Meltlilith even playing the part of the heroine in the most serious event to date, SE.RA.PH.
** There's also a fair bit of teasing between various Servants:
*** Sanson, Mozart and d'Eon are all in love with Marie Antoinette, though she's kind of spacey and doesn't seem entirely aware of it.
*** Sasaki Kojirou seems to have a thing for Martha, who appears to find it kind of annoying. Still, fans eat it up so the writers started adding in more of it.
*** One of Altria's My Room lines has her reminiscing fondly about [[TookALevelInKindness EMIYA]] while [[LuminescentBlush blushing]], clearly remembering him more as [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Shirou]] from the ''Fate'' route.
*** Caesar and Cleopatra are very much in love with each other, as is only fitting. Cleopatra is initially shocked to see how fat he is, but after recovering she doesn't care, despite her usual vanity. Similarly, Irisviel and Kiritsugu are married in other continuities and while they don't know each other here, they're still drawn to each other.
*** Kintoki is caught between Shuten-douji and Raikou, which is a really uncomfortable for him because he helped kill the former and considers the latter to be something like his mom, but she's crazy and considers that the same thing as romantic love. He appears to mostly love Shuten, but they always seem to end up bickering when they meet. Finally, Tamamo also flirts with him in London, but they both know she's only doing it to embarrass him. Kintoki knows perfectly well she actually loves someone else, namely Hakuno.
*** During Okeanos, Blackbeard loudly proclaims about how he's a lolicon and so forth and that Drake is an old hag. However, despite this, she's actually the one woman he's genuinely serious about and asks her to hold him as he dies in Okeanos, which is a request she grants. In case you're thinking it's too serious, his Interlude is also about getting explicit doujins about her.
*** Also during Okeanos, Euryale and Asterios have a BeastAndBeauty type relationship going on, or at least teased at. Asterios is fighting to protect her from Jason, but is badly injured when he attacks your party because he and Euryale assumed you were with the Argonauts. When this happens, she rushes out intending to sacrifice herself for him despite her usual self centered attitude. She's happy to see him again during Salomon.
*** Like in legend, Rama and Sita are heavily devoted to each other with a third of the America chapter revolving around their romance as Rama tries to rescue her and Rama's profile mostly focuses on the aspects of his legend with Sita.
*** There are several hints that the relationship between EMIYA Alter and [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] is much deeper than either would admit too. [[spoiler:Slaughtering her and her cult in one alternate timeline is what drove Emiya Shirou down this path, and Kiara when she becomes Beast III-R in the SE.RA.PH. chapter is able to bring him to her side not through force, but using said guilt to draw him over and corrupt him into a Beast Servant]].
*** During the first Christmas event, Santa Alter gives [[AmbiguousGender Le Chevalier d'Eon]] a maid dress, much to their consternation. If this wasn't obvious enough, Alter also asks them for their contact information.
*** Nikola Tesla is ''immediately'' smitten with Tamamo upon meeting her in London. All of his dialogue with her involves him gushing over her, to the point that Tamamo has to actually remind herself to remain loyal to Hakuno.
*** When Hijikata Toshizou was released, he came with several lines complimenting female Servants (i.e. Musashi, Carmilla). Fan artists were all over the latter. And in the Halloween 2017 event with Carmilla's animation and voice updates, she also has a voice line with Hijikata, even calling him by his real name without any honorifics. Cue fans shipping them ''even further''.
*** Musashi and Osakabehime started picking up steam in the months leading to "Battle in New York", even though they've had hints since the latter's debut in the third Halloween event. Musashi is known for her love of cute girls, while Osakabehime is known to collect Musashi merchandise, and their profiles from the material books have matching lines for each other where Musashi attempts to drag Osakabehime from her room. If the [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fategrandorder/images/3/30/CE900.png/revision/latest?cb=20180919135715 Chaldea Kitchen Truck CE]] is any indication, she succeeded, and the two have been touring New York together. They're also a DualBoss during the event, and their title is "[[LadyAndKnight Princess and her Bodyguard]]", introducing a fairly popular dynamic to their interactions.
** Roman and Da Vinci had significant amount of ship tease with her attempting to take care of him, often visiting him in the middle of work to remind him to eat, and they basically become the Chaldea crew's surrogate parents. Additionally, Dr Roman gets very emotional (and slightly {{tsundere}}) when Da Vinci gets into some peril in Camelot, and Da Vinci's interlude clearly implies she has feelings for him. Part of this is based on the fact that their [[Creator/KenichiSuzumura voice]] [[Creator/MaayaSakamoto actors]] are married and the two actors are playing an official couple in [[LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai another Type-Moon series]].
** Kadoc and Anastasia are shown to have a bond deeper then just Master-Servant, with Kadoc's fellow Crypters even worried that he'll prioritize her wish over expanding his Lostbelt and [[spoiler:Anastasia sacrifices herself at the end to save his life.]]
* ShooOutTheClowns: [[spoiler:In London, to establish just how much of a threat Solomon is and how serious the stakes have become, he kills all the Servants (Shakespeare, Tamamo and Kintoki) who were mostly providing comic relief.]]
** PlayedForLaughs in Garden of Order, where MHX is terrified of Saber Shiki due to the latter emitting an aura can ignore the rules of Servant Universe (comical characters can't be killed).
* ShootTheMedicFirst: Averted. Enemies, including enemy Servants, have honestly pretty pathetic healing, especially when used on the boss Servants they sometimes show up with. In Okeanos in particular, focusing on [[spoiler:Medea Lily]] before attacking [[spoiler:Demon Pillar Forneus]] is a good way to be grinded into dust by the latter, especially its ChargedAttack, while the former's Noble Phantasm is a minor inconvenience at best.
* {{Shopkeeper}}:
** Da Vinci serves as the default shopkeeper in the game, though she can be affected by the player's progress in the main story, like turning into a hologram when she personally joins the protagonist in Camelot and [[spoiler:being replaced by the younger Da Vinci in the ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' storyline when the original one is killed.]]
** Event shops (with some exceptions) has the event's featured Servant (usually the reward one if there's any) as their shopkeeper.
* ShowWithinAShow: The party performs several plays; one is about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, another features the three Jeannes, the third one stars Medea Lily and Circe, and a CompressedAdaptation of "Starry Xuanzang goes to India" for the townspeople of Salem with the UI slightly altered to reflect it being a play.
* SimpleYetAwesome:
** Most events give you a free SR Servant and allow you to buy four more copies of them and all of their unique ascension items using easily grindable items in the event shop, meaning that you can get them to level 80 and their NP level to 5 ''very'' easily. They're all considered useful in some way (with a few considered absolutely absurd), though some of the early ones have been power-creeped.
** Medea's Rule Breaker doesn't seem too special, just being a dagger that removes buffs - except its self-recharging effect, combined with her High-Speed Divine Words skill that gives her at least 80% of an NP gauge with the press of a button, makes it a very reliable and deadly SpamAttack. It helps that she has three normal Arts cards, and that Rule Breaker is an Arts card itself.
** Sakata Kintoki's Rider version gives everyone else in this list competition--having a single-target Noble Phantasm that [[JustForPun runs over]] most bosses (especially the Caster and Berserker ones). His skills are all straightforward, so he's also ''very'' easy to use. He's also a SR Servant obtainable for free.
** After Camelot, Mash is considered one of the best SR Servants. She can tank reliably with her huge HP pool, taunt, and invincibility, has decent damage potential (as Shielder class deals normal damage to any Class), and support with her NP that adds two DEF buffs and a big ATK buff to the whole party. And she has ''0 party cost''. The only downside for using her is she doesn't get any bond points.
** Paul Bunyan, full stop. She's a 1* unit with a very good skillset and '''short NP animation''', born to be the ultimate farming unit.
** Your starting outfit, Mystic Code Chaldea. Other Codes may look cool or have clever spells, but you really ''can't'' go wrong with the provided versatility of a strong heal, attack boost, and evade.
** Some lower rarity servants are like this, as despite their lower than average stat-line, some of them have incredibly powerful and useful skill setup and/or useful Noble Phantasm that makes them more useful for their utility that outweighs their lower stat line. In fact, many of these servants are often referred as "low-rarity EX tier" mainly because of their useful utility that can provide in many team composition and serve as cheaper alternatives to their respective higher rarity counterparts [[BribingYourWayToVictory for those who don't want to spend real life money]] to get higher rarity servants. Some noticeable examples include Hans Christian Andersen, Euryale, Robin Hood, Billy the Kid, David, Julius Caesar, Bedivere, Lu Bu, and Georgios, as they have very straightforward skill sets in addition to them being lower rarity.
** Some of the 4* and 5* Craft Essence the player can obtain from events for free can be really good. While the earlier events have event Craft Essences that are either decent or too situational, some of the later events have free event Craft Essence that are incredibly good (one noticeable example is the Golden Sumo Wrestling CE from the Onigashima event, which grants the servant equipped with it 15% increased attack and starting with 50% NP charge when max limited break, arguably considered one of the best free event Craft Essences the player can obtain).
* SirNotAppearingInThisTrailer: Some Servants aren't announced or promoted to make their appearance in the story all the more impactful.
** Lancer Altria Alter is the only antagonist for London that wasn't already shown in the trailer or promotional release gacha rate-up.
** In America, [[spoiler: Cu Chulainn Alter is never hinted at in the trailer or promotion, with his appearance in the chapter's cold open being the first time he appears.]] In addition, Li Shuwen who didn't have any connection to the new Servants or prior appearance in the game, yet he debuts there.
** [[spoiler:Tiamat was never shown in trailers or promotion for Babylonia to hide her role as the actual ArcVillain, with her horns as the icon representing Babylonia being the only hint towards her existence before its release.]]
** [[spoiler:Shakespeare and Andersen are never shown in the Shinjuku trailer, but they have an important role for the story's finale.]]
** [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] is the only SE.RA.PH Servant not to show up at all in promotional materials prior to release, as it would be a major spoiler.
** [[spoiler:Medb, Quetzalcoatl and Gugalanna]] do not feature at all in the "Dead Heat Summer Race" event PV.
** [[spoiler:Caster Limbo, Sengo Muramasa, Amakusa Shirou and Sasaki Kojiro]] do not appear in the Shimosa PV.
** [[spoiler:The Queen of Sheba and Lavinia Whateley]] don't appear in the Salem trailer.
** [[spoiler:Billy the Kid and Ivan the Terrible]] don't appear in the Anastasia trailer
* SituationalSword:
** Many [=NPs=] provide bonus damage against certain targets, such as Lancer Tamamo dealing bonus damage to Males, Gilgamesh to Servants and Nobunaga to enemies with Riding. A related effect is providing a power up bonus vs certain targets, which has the same effect through a different mechanic. Scathach has a power up effect against undead and divine enemies on her third skill, while one of Nobunaga's has power up against Divinity, meaning the effects multiply against enemies with both Riding and Divinity such as Raikou or Caesar. The standard super effective multiplier is 50% on [=NPs=] while power up usually ranges from 50-100% as it's normally attached to skills, meaning the effect can be improved on.
** Some skills provide extra effects to Servants with certain traits. Elisabeth and Medb, for example, provide double the effect to female and male Servants respectively on their improved Charisma buffs.
** Other skills ''only'' work on certain targets. Charm effects usually only target one gender, for example. Stheno's NP also only works on males apart from the defense down effect, causing her to be one of the least popular Servants in the game.
** Certain Craft Essences give the equipped Servant bonus damage against certain types of enemies, i.e. Origin Bullet gives the equipped Servant more damage against enemy Casters.
** Finally, some skills provide additional benefits depending on the terrain type. Ruler Martha gains an attack bonus in maps with water, Gawain gains a Buster buff on maps with sunshine, Jaguar Warrior has bonus star generation on forest maps, and Swimsuit Nobunaga has bonus attack on burning maps.
* SlapOnTheWristNuke: Due to GameplayAndStorySegregation, TacticalRockPaperScissors, and Noble Phantasm gameplay mechanics, a flashy, lore-wise devastating NP could deal a lot less damage compared to a more mundane, weaker, and less impressive NP for certain enemies, i.e. Gilgamesh's Enuma Elish is a lot less useful than Kojirou's ''Tsubame-gaeshi'' when it comes to taking on Rider dragons.
* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness: The storyline can switch between silliness and seriousness (although later chapters shift more towards the later). Certain events, however, shifts more towards silliness with massive amount of either BreakingTheFourthWall or SelfDeprecation, even events that are supposed to be "serious" such as the Garden of Order and Fate/Accel Zero events (which the later is lampshaded by Mash with a BreakTheFourthWall moment).
* SNKBoss:
** The Exhibition Matches of the 2016 Nero Festival are made to be harder then hard and it shows.
*** The first is a battle against Heracles. Already a tough opponent as a Berserker with a dodge skill, an attack buff and high debuff resistance, this Heracles has his Noble Phantasm, God Hand, as a permanent unremovable buff which revives him with half HP ''eleven times''. Also, to make things harder, any Servants on the frontline at the start of the battle get hit with a permanent debuff to their Arts cards which severely cripples NP gain and damage.
*** The second has you against Scathach and Cu Chulainn. On the first turn, Scathach will use a skill to seal all Noble Phantasms for 3 turns. After taking out one, the remaining one will proceed to ''instantly kill'' your party. Both of them come with a dodge skill and they will spam them. A lot. They have high chances of launching critical attacks and more often then not, their [=NPs=] will instantly kill your Servants. Also just to make things harder, Cu's NP bar has three segments instead of the usual four, meaning he'll use his Noble Phantasm a lot more often then he usually can.
*** The fourth pits you against Siegfried with his Armor of Fafnir NP, that basically give him 200% DEF buff (which you can't dispel). Most Servants will be dealing a miniscule amount of damage, so you must bypass that buff with at least a 200% buff to your attack. Oh and for the first turn, his NP gauge is instantly full. Sumanai no more.
*** The fifth puts you against Medb with an army of her created soldiers. On the first turn, she instantly inflicts permanent charm any male Servant (that even pierces King Hassan's Charm immunity!) and the AI is adjusted to focus fire on them, so you're restricted to using female servants. She comes with Invincibility, resistance to all 3 card types, and 90% defense split across 3 buffs, and the only way to remove them is to kill the soldiers, with each soldier removing one of her defense buffs. However, when they die or enter battle, the soldier buffs Medb's attack, making her deadlier. And this is on top of Medb and the soldiers charging each other's NP bars. Oh, and the last two soldiers are Casters, which will wreck any Assassins you decided to bring if they come out.
*** The sixth battle is Gilgamesh. Already a tough opponent with Golden Rule charging his already short NP bar, he has 1.5 ''million'' HP, a high crit rate, and he drains your entire team's (including your reserve) NP bars on turn 1. For 2016, he also has two different versions of his fight which will put you through the wringer, in 2017 players only face the Hero version.
*** The "King" version gives him an absurdly high defense buff that lowers in effectiveness with each turn. However, at the same time he has an attack buff that will make him even more powerful with each turn. It's possible to remove these buffs, however, Gilgamesh has a buff that nullifies buff removal twice. And to top things off, he can throw out a five turn NP seal.
*** The "Hero" version hits the entire team (again, including the reserve) with an NP power debuff while giving himself a buff that raises his attack every turn without taking an action. And don't forget that he still has Charisma to further increase his attack! If you try to be smart and use buff removal, he decides to immediately charge his NP and hit you with Enuma Elish before recasting the buff.
*** The last battle is a BossRush against six enemies. Jack will cast a skill to make any buff fail to occur (if she's dead she puts a regen of 15k HP per turn on her allies). Medea will poison your party (on death she will cast an unremovable 50% DEF buff). Lancer Altria Alter will increase her party's NP by 2 bars per turn permanently. Amakusa will cast a 2000 max HP down debuff that is stackable (on death he will increase his team's critical chance). Ozymandias will instantly cast Imperial Privilege if he's entering and casts Protection of the Sun God (NP gauge up + buff chance increased), and on death he will add evasion pierce to his party's attacks. Lastly, there is Nero with her Imperial Privilege spam per turn, 3-times Guts, critical chance and damage up. And their debuffs on death will affect all of your party, even in reserve. If you kill Nero before any other enemy Servant, she gives every remaining enemy Servant unlimited Guts which can't be dispelled - which means all of your Command Seals and effort are completely wasted. This battle was so hard (mainly Nero's unlimited Guts), it was nerfed a day after it came out. A pre-nerf version of this battle came out on 2017 as a special surprise match after all the new matches came out to see how players would fare against it, with its difficulty being ranked ''EX''.
** The bonus boss for SE.RA.PH, [[spoiler:Demonic Bodhisattva Kiara]], is hella hard with 3 seperate HP bars, each worth one million. With several buffs she grants herself every turn and more permanent buffs, she's a hard hitter and there being no [[spoiler:Kiara Punishers]] means the party gets the full brunt of her three different attacks. Her NP removes buffs before damage is applied and she utilizes multiple different debuffs to wear down the team. This boss mainly exists just to see whether players can actually take her down, as her battle yields no bond points or drops nor are there any rewards for beating her.
** Nero Festival 2017 Autumn incorporates the Break mechanic and it's just as hard as last year's:
*** First we have Spartacus with his absurd regeneration given to him by Crying Warmonger which heals him 90k HP ''per turn'' and ''400k HP'' every three turns. His defense-piercing NP becomes stronger as his HP bars are depleted and he gains a special defense buff against Kings later on. Ideally you must deal more than 100k damage ''per turn'' to be safe! In practical terms, you need to be able to wipe out a full health bar in a single turn.
*** Second is Suzuka Gozen with different gimmicks per HP bar. First, she casts a 90% double attack-type resistance per turn. Then for her second phase, she switches between Class resistances and advantages every turn. Her final phase has her put up a massive permanent Special Defense buff that can only be weakened by Servants who have a certain alignment each turn. She also has a taunt skill throughout all three phases to let her focus fire a certain Servant.
*** Third is Arash with ''5 million HP'' and a ''three times'' Guts that revives him with two million HP. His NP bypasses invulnerability and evasion and he only has 3 NP bars (that he can charge anytime). After you manage to get all three revives out of the way, the next turn he automatically recasts another Guts buff and uses Stella again! The proper strategy to beating him is actually to ignore offense entirely and find a way to survive his multiple Stellas, each one of which will remove his own Guts. However, given that he pierces invincibility and has a ''super'' Stella that deals upwards of 180k full party damage, either a full party guts (Irisviel) or serious defense buff stacking is required.
*** Then there's Karna and Arjuna. Each brother comes with unremovable buffs (every attack Karna does grants debuffs and Arjuna is immune to debuffs and gain critical buffs when attacked) and a damage bonus against Divinity enemies. So, who to kill first? If you kill Karna first, Arjuna automatically gives himself an Instant Kill buff and drains everyone's NP gauge. If you kill Arjuna first, Karna buffs himself with massive damage resistance, a high attack buff, and extra NP gain per turn.
*** Da Vinci and her motley crew of annoying enemies is next. She comes with almost every single midboss monster type, can cast a skill to increase two NP bars and every monster has a special buff that grants a debuff on anyone who attacks them. And she will spam her invincibility pierce buff for her NP if there are only two enemies on the field. If you try to be smart and kill Da Vinci first, she buffs her companions to become absolute monsters!
*** The sixth battle is against the "Old Man of the Mountain", King Hassan and an endless army of failed Hassan candidates. He starts off with a massive damage resistance buff, which can only be removed whenever he ''kills'' one of his allied Hassans for a buff (bulky ones give him one NP bar and an attack buff, and skinny ones give him crit buffs). Once his break gauge is depleted, he starts using evasion buffs that protect him from a certain card type each turn. His chance of proccing an instant kill with any attack has been increased and his third skill lowers everyone's resistance to having an IK, with his NP almost guaranteed to unleash an IK on any unfortunate target.
*** The final battle is yet another BossRush. This time, each Servant comes with a three-turn resistance to something, a party buff that lasts as long as they're alive and a buff that they can apply when certain allies enter. And the last boss is of course Nero, who gives the entire team a Guts buff once she comes out.
* SocializationBonus: A friend's support Servant can be brought into battle, though only ones from your friend list can use their Noble Phantasm.
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Most limited and/or seasonal events are these as the cast takes a break from saving the world to engage in zany hijinks.
* SpannerInTheWorks: One of the biggest reasons the grand plan of [[spoiler:King Goetia]] is derailed is [[spoiler:Roman, aka Solomon]] showing up and [[spoiler:using Ars Nova to erase himself from the Throne of Heroes and thus make Goetia unable to sustain his own existence]]. This was because [[spoiler:Solomon]] was in possession of [[spoiler:the final ring]] due to it being used as a summoning catalyst by [[spoiler:his Master, Maris Billy Animusphere]]. The reason [[spoiler:Maris]] had it in the first place? [[spoiler:''God'' told Solomon to send the ring into the future where it would be needed.]] So, assuming that [[spoiler:"God" isn't the Counter Force in disguise like what apparently might have been the case with the voices Jeanne heard]], the BigBad's plan was derailed because [[spoiler:God]] foresaw what would happen ([[spoiler:but considering this is ''[[TheOmniscient God]]'' we're talking about, that's no surprise]]) and arranged for the right conditions for his defeat, [[spoiler:by allowing Maris to win the Fifth Fuyki Grail War and establish Chaldea, also allowing for Solomon to exist in the present day to act against Goetia, and also establishing the events that not only allowed the Protagonist and their allies to win in the first place, but also set things up so they have a fighting chance against the ''other'' big threats likely threatening to destroy humanity.]] So, basically, [[spoiler:[[GodIsGood God]] [[SubvertedTrope ain't]] [[TheGodsMustBeLazy lazy]], and He sure as hell knows how to set up a domino effect. Nor does He appreciate gifts he made being used by those who weren't meant to use them, ''especially'' demons.]]
** Even more simply, the bombing meant to take out all of Chaldea's summoners at the beginning would have succeeded if you hadn't fallen asleep during the orientation meeting and been kicked out of the mission to Fuyuki.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS:
** Kiara Sesshouin's name is usually spelled as such, but depending on the romanization system or source it may also be "Sessyouin", though that's not how it's pronounced.
** FSN-Saber's name アルトリア (lit. Arutoria) has been spelled either as Altria or Artoria in official Type-MOON merchandise. It has also been spelled as Arturia in some fan translations. In Fate/Grand Order however, Type-MOON dictated that the game go with Altria over the localization team's protests.
** The Near-Future Observation Lens was originally translated as SHIVA, but was later corrected to SHEBA after her appearance in Salem.
** Type-Moon in general used more "native" names on certain Servants in which the katakana that sounded closer to the Servant's native name are used instead of the katakana of their "generic" names unlike other Japanese media do. The English version reflects this through changes in the Servants' spellings to better match the spelling from their original language. Some are minor like Atalanta and Hector being Atalante[[note]] The Japanese used アタランテ (Atarante) instead of アタランタ (Ataranta) for Atalanta's name.[[/note]] and Hektor[[note]]Which used ヘクトール (Hekutoru) over ヘクター (Hekuta) which the usual katanaka for Hector[[/note]] is read as, while some are more noticeable like spelling Angra Mainyu as Aŋra Mainiiu [[note]] reflecting his Japanese name アンリマユ (Anrimayu) instead of アングラマイニュ (Anguramainiyu)[[/note]]. These name changes may apply to Achilles/Achilleus and Chiron/Cheiron once they got released in the English server in the future.
** In a more traditional version of the trope, more recent material, especially adaptations, of the Camelot chapter tend to have a problem with a certain name that features in the narrative. The story features an object that is ''very'' clearly meant to reference the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuada_Airgetl%C3%A1m Airgetlám of Nuada]]. However, both the stage and animated adaptation titles have a bad tendency of calling the object "Agateram", which is a meaningless name derived from a semi-direct romanization of the kana used for "Airgetlám" (アガートラム); this even cropped up in the promotional Craft Essence for the stage play, which gave the name in romanized letters. The English version of the chapter does retain the name Airgetlám, at least.
* StableTimeLoop:
** [[spoiler:The Singularities in the first part of the story are this. According to Gilgamesh,in the grand scheme of things what happens in a singularity will still happen but history will record if differently. The example he gave was a dragon showing up in a singularity kills a man. Once the singularity is resolved and history is restored that man does not come back to life, instead he get's killed by another more mundane cause.]]
** [[spoiler:Kiara creates one in SE.RA.PH, partially to provide the pseudo-Spiritrons to fuel her and SE.RA.PH but mostly just for her amusement at watching people suffer.]]
** After hearing the protagonist's description of their moonlit walk on the beach in "Murder at the Kogetsukan", Holmes realizes that [[spoiler:there's a small gap in time between the protagonist dreaming at Chaldea and the two families arriving at the hotel, so he quickly rushes to assume the alias of the detective the Goldie family hired and arrives there as "Sheringham", leading to the protagonist seeing him as "Sheringham" in their dreams, directly setting up Holmes to become the detective when they inform him of their dreams.]]
* StatusBuff: Most units have the ability to grant themselves or allies temporary bonus effects, some stronger than others. For every buff, there is usually a debuff version.
** Offensively, the three main categories are attack, card buffs and power bonuses. Card buffs are bonus effects to the damage of Buster, Arts or Quick cards on top of boosting the secondary effects like NP gain or star generation. Power is split between three effects. First is critical damage, which can apply to all attack. Second is Noble Phantasm power up, which only applies to Noble Phantasms. Finally is just straight power up effects, which are generally fairly rare and tend to be limited to activating against certain straights such as enemies tagged as Evil or Kings. However, despite the different effective targets for power buffs, they are all actually the same effect and have additive effects, not multiplicative, which makes [=NPs=] and crits less effective during raid events like Rashomon which provide large power bonuses to the party. There's also an added flat damage bonus from a few skills, but the effect is minor and rarely consequential.
** Defensively there are two kinds of defense skill as well as two kind of damage negation. First is defense up, which is the opposite of attack up. A related effect is damage cut, which is like attack up but much more valuable due to the lower numbers involved. Unfortunately, this isn't a common effect. The last two defensive skills are invincibility and evasion. Mechanically, these skills are identical except that invincibility effects are harder to ignore. There are also a few boss only defensive abilities that force you into using certain strategies, but these are infrequent enough to not go into much detail about them.
** Stars, health and NP can all be generated in flat amounts on a per turn basis. Merlin, for example, can provide 5+ stars every turn, 5% NP charge and 1000+ HP for five turns by using his NP. It's also possible to increase maximum health or increase healing received. All of these effects also have debuff versions that do the opposite.
** Finally, there are various miscellaneous effects like increasing the chances of instant death affecting the target when using certain attacks, NP seal, skill seal and even an effect known as buff denial, which blocks attempts by the afflicted to receive any kind of buff until the effect wears off. This effect is actually the opposite of increased skill success rate, a rare effect that increases the odds that chance based skills such as Imperial Privilege will grant their full effect.
* StealthPun:
** The "demonic fog" in Japanese is ''makiri'', [[spoiler:as in Makiri Zolgen, the villain of the chapter.]]
** The 2017 Christmas event has '''Alter'''a as the Santa stand-in, taking the role from the two Alters before her.
** Saber Gilles's White Day present is his Jeanne fanzine. He has ''issues''.
** The first new Mystic Code given in the Lostbelts has less belts opposed to the TooManyBelts of the standard Chaldea Mystic Code. The protagonist had [[JustForPun lost belts]].
** The changes in My Room always goes with beds or anything that people can sleep on. Then during the ''Inheritance of Glory'' event, the My Room is a flower garden and doesn't have any beds in it, besides some [[JustForPun flowerbeds]]. A lot funnier when Spartacus actually used one to sleep on during the event's story.
* TheStinger: [[spoiler:The ''-Moonlight/Lost Room-'' OVA's after-credits scene has someone approach Solomon's throne and take one of his ten rings.]]
* SubbingForSanta: [[ChristmasEpisode Each Christmas]], a Servant will don the Santa Hat and HilarityEnsues... and life lessons.
* SuccessionCrisis: The Septem chapter takes place during Nero's turbulent reign, when a faction of pretenders raises up to knock Nero down from the throne faster than the historical record. Said pretenders are Nero's predecessors.
* SuddenlyVoiced: The game only has certain cutscenes voiced for special occasions since if the entire game was voiced, its data would be incredibly bloated.
** BB is voiced only for one cutscene at the start of the ''Fate/Extra CCC'' event, even acknowledging that she's voiced for this cutscene and it would be a good idea to be on headphones for this if you're in public.
** The victors of each round of the "Dead Heat Summer Race" are voiced with three different variations of the same scene and the final round has an extended cutscene where a team basks in their victory.
** Starting with Nero Festival 2016, lottery draws are now voiced.
** During the climax of ''Observer on Timeless Temple,'' [[spoiler:Dr. Roman is voiced for the cutscene where he casts Ars Nova on Goetia.]]
* SuperMovePortraitAttack: Every Noble Phantasm attack animation gives a close-up shot of the face of the Servant using it.
* SupernaturalFearInducer: Demons have an ability called "Fear" that inflicts a [[CriticalHit critical damage]] debuff on a target for three turns. Caster Gilles' third skill, Prelati's Encouragement, inflicts the "Fear" status on all opponents for five turns with a chance of stunning them. Abigail's second skill also has the same effect.
* SuperTitle64Advance: ''Fate/Grand Order'' is often abbreviated to ''F/GO'' or even more blatantly, ''Fate/GO''. The April's Fools app also follows this naming scheme by adding the subtitle ''Gutentag Omen''.
* SurplusDamageBonus: Getting Overkill on an enemy guarantees more critical stars and fills a little bit more of the Servant's NP gauge.
* SwitchOutMove: The Chaldea Plugsuit is the only way of swapping Servants from the frontline to the backrow.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* TacticalRockPaperScissors: Some Classes have bonus damage and weakness to other Classes.
** The Three Knight classes form a triangle with Sabers being strong against Lancers, Lancers being strong against Archers, and Archers being strong against Sabers.
** Riders, Assassins and Casters form another triangle. Riders are strong against Casters, Casters are strong against Assassins, and Assassins are strong against Riders.
** Berserkers exist outside both triangles. Instead, they have an advantage against most classes, but at the same time, they have a weakness to most classes. An exception is Shielder, who takes neutral damage from and deals neutral damage to Berserker. They deal half damage to and receive double damage from Foreigners.
** Shielder equally damages and resists all Classes.
** Ruler resists all classes except Berserker and Shielder but deals normal damage to everyone except Berserker, who receives the same increased damage it receives from all classes except Shielder.
** Avenger resists and deals double damage to Ruler, takes half damage from Beast and takes and deals normal damage to all other classes except Berserker.
** [[VideoGame/FateExtra BB]] has the exclusive Moon Cancer class, which completes a triangle with Ruler and Avenger by being weak to Ruler and strong against Avenger.
** Alter Egos deal double damage to the Rider triangle, deal halved damage from the Saber triangle, and are defensively neutral to most classes except Berserker. They deal double to and resist Foreigners.
** Foreigners are in a strange triangle with Berserkers and Alter Egos. They resist and deal double damage to Berserkers. They receive double and deal half damage to Alter Egos. Foreigners are weak against themselves.
** Each Beast has their own unique triangles and weaknesses.
*** The "Unknown" type which Solomon and his demons belong to is actually [[spoiler:Beast I]], and they deal double damage to the Knight class triangle, take double damage from the Cavalry class triangle, deal neutral damage to Ruler and equally resist and deal half damage to Avenger.
*** Beast II simply takes and deals neutral damage to all classes, except Avengers.
*** Beast III-R is defensively neutral to all classes ''except'' Alter Ego, which deals bonus damage to them. It is offensively neutral to all.
** Beyond the Servant classes, there is a well-hidden second set of stats that sort Servants by what grade of Servant they are, with the designations Earth, Man, Sky, Star, and Beast. They're mentioned in EMIYA's interlude and near the end of Chapter 4 by Tesla and Da Vinci, and the damage is at most modified by 10%, so it's not something you'd notice in normal gameplay unless a Servant has a skill or NP that directly relates to it (Raikou's third skill and Tesla's NP do bonus damage to Servants with the Earth or Sky traits, for example).
*** Da Vinci in chapter 4 explains how the triangle between the first three works: Earth represents legends and stories, Man are those who actually existed in history or were completely unknown, and Sky are those who were Gods or Divine. Earth beats Man because they're more powerful then regular humans, Man beats Sky because humanity can rebel against the gods, and Sky beats Earth because gods have dominion over heroes in stories.
* TalkingToHimself: Invoked. During the Journey to the West event, Mordred/Red Boy appeals to her mother Nightingale/Princess Iron Fan that the former is the latter son because they have the same voice. Both of them are voiced by [[Creator/MiyukiSawashiro the same person]] indeed.
* TakeMyHand: [[spoiler: Mash, recently revived by Fou, manages to do this for the protagonist when the path they're on collapses before they make it to the exit to Solomon's Temple.]]
* TakesOneToKillOne:
** Berserkers having MutualDisadvantage against most classes (except Shielder and Foreigner), has this towards other Berserkers.
** Foreigners' weakness aside from Alter Ego is also itself.
** Certain Servants have KryptoniteFactor against certain enemies due to their traits [[{{Irony}} carries those traits themselves]] like Karna, Siegfried, Jack the Ripper and MHX, making them weak against their own Noble Phantasms.
** Lorewise, certain chapters in main story involved non-Servant beings like human soldiers and Yagas who are able to fight off monsters and other summoned beings, yet completely helpless against Servants. Their only hope against them is to have some of them in their side.
* TakeThat:
** During Brynhild's Trial Quest, several Helter Skelters interrupted her dialogue, in which she commented that they must have been brought by "that damnable [[VideoGame/FireEmblem fire emblem...]]" before focusing to kill them for interrupting her dialogue.
** Da Vinci find the idea of having put [[Literature/TheDaVinciCode codes into her paintings]] to be both silly and demeaning.
* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of Gotterdammerung Lostbelt is some sort of this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached that age, the Valkyries will take him/her to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
* TemporaryOnlineContent: True to mobage tradition, certain Servants, Craft Essences, and Mystic Codes are only available for a limited time, as either missable event content or locked behind a limited-time gacha. However, the developers eventually put event content like the latter two in the Rare Prism shop. The former returning to the game remains dependent on when they decide to do another limited rate-up gacha or rerun the event.
* ThematicThemeTune: "Shikisai", the theme song for part 1, is mainly written from Mash's perspective, or more specifically [[spoiler:the mindset she has when going into the final battle, rejecting Solomon's vision of immortality even as she's dying, trying to live every moment to the fullest as a human.]]
* ThemeMusicPowerup: Some Noble Phantasms get this treatment, temporarily replacing the soundtrack while the animation plays with a small snippet of their related theme.
** Altria (her vanilla Saber version only) gets "Sword of Promised Victory" from VideoGame/FateHollowAtaraxia when she uses Excalibur.
** The original EMIYA gets his theme, "EMIYA" when he uses Unlimited Blade Works.
** Nero has a choir version of her theme from VideoGame/FateExtra, "Everything is in Your Hands" (the version that plays in ''CCC'' to be specific) when she uses Laus Saint Claudius, and her Bride counterpart uses a different arrangement. Her Swimsuit version uses a new arrangement of the same song for her Noble Phantasm.
** After the Chapter 5 update, Tamamo also has her theme music, "Extra Life with Anyone She Wants".
** Santa Alter has... "Jingle Bells". No, really.
** Ryougi Shiki (either one) gets her theme, "Seventh Heaven", from the ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'' movie series.
** Gilgamesh's updated animation gives him his {{Leitmotif}} from ''Fate/Extra CCC'', "Cosmic Air".
** Iskander has "You Are My King" and Dress of Heaven has "Silver Moon" from ''Fate/Zero''.
** Rider Kintoki has rock music play when using Golden Drive.
** [[spoiler: Mash's true Noble Phantasm, Lord Camelot, comes with a remix of the [[TitleThemeDrop title theme]].]]
** Illya and Chloe have music from the ''Prisma Illya'' anime play when using their NP. Chloe has "Shoujo Yo, Hoshi ni Nare", which is in turn a remix of "Starlog", the original opening theme music.
** After an update, Altera has her theme from ''Fate/Extella'' play when using Photon Ray.
** After much requesting from fans and her own voice actor, Bathory finally has her theme song, "Fresh Blood Demoness" from ''Extra CCC'' when using her NP.
** BB gets a remix of the "BB Channel" theme.
** Swimsuit Helena has an electronic theme, befitting the NP's cyberpunk aesthetic.
** Swimsuit Nobunaga plays rock music on her guitar for her NP.
** Osakabe-hime has soft Japanese music, enhancing the atmosphere of a Japanese princess walking on the castle roof at night.
** Kiara has "Anima Ataraxia", her [[spoiler: TrueFinalBoss]] theme from ''Fate/Extra CCC''.
** Abigail has sickly-sounding string instruments play as she unleashes unworldly horrors on the enemy.
** Scathach-Skadi's theme [[https://youtu.be/97l1f9xAtSQ is imperious in tone]], complete with a OneWomanWail.
** As part of the MagicalGirl AffectionateParody, Shuten-douji's Caster version has [[https://youtu.be/abHaZA6bQHU an upbeat Japanese tune]].
** In the story itself, "Sword of Promised Victory" plays in Shinjuku as Altria Alter [[spoiler:destroys the meteor rubble above the city with Excalibur Morgan.]]
** In Shimosa Province, [[spoiler:Sengo Muramasa has a new arrangement of "EMIYA" play as he prepares his NP against Amakusa.]]
* ThereCanBeOnlyOne: [[spoiler:SE.RA.PH once again operates by these rules in the ''CCC'' crossover, as the protagonist must eliminate the other 127 Servants to escape. Well, in theory, anyway...]]
* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Cu Chulainn's three alternate versions are modeled after this. The Prototype version is defined by his warrior feats against the near infinite army of Connacht and explicitly referred as younger than usual, making him the Hunter. His Alter is the Lord, a what-if scenario where he's a king and changes his land to fit his ideals for better or worse. His Caster version is the Prophet, preferring to watch the story unfold and acting as a guide for his Master when needed.
* ThresholdGuardian: Nearly all enemy Servants are this; even ones that supposedly are helping Solomon. Altria Alter (both Saber and Lancer) openly comment that they are a barrier to prove whether the Main Character is worthy of moving forward.
* ThunderboltIron: One of the ascension materials, the Meteoric Horseshoe, is made from this. Its flavor text notes that though it's made up of the same materials any earthborn horseshoe would have, it's special because it wasn't forged on Earth and from a meteor.
* TimeCrash: [[spoiler:Normally sacrificing a Divine Spirit to the Ark would, at worst, just destroy the surrounding area but since it's in a singularity, this is what would happen.]]
* TimeTravel: The plot involves traveling to singularities/Lostbelts, which are a kind of corrupted version of history that have been partially severed from the normal flow of time and need to be repaired. Real-time travel to whenever you please is not actually possible without using something like Kaleidoscope.
** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover.
** [[spoiler:Due to the unique nature of SE.RA.PH's digitization of the ocean, a localized version of this can occur by going upwards through the path created by SE.RA.PH as certain heights correspond to a certain point in time. Meltlilith uses Virgin Laser Palladion to launch her two hours in real time back to her first meeting with the protagonist. BB pulls a similar trick by transporting everyone before they died to two minutes before that happened.]]
** [[spoiler:The enemies in ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' have removed humanity and imposed certain time periods on Earth but they have to keep AlternateUniverse stitched to each of their individual lines of time (their "lostbelts") via a Phantasy Tree or else the timeline is denied and collapses. The new mobile base can enter the new timeline.]]
* TimeyWimeyBall: Seemingly averted as at the end of [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Sasaki Kojirou's]] Interlude, you get scolded for letting him mark his name on the colosseum wall, saying that it could've caused issues in the future.
* TitleDrop: Obviously, the mission to save humanity, which is known as the Grand Order. However, the mission was named for "the oldest and greatest order of mankind", a policy amongst mages to never commit suicide and to continue living so they can continue their bloodlines. [[spoiler:The Final Order, however, reveals the ''very'' sinister truth about the original Grand Order: it is an AncientConspiracy to allow Goetia to seed himself across three thousand years in the form of seventy-two agents so that he can create the Singularities.]]
* TitleThemeDrop:
** At the end of the America chapter, [[spoiler:the player fights Halphas while [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cpYEzB59bo a remix of the main menu theme]] is playing in the background.]]
** [[spoiler: Mash's true Noble Phantasm, Lord Camelot, plays a remix of the title theme.]]
** TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Salomon]], features a lot of remixes of the title theme, the main menu theme, and even the opening theme, "Shikisai".
* TomesOfProphecyAndFate: Well, tablet actually (paper wasn't invented yet), but Caster Gilgamesh sends the heroes to search for one of these during the Babylonia chapter, in hopes that it might have information that could help them. After retrieving it, Gilgamesh uses it and his magic to show the protagonist a cryptic vision. [[spoiler: It's later revealed to be a glimpse into "Solomon"'s motive for incinerating the Human Order.]]
* TooAwesomeToUse: Several examples:
** The Command Seals. When you have three of them activate, you can fully revive your party and fill up their NP gauge. While this is incredibly powerful, it takes 24 hours for a Command Seal to recharge, totaling about 3 days to fully recharge your Command Seals. Many would agree that this should only be used in the toughest boss fights as a comeback mechanic when your entire party is wiped.
** Saint Quartz. Obtaining them is ''incredibly'' limited and there are finite ways to obtain them such as daily logins, weekly missions, increasing the Bond level of your higher tier Servants as a reward, doing quests and Interludes, compensation for maintenances, event rewards, or [[BribingYourWayToVictory spending real life money for them]]. They are used for particular Saint Quartz summoning events where the player can potentially get a Servant or a Craft Essence that is 4 stars or more. In fact, it is not uncommon for players to save up months worth of Saint Quartz for a specific Summoning Quartz summon event where a particular servant's drop rate is either increased, or obtaining a limited Servant that cannot be obtained normally via the regular Summoning Quartz summon.
** The Holy Grail item for Palingenesis. They are considered to be the rarest item in the game for Palingenesis where you can only obtain them either through completing singularities in the main storyline, or completing certain special events. Many players will strictly use them in servants that are 4 star or above (or certain lower rarity servants that are SimpleYetAwesome).
** Crystallized Lores are the material used to increase a Servant's skill to level 10 but they are only obtainable through the Rare Prism shop or through events by either 1.) completing a challenge quest, 2.) using a high number of the rarest event currency to buy one, 3.) reaching the tenth raffle box, or 4.) grinding several million points.
* TouchedByVorlons:
** The Babylonia chapter reveals microorganisms from a meteor infected plants and animals in Mesoamerica, transforming the plants and animals into divine spirits and tying them into the prehistoric.
** [[spoiler:A major qualifications for the Foreigner class is having contact with an Outer God and resisting the madness that comes with it. Abigail Williams had been used as a vessel for the Outer God Räum attempts to summon, while Katsushika Hokusai had contact with another upon stumbling into a dimensional rift Abigail had created.]]
* TournamentArc:
** The Nero Festival events are these with several teams of Servants competing against one another to win the tournament. There were tiers of increasing difficulty that would change every 3 days of the event.
** Mysterious Heroine X's interludes are about her participating in a tournament to defeat the most famous Sabers.
** Kojirou's interlude is about him conquering Nero's colosseum.
** Shimosa is set up as a tournament of Musashi against seven swordmasters, with the FinalBoss as her final match and the ending text being "Grand Slam".
** Quetzacoatl's interlude is about her in an MMA tournament arranged by Mash to entertain her, with her going up against Ruler Martha, Assassin of Shinjuku, and Sherlock Holmes.
* TrailersAlwaysLie: Several trailers have had false details in them, fooling players into assuming what's going to happen in the story.
** The one for Garden of Order had Diarmuid in it but he doesn't show up anywhere. Likewise, Medea Lily plays no role nor do Azaka and Illya ever interact.
** The one for America had Diarmuid wielding swords, hinting he would appear as a Saber, but you only fight him as a Lancer.
** The "Fate/Accel Zero Order" trailer shows the iconic Lancelot and Gilgamesh dogfight, now with Mash and has young Waver with Kayneth, neither of which actually happens in the event story.
** Shinjuku's PV has Dantes fighting against Yan Qing, [[spoiler:which doesn't actually happen in the story. Nor does the group assembled at the end of the trailer actually come to be in the story proper as Holmes had disguised himself as Dantes, and the latter only shows up briefly for the final battle.]]
** Nero Bride ultimately plays no role in SE.RA.PH, only providing a brief appearance at the start of the chapter and even then it's the original version of Nero. She appears in the second part only as OG Nero. Moreover, the original trailer literally lies and implies that the event is another funny gag event, whereas the second trailer, released after the event revealed itself as a gruesome gaiden chapter, is accurate.
** Salem's PV depicts the male protagonist and Mash in circus attire with a circus tent in the background. However in the game, the heroes aren't circus performers and are pretending to be part of an acting troupe.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The Gotterdamerung trailer reveals [[spoiler:that Surtr goes on the rampage and Sigurd has to fight him, which are major plot twists for that arc.]]
* TranslatorMicrobes: Chaldea provides translation charms for their staff to allow them to understand anyone from any time period.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U-V]]
* UndergroundMonkey:
** Several enemies have multiple variations with different coloring like golems being made of different kinds of rock or crystal, or even snowmen and biscuits. The main difference between enemy types in gameplay are the skills they use and class.
** In the Babylonia Singularity (which actually tries to avert this trope by introducing a wave of enemies with completely new animations), the player spars with Uruk Spartan Soldiers (Uruk soldiers trained by Leonidas), but they're just renamed Roman soldiers from the Rome Singularity, complete with gladius and scutum.
** The four Irisviels that were created from the corrupted Holy Grail's essence are all recolored versions of Dark Irisviel with different skills, lines, and [=NPs=].
** Played for laughs in the gag Riyo event. Altera and Billy show up to play the role of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday respectively, but while Altera really gets into it, Billy admits he's not entirely sure who he's supposed to be, or why they're reusing assets in such a half-assed way. Later, Altera comes back as Buffalo Bill. Naturally, she still looks and speaks exactly the same as always. Or rather, exactly the same as a meme version of her character.
* UnderTheSea:
** One of the stages in Agartha is the Undersea Dragon Palace, where the protagonist and co. have their final encounter with Dahut.
** The entire setting of SE.RA.PH is technically one as it takes place in a sinking oil rig.
* UndyingLoyalty: As Bond EXP goes up, some Servants will vow to always serve and protect their Master.
* UnlockableContent: Beating certain points in the game's story will give the player more content.
** Each Singularity has a set of Servants associated with it that can be only summoned after beating it, and even then they can only be summoned from the main story gacha or event banners with them featured:
*** Caster Cu Chulainn and Saber Alter from Fuyuki.
*** Caster Gilles from Orleans.
*** Nero from Rome.
*** Medea (Lily) from Okeanos.
*** Nikola Tesla and Lancer Altria (Alter) from London.
*** Medb, Cu Chulainn (Alter), Li Shuwen and Thomas Edison from E Pluribus Unum.
*** Lancer Altria, Gawain, Tristan, and Bedivere from Camelot.
*** Quetzalcoatl, Gorgon and Jaguar Warrior from Babylonia.
*** EMIYA (Alter) from Shinjuku.
*** Rider of the Resistance/[[spoiler:Christopher Columbus]] from Agartha.
*** Kato Danzo and Saber Empireo/[[spoiler:Yagyu Tajima-no-kami Munenori]] from Shimosa Province.
*** Caster of Midrash/[[spoiler:The Queen of Sheba]] from Salem.
*** Antonio Salieri from Anastasia.
*** Sitonai from Gotterdammerung. Unique in that she only became available several months later during the Oniland event before being added to the story gacha.
*** Red Hare and Yu Miaoyi from SIN. Doubly so in Yu's case [[spoiler:since she's Hinako, and she ''has'' to die at the end of SIN in order to ascend to the Throne of Heroes as a Servant.]]
** Most events can only be done after beating Fuyuki, with others requiring players to go further and beat certain Singularities. To play any ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, you must clear Salomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beating Salomon Temple.
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beat Salomon Temple.
** The third Christmas event, "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld", can be only participated by players who beat Babylonia before and during the event period.
* TheUnmasquedWorld: [[spoiler: What Scheherazade was intending to do by crashing Laputa, effectively exposing magic and weaken it to the point where Servants could no longer be summoned, finally allowing her to rest at peace.]]
* UpgradeArtifact: The Holy Grails have been used as these for Servants throughout the game.
** The Palingenesis mechanic lets you use them on Servants to go beyond the normal level cap and level them up to 100.
** In America, Medb uses a grail to empower Cu Chulainn Alter, making him even more deadly.
** In Babylonia, [[spoiler: Gorgon uses one to make herself divine and also borrow one of Tiamat's authorities, making her more powerful than she usually would be.]]
* UrbanFantasy: Shinjuku is a return to the Nasuverse's roots with Servants duking it out in a densely populated urban environment. Also, the Servant antagonists have directly recruited {{Muggle}} gang members as their mooks, providing them with drugs that give them temporary Magic Circuits and have been given genetically engineered Chimeras as enforcement.
* UnrevealAngle:
** Throughout the first segment of ''Moonlight/Lostroom'', [[spoiler:Dr. Roman]] is kept at specific angles that don't exactly show him, but the audience is able to [[TheVoice hear him]] and see his hands.
** The same also applies to the owner of the mysterious hands that take [[spoiler:one of Solomon's rings]] in TheStinger of the aforementioned OVA.
* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Solomon]], the [[BigBad Big Bad's]] fortress that has been summoned to the year 2016, right before the extinction of humanity, acts as this for the first arc.
* VirtualPaperDoll: Servants can be freely switched between three different outfits and a costume store introduced with the Summer 2016 event rerun allows players to buy alternate costumes like swimsuits and casual outfits for Servants albeit certain conditions need to be fulfilled before unlocking the costumes, like beating a certain quest or having them at max level. Currently, only Mash (has two), Medb, 4* Saber Nero, Parvati, Astolfo, Jeanne Alter, and Arthur (Prototype) have these alternate costumes.
* VirtualTrainingSimulation: Chaldea provides several as part of their way to train Masters and Servants. It serves as the tutorial while you wait for entrance into the main building.
** It's also explained later that the daily quests in Chaldea Gate are these as well. The game [[LampshadeHanging warns against]] thinking about ''why'' you get [[ImpossibleItemDrop special drops]] from them in Sherlock's trial quest.
** Several interludes have the Servants using the sim with varying degrees of success, like Fergus using simulations of several women to attempt flirting or Jing Ke going through a recreation of her assassination attempt to see if it could be pulled off successfully.
** Edison has his own installed in his castle and goes through one before leading his army against the Celts.
* VitriolicBestBuds: The Knights of the Round Table bicker, squabble and attack each other constantly, but there's no hard feelings on any sides anymore even though almost all of them betrayed or screwed over their beloved king in one way or another. Even setting that aside, Mordred killed Gawain while Lancelot killed his younger siblings.
** Dr Roman and Da Vinci constantly bicker, with him calling her a pervert and her threatening to "straight-up murder" him for being so annoying. They still clearly trust and care about each other anyway. There's also a sort of one-sided version of this in Dr Roman's relationship with Mash: he's nice to her but can't help being annoying, so she never hesitates to completely roast him.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W-Y]]
* WackyRacing: The theme for the Summer 2017 event as various Servants, some in swimsuits, pair up to win a death race. The second part still continues it as they race to break out of jail first with the explanation that Isthar's still filming them and need something to keep the audience entertained. It's all an excuse Ishtar whipped up to get Servants to complete a ritual for her to remove the Singularity.
* WakeUpCallBoss:
** You fight Saber Alter at the end of the Fuyuki prologue, and if you don't kill her fast enough, you'll learn that unlike the shadow Servants you've faced thus far, enemy Servants can and will use their Noble Phantasms once they've charged up that bar below their HP bar.
** The first Demon Pillar is fought near the end of the Septem chapter and sets the standard for future Demon Pillar fights to come, boasting a boatload of HP and weaknesses that [[TrialAndErrorGameplay the player won't know until they find out for themselves]]. Additionally, ''every'' attack it makes is [=AoE=], spelling TotalPartyKill for an underleveled and underbuffed party.
* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Even though Chaldea's employees and the Servants they summon hail from all over the globe, they all treat Japanese holidays like Golden Week and White Day as commonplace things to celebrate mainly because the developers and primary target audience of this game are Japanese and subsequently tailor the aforementioned holidays into the game.
* WebcomicTime: The game is supposed to happen in real time with each holiday marking that holiday passing by for Chaldea in the game, but production delays for events or the main story's chapters has caused the ratio of real time to what's happening in-game to be a bit skewed. One such example would be the storyline for ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' as the three month hiatus between its prologue and first major chapter ''did'' happen in-game, but the interval between the first chapter and second chapter is nigh-instantaneous in the story despite there being about two months in between release.
* WeatherControlMachine: Babbage and Paracelsus used the Grail to power one of these, spewing the demonic fog everywhere in London.
* WeirdSun: It's observed that the sun in the second Lostbelt is seemingly much larger which is odd because the surface would be ''scorched'' if the sun really was that close to Earth and it also never seems to move from its position. [[spoiler:It's because it was magically warped to serve as the prison for Surtr in this pruned timeline.]]
* WhamEpisode:
** London is the game's first true wham episode. [[spoiler: It introduces the concept of Grand Servants, the original seven Servants who were meant to be summoned to fight against a threat against humanity. The Servant system used in Fuyuki is the toned-down version for summoning non-Grands as mere backup to the Grand Servants; these Servants, these beings who are incomparably more powerful than human beings, are ''cheap, disposable familiars'' compared to Grand Servants and the things Grands are meant to fight. (And the phrasing of the explanation, and context of the chapter overall, is meant to make it clear that, yes, this is all meant to be back-ported to ''F/SN'' and other works.) And then we find out the Grand Caster, Solomon, is the BigBad and is working completely contrary to the purpose of his summoning. Oh, and those Grails you were collecting? Largely worthless in the grand scheme of things. Recovering them alone won't fix the problem.]]
** The very end of America reveals that [[spoiler:Mash's powers are killing her. Not slowly either, but ''rapidly''.]]
** [[WordofGod Nasu]] talked in an interview about how Chapter 6 and 7 would be the turning point of the entire game. At the start of Camelot, Dr. Roman reveals [[spoiler:Shielder's origins and place in Chaldea, how and why she became a Demi-Servant and the fact that Mash won't live past 18.]] It's also mentioned that this singularity is the ''only one'' not related to the BigBad. Also in Camelot, Sherlock Holmes reveals [[spoiler: Solomon incinerating humanity is part of a different plan, humanity was already going to die in 2016 due to something else and Olga Marie's father won the Fuyuki Holy Grail War of 2004 in ''GO'''s timeline.]]
** Babylonia finally explains a concept long foreshadowed yet unexplained by the rest of the ''Franchise/{{Nasuverse}}'', [[spoiler: the Beast-class]]. [[spoiler:The Beasts are seven embodiment of humanity's evils and are the very threat that the Heroic Spirit Summoning system, and by extension the Grand Servants, are meant to combat, and they are by far ''leagues'' more powerful than everything faced before. This chapter introduces Beast II, Tiamat, representing the sin of Regression. The final chapter reveals that the BigBad is Beast I, King Goetia, and that ''Fou'' is Beast IV, better known among Nasuverse veterans as ''Primate Murder''.]]
** Salomon, being the GrandFinale of the first arc, drops several major bombshells. [[spoiler: The Solomon that's been acting as the BigBad is actually Beast I inhabiting his dead corpse. Mash dies using Lord Camelot to defend against Goetia's Ars Almadel Salomonis. Dr. Roman reveals that he's the actual Solomon, who was summoned by Maris Billy for the Holy Grail War and used his wish to become human, shortly before he uses Ars Nova to remove himself from the Throne of Heroes and remove Goetia's immortality. And Fou gives up his power and intellect as Beast IV to resurect Mash with a normal lifespan.]]
** Shinjuku reveals that [[spoiler:Solomon's Ars Nova failed to wipe out all of Goetia's Pillars. Four of them are still around, coming up with various schemes. Hence the title, ''Epic of Remnant'', as the story of dealing with the Demon Pillars' remnants.]]
** The May 2017 crossover event with ''[[VideoGame/FateExtra Fate/Extra CCC]]'' is also this. [[spoiler: At the end of the event intro, right after BB has taunted you for thinking this would be easy, the "BB-chan's Revenge" banner ''shatters'' into the proper ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter title screen, revealing that this "event" is in fact [=EoR=] Chapter Extra: The Deep Sea Cyber-Nirvana - SE.RA.PH. The event is a full-bore, no-nonsense story chapter, with the attendant slew of new graphics, maps, missions, Servants, game mechanics (including two new playable Classes), and a story mode as big as any other chapter's, doled out over the course of a week.]]
** Salem is an enormous wham episode, despite being quiet, tense Lovecraftian horror for most of it. [[spoiler:In the opening, the singularity surrounding Salem and Danvers is manifesting in ''present day'' and is seven kilometers across - in some ways, this is an even bigger [[BrokenMasquerade masquerade breaker]] than the missing 18 months caused by the Goetia incident. Moreover, by the end of it, so much effort is required to contain the final threat of the singularity that Chaldea itself may have to be disbanded to keep things quiet. Oh, and let's not forget the wham of the confirmation that the Outer Gods that Lovecraft described absolutely do exist in the Nasuverse and they are ''not friendly''. When one attempts to manifest using a certain medium in the singularity, it easily rises to be a Beast-level threat.]]
** The prologue to the second storyline of the game is not kind to the player (you) and your team. [[spoiler:The Mage's Association forcibly turns off the Chaldea summoning system, banishes all the protagonist's previously summoned servants, sends a whole new staff and a new head to Chaldea (Da Vinci and even ''you'' were fired) and brings in a PMC force to deal with any protests, basically shutting off any means to deal with any danger humanity will face for the time being. Worse, ''Kotomine Kirei himself'' joined the fray means the church is involved in the mess too. Then they get attacked by Anastasia and her army, as both Kotomine and Konyanskaya are collaborating with them to take control of Chaldea, with the onslaught reducing the number of Chaldea's remaining employees from 40 to 8, Da Vinci gets brutally impaled by Kotomine with his bare hands, and the protagonists are forced to abandon the observatory, and the antagonists begin the process of erasing history. Even worse, seven Masters from Chaldea are revealed to be going along with this, with the aims of bringing back the Age of Gods.]] The saving grace is that [[spoiler:Holmes secretly evacuated the servants and hid their Saint Graphs for insurance, da Vinci managed to get a backup body and she brought a backup Saint Graph database along with them so they still have access to their Servants]], but for the time being things will be ''very'' bleak.
** Lostbelt 3 provides a number of shakeups. [[spoiler:Koyanskaya is revealed to be Tamamo Vitch, Sion Eltnam joins the team, the first True Ancestor who isn't Arceuid is introduced, and Spartacus is [[KilledOffForReal permanently erased from Chaldea's roster]] due to his HeroicSacrifice severely crippling his Saint Graph, proving that not even Servants are immune to FinalDeath.]]
* WhamLine:
** [[spoiler:Fou explains what he is to Mash in the void:]]
--> ''I feed on humanity's battles, growth, envy, and regret and use it for my characteristic as a beast to "become stronger than the enemy". The beast of calamity, [[spoiler: Cath Palug]]. In a different time and place, I might have been called [[spoiler:the great killer of primates - [[{{VisualNovel/Tsukihime}} Primate Murder]]]].''
** [[spoiler:Caster Limbo reveals the existence of TheManBehindTheMan who was simply using the parallel version of Shimosa as an experiment for future plans.]]
--> ''Having it appear in Chaldea was a failure; however, it left behind some good sample data. Anyway, finally, finally I succeeded in discovering the lost history. [[spoiler:This Shimosa]] is distorted compared to the original. A world that is terminated without being destroyed, a pruning event. It is not that. Then a parallel world? Ish. It's close but not the same. So this is different. This is something else. [[spoiler:This Shimosa]] is human history but not human history. It is a different world that a different earth's god observes with their different eyes. [[spoiler:An otherworld that is falsely similar to a singularity! Fuhahahahahah, no no no no. Using that temporary name was too funny and even more so using Satan!! I intended it to be a joke, but it went quite well. It was one of that Necromancer's favorite things. Even so, Doman, you were supposed to be above practical jokes right. So I was rude, my dear ally ----- sama'']]
** The ending of Götterdämmerung, confirming the existence of a certain character in the ''Grand Order'' timeline to greet the player upon [[spoiler:arrival at the Wandering Sea]]:
--> [[spoiler:''Welcome to the Primordial Mage Workshop, the Wandering Sea of Baldanders! I am Sion. [[VideoGame/MeltyBlood Sion Eltnam Sokaris]]. A spiritron hacker who managed to predict and call the end of this world, escaped to the Wandering Sea, and have since waited for your arrival. The final remaining member of the Atlas Institute.'']]
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: This is touched upon in London as Mash expresses discomfort at fighting homunculi as she empathizes with them since she [[spoiler:too is technically an artificial human.]]
* WhatTheHellHero: Mash really chews out [[spoiler: her "dad", Lancelot]] for [[spoiler: going along with the Lion King's plans despite knowing exactly what it entailed.]]
* WhenDimensionsCollide: A Lostbelt stitches on an AlternateHistory to Earth to rewrite reality in favor of the altered timeline.
* WholePlotReference: The Shimosa chapter is pretty much "''F/GO'' does ''Makai Tensho''", straight down to using a whole bunch of the same characters (just swapping out Jubei for Musashi). This is extra hilarious as ''Makai Tensho'' was a major inspiration for ''Fate'' in the first place. [[spoiler:It also may well be this ''in-universe'', as the whole thing was constructed by Doman and it seems like he was largely just having a lark with his experiment concerning using Lostbelts.]]
* WolverinePublicity: Likely the main reasons why Altria Pendragon (Saber) and her clones, Gilgamesh, and EMIYA are promoted heavily in marketing and feature prominently in the opening, as they're the most known characters of the ''Fate'' franchise.
* WoodenShipsAndIronMen: As the setting of the Third Order, Okeanos, is the Age of Discovery, this is inevitable. Battles of cannon fires at point blank range, sea monsters and bandits blocking the way, treacherous weather disturbing navigations, and [[BadassCrew several crews composed of Heroic Spirits]], the main draw of this Order is just how action-packed it is.
* WorldOfMammals: [[spoiler:The first Lostbelt the ''Shadow Border'' arrives in is a history inhabited solely by humanoid wolves. There are no humans besides Servants summoned there, the stationed Crypter, and Chaldea.]]
* WorldTree: [[spoiler:Each Lostbelt has its own gigantic Phantasy Tree which must be sustained until it can fully replace proper human history. It's noted by Holmes that these aren't a natural phenomenon and are probably not from this world.]]
* WretchedHive: Shinjuku, a decaying modern city overflowing with mages, mercenaries, and monsters. It literally has a magic barrier meant to keep most Servants who aren't evil-aligned from entering. It would not be out of place in the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' franchise.
* [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: In the America chapter, while time does pass while moving between each stage on the map the writers still clearly underestimated just ''how much'' time it would take just due to America's sheer size. As an example, the journey from from Denver, Colorado to Deming, New Mexico is treated as lasting overnight with the player sleeping through the journey. In reality, it takes about 200 hours to walk that distance. Possibly justified with the superhuman Servants, who could conceivably have carried the player and moved quicker than he/she could on these extremely long trips.
* {{Wutai}}: While this game's setting is not a ConstructedWorld unlike most examples of this trope are in, the Shimosa chapter was notably the only Eastern Asia-themed main story chapter so far[[note]]While Fuyuki and Shinjuku are also set in Japan, it's modern day or close enough to the point where Japanese elements aren't very prominent.[[/note]] for three years, with the introduction of SIN a year later. Both very much play up the Asian aspect, with only token Western Servants and the Chaldea crew as the only foreign aspects of the story.
* YearInsideHourOutside:
** The island from the summer 2016 event is revealed to have this property in Part II, meaning that in the short timespan that the heroes left the island, the boars on the island developed intelligence, formed a civilization using the leftover infrastructure as a base, and then for the civilization to fall apart before the heroes returned.
** [[spoiler:One hundred minutes spent in SE.RA.PH is equivalent to ten minutes in the outside world. The Seraphix staff dejectedly understand this means it would take over fifty years for them to get rescued by Chaldea.]]
* YearOutsideHourInside: [[spoiler:Imaginary Number Space has this effect on the ''Shadow Border'' as the protagonists have only experienced a week inside, but by the time they leave, it's already been three months to the Crypters. Da Vinci notes it's entirely dependent on the tides and how it's acting up at the moment, so the exact ratio for Imaginary Number Space time to time on Earth is in flux.]]
* YouDontLookLikeYou: Bašmu who appear in Babylonia look like blue and yellow PaletteSwap of the regular Dragon enemies, even though in ''Apocrypha'' the ones summoned by Semiramis look like green serpentine creatures. Especially notable in that when Semiramis was added into the game, she summons a Bašmu that looks like it does in ''Apocrypha''.
[[/folder]]
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FateGrandOrder/TropesAToC | FateGrandOrder/TropesDToI | FateGrandOrder/TropesKToP | '''Tropes S To Z''' |
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[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Q-R]]
* QuintessentialBritishGentleman: Appropriately for Londinium, the storyline is filled with GentlemanAndAScholar Servants who most of the time throwing passive aggressive rhetoric before getting down to fights with so much class. Mordred, whose solution to a murder mystery is to punch the suspects until they squeal and if they're innocent, punch someone else until they cough up, is figuratively and literally out of place.
* RaceAgainstTheClock: [[spoiler:The Seraphix oil rig is sinking into the Mariana Trench and the protagonist only has ten days in SE.RA.PH to save it.]]
* RagnarokProofing: [[spoiler:Atlas Academy is doing just fine despite the incineration of Earth killing the magi inside. Holmes theorizes that the several layers of protection in place must have allowed the institution and its various installations to survive.]]
* RandomDrop: The only way to get money, EXP, Ascension materials and Servant skill items is this. During events, this is the only way to get special Craft Essences and event currency, the chance of getting more currency is either boosted by certain Servants or event [=CEs=].
* RareCandy:
** Fou cards give Servants a stat boost with a cap of 2000 for both HP and Atk, but only 4* Fou cards can be used to level that stat boost from 1001-2000.
** The Holy Grails you've been collecting from beating each singularity and certain events can level even a 1* Servant past their usual limit up to level 100, if you have enough. The game calls this "[[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/palingenesis Palingenesis]]." It really is rare, however as of the game's two-year lifespan in Japan, only slightly more than 20 have been available through events and story quests. Since it takes 10 to max out a one-star, which Servant a player uses a Grail on is a limited and permanent decision.
* RareRandomDrop
** For certain events, event Craft Essences also have a chance of dropping from enemies, with the indication of it dropping being a rainbow aura around the gold chest. Craft Essence experience cards are indicated by a yellow star next to the gold chest.
** The very nature of the gacha.
*** The quartz gacha has pull rates of 40% 3*/R Servants, 3% 4*/SR and 1% 5*/SSR while for Craft Essences it's 40% R, 12% SR and 4% SSR. A ten-roll guarantees at least one SR card; but in practice, this will almost always be an SR CE if the game is forced to make a gold card appear, which generally aren't considered particularly desirable. The odds of getting a rated-up Servant or Craft Essence vary. Assuming a single rate up, [=SSRs=] have a 70% chance if you roll any SSR, [=SRs=] have a 50% chance and [=SRs=] have a mere 10% chance while for [=CEs=] it's 70%, 33% and 20% respectively. More rated up [=CEs=] and Servants at one time changes the odds. For example, if two [=SSRs=] are rated up at once, each one will have a 40% chance of appearing for a total of 80% between them, reducing the odds of a spook even though it decreases the chances of getting a particular one of them.
*** The friend point gacha, while generally of little interest to most players due to how little of value is in it, actually has the rarest drop of all. AÅ‹ra Mainiiu, the game's only 0* Servant, is a very rare FP summon-only Servant who was added during the Fate/Zero collaboration event. The official rates of pulling him are unstated but are believed to be ''far'' lower than the odds of pulling even an SSR. However, he's a JunkRare that is only as strong as a 2*/C Servant. As a nod to his rarity, he had a special line of dialogue in Christmas 2017 to acknowledge players who had actually managed to get him.
* ReadingsAreOffTheScale:
** The damage the Camelot singularity does to the timeline is unrelated to Solomon, so Chaldea has no idea what to expect; and the fact that it's becoming incredibly erratic, like the times when it literally disappeared from the map and separated from the timeline of humanity, has caused them to rank it EX in value to restoring humanity. The impossibility of the Lion King's presence is the direct cause.
** The humanity foundation value of SE.RA.PH is "CCC", which isn't quantifiable by the franchise scale.
** This is what "Saber Wars" went for - pitting you against bosses with ludicrously high HP (including the first ever enemy to break one million HP), but at the same time giving you Craft Essences to greatly multiply your Servants' attack power and overcome these foes by dealing ludicrous amounts of damage.
** The three Void Ghosts in the Incinerated Remains area from "Garden of Order" each have 6,666,666 HP, which is much higher compared to any enemy encount.
** Rashoumon has the first raid boss of the game with a ''2 trillion'' HP bar which the entire playerbase was required to attack and get rid of over the course of the event. To boost your Servants' damage, they used the system of "Saber Wars". The highest HP Ibaraki you can fight has 6 million HP, accompanied by some-hundred thousand HP GiantHandsOfDoom. This is used again for the Onigashima event.
* RecurringRiff: The melody of the title screen music, "Grand Order", is used in every Grand Battle theme and is also remixed for the title screens of ''Epic of Remnant'' and ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt''.
* ReligiousAndMythologicalThemeNaming: Shimosa's antagonists all use an afterlife as their moniker, with Lancer "Purgatorio", Archer "Inferno", Assassin "Paraiso", Berserker "Samghata Naraka"[[note]]The "Crushing Hell" of Buddhism[[/note]], Rider "Kalasutra Naraka"[[note]]The "Hell of Black Threads" of Buddhism[[/note]], Saber "Empireo", and Caster "Limbo".
* RemixedLevel: Certain stages in later parts of the game are just altered versions of earlier and "more generic" stages like the "Babylonian forest" stage in Babylonia which is just a greener version of "Redwood Forest" stage from America, the "Subway" stage in Shinjuku which is an altered version of Camelot's "Temple" stage, and the Assassin of Nightless City's forecourt stage is a Chinese-style alteration of the "Throne Room" stage. "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld" intentionally uses this as the protagonist returns to the gloomy Babylonian underworld, only to find that there are Christmas trees and someone's strung up holiday lights all over the arches and Ereshkigal's cages.
* RenaissanceMan: [[TropeCodifier Leonardo da Vinci]] is a summonable Servant and each of Hundred Faces' personalities are said to have a different area of expertise. In addition, some Heroic Spirits can materialize in more than one class. The gold medal has to go to Heracles, who is said to be summonable in all of the standard classes [[spoiler:(and Avenger)]] barring Caster, with Geronimo having four distinct classes to his name coming in second. In-game, Medusa currently has the most classes available with three, Rider, Lancer, and Avenger.[[note]]Altria, Cu Chulainn, Elisabeth, and Jeanne have that many and in the former's case ''even more'', but only when counting gag Servants and Servants where they were put into a different class due to an external force.[[/note]]
* {{Retcon}}:
** The main plot hook of the story is that CHALDEAS gives humanity a year until the extinction event, so every adaptation dates the apocalypse depending on when it was originally made: for example, the original Japanese release of the game was in 2015, so CHALDEAS predicts humanity will be gone in 2016. The anime OVA has the end-date as 2017, and in the US version, it's 2018.
** In previous Fate works, a fairly big deal was made of Servants not remembering their past summonings and if they did, it was only a vague recollection of events; Saber (Altria) in ''F/SN'' could, but her situation was ''extremely'' specific. In ''F/GO'', however, the player-summoned Servants remember their previous summonings and will discuss them at points. It isn't completely consistent and may be limited to Chaldea-summoned Servants, however; when Saber Alter and Jeanne Alter appear in Shinjuku, they explicitly do ''not'' remember your previous meetings in Fuyuki and Orleans, and Mordred in Camelot similarly does not remember your adventures in London (to Mash's abject dismay). Other Servants summoned inside some Singularities, like Atalante and Xuanzang, both cite previous encounters with the protagonist, however. Ancillary material for the franchise explains this discrepancy, saying that a Servant's memories ''do'' always go back to the original Heroic Spirit, but the Throne of Heroes automatically adjusts what the Servant remembers for the next summoning to prevent confusion from having overlapping sets of memories. In other words, what a Servant does or does not remember is ultimately circumstantial, and if they happen to remember past events they will only remember how it played out in one timeline.
** ''GO'' also carries forward a retcon previously put forward by ''Extra'' and ''Apocrypha'' concerning Assassins. In ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', the ''only'' people who could be Assassins were explicitly members of Hashashin, preferably one of the 19 "Old Men of the Mountain". Kojirou was "Assassin", yes, but he was extraordinarily unusual because he had been summoned by another Servant and wasn't a true Servant himself. As this would really limit the options ''GO'' would have for Assassin-class Servants, though, this conceit has been abandoned entirely and now anyone with proper parameters and a talent for silent, agile killing can be an Assassin; the Hashashin now make up a ''minority'' (though still an important one) of the Class.
** Moreover, previous ''Fate'' works, particularly ''VisualNovel/FateStayNight'', leaned on the idea of most proper Assassins being bad at direct confrontation with even Kojirou needing a highly specialized battlefield to match the knight classes. ''GO'''s Assassins tend to have slightly lower HP totals, and a larger proportion of them are a low-rarity, but, in practical terms, Assassins can fight as well as anyone and have a typical place in a triangle. Several Assassins are counted as among the strongest units in the entire ''game''.
** There is also a minor retcon concerning "Alter" Servants and their eyes, thanks to the proliferation of Alter Servants in ''GO''. In ''F/SN'', Altria Alter's striking golden eyes are noted in her profile as being the result ''specifically'' of her dragon blood awakening. Jeanne Alter (and her related Santa Lily version), EMIYA Alter and Dark Irisviel all have identical eyes to Altria, however, and none of them have dragon traits. While there is perhaps a dragon connection with Jeanne Alter through her "Dragon Witch" skill, there is no indication she has a physical relation to dragons, and neither EMIYA Alter or Dark Irisviel have any kind of relation to dragons, period. The previous dragon connection to Altria's eyes is also not mentioned in ''GO''. This retcon was carried further into ''Anime/FatePrototype Fragments'', [[spoiler:where a number of the re-manifested Alters of Servants like Ozymandias and Brynhild have gold eyes]].
** Relatedly, somewhere between a retcon, ArcWelding and AdaptationExpansion is the game's acknowledgment of the idea of "Alter" Servants entirely. ''F/SN'' did not use the term "Alter" at all; any Servants corrupted during the third route were referred to as "blackened", Altria included. And while ''Hollow Ataraxia'' and ''Unlimited Codes'' introduced the name of Saber Alter, no other Servant was called "Alter" prior to ''GO'' and Altria's situation was treated as essentially unique. ''GO'', however, has embraced a long-running fan idea of the Alter state being a distinct mode of existence for a Servant, separate from their usual summoned state; the Shinjuku chapter, in particular, addresses the concept of Alter Servants at some length (thanks to there being no less than three of them running around), and even attaches a set of kanji to the term "Alter" (in furigana), the kanji essentially translating to "reversed".
* RevengeBeforeReason: According to Jeanne Alter, the defining characteristic of Avengers is that they have a great emptiness inside them that they try to fill through vengeance, but can never successfully cope with. For them, getting their revenge is not even about satisfaction or pleasure but just to keep going. She finds it quite pathetic even as she knows it applies to herself just as much as to Hessian Lobo, the enemy she's trying to kill or at least slow down.
* RevisitingTheRoots: The autumn 2016 event is Nero Festival, which is basically a new and improved version of 2015's Nero Festival, the first major event the game had in its history. As such, the event refrains from having even a silly plot (besides the introduction), and just pits the player and their Servants against difficult themed teams of enemy Servants, just like the original Nero Festival, and has the original Nero Medals as event currency.
* RewatchBonus: Revelations like [[spoiler: Dr. Roman being Solomon, Mash having been fused with Galahad for several years, Fou being Primate Murder and a Beast, the circumstances behind how Olga's father funded Chaldea, and Goetia's nature and endgame]] put several things in a much different light on a reread of the game's story.
* RiddleOfTheSphinx: The answer to this is one of two ways to enter Ozymandias' temple complex in Camelot.
* RidiculouslyCuteCritter:
** The boars from the Chaldea Summer event are also this, both in-universe and out. The demonic boars, not so much...
** Fou, naturally, is also this, as a mobage RPG staple. [[spoiler:He ends up having a much more important role in the plot and wider Nasuverse than anyone foresaw.]]
** Ozymandias' sphinx cubs are adored by [[NotSoAboveItAll him]] and players alike.
* RooftopConfrontation: The final two battles of the Garden of Order event take place on the rooftop of the apartment complex the event is centered around.
* RuleOfFunny: Most events and some Interludes run on this.
* RuleOfThree: A major plot point is that Chaldea had successfully summoned three Heroic Spirits before the game proper.
** The first one you encounter is the third Servant summoned, Leonardo da Vinci, who's been staying at Chaldea for a while now.
** The second is [[spoiler:Galahad who was fused with Mash ten years ago and lay dormant within her. It's noted that he was the only Heroic Spirit to respond to their fusion projects with Chaldea's designer babies, the rest refused.]]
** [[spoiler:The very first one is King Solomon, summoned before Chaldea even became the gigantic facility it is now, by Maris Billy Animusphere for the Holy Grail War in Fuyuki.]]
[[/folder]]
[[folder:S]]
* SadlyMythtaken:
** In Salem, "[[http://fategrandorder.wikia.com/wiki/Elder_Ghoul Elder Ghouls]]" have the appearance of [[http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Gug Gugs]]. Justified in the plot saying that Lovecraft dreamed the idea right, but not necessarily the particulars.
** Caster Cu uses Norse runes instead of Celtic. AuthorsSavingThrow has Scathatch explaining she taught him these because Odin likes warriors regardless of nationality and they were faster than Celtic ones.
* SaveScumming: If you force-quit the game during a battle turn then open the game again, it resets to before you picked your command cards. This can be useful if you forgot to use a skill or the RandomNumberGod ruins your plan. The effectiveness of this was decreased with a fix that let you return to the skill use section with a single button press, but would distribute stars at the beginning of the turn instead of redistributing them whenever you use a new skill. Now the only thing that changes crit chances is to use a star absorption skill or to generate more stars with a skill.
* ScoreMultiplier: Bonus Servants or event Craft Essences are used to boost the number of points gained in certain events like the Gudaguda events and Saber Wars.
* ScunthorpeProblem: The NA version introduced the messaging system in November 2018 and censors the ''entire'' message if there's any inappropriate word caught by the filter. This extends to mentioning Assassin, one of the game's seven basic classes. There's also no actual indication of censoring on the player's side, it only appears censored on friend lists.
* SelfDeprecation:
** During the GUDAGUDA Honnouji event, Andersen mentions how people shouldn't grind and grind for currency but that's how the events are set up. Gilgamesh, of all people, complains about how you need lots and lots of money or luck just to get what you want from the gacha.
** Dr. Roman and the protagonist call out how absurdly high the prices are for any of the Da Vinci Craft Essences during the Garden of Order Event. She still won't change them. This results in the Da Vinci and the 7 Counterfeit Heroic Spirits event, where someone starts selling cheap knockoffs to cater to those who don't have enough Mana Prisms to buy the real ones.
** Riyo's "How to Play" comics are full of lampshades on all the problems in the game, including the horrendous gacha rates, the ascension material farming hell, the servers being unable to handle all the players, and [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking the lack of a skip function for NP.]] Olga Marie and Mash are surprised that the author's allowed to get away with all this criticism.
*** In the official translation of Riyo's comics, when introduced with Altria, Gudako's comment about it got [[{{Woolseyism}} modified]] into "Man, something must be wrong with her parents to name her Altria" (instead of making the mistake that 'Pendragon' is her first name and thought her parents were delinquents to name her after a creature like that), indirectly poking fun on Type-Moon's verdict that Altria is spelled as such instead of the more preferred 'Artoria' (which ''VideoGame/FateExtellaTheUmbralStar'' used)
** "All the Statesmen" mocks the game repeatedly without remorse as the protagonist constantly asks for QP or rare materials with Mash having to say that, no, this event will unfortunately not give the protagonist those desired materials.
** Chloe mocks the tendency for Servants to wear increasingly {{Stripperific}} outfits when you ascend them and refuses to do so herself...[[NotSoAboveItAll until her final Ascension]].
** Okita Alter has one My Room line where she whines for her terrible luck in gambling and other games of chance, mocking the nature of the Summoning gacha though ironically coming from someone who requires extreme luck to obtain.
* SealedCastInAMultipack: In the beginning of ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'', all Servants except for da Vinci and Holmes are forcibly sent away, depriving the protagonist of any way to fight. [[spoiler:However da Vinci put all the Saint Graphs of your playable Servants in a briefcase, allowing you to bring them back with the appropriate ritual and resources.]]
* SelfImposedChallenge: Later events have the ability to rerun the most difficult fights as a way for players to challenge themselves, with no rewards for doing so after beating it the first time.
** Some of them even go one step beyond, such as Kiara in the SE.RA.PH event. Normally you buy one item to make her not use her OneWingedAngel form and then an optional amount more to remove various buffs from her humanoid form, but it's also possible to challenge her in her demon form. The most difficult version of the fight, however, is to not allow her to transform but then allow her to use the rest of her overpowered buffs, which together halve all your Arts/Quick/Buster attacks, deal a thousand damage per turn, drain 5% NP so you can never reach 100% without being at [=NP2=] or using a skill and so on.
** Another way to make fights more challenging is to not use any of the top-tier buffers (Waver, Merlin, or Mash for example), especially when fighting difficult bosses.
** Removing damage-boosting event Craft Essences is another method players do, to see whether they don't need to rely on a booster to take down bosses with several hundred thousand HP.
** ''Epic of Remnant'' chapters have themed Servants which receive double bond points for every story battles. For Shinjuku, it's Evil-aligned Servants. For Agartha, females, Astolfo, d'Eon, and Enkidu. For Shimosa Province, the Knight Classes and for Salem, Casters. For story immersion, challenge, and maximum bond point allocation, players limit themselves by using only themed Servants.
** Players can do a [[SoloCharacterRun self-imposed solo Servant fight]]. Because the game forces the player to have at least three Servants for a fight, they choose a Servant they want to do the solo fight with and pair that Servant with two other low-level CannonFodder Servants to take the first few hits for him or her (preferably Leonidas and/or Saint George since they have the Taunt skill which forces the enemy to attack them first). After the two [[CannonFodder cannon fodders]] die, only the main Servant remains to do the challenge.
** Or they can do the [[LowLevelRun low-rarity run]] where players only use 1-3 star Servants and/or 1-3 star Craft Essences. It is borderline impossible to win in stages where the opponents cheat unless players get lucky [[CriticalHit critical hits]] or the opponents skip a turn without attacking.
* SelfInflictedHell: [[spoiler: What Salem is more or less. To elaborate, Salem was created to cause as much 'pain' as possible by Räum so that Abigail, who has the ability to channel an [[{{EldritchAbomination}} Elder God]], by using her guilt on the injustices that she caused and the fact that she doesn't remember ''what'' injustice she caused. Making her incapable of forgiving herself and humanity. In doing so literally creating a Christian HellOnEarth with Räum and Abigail as joint administrator]]
* SequelEscalation: The third and final Halloween event starring Bathory goes this way, with three castles to invade instead of just Csejte Castle, two new variations of Bathory, and a more dramatic plot that isn't just about the protagonist trying to get to the castle and resolve the issue.
* SequelHook: [[spoiler:Despite the sheer sense of closure that the ending provided, with the world being saved thanks to the collective efforts of Chaldea and the sacrifice of Dr. Roman, there are still threats for Chaldea to face. Gilgamesh's speech during the climax has him imply that ''at least'' one more Beast is currently active and that once one Beast makes an attack, events accelerate to an "ultimate conclusion" of some sort, and Holmes' theory that Goetia chose 2016 to destroy humanity because a greater threat was going to do something worse in either that year or soon afterward hasn't been confirmed or denied yet. More directly, in the post-credits scene, da Vinci debriefs the protagonist and Mash saying that the Mage's Association will come knocking on their door soon, thanks to the entire ''planet'' missing a year and even the [[{{Muggles}} normies]] knowing something weird happened.]]
* SequentialBoss: The MultipleLifeBars mechanic introduced with Shinjuku has facilitated these, with a health bar depletion triggering the next phase of the fight.
** For Shinjuku, the Christine doll turns into a giant ghost.
** In SE.RA.PH's extra story, Nero turns into Nero Bride, Tamamo turns into her Lancer version, [[spoiler:and Shiki transforms into her Saber version.]]
** Certain bosses also give themselves special unremovable buffs upon health bar depletion, forcing players to switch strategies on the fly, like Saber Empireo giving himself a 100% defense shield or Suzuka Gozen draining everyone's HP every turn.
* SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong:
** The HolyGrail has appeared in several key points in Humanity's development, and the player has to travel to them all to either destroy or retrieve the Grail in order to set history back on course and prevent its demise in the future. [[spoiler:At first the heroes assume this means that anyone who dies during a Singularity is revived once history is restored, but during Babylonia Gilgamesh replies that no, people who die stay dead, even if they didn't die in the original history. History is rewritten such that they died of some cause other than the Singularity, but the fact that they died at that specific time remains unaltered. However, the opposite is also true: anyone who lives (including those that died in the original history during that time) will survive past the point the Singularity takes place in.]]
** The Saber Wars event. Heroine X comes from the future from another planet, the Planet Servant with a dystopian future dominated by the Sabers where Lancers are extinct and Archers are deemed criminals. So she came back in time to kill all Sabers and all Servants with Saber-faces. This storyline is continued in Mysterious Heroine X Alter's trial quest.
** The ''Fate/Zero'' crossover is about Lord El-Melloi II and his determination to save the innocent lives lost to the Holy Grail.
* SevenDeadlySins:
** The theme of the Prison Tower quest bosses, with seven Servants corresponding to each sin. [[spoiler:Jeanne is the only one who doesn't actually qualify.]]
** In Babylonia, a set called the seven Evils of Humanity are brought up which are essentially disasters manifesting as Beast class Servants, brought about by humanity's beastly nature, which humanity's tasked with destroying. They don't quite match with the classical set, as the first is "Pity", the second is "Regression", the fourth is "Comparison", and another one is "Regret".
*** [[spoiler:Beast III-R invokes a somewhat more classic Evil, that being "Desire". It is somewhat broader than the [[{{Lust}} usual expression of such]], as it includes things like "desiring salvation" (though certainly, she is quite willing to exploit ''that'' kind of "Desire" as well...)]]
* ShamelessFanserviceGirl: There is a lot of female {{Fanservice}} in this game. Some of the girls know they are sexy and want others to know it to.
* ShesAManInJapan: d'Eon and Astolfo are made explicitly female in the Chinese port of the game, and can be used in girl-exclusive events as well.
* ShiftingSandLand: The first area the protagonists arrive in Camelot is this, with sandstorms, a pyramid and lots and lots of desert. It's actually the Egypt of Ozymandias' time that was twisted into the singularity when he was summoned.
* ShiningCity: The holy city of Camelot [[spoiler:built over the ashes of Jerusalem]] is this, as it stands as the last shelter in a shrinking singularity. Almost all inhabitants of the area have been attempting to get entrance into it.
* ShipTease: In a story as long as this, there's a lot of relationship teasing to go around.
** The protagonist gets the bulk of the ship tease:
*** Mash is clearly in love with the protagonist and tends to be [[ClingyJealousGirl very clingy if she sees any sign of the protagonist showing affection for other female Servants]] while as the story progresses the protagonist grows more protective and dialogue choices can show them being fond of her in return.
*** Roughly half the female Servants fall for the protagonist, though nothing much comes of this most of the time. These tend to be characters who did not have a relationship in a previous story, such as Euryale or Okita, but it does also happen to alternate versions of characters such as Swimsuit Tamamo or Nero Bride.
*** Finally, several story chapters also include a lot of romantic interactions, such as Hassan of Serenity's massive crush on the protagonist in Camelot and Ereshkigal's similar one in Babylonia (to the point Ishtar teases at a LoveTriangle forming between the protagonist, Mash, and Ereshkigal), Jeanne Alter and Saber Alter quasi-love triangle in Shinjuku, [[spoiler:not to mention Moriarty's plan literally revolves around the protagonist becoming the closest person to him]], and Meltlilith even playing the part of the heroine in the most serious event to date, SE.RA.PH.
** There's also a fair bit of teasing between various Servants:
*** Sanson, Mozart and d'Eon are all in love with Marie Antoinette, though she's kind of spacey and doesn't seem entirely aware of it.
*** Sasaki Kojirou seems to have a thing for Martha, who appears to find it kind of annoying. Still, fans eat it up so the writers started adding in more of it.
*** One of Altria's My Room lines has her reminiscing fondly about [[TookALevelInKindness EMIYA]] while [[LuminescentBlush blushing]], clearly remembering him more as [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Shirou]] from the ''Fate'' route.
*** Caesar and Cleopatra are very much in love with each other, as is only fitting. Cleopatra is initially shocked to see how fat he is, but after recovering she doesn't care, despite her usual vanity. Similarly, Irisviel and Kiritsugu are married in other continuities and while they don't know each other here, they're still drawn to each other.
*** Kintoki is caught between Shuten-douji and Raikou, which is a really uncomfortable for him because he helped kill the former and considers the latter to be something like his mom, but she's crazy and considers that the same thing as romantic love. He appears to mostly love Shuten, but they always seem to end up bickering when they meet. Finally, Tamamo also flirts with him in London, but they both know she's only doing it to embarrass him. Kintoki knows perfectly well she actually loves someone else, namely Hakuno.
*** During Okeanos, Blackbeard loudly proclaims about how he's a lolicon and so forth and that Drake is an old hag. However, despite this, she's actually the one woman he's genuinely serious about and asks her to hold him as he dies in Okeanos, which is a request she grants. In case you're thinking it's too serious, his Interlude is also about getting explicit doujins about her.
*** Also during Okeanos, Euryale and Asterios have a BeastAndBeauty type relationship going on, or at least teased at. Asterios is fighting to protect her from Jason, but is badly injured when he attacks your party because he and Euryale assumed you were with the Argonauts. When this happens, she rushes out intending to sacrifice herself for him despite her usual self centered attitude. She's happy to see him again during Salomon.
*** Like in legend, Rama and Sita are heavily devoted to each other with a third of the America chapter revolving around their romance as Rama tries to rescue her and Rama's profile mostly focuses on the aspects of his legend with Sita.
*** There are several hints that the relationship between EMIYA Alter and [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] is much deeper than either would admit too. [[spoiler:Slaughtering her and her cult in one alternate timeline is what drove Emiya Shirou down this path, and Kiara when she becomes Beast III-R in the SE.RA.PH. chapter is able to bring him to her side not through force, but using said guilt to draw him over and corrupt him into a Beast Servant]].
*** During the first Christmas event, Santa Alter gives [[AmbiguousGender Le Chevalier d'Eon]] a maid dress, much to their consternation. If this wasn't obvious enough, Alter also asks them for their contact information.
*** Nikola Tesla is ''immediately'' smitten with Tamamo upon meeting her in London. All of his dialogue with her involves him gushing over her, to the point that Tamamo has to actually remind herself to remain loyal to Hakuno.
*** When Hijikata Toshizou was released, he came with several lines complimenting female Servants (i.e. Musashi, Carmilla). Fan artists were all over the latter. And in the Halloween 2017 event with Carmilla's animation and voice updates, she also has a voice line with Hijikata, even calling him by his real name without any honorifics. Cue fans shipping them ''even further''.
*** Musashi and Osakabehime started picking up steam in the months leading to "Battle in New York", even though they've had hints since the latter's debut in the third Halloween event. Musashi is known for her love of cute girls, while Osakabehime is known to collect Musashi merchandise, and their profiles from the material books have matching lines for each other where Musashi attempts to drag Osakabehime from her room. If the [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/fategrandorder/images/3/30/CE900.png/revision/latest?cb=20180919135715 Chaldea Kitchen Truck CE]] is any indication, she succeeded, and the two have been touring New York together. They're also a DualBoss during the event, and their title is "[[LadyAndKnight Princess and her Bodyguard]]", introducing a fairly popular dynamic to their interactions.
** Roman and Da Vinci had significant amount of ship tease with her attempting to take care of him, often visiting him in the middle of work to remind him to eat, and they basically become the Chaldea crew's surrogate parents. Additionally, Dr Roman gets very emotional (and slightly {{tsundere}}) when Da Vinci gets into some peril in Camelot, and Da Vinci's interlude clearly implies she has feelings for him. Part of this is based on the fact that their [[Creator/KenichiSuzumura voice]] [[Creator/MaayaSakamoto actors]] are married and the two actors are playing an official couple in [[LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai another Type-Moon series]].
** Kadoc and Anastasia are shown to have a bond deeper then just Master-Servant, with Kadoc's fellow Crypters even worried that he'll prioritize her wish over expanding his Lostbelt and [[spoiler:Anastasia sacrifices herself at the end to save his life.]]
* ShooOutTheClowns: [[spoiler:In London, to establish just how much of a threat Solomon is and how serious the stakes have become, he kills all the Servants (Shakespeare, Tamamo and Kintoki) who were mostly providing comic relief.]]
** PlayedForLaughs in Garden of Order, where MHX is terrified of Saber Shiki due to the latter emitting an aura can ignore the rules of Servant Universe (comical characters can't be killed).
* ShootTheMedicFirst: Averted. Enemies, including enemy Servants, have honestly pretty pathetic healing, especially when used on the boss Servants they sometimes show up with. In Okeanos in particular, focusing on [[spoiler:Medea Lily]] before attacking [[spoiler:Demon Pillar Forneus]] is a good way to be grinded into dust by the latter, especially its ChargedAttack, while the former's Noble Phantasm is a minor inconvenience at best.
* {{Shopkeeper}}:
** Da Vinci serves as the default shopkeeper in the game, though she can be affected by the player's progress in the main story, like turning into a hologram when she personally joins the protagonist in Camelot and [[spoiler:being replaced by the younger Da Vinci in the ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' storyline when the original one is killed.]]
** Event shops (with some exceptions) has the event's featured Servant (usually the reward one if there's any) as their shopkeeper.
* ShowWithinAShow: The party performs several plays; one is about Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, another features the three Jeannes, the third one stars Medea Lily and Circe, and a CompressedAdaptation of "Starry Xuanzang goes to India" for the townspeople of Salem with the UI slightly altered to reflect it being a play.
* SimpleYetAwesome:
** Most events give you a free SR Servant and allow you to buy four more copies of them and all of their unique ascension items using easily grindable items in the event shop, meaning that you can get them to level 80 and their NP level to 5 ''very'' easily. They're all considered useful in some way (with a few considered absolutely absurd), though some of the early ones have been power-creeped.
** Medea's Rule Breaker doesn't seem too special, just being a dagger that removes buffs - except its self-recharging effect, combined with her High-Speed Divine Words skill that gives her at least 80% of an NP gauge with the press of a button, makes it a very reliable and deadly SpamAttack. It helps that she has three normal Arts cards, and that Rule Breaker is an Arts card itself.
** Sakata Kintoki's Rider version gives everyone else in this list competition--having a single-target Noble Phantasm that [[JustForPun runs over]] most bosses (especially the Caster and Berserker ones). His skills are all straightforward, so he's also ''very'' easy to use. He's also a SR Servant obtainable for free.
** After Camelot, Mash is considered one of the best SR Servants. She can tank reliably with her huge HP pool, taunt, and invincibility, has decent damage potential (as Shielder class deals normal damage to any Class), and support with her NP that adds two DEF buffs and a big ATK buff to the whole party. And she has ''0 party cost''. The only downside for using her is she doesn't get any bond points.
** Paul Bunyan, full stop. She's a 1* unit with a very good skillset and '''short NP animation''', born to be the ultimate farming unit.
** Your starting outfit, Mystic Code Chaldea. Other Codes may look cool or have clever spells, but you really ''can't'' go wrong with the provided versatility of a strong heal, attack boost, and evade.
** Some lower rarity servants are like this, as despite their lower than average stat-line, some of them have incredibly powerful and useful skill setup and/or useful Noble Phantasm that makes them more useful for their utility that outweighs their lower stat line. In fact, many of these servants are often referred as "low-rarity EX tier" mainly because of their useful utility that can provide in many team composition and serve as cheaper alternatives to their respective higher rarity counterparts [[BribingYourWayToVictory for those who don't want to spend real life money]] to get higher rarity servants. Some noticeable examples include Hans Christian Andersen, Euryale, Robin Hood, Billy the Kid, David, Julius Caesar, Bedivere, Lu Bu, and Georgios, as they have very straightforward skill sets in addition to them being lower rarity.
** Some of the 4* and 5* Craft Essence the player can obtain from events for free can be really good. While the earlier events have event Craft Essences that are either decent or too situational, some of the later events have free event Craft Essence that are incredibly good (one noticeable example is the Golden Sumo Wrestling CE from the Onigashima event, which grants the servant equipped with it 15% increased attack and starting with 50% NP charge when max limited break, arguably considered one of the best free event Craft Essences the player can obtain).
* SirNotAppearingInThisTrailer: Some Servants aren't announced or promoted to make their appearance in the story all the more impactful.
** Lancer Altria Alter is the only antagonist for London that wasn't already shown in the trailer or promotional release gacha rate-up.
** In America, [[spoiler: Cu Chulainn Alter is never hinted at in the trailer or promotion, with his appearance in the chapter's cold open being the first time he appears.]] In addition, Li Shuwen who didn't have any connection to the new Servants or prior appearance in the game, yet he debuts there.
** [[spoiler:Tiamat was never shown in trailers or promotion for Babylonia to hide her role as the actual ArcVillain, with her horns as the icon representing Babylonia being the only hint towards her existence before its release.]]
** [[spoiler:Shakespeare and Andersen are never shown in the Shinjuku trailer, but they have an important role for the story's finale.]]
** [[spoiler:Kiara Sesshouin]] is the only SE.RA.PH Servant not to show up at all in promotional materials prior to release, as it would be a major spoiler.
** [[spoiler:Medb, Quetzalcoatl and Gugalanna]] do not feature at all in the "Dead Heat Summer Race" event PV.
** [[spoiler:Caster Limbo, Sengo Muramasa, Amakusa Shirou and Sasaki Kojiro]] do not appear in the Shimosa PV.
** [[spoiler:The Queen of Sheba and Lavinia Whateley]] don't appear in the Salem trailer.
** [[spoiler:Billy the Kid and Ivan the Terrible]] don't appear in the Anastasia trailer
* SituationalSword:
** Many [=NPs=] provide bonus damage against certain targets, such as Lancer Tamamo dealing bonus damage to Males, Gilgamesh to Servants and Nobunaga to enemies with Riding. A related effect is providing a power up bonus vs certain targets, which has the same effect through a different mechanic. Scathach has a power up effect against undead and divine enemies on her third skill, while one of Nobunaga's has power up against Divinity, meaning the effects multiply against enemies with both Riding and Divinity such as Raikou or Caesar. The standard super effective multiplier is 50% on [=NPs=] while power up usually ranges from 50-100% as it's normally attached to skills, meaning the effect can be improved on.
** Some skills provide extra effects to Servants with certain traits. Elisabeth and Medb, for example, provide double the effect to female and male Servants respectively on their improved Charisma buffs.
** Other skills ''only'' work on certain targets. Charm effects usually only target one gender, for example. Stheno's NP also only works on males apart from the defense down effect, causing her to be one of the least popular Servants in the game.
** Certain Craft Essences give the equipped Servant bonus damage against certain types of enemies, i.e. Origin Bullet gives the equipped Servant more damage against enemy Casters.
** Finally, some skills provide additional benefits depending on the terrain type. Ruler Martha gains an attack bonus in maps with water, Gawain gains a Buster buff on maps with sunshine, Jaguar Warrior has bonus star generation on forest maps, and Swimsuit Nobunaga has bonus attack on burning maps.
* SlapOnTheWristNuke: Due to GameplayAndStorySegregation, TacticalRockPaperScissors, and Noble Phantasm gameplay mechanics, a flashy, lore-wise devastating NP could deal a lot less damage compared to a more mundane, weaker, and less impressive NP for certain enemies, i.e. Gilgamesh's Enuma Elish is a lot less useful than Kojirou's ''Tsubame-gaeshi'' when it comes to taking on Rider dragons.
* SlidingScaleOfSillinessVersusSeriousness: The storyline can switch between silliness and seriousness (although later chapters shift more towards the later). Certain events, however, shifts more towards silliness with massive amount of either BreakingTheFourthWall or SelfDeprecation, even events that are supposed to be "serious" such as the Garden of Order and Fate/Accel Zero events (which the later is lampshaded by Mash with a BreakTheFourthWall moment).
* SNKBoss:
** The Exhibition Matches of the 2016 Nero Festival are made to be harder then hard and it shows.
*** The first is a battle against Heracles. Already a tough opponent as a Berserker with a dodge skill, an attack buff and high debuff resistance, this Heracles has his Noble Phantasm, God Hand, as a permanent unremovable buff which revives him with half HP ''eleven times''. Also, to make things harder, any Servants on the frontline at the start of the battle get hit with a permanent debuff to their Arts cards which severely cripples NP gain and damage.
*** The second has you against Scathach and Cu Chulainn. On the first turn, Scathach will use a skill to seal all Noble Phantasms for 3 turns. After taking out one, the remaining one will proceed to ''instantly kill'' your party. Both of them come with a dodge skill and they will spam them. A lot. They have high chances of launching critical attacks and more often then not, their [=NPs=] will instantly kill your Servants. Also just to make things harder, Cu's NP bar has three segments instead of the usual four, meaning he'll use his Noble Phantasm a lot more often then he usually can.
*** The fourth pits you against Siegfried with his Armor of Fafnir NP, that basically give him 200% DEF buff (which you can't dispel). Most Servants will be dealing a miniscule amount of damage, so you must bypass that buff with at least a 200% buff to your attack. Oh and for the first turn, his NP gauge is instantly full. Sumanai no more.
*** The fifth puts you against Medb with an army of her created soldiers. On the first turn, she instantly inflicts permanent charm any male Servant (that even pierces King Hassan's Charm immunity!) and the AI is adjusted to focus fire on them, so you're restricted to using female servants. She comes with Invincibility, resistance to all 3 card types, and 90% defense split across 3 buffs, and the only way to remove them is to kill the soldiers, with each soldier removing one of her defense buffs. However, when they die or enter battle, the soldier buffs Medb's attack, making her deadlier. And this is on top of Medb and the soldiers charging each other's NP bars. Oh, and the last two soldiers are Casters, which will wreck any Assassins you decided to bring if they come out.
*** The sixth battle is Gilgamesh. Already a tough opponent with Golden Rule charging his already short NP bar, he has 1.5 ''million'' HP, a high crit rate, and he drains your entire team's (including your reserve) NP bars on turn 1. For 2016, he also has two different versions of his fight which will put you through the wringer, in 2017 players only face the Hero version.
*** The "King" version gives him an absurdly high defense buff that lowers in effectiveness with each turn. However, at the same time he has an attack buff that will make him even more powerful with each turn. It's possible to remove these buffs, however, Gilgamesh has a buff that nullifies buff removal twice. And to top things off, he can throw out a five turn NP seal.
*** The "Hero" version hits the entire team (again, including the reserve) with an NP power debuff while giving himself a buff that raises his attack every turn without taking an action. And don't forget that he still has Charisma to further increase his attack! If you try to be smart and use buff removal, he decides to immediately charge his NP and hit you with Enuma Elish before recasting the buff.
*** The last battle is a BossRush against six enemies. Jack will cast a skill to make any buff fail to occur (if she's dead she puts a regen of 15k HP per turn on her allies). Medea will poison your party (on death she will cast an unremovable 50% DEF buff). Lancer Altria Alter will increase her party's NP by 2 bars per turn permanently. Amakusa will cast a 2000 max HP down debuff that is stackable (on death he will increase his team's critical chance). Ozymandias will instantly cast Imperial Privilege if he's entering and casts Protection of the Sun God (NP gauge up + buff chance increased), and on death he will add evasion pierce to his party's attacks. Lastly, there is Nero with her Imperial Privilege spam per turn, 3-times Guts, critical chance and damage up. And their debuffs on death will affect all of your party, even in reserve. If you kill Nero before any other enemy Servant, she gives every remaining enemy Servant unlimited Guts which can't be dispelled - which means all of your Command Seals and effort are completely wasted. This battle was so hard (mainly Nero's unlimited Guts), it was nerfed a day after it came out. A pre-nerf version of this battle came out on 2017 as a special surprise match after all the new matches came out to see how players would fare against it, with its difficulty being ranked ''EX''.
** The bonus boss for SE.RA.PH, [[spoiler:Demonic Bodhisattva Kiara]], is hella hard with 3 seperate HP bars, each worth one million. With several buffs she grants herself every turn and more permanent buffs, she's a hard hitter and there being no [[spoiler:Kiara Punishers]] means the party gets the full brunt of her three different attacks. Her NP removes buffs before damage is applied and she utilizes multiple different debuffs to wear down the team. This boss mainly exists just to see whether players can actually take her down, as her battle yields no bond points or drops nor are there any rewards for beating her.
** Nero Festival 2017 Autumn incorporates the Break mechanic and it's just as hard as last year's:
*** First we have Spartacus with his absurd regeneration given to him by Crying Warmonger which heals him 90k HP ''per turn'' and ''400k HP'' every three turns. His defense-piercing NP becomes stronger as his HP bars are depleted and he gains a special defense buff against Kings later on. Ideally you must deal more than 100k damage ''per turn'' to be safe! In practical terms, you need to be able to wipe out a full health bar in a single turn.
*** Second is Suzuka Gozen with different gimmicks per HP bar. First, she casts a 90% double attack-type resistance per turn. Then for her second phase, she switches between Class resistances and advantages every turn. Her final phase has her put up a massive permanent Special Defense buff that can only be weakened by Servants who have a certain alignment each turn. She also has a taunt skill throughout all three phases to let her focus fire a certain Servant.
*** Third is Arash with ''5 million HP'' and a ''three times'' Guts that revives him with two million HP. His NP bypasses invulnerability and evasion and he only has 3 NP bars (that he can charge anytime). After you manage to get all three revives out of the way, the next turn he automatically recasts another Guts buff and uses Stella again! The proper strategy to beating him is actually to ignore offense entirely and find a way to survive his multiple Stellas, each one of which will remove his own Guts. However, given that he pierces invincibility and has a ''super'' Stella that deals upwards of 180k full party damage, either a full party guts (Irisviel) or serious defense buff stacking is required.
*** Then there's Karna and Arjuna. Each brother comes with unremovable buffs (every attack Karna does grants debuffs and Arjuna is immune to debuffs and gain critical buffs when attacked) and a damage bonus against Divinity enemies. So, who to kill first? If you kill Karna first, Arjuna automatically gives himself an Instant Kill buff and drains everyone's NP gauge. If you kill Arjuna first, Karna buffs himself with massive damage resistance, a high attack buff, and extra NP gain per turn.
*** Da Vinci and her motley crew of annoying enemies is next. She comes with almost every single midboss monster type, can cast a skill to increase two NP bars and every monster has a special buff that grants a debuff on anyone who attacks them. And she will spam her invincibility pierce buff for her NP if there are only two enemies on the field. If you try to be smart and kill Da Vinci first, she buffs her companions to become absolute monsters!
*** The sixth battle is against the "Old Man of the Mountain", King Hassan and an endless army of failed Hassan candidates. He starts off with a massive damage resistance buff, which can only be removed whenever he ''kills'' one of his allied Hassans for a buff (bulky ones give him one NP bar and an attack buff, and skinny ones give him crit buffs). Once his break gauge is depleted, he starts using evasion buffs that protect him from a certain card type each turn. His chance of proccing an instant kill with any attack has been increased and his third skill lowers everyone's resistance to having an IK, with his NP almost guaranteed to unleash an IK on any unfortunate target.
*** The final battle is yet another BossRush. This time, each Servant comes with a three-turn resistance to something, a party buff that lasts as long as they're alive and a buff that they can apply when certain allies enter. And the last boss is of course Nero, who gives the entire team a Guts buff once she comes out.
* SocializationBonus: A friend's support Servant can be brought into battle, though only ones from your friend list can use their Noble Phantasm.
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: Most limited and/or seasonal events are these as the cast takes a break from saving the world to engage in zany hijinks.
* SpannerInTheWorks: One of the biggest reasons the grand plan of [[spoiler:King Goetia]] is derailed is [[spoiler:Roman, aka Solomon]] showing up and [[spoiler:using Ars Nova to erase himself from the Throne of Heroes and thus make Goetia unable to sustain his own existence]]. This was because [[spoiler:Solomon]] was in possession of [[spoiler:the final ring]] due to it being used as a summoning catalyst by [[spoiler:his Master, Maris Billy Animusphere]]. The reason [[spoiler:Maris]] had it in the first place? [[spoiler:''God'' told Solomon to send the ring into the future where it would be needed.]] So, assuming that [[spoiler:"God" isn't the Counter Force in disguise like what apparently might have been the case with the voices Jeanne heard]], the BigBad's plan was derailed because [[spoiler:God]] foresaw what would happen ([[spoiler:but considering this is ''[[TheOmniscient God]]'' we're talking about, that's no surprise]]) and arranged for the right conditions for his defeat, [[spoiler:by allowing Maris to win the Fifth Fuyki Grail War and establish Chaldea, also allowing for Solomon to exist in the present day to act against Goetia, and also establishing the events that not only allowed the Protagonist and their allies to win in the first place, but also set things up so they have a fighting chance against the ''other'' big threats likely threatening to destroy humanity.]] So, basically, [[spoiler:[[GodIsGood God]] [[SubvertedTrope ain't]] [[TheGodsMustBeLazy lazy]], and He sure as hell knows how to set up a domino effect. Nor does He appreciate gifts he made being used by those who weren't meant to use them, ''especially'' demons.]]
** Even more simply, the bombing meant to take out all of Chaldea's summoners at the beginning would have succeeded if you hadn't fallen asleep during the orientation meeting and been kicked out of the mission to Fuyuki.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS:
** Kiara Sesshouin's name is usually spelled as such, but depending on the romanization system or source it may also be "Sessyouin", though that's not how it's pronounced.
** FSN-Saber's name アルトリア (lit. Arutoria) has been spelled either as Altria or Artoria in official Type-MOON merchandise. It has also been spelled as Arturia in some fan translations. In Fate/Grand Order however, Type-MOON dictated that the game go with Altria over the localization team's protests.
** The Near-Future Observation Lens was originally translated as SHIVA, but was later corrected to SHEBA after her appearance in Salem.
** Type-Moon in general used more "native" names on certain Servants in which the katakana that sounded closer to the Servant's native name are used instead of the katakana of their "generic" names unlike other Japanese media do. The English version reflects this through changes in the Servants' spellings to better match the spelling from their original language. Some are minor like Atalanta and Hector being Atalante[[note]] The Japanese used アタランテ (Atarante) instead of アタランタ (Ataranta) for Atalanta's name.[[/note]] and Hektor[[note]]Which used ヘクトール (Hekutoru) over ヘクター (Hekuta) which the usual katanaka for Hector[[/note]] is read as, while some are more noticeable like spelling Angra Mainyu as Aŋra Mainiiu [[note]] reflecting his Japanese name アンリマユ (Anrimayu) instead of アングラマイニュ (Anguramainiyu)[[/note]]. These name changes may apply to Achilles/Achilleus and Chiron/Cheiron once they got released in the English server in the future.
** In a more traditional version of the trope, more recent material, especially adaptations, of the Camelot chapter tend to have a problem with a certain name that features in the narrative. The story features an object that is ''very'' clearly meant to reference the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuada_Airgetl%C3%A1m Airgetlám of Nuada]]. However, both the stage and animated adaptation titles have a bad tendency of calling the object "Agateram", which is a meaningless name derived from a semi-direct romanization of the kana used for "Airgetlám" (アガートラム); this even cropped up in the promotional Craft Essence for the stage play, which gave the name in romanized letters. The English version of the chapter does retain the name Airgetlám, at least.
* StableTimeLoop:
** [[spoiler:The Singularities in the first part of the story are this. According to Gilgamesh,in the grand scheme of things what happens in a singularity will still happen but history will record if differently. The example he gave was a dragon showing up in a singularity kills a man. Once the singularity is resolved and history is restored that man does not come back to life, instead he get's killed by another more mundane cause.]]
** [[spoiler:Kiara creates one in SE.RA.PH, partially to provide the pseudo-Spiritrons to fuel her and SE.RA.PH but mostly just for her amusement at watching people suffer.]]
** After hearing the protagonist's description of their moonlit walk on the beach in "Murder at the Kogetsukan", Holmes realizes that [[spoiler:there's a small gap in time between the protagonist dreaming at Chaldea and the two families arriving at the hotel, so he quickly rushes to assume the alias of the detective the Goldie family hired and arrives there as "Sheringham", leading to the protagonist seeing him as "Sheringham" in their dreams, directly setting up Holmes to become the detective when they inform him of their dreams.]]
* StatusBuff: Most units have the ability to grant themselves or allies temporary bonus effects, some stronger than others. For every buff, there is usually a debuff version.
** Offensively, the three main categories are attack, card buffs and power bonuses. Card buffs are bonus effects to the damage of Buster, Arts or Quick cards on top of boosting the secondary effects like NP gain or star generation. Power is split between three effects. First is critical damage, which can apply to all attack. Second is Noble Phantasm power up, which only applies to Noble Phantasms. Finally is just straight power up effects, which are generally fairly rare and tend to be limited to activating against certain straights such as enemies tagged as Evil or Kings. However, despite the different effective targets for power buffs, they are all actually the same effect and have additive effects, not multiplicative, which makes [=NPs=] and crits less effective during raid events like Rashomon which provide large power bonuses to the party. There's also an added flat damage bonus from a few skills, but the effect is minor and rarely consequential.
** Defensively there are two kinds of defense skill as well as two kind of damage negation. First is defense up, which is the opposite of attack up. A related effect is damage cut, which is like attack up but much more valuable due to the lower numbers involved. Unfortunately, this isn't a common effect. The last two defensive skills are invincibility and evasion. Mechanically, these skills are identical except that invincibility effects are harder to ignore. There are also a few boss only defensive abilities that force you into using certain strategies, but these are infrequent enough to not go into much detail about them.
** Stars, health and NP can all be generated in flat amounts on a per turn basis. Merlin, for example, can provide 5+ stars every turn, 5% NP charge and 1000+ HP for five turns by using his NP. It's also possible to increase maximum health or increase healing received. All of these effects also have debuff versions that do the opposite.
** Finally, there are various miscellaneous effects like increasing the chances of instant death affecting the target when using certain attacks, NP seal, skill seal and even an effect known as buff denial, which blocks attempts by the afflicted to receive any kind of buff until the effect wears off. This effect is actually the opposite of increased skill success rate, a rare effect that increases the odds that chance based skills such as Imperial Privilege will grant their full effect.
* StealthPun:
** The "demonic fog" in Japanese is ''makiri'', [[spoiler:as in Makiri Zolgen, the villain of the chapter.]]
** The 2017 Christmas event has '''Alter'''a as the Santa stand-in, taking the role from the two Alters before her.
** Saber Gilles's White Day present is his Jeanne fanzine. He has ''issues''.
** The first new Mystic Code given in the Lostbelts has less belts opposed to the TooManyBelts of the standard Chaldea Mystic Code. The protagonist had [[JustForPun lost belts]].
** The changes in My Room always goes with beds or anything that people can sleep on. Then during the ''Inheritance of Glory'' event, the My Room is a flower garden and doesn't have any beds in it, besides some [[JustForPun flowerbeds]]. A lot funnier when Spartacus actually used one to sleep on during the event's story.
* TheStinger: [[spoiler:The ''-Moonlight/Lost Room-'' OVA's after-credits scene has someone approach Solomon's throne and take one of his ten rings.]]
* SubbingForSanta: [[ChristmasEpisode Each Christmas]], a Servant will don the Santa Hat and HilarityEnsues... and life lessons.
* SuccessionCrisis: The Septem chapter takes place during Nero's turbulent reign, when a faction of pretenders raises up to knock Nero down from the throne faster than the historical record. Said pretenders are Nero's predecessors.
* SuddenlyVoiced: The game only has certain cutscenes voiced for special occasions since if the entire game was voiced, its data would be incredibly bloated.
** BB is voiced only for one cutscene at the start of the ''Fate/Extra CCC'' event, even acknowledging that she's voiced for this cutscene and it would be a good idea to be on headphones for this if you're in public.
** The victors of each round of the "Dead Heat Summer Race" are voiced with three different variations of the same scene and the final round has an extended cutscene where a team basks in their victory.
** Starting with Nero Festival 2016, lottery draws are now voiced.
** During the climax of ''Observer on Timeless Temple,'' [[spoiler:Dr. Roman is voiced for the cutscene where he casts Ars Nova on Goetia.]]
* SuperMovePortraitAttack: Every Noble Phantasm attack animation gives a close-up shot of the face of the Servant using it.
* SupernaturalFearInducer: Demons have an ability called "Fear" that inflicts a [[CriticalHit critical damage]] debuff on a target for three turns. Caster Gilles' third skill, Prelati's Encouragement, inflicts the "Fear" status on all opponents for five turns with a chance of stunning them. Abigail's second skill also has the same effect.
* SuperTitle64Advance: ''Fate/Grand Order'' is often abbreviated to ''F/GO'' or even more blatantly, ''Fate/GO''. The April's Fools app also follows this naming scheme by adding the subtitle ''Gutentag Omen''.
* SurplusDamageBonus: Getting Overkill on an enemy guarantees more critical stars and fills a little bit more of the Servant's NP gauge.
* SwitchOutMove: The Chaldea Plugsuit is the only way of swapping Servants from the frontline to the backrow.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:T]]
* TacticalRockPaperScissors: Some Classes have bonus damage and weakness to other Classes.
** The Three Knight classes form a triangle with Sabers being strong against Lancers, Lancers being strong against Archers, and Archers being strong against Sabers.
** Riders, Assassins and Casters form another triangle. Riders are strong against Casters, Casters are strong against Assassins, and Assassins are strong against Riders.
** Berserkers exist outside both triangles. Instead, they have an advantage against most classes, but at the same time, they have a weakness to most classes. An exception is Shielder, who takes neutral damage from and deals neutral damage to Berserker. They deal half damage to and receive double damage from Foreigners.
** Shielder equally damages and resists all Classes.
** Ruler resists all classes except Berserker and Shielder but deals normal damage to everyone except Berserker, who receives the same increased damage it receives from all classes except Shielder.
** Avenger resists and deals double damage to Ruler, takes half damage from Beast and takes and deals normal damage to all other classes except Berserker.
** [[VideoGame/FateExtra BB]] has the exclusive Moon Cancer class, which completes a triangle with Ruler and Avenger by being weak to Ruler and strong against Avenger.
** Alter Egos deal double damage to the Rider triangle, deal halved damage from the Saber triangle, and are defensively neutral to most classes except Berserker. They deal double to and resist Foreigners.
** Foreigners are in a strange triangle with Berserkers and Alter Egos. They resist and deal double damage to Berserkers. They receive double and deal half damage to Alter Egos. Foreigners are weak against themselves.
** Each Beast has their own unique triangles and weaknesses.
*** The "Unknown" type which Solomon and his demons belong to is actually [[spoiler:Beast I]], and they deal double damage to the Knight class triangle, take double damage from the Cavalry class triangle, deal neutral damage to Ruler and equally resist and deal half damage to Avenger.
*** Beast II simply takes and deals neutral damage to all classes, except Avengers.
*** Beast III-R is defensively neutral to all classes ''except'' Alter Ego, which deals bonus damage to them. It is offensively neutral to all.
** Beyond the Servant classes, there is a well-hidden second set of stats that sort Servants by what grade of Servant they are, with the designations Earth, Man, Sky, Star, and Beast. They're mentioned in EMIYA's interlude and near the end of Chapter 4 by Tesla and Da Vinci, and the damage is at most modified by 10%, so it's not something you'd notice in normal gameplay unless a Servant has a skill or NP that directly relates to it (Raikou's third skill and Tesla's NP do bonus damage to Servants with the Earth or Sky traits, for example).
*** Da Vinci in chapter 4 explains how the triangle between the first three works: Earth represents legends and stories, Man are those who actually existed in history or were completely unknown, and Sky are those who were Gods or Divine. Earth beats Man because they're more powerful then regular humans, Man beats Sky because humanity can rebel against the gods, and Sky beats Earth because gods have dominion over heroes in stories.
* TalkingToHimself: Invoked. During the Journey to the West event, Mordred/Red Boy appeals to her mother Nightingale/Princess Iron Fan that the former is the latter son because they have the same voice. Both of them are voiced by [[Creator/MiyukiSawashiro the same person]] indeed.
* TakeMyHand: [[spoiler: Mash, recently revived by Fou, manages to do this for the protagonist when the path they're on collapses before they make it to the exit to Solomon's Temple.]]
* TakesOneToKillOne:
** Berserkers having MutualDisadvantage against most classes (except Shielder and Foreigner), has this towards other Berserkers.
** Foreigners' weakness aside from Alter Ego is also itself.
** Certain Servants have KryptoniteFactor against certain enemies due to their traits [[{{Irony}} carries those traits themselves]] like Karna, Siegfried, Jack the Ripper and MHX, making them weak against their own Noble Phantasms.
** Lorewise, certain chapters in main story involved non-Servant beings like human soldiers and Yagas who are able to fight off monsters and other summoned beings, yet completely helpless against Servants. Their only hope against them is to have some of them in their side.
* TakeThat:
** During Brynhild's Trial Quest, several Helter Skelters interrupted her dialogue, in which she commented that they must have been brought by "that damnable [[VideoGame/FireEmblem fire emblem...]]" before focusing to kill them for interrupting her dialogue.
** Da Vinci find the idea of having put [[Literature/TheDaVinciCode codes into her paintings]] to be both silly and demeaning.
* TeenageWasteland: [[spoiler:The nature of Gotterdammerung Lostbelt is some sort of this. Here, the humans only have up to 25 years to live and once one reached that age, the Valkyries will take him/her to be [[ToServeMan fed to the giants]].]]
* TemporaryOnlineContent: True to mobage tradition, certain Servants, Craft Essences, and Mystic Codes are only available for a limited time, as either missable event content or locked behind a limited-time gacha. However, the developers eventually put event content like the latter two in the Rare Prism shop. The former returning to the game remains dependent on when they decide to do another limited rate-up gacha or rerun the event.
* ThematicThemeTune: "Shikisai", the theme song for part 1, is mainly written from Mash's perspective, or more specifically [[spoiler:the mindset she has when going into the final battle, rejecting Solomon's vision of immortality even as she's dying, trying to live every moment to the fullest as a human.]]
* ThemeMusicPowerup: Some Noble Phantasms get this treatment, temporarily replacing the soundtrack while the animation plays with a small snippet of their related theme.
** Altria (her vanilla Saber version only) gets "Sword of Promised Victory" from VideoGame/FateHollowAtaraxia when she uses Excalibur.
** The original EMIYA gets his theme, "EMIYA" when he uses Unlimited Blade Works.
** Nero has a choir version of her theme from VideoGame/FateExtra, "Everything is in Your Hands" (the version that plays in ''CCC'' to be specific) when she uses Laus Saint Claudius, and her Bride counterpart uses a different arrangement. Her Swimsuit version uses a new arrangement of the same song for her Noble Phantasm.
** After the Chapter 5 update, Tamamo also has her theme music, "Extra Life with Anyone She Wants".
** Santa Alter has... "Jingle Bells". No, really.
** Ryougi Shiki (either one) gets her theme, "Seventh Heaven", from the ''LightNovel/KaraNoKyoukai'' movie series.
** Gilgamesh's updated animation gives him his {{Leitmotif}} from ''Fate/Extra CCC'', "Cosmic Air".
** Iskander has "You Are My King" and Dress of Heaven has "Silver Moon" from ''Fate/Zero''.
** Rider Kintoki has rock music play when using Golden Drive.
** [[spoiler: Mash's true Noble Phantasm, Lord Camelot, comes with a remix of the [[TitleThemeDrop title theme]].]]
** Illya and Chloe have music from the ''Prisma Illya'' anime play when using their NP. Chloe has "Shoujo Yo, Hoshi ni Nare", which is in turn a remix of "Starlog", the original opening theme music.
** After an update, Altera has her theme from ''Fate/Extella'' play when using Photon Ray.
** After much requesting from fans and her own voice actor, Bathory finally has her theme song, "Fresh Blood Demoness" from ''Extra CCC'' when using her NP.
** BB gets a remix of the "BB Channel" theme.
** Swimsuit Helena has an electronic theme, befitting the NP's cyberpunk aesthetic.
** Swimsuit Nobunaga plays rock music on her guitar for her NP.
** Osakabe-hime has soft Japanese music, enhancing the atmosphere of a Japanese princess walking on the castle roof at night.
** Kiara has "Anima Ataraxia", her [[spoiler: TrueFinalBoss]] theme from ''Fate/Extra CCC''.
** Abigail has sickly-sounding string instruments play as she unleashes unworldly horrors on the enemy.
** Scathach-Skadi's theme [[https://youtu.be/97l1f9xAtSQ is imperious in tone]], complete with a OneWomanWail.
** As part of the MagicalGirl AffectionateParody, Shuten-douji's Caster version has [[https://youtu.be/abHaZA6bQHU an upbeat Japanese tune]].
** In the story itself, "Sword of Promised Victory" plays in Shinjuku as Altria Alter [[spoiler:destroys the meteor rubble above the city with Excalibur Morgan.]]
** In Shimosa Province, [[spoiler:Sengo Muramasa has a new arrangement of "EMIYA" play as he prepares his NP against Amakusa.]]
* ThereCanBeOnlyOne: [[spoiler:SE.RA.PH once again operates by these rules in the ''CCC'' crossover, as the protagonist must eliminate the other 127 Servants to escape. Well, in theory, anyway...]]
* TheThreeFacesOfAdam: Cu Chulainn's three alternate versions are modeled after this. The Prototype version is defined by his warrior feats against the near infinite army of Connacht and explicitly referred as younger than usual, making him the Hunter. His Alter is the Lord, a what-if scenario where he's a king and changes his land to fit his ideals for better or worse. His Caster version is the Prophet, preferring to watch the story unfold and acting as a guide for his Master when needed.
* ThresholdGuardian: Nearly all enemy Servants are this; even ones that supposedly are helping Solomon. Altria Alter (both Saber and Lancer) openly comment that they are a barrier to prove whether the Main Character is worthy of moving forward.
* ThunderboltIron: One of the ascension materials, the Meteoric Horseshoe, is made from this. Its flavor text notes that though it's made up of the same materials any earthborn horseshoe would have, it's special because it wasn't forged on Earth and from a meteor.
* TimeCrash: [[spoiler:Normally sacrificing a Divine Spirit to the Ark would, at worst, just destroy the surrounding area but since it's in a singularity, this is what would happen.]]
* TimeTravel: The plot involves traveling to singularities/Lostbelts, which are a kind of corrupted version of history that have been partially severed from the normal flow of time and need to be repaired. Real-time travel to whenever you please is not actually possible without using something like Kaleidoscope.
** Chaldea's version of time travel can only go to the past and BB's hacking is the only reason they could rayshift the protagonist to the future for one special occasion in the ''CCC'' crossover.
** [[spoiler:Due to the unique nature of SE.RA.PH's digitization of the ocean, a localized version of this can occur by going upwards through the path created by SE.RA.PH as certain heights correspond to a certain point in time. Meltlilith uses Virgin Laser Palladion to launch her two hours in real time back to her first meeting with the protagonist. BB pulls a similar trick by transporting everyone before they died to two minutes before that happened.]]
** [[spoiler:The enemies in ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' have removed humanity and imposed certain time periods on Earth but they have to keep AlternateUniverse stitched to each of their individual lines of time (their "lostbelts") via a Phantasy Tree or else the timeline is denied and collapses. The new mobile base can enter the new timeline.]]
* TimeyWimeyBall: Seemingly averted as at the end of [[VisualNovel/FateStayNight Sasaki Kojirou's]] Interlude, you get scolded for letting him mark his name on the colosseum wall, saying that it could've caused issues in the future.
* TitleDrop: Obviously, the mission to save humanity, which is known as the Grand Order. However, the mission was named for "the oldest and greatest order of mankind", a policy amongst mages to never commit suicide and to continue living so they can continue their bloodlines. [[spoiler:The Final Order, however, reveals the ''very'' sinister truth about the original Grand Order: it is an AncientConspiracy to allow Goetia to seed himself across three thousand years in the form of seventy-two agents so that he can create the Singularities.]]
* TitleThemeDrop:
** At the end of the America chapter, [[spoiler:the player fights Halphas while [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cpYEzB59bo a remix of the main menu theme]] is playing in the background.]]
** [[spoiler: Mash's true Noble Phantasm, Lord Camelot, plays a remix of the title theme.]]
** TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon, [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Salomon]], features a lot of remixes of the title theme, the main menu theme, and even the opening theme, "Shikisai".
* TomesOfProphecyAndFate: Well, tablet actually (paper wasn't invented yet), but Caster Gilgamesh sends the heroes to search for one of these during the Babylonia chapter, in hopes that it might have information that could help them. After retrieving it, Gilgamesh uses it and his magic to show the protagonist a cryptic vision. [[spoiler: It's later revealed to be a glimpse into "Solomon"'s motive for incinerating the Human Order.]]
* TooAwesomeToUse: Several examples:
** The Command Seals. When you have three of them activate, you can fully revive your party and fill up their NP gauge. While this is incredibly powerful, it takes 24 hours for a Command Seal to recharge, totaling about 3 days to fully recharge your Command Seals. Many would agree that this should only be used in the toughest boss fights as a comeback mechanic when your entire party is wiped.
** Saint Quartz. Obtaining them is ''incredibly'' limited and there are finite ways to obtain them such as daily logins, weekly missions, increasing the Bond level of your higher tier Servants as a reward, doing quests and Interludes, compensation for maintenances, event rewards, or [[BribingYourWayToVictory spending real life money for them]]. They are used for particular Saint Quartz summoning events where the player can potentially get a Servant or a Craft Essence that is 4 stars or more. In fact, it is not uncommon for players to save up months worth of Saint Quartz for a specific Summoning Quartz summon event where a particular servant's drop rate is either increased, or obtaining a limited Servant that cannot be obtained normally via the regular Summoning Quartz summon.
** The Holy Grail item for Palingenesis. They are considered to be the rarest item in the game for Palingenesis where you can only obtain them either through completing singularities in the main storyline, or completing certain special events. Many players will strictly use them in servants that are 4 star or above (or certain lower rarity servants that are SimpleYetAwesome).
** Crystallized Lores are the material used to increase a Servant's skill to level 10 but they are only obtainable through the Rare Prism shop or through events by either 1.) completing a challenge quest, 2.) using a high number of the rarest event currency to buy one, 3.) reaching the tenth raffle box, or 4.) grinding several million points.
* TouchedByVorlons:
** The Babylonia chapter reveals microorganisms from a meteor infected plants and animals in Mesoamerica, transforming the plants and animals into divine spirits and tying them into the prehistoric.
** [[spoiler:A major qualifications for the Foreigner class is having contact with an Outer God and resisting the madness that comes with it. Abigail Williams had been used as a vessel for the Outer God Räum attempts to summon, while Katsushika Hokusai had contact with another upon stumbling into a dimensional rift Abigail had created.]]
* TournamentArc:
** The Nero Festival events are these with several teams of Servants competing against one another to win the tournament. There were tiers of increasing difficulty that would change every 3 days of the event.
** Mysterious Heroine X's interludes are about her participating in a tournament to defeat the most famous Sabers.
** Kojirou's interlude is about him conquering Nero's colosseum.
** Shimosa is set up as a tournament of Musashi against seven swordmasters, with the FinalBoss as her final match and the ending text being "Grand Slam".
** Quetzacoatl's interlude is about her in an MMA tournament arranged by Mash to entertain her, with her going up against Ruler Martha, Assassin of Shinjuku, and Sherlock Holmes.
* TrailersAlwaysLie: Several trailers have had false details in them, fooling players into assuming what's going to happen in the story.
** The one for Garden of Order had Diarmuid in it but he doesn't show up anywhere. Likewise, Medea Lily plays no role nor do Azaka and Illya ever interact.
** The one for America had Diarmuid wielding swords, hinting he would appear as a Saber, but you only fight him as a Lancer.
** The "Fate/Accel Zero Order" trailer shows the iconic Lancelot and Gilgamesh dogfight, now with Mash and has young Waver with Kayneth, neither of which actually happens in the event story.
** Shinjuku's PV has Dantes fighting against Yan Qing, [[spoiler:which doesn't actually happen in the story. Nor does the group assembled at the end of the trailer actually come to be in the story proper as Holmes had disguised himself as Dantes, and the latter only shows up briefly for the final battle.]]
** Nero Bride ultimately plays no role in SE.RA.PH, only providing a brief appearance at the start of the chapter and even then it's the original version of Nero. She appears in the second part only as OG Nero. Moreover, the original trailer literally lies and implies that the event is another funny gag event, whereas the second trailer, released after the event revealed itself as a gruesome gaiden chapter, is accurate.
** Salem's PV depicts the male protagonist and Mash in circus attire with a circus tent in the background. However in the game, the heroes aren't circus performers and are pretending to be part of an acting troupe.
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The Gotterdamerung trailer reveals [[spoiler:that Surtr goes on the rampage and Sigurd has to fight him, which are major plot twists for that arc.]]
* TranslatorMicrobes: Chaldea provides translation charms for their staff to allow them to understand anyone from any time period.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:U-V]]
* UndergroundMonkey:
** Several enemies have multiple variations with different coloring like golems being made of different kinds of rock or crystal, or even snowmen and biscuits. The main difference between enemy types in gameplay are the skills they use and class.
** In the Babylonia Singularity (which actually tries to avert this trope by introducing a wave of enemies with completely new animations), the player spars with Uruk Spartan Soldiers (Uruk soldiers trained by Leonidas), but they're just renamed Roman soldiers from the Rome Singularity, complete with gladius and scutum.
** The four Irisviels that were created from the corrupted Holy Grail's essence are all recolored versions of Dark Irisviel with different skills, lines, and [=NPs=].
** Played for laughs in the gag Riyo event. Altera and Billy show up to play the role of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday respectively, but while Altera really gets into it, Billy admits he's not entirely sure who he's supposed to be, or why they're reusing assets in such a half-assed way. Later, Altera comes back as Buffalo Bill. Naturally, she still looks and speaks exactly the same as always. Or rather, exactly the same as a meme version of her character.
* UnderTheSea:
** One of the stages in Agartha is the Undersea Dragon Palace, where the protagonist and co. have their final encounter with Dahut.
** The entire setting of SE.RA.PH is technically one as it takes place in a sinking oil rig.
* UndyingLoyalty: As Bond EXP goes up, some Servants will vow to always serve and protect their Master.
* UnlockableContent: Beating certain points in the game's story will give the player more content.
** Each Singularity has a set of Servants associated with it that can be only summoned after beating it, and even then they can only be summoned from the main story gacha or event banners with them featured:
*** Caster Cu Chulainn and Saber Alter from Fuyuki.
*** Caster Gilles from Orleans.
*** Nero from Rome.
*** Medea (Lily) from Okeanos.
*** Nikola Tesla and Lancer Altria (Alter) from London.
*** Medb, Cu Chulainn (Alter), Li Shuwen and Thomas Edison from E Pluribus Unum.
*** Lancer Altria, Gawain, Tristan, and Bedivere from Camelot.
*** Quetzalcoatl, Gorgon and Jaguar Warrior from Babylonia.
*** EMIYA (Alter) from Shinjuku.
*** Rider of the Resistance/[[spoiler:Christopher Columbus]] from Agartha.
*** Kato Danzo and Saber Empireo/[[spoiler:Yagyu Tajima-no-kami Munenori]] from Shimosa Province.
*** Caster of Midrash/[[spoiler:The Queen of Sheba]] from Salem.
*** Antonio Salieri from Anastasia.
*** Sitonai from Gotterdammerung. Unique in that she only became available several months later during the Oniland event before being added to the story gacha.
*** Red Hare and Yu Miaoyi from SIN. Doubly so in Yu's case [[spoiler:since she's Hinako, and she ''has'' to die at the end of SIN in order to ascend to the Throne of Heroes as a Servant.]]
** Most events can only be done after beating Fuyuki, with others requiring players to go further and beat certain Singularities. To play any ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, you must clear Salomon Temple.
** SE.RA.PH, while a big crossover event meant to draw in new players like prior crossover events, is also an ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter, and so was only accessible upon beating Salomon Temple.
** Some events include a Challenge Quest only accessible for players that beat Salomon Temple.
** The third Christmas event, "Merry Christmas in the Netherworld", can be only participated by players who beat Babylonia before and during the event period.
* TheUnmasquedWorld: [[spoiler: What Scheherazade was intending to do by crashing Laputa, effectively exposing magic and weaken it to the point where Servants could no longer be summoned, finally allowing her to rest at peace.]]
* UpgradeArtifact: The Holy Grails have been used as these for Servants throughout the game.
** The Palingenesis mechanic lets you use them on Servants to go beyond the normal level cap and level them up to 100.
** In America, Medb uses a grail to empower Cu Chulainn Alter, making him even more deadly.
** In Babylonia, [[spoiler: Gorgon uses one to make herself divine and also borrow one of Tiamat's authorities, making her more powerful than she usually would be.]]
* UrbanFantasy: Shinjuku is a return to the Nasuverse's roots with Servants duking it out in a densely populated urban environment. Also, the Servant antagonists have directly recruited {{Muggle}} gang members as their mooks, providing them with drugs that give them temporary Magic Circuits and have been given genetically engineered Chimeras as enforcement.
* UnrevealAngle:
** Throughout the first segment of ''Moonlight/Lostroom'', [[spoiler:Dr. Roman]] is kept at specific angles that don't exactly show him, but the audience is able to [[TheVoice hear him]] and see his hands.
** The same also applies to the owner of the mysterious hands that take [[spoiler:one of Solomon's rings]] in TheStinger of the aforementioned OVA.
* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: [[spoiler: Grand Time Temple Solomon]], the [[BigBad Big Bad's]] fortress that has been summoned to the year 2016, right before the extinction of humanity, acts as this for the first arc.
* VirtualPaperDoll: Servants can be freely switched between three different outfits and a costume store introduced with the Summer 2016 event rerun allows players to buy alternate costumes like swimsuits and casual outfits for Servants albeit certain conditions need to be fulfilled before unlocking the costumes, like beating a certain quest or having them at max level. Currently, only Mash (has two), Medb, 4* Saber Nero, Parvati, Astolfo, Jeanne Alter, and Arthur (Prototype) have these alternate costumes.
* VirtualTrainingSimulation: Chaldea provides several as part of their way to train Masters and Servants. It serves as the tutorial while you wait for entrance into the main building.
** It's also explained later that the daily quests in Chaldea Gate are these as well. The game [[LampshadeHanging warns against]] thinking about ''why'' you get [[ImpossibleItemDrop special drops]] from them in Sherlock's trial quest.
** Several interludes have the Servants using the sim with varying degrees of success, like Fergus using simulations of several women to attempt flirting or Jing Ke going through a recreation of her assassination attempt to see if it could be pulled off successfully.
** Edison has his own installed in his castle and goes through one before leading his army against the Celts.
* VitriolicBestBuds: The Knights of the Round Table bicker, squabble and attack each other constantly, but there's no hard feelings on any sides anymore even though almost all of them betrayed or screwed over their beloved king in one way or another. Even setting that aside, Mordred killed Gawain while Lancelot killed his younger siblings.
** Dr Roman and Da Vinci constantly bicker, with him calling her a pervert and her threatening to "straight-up murder" him for being so annoying. They still clearly trust and care about each other anyway. There's also a sort of one-sided version of this in Dr Roman's relationship with Mash: he's nice to her but can't help being annoying, so she never hesitates to completely roast him.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:W-Y]]
* WackyRacing: The theme for the Summer 2017 event as various Servants, some in swimsuits, pair up to win a death race. The second part still continues it as they race to break out of jail first with the explanation that Isthar's still filming them and need something to keep the audience entertained. It's all an excuse Ishtar whipped up to get Servants to complete a ritual for her to remove the Singularity.
* WakeUpCallBoss:
** You fight Saber Alter at the end of the Fuyuki prologue, and if you don't kill her fast enough, you'll learn that unlike the shadow Servants you've faced thus far, enemy Servants can and will use their Noble Phantasms once they've charged up that bar below their HP bar.
** The first Demon Pillar is fought near the end of the Septem chapter and sets the standard for future Demon Pillar fights to come, boasting a boatload of HP and weaknesses that [[TrialAndErrorGameplay the player won't know until they find out for themselves]]. Additionally, ''every'' attack it makes is [=AoE=], spelling TotalPartyKill for an underleveled and underbuffed party.
* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Even though Chaldea's employees and the Servants they summon hail from all over the globe, they all treat Japanese holidays like Golden Week and White Day as commonplace things to celebrate mainly because the developers and primary target audience of this game are Japanese and subsequently tailor the aforementioned holidays into the game.
* WebcomicTime: The game is supposed to happen in real time with each holiday marking that holiday passing by for Chaldea in the game, but production delays for events or the main story's chapters has caused the ratio of real time to what's happening in-game to be a bit skewed. One such example would be the storyline for ''Cosmos in the Lostbelt'' as the three month hiatus between its prologue and first major chapter ''did'' happen in-game, but the interval between the first chapter and second chapter is nigh-instantaneous in the story despite there being about two months in between release.
* WeatherControlMachine: Babbage and Paracelsus used the Grail to power one of these, spewing the demonic fog everywhere in London.
* WeirdSun: It's observed that the sun in the second Lostbelt is seemingly much larger which is odd because the surface would be ''scorched'' if the sun really was that close to Earth and it also never seems to move from its position. [[spoiler:It's because it was magically warped to serve as the prison for Surtr in this pruned timeline.]]
* WhamEpisode:
** London is the game's first true wham episode. [[spoiler: It introduces the concept of Grand Servants, the original seven Servants who were meant to be summoned to fight against a threat against humanity. The Servant system used in Fuyuki is the toned-down version for summoning non-Grands as mere backup to the Grand Servants; these Servants, these beings who are incomparably more powerful than human beings, are ''cheap, disposable familiars'' compared to Grand Servants and the things Grands are meant to fight. (And the phrasing of the explanation, and context of the chapter overall, is meant to make it clear that, yes, this is all meant to be back-ported to ''F/SN'' and other works.) And then we find out the Grand Caster, Solomon, is the BigBad and is working completely contrary to the purpose of his summoning. Oh, and those Grails you were collecting? Largely worthless in the grand scheme of things. Recovering them alone won't fix the problem.]]
** The very end of America reveals that [[spoiler:Mash's powers are killing her. Not slowly either, but ''rapidly''.]]
** [[WordofGod Nasu]] talked in an interview about how Chapter 6 and 7 would be the turning point of the entire game. At the start of Camelot, Dr. Roman reveals [[spoiler:Shielder's origins and place in Chaldea, how and why she became a Demi-Servant and the fact that Mash won't live past 18.]] It's also mentioned that this singularity is the ''only one'' not related to the BigBad. Also in Camelot, Sherlock Holmes reveals [[spoiler: Solomon incinerating humanity is part of a different plan, humanity was already going to die in 2016 due to something else and Olga Marie's father won the Fuyuki Holy Grail War of 2004 in ''GO'''s timeline.]]
** Babylonia finally explains a concept long foreshadowed yet unexplained by the rest of the ''Franchise/{{Nasuverse}}'', [[spoiler: the Beast-class]]. [[spoiler:The Beasts are seven embodiment of humanity's evils and are the very threat that the Heroic Spirit Summoning system, and by extension the Grand Servants, are meant to combat, and they are by far ''leagues'' more powerful than everything faced before. This chapter introduces Beast II, Tiamat, representing the sin of Regression. The final chapter reveals that the BigBad is Beast I, King Goetia, and that ''Fou'' is Beast IV, better known among Nasuverse veterans as ''Primate Murder''.]]
** Salomon, being the GrandFinale of the first arc, drops several major bombshells. [[spoiler: The Solomon that's been acting as the BigBad is actually Beast I inhabiting his dead corpse. Mash dies using Lord Camelot to defend against Goetia's Ars Almadel Salomonis. Dr. Roman reveals that he's the actual Solomon, who was summoned by Maris Billy for the Holy Grail War and used his wish to become human, shortly before he uses Ars Nova to remove himself from the Throne of Heroes and remove Goetia's immortality. And Fou gives up his power and intellect as Beast IV to resurect Mash with a normal lifespan.]]
** Shinjuku reveals that [[spoiler:Solomon's Ars Nova failed to wipe out all of Goetia's Pillars. Four of them are still around, coming up with various schemes. Hence the title, ''Epic of Remnant'', as the story of dealing with the Demon Pillars' remnants.]]
** The May 2017 crossover event with ''[[VideoGame/FateExtra Fate/Extra CCC]]'' is also this. [[spoiler: At the end of the event intro, right after BB has taunted you for thinking this would be easy, the "BB-chan's Revenge" banner ''shatters'' into the proper ''Epic of Remnant'' chapter title screen, revealing that this "event" is in fact [=EoR=] Chapter Extra: The Deep Sea Cyber-Nirvana - SE.RA.PH. The event is a full-bore, no-nonsense story chapter, with the attendant slew of new graphics, maps, missions, Servants, game mechanics (including two new playable Classes), and a story mode as big as any other chapter's, doled out over the course of a week.]]
** Salem is an enormous wham episode, despite being quiet, tense Lovecraftian horror for most of it. [[spoiler:In the opening, the singularity surrounding Salem and Danvers is manifesting in ''present day'' and is seven kilometers across - in some ways, this is an even bigger [[BrokenMasquerade masquerade breaker]] than the missing 18 months caused by the Goetia incident. Moreover, by the end of it, so much effort is required to contain the final threat of the singularity that Chaldea itself may have to be disbanded to keep things quiet. Oh, and let's not forget the wham of the confirmation that the Outer Gods that Lovecraft described absolutely do exist in the Nasuverse and they are ''not friendly''. When one attempts to manifest using a certain medium in the singularity, it easily rises to be a Beast-level threat.]]
** The prologue to the second storyline of the game is not kind to the player (you) and your team. [[spoiler:The Mage's Association forcibly turns off the Chaldea summoning system, banishes all the protagonist's previously summoned servants, sends a whole new staff and a new head to Chaldea (Da Vinci and even ''you'' were fired) and brings in a PMC force to deal with any protests, basically shutting off any means to deal with any danger humanity will face for the time being. Worse, ''Kotomine Kirei himself'' joined the fray means the church is involved in the mess too. Then they get attacked by Anastasia and her army, as both Kotomine and Konyanskaya are collaborating with them to take control of Chaldea, with the onslaught reducing the number of Chaldea's remaining employees from 40 to 8, Da Vinci gets brutally impaled by Kotomine with his bare hands, and the protagonists are forced to abandon the observatory, and the antagonists begin the process of erasing history. Even worse, seven Masters from Chaldea are revealed to be going along with this, with the aims of bringing back the Age of Gods.]] The saving grace is that [[spoiler:Holmes secretly evacuated the servants and hid their Saint Graphs for insurance, da Vinci managed to get a backup body and she brought a backup Saint Graph database along with them so they still have access to their Servants]], but for the time being things will be ''very'' bleak.
** Lostbelt 3 provides a number of shakeups. [[spoiler:Koyanskaya is revealed to be Tamamo Vitch, Sion Eltnam joins the team, the first True Ancestor who isn't Arceuid is introduced, and Spartacus is [[KilledOffForReal permanently erased from Chaldea's roster]] due to his HeroicSacrifice severely crippling his Saint Graph, proving that not even Servants are immune to FinalDeath.]]
* WhamLine:
** [[spoiler:Fou explains what he is to Mash in the void:]]
--> ''I feed on humanity's battles, growth, envy, and regret and use it for my characteristic as a beast to "become stronger than the enemy". The beast of calamity, [[spoiler: Cath Palug]]. In a different time and place, I might have been called [[spoiler:the great killer of primates - [[{{VisualNovel/Tsukihime}} Primate Murder]]]].''
** [[spoiler:Caster Limbo reveals the existence of TheManBehindTheMan who was simply using the parallel version of Shimosa as an experiment for future plans.]]
--> ''Having it appear in Chaldea was a failure; however, it left behind some good sample data. Anyway, finally, finally I succeeded in discovering the lost history. [[spoiler:This Shimosa]] is distorted compared to the original. A world that is terminated without being destroyed, a pruning event. It is not that. Then a parallel world? Ish. It's close but not the same. So this is different. This is something else. [[spoiler:This Shimosa]] is human history but not human history. It is a different world that a different earth's god observes with their different eyes. [[spoiler:An otherworld that is falsely similar to a singularity! Fuhahahahahah, no no no no. Using that temporary name was too funny and even more so using Satan!! I intended it to be a joke, but it went quite well. It was one of that Necromancer's favorite things. Even so, Doman, you were supposed to be above practical jokes right. So I was rude, my dear ally ----- sama'']]
** The ending of Götterdämmerung, confirming the existence of a certain character in the ''Grand Order'' timeline to greet the player upon [[spoiler:arrival at the Wandering Sea]]:
--> [[spoiler:''Welcome to the Primordial Mage Workshop, the Wandering Sea of Baldanders! I am Sion. [[VideoGame/MeltyBlood Sion Eltnam Sokaris]]. A spiritron hacker who managed to predict and call the end of this world, escaped to the Wandering Sea, and have since waited for your arrival. The final remaining member of the Atlas Institute.'']]
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: This is touched upon in London as Mash expresses discomfort at fighting homunculi as she empathizes with them since she [[spoiler:too is technically an artificial human.]]
* WhatTheHellHero: Mash really chews out [[spoiler: her "dad", Lancelot]] for [[spoiler: going along with the Lion King's plans despite knowing exactly what it entailed.]]
* WhenDimensionsCollide: A Lostbelt stitches on an AlternateHistory to Earth to rewrite reality in favor of the altered timeline.
* WholePlotReference: The Shimosa chapter is pretty much "''F/GO'' does ''Makai Tensho''", straight down to using a whole bunch of the same characters (just swapping out Jubei for Musashi). This is extra hilarious as ''Makai Tensho'' was a major inspiration for ''Fate'' in the first place. [[spoiler:It also may well be this ''in-universe'', as the whole thing was constructed by Doman and it seems like he was largely just having a lark with his experiment concerning using Lostbelts.]]
* WolverinePublicity: Likely the main reasons why Altria Pendragon (Saber) and her clones, Gilgamesh, and EMIYA are promoted heavily in marketing and feature prominently in the opening, as they're the most known characters of the ''Fate'' franchise.
* WoodenShipsAndIronMen: As the setting of the Third Order, Okeanos, is the Age of Discovery, this is inevitable. Battles of cannon fires at point blank range, sea monsters and bandits blocking the way, treacherous weather disturbing navigations, and [[BadassCrew several crews composed of Heroic Spirits]], the main draw of this Order is just how action-packed it is.
* WorldOfMammals: [[spoiler:The first Lostbelt the ''Shadow Border'' arrives in is a history inhabited solely by humanoid wolves. There are no humans besides Servants summoned there, the stationed Crypter, and Chaldea.]]
* WorldTree: [[spoiler:Each Lostbelt has its own gigantic Phantasy Tree which must be sustained until it can fully replace proper human history. It's noted by Holmes that these aren't a natural phenomenon and are probably not from this world.]]
* WretchedHive: Shinjuku, a decaying modern city overflowing with mages, mercenaries, and monsters. It literally has a magic barrier meant to keep most Servants who aren't evil-aligned from entering. It would not be out of place in the ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' franchise.
* [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale Writers Have No Sense of Scale]]: In the America chapter, while time does pass while moving between each stage on the map the writers still clearly underestimated just ''how much'' time it would take just due to America's sheer size. As an example, the journey from from Denver, Colorado to Deming, New Mexico is treated as lasting overnight with the player sleeping through the journey. In reality, it takes about 200 hours to walk that distance. Possibly justified with the superhuman Servants, who could conceivably have carried the player and moved quicker than he/she could on these extremely long trips.
* {{Wutai}}: While this game's setting is not a ConstructedWorld unlike most examples of this trope are in, the Shimosa chapter was notably the only Eastern Asia-themed main story chapter so far[[note]]While Fuyuki and Shinjuku are also set in Japan, it's modern day or close enough to the point where Japanese elements aren't very prominent.[[/note]] for three years, with the introduction of SIN a year later. Both very much play up the Asian aspect, with only token Western Servants and the Chaldea crew as the only foreign aspects of the story.
* YearInsideHourOutside:
** The island from the summer 2016 event is revealed to have this property in Part II, meaning that in the short timespan that the heroes left the island, the boars on the island developed intelligence, formed a civilization using the leftover infrastructure as a base, and then for the civilization to fall apart before the heroes returned.
** [[spoiler:One hundred minutes spent in SE.RA.PH is equivalent to ten minutes in the outside world. The Seraphix staff dejectedly understand this means it would take over fifty years for them to get rescued by Chaldea.]]
* YearOutsideHourInside: [[spoiler:Imaginary Number Space has this effect on the ''Shadow Border'' as the protagonists have only experienced a week inside, but by the time they leave, it's already been three months to the Crypters. Da Vinci notes it's entirely dependent on the tides and how it's acting up at the moment, so the exact ratio for Imaginary Number Space time to time on Earth is in flux.]]
* YouDontLookLikeYou: Bašmu who appear in Babylonia look like blue and yellow PaletteSwap of the regular Dragon enemies, even though in ''Apocrypha'' the ones summoned by Semiramis look like green serpentine creatures. Especially notable in that when Semiramis was added into the game, she summons a Bašmu that looks like it does in ''Apocrypha''.
[[/folder]]
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