History FinalFantasyX / TropesDToH

* HappyEndingOverride: The Final Fantasy X -Will- audio drama is this for the entire series. [[spoiler: Yuna and Tidus are no longer a couple, Tidus is a beckoned who will disappear for good if he ever realizes what he actually is, and the "Eternal" Calm ends with [[WhamShot the return of Sin]].]]

* HappyEndingOverride: The Final Fantasy X -Will- audio drama is this for the entire series. [[spoiler: Yuna and Tidus are no longer a couple, Tidus is a beckoned who will disappear for good if he ever realizes what he actually is, and the Eternal Calm ends with the return of Sin.]]

* HappyEndingOverride: The Final Fantasy X -Will- audio drama is this for the entire series. [[spoiler: Yuna and Tidus broke up and the Eternal Calm ends with the return of Sin.]]

** The same goes with [[spoiler:Auron, although for him it's also a bit of a relief]]. In his case, [[spoiler:it's an inversion: the sacrifice was ''not'' dying, but instead choosing to force himself to tread on to get revenge for his friends, watch after their kids, and bring peace to Spira. It was only after all of this that he allowed himself his final repose]].

** There are four Maesters; one of them. [[spoiler:Seymour, is one of the game's primary antagonists]], and you have to kill him four times before he ''stays'' dead. Also, all four Maesters [[spoiler:are dead]] by the end of the game.

** There are four Maesters; one of them, [[spoiler:Seymour, is one of the game's primary antagonists, and you have to kill him four times before he ''stays'' dead. Also, all four Maesters are dead by the end of the game]].

** [=NPCs=] continue to live their lives and experience change when you're not around. For example, [=NPCs=] who were suffering from the effects of Sin's toxin in Besaid and Kilika will recover and regain their memories. One of the members of the Kilika blitz team will feel like he let his team down for being affected by the toxin and not playing his best because of it. A sailor on the ship that Sin attacked near Kilika develops severe PTSD as a result. The old woman who was furious at you in Besaid for entering the Cloister of Trials and tried to keep you from speaking to Yuna will still think of you as a heretic and refuse to believe that you're a guardian now. There's even a particularly heart wrenching insight into one NPC you can gain by backtracking: there's an old man NPC in Kilika who commented on how he was sure that his grandchildren reached the Farplane thanks to Yuna's sending. Go back and speak to him again, and it becomes clear he has dementia: he's apparently forgotten about the death of his grandchildren because he speaks of them as if they were still alive, says that he's going to to the temple to pray for their future, then, shortly after starting to go to the temple, he stops, says that he forgot what he was going to do, and returns to where he was before.
** If you do some backtracking after Kimahri and company are warned about summoners disappearing, you'll hear rumors that the Al Bhed are behind the disappearances, and that Isaaru vanished shortly after making it to Besaid, making it less of a surprise when you see him at the Al Bhed home.

* DuelBoss: When the party reaches Mt. Gagazet, [[spoiler:Biran and Yenke]] will appear and refuse to allow them to set foot on the mountain unless [[spoiler:Kimahri]] can defeat them to prove his strength. If you haven't been training him properly, this can make for a tough fight.

* DegradedBoss: After defeating a rock creature boss called Defender X, a weaker version called Defender with less HP can be found in the very next available area as a generic mook
** Lord Ochu appears first as a mini-boss only to be a common aeon fodder mook in later areas

* DarkIsNotEvil: Anima is a dark-powered embodiment of pain and suffering, and she looks frankly terrifying. Ultimately though she only wants to help her party in their quest.

** Scan your party members, and you're treated to character biographies.

** [=NPCs=] continue to live their lives and experience change when you're not around. For example, [=NPCs=] who were suffering from the effects of Sin's toxin in Besaid and Kilika will recover and regain their memories. (One of the members of the Kilika blitz team will feel like he let his team down for being affected by the toxin and not playing his best because of it.) A sailor on the ship that Sin attacked near Kilika develops severe PTSD as a result. The old woman who was furious at you in Besaid for entering the Cloister of Trials and tried to keep you from speaking to Yuna will still think of you as a heretic and refuse to believe that you're a guardian now. There's even a particularly heart wrenching insight into one NPC you can gain by backtracking: there's an old man NPC in Kilika who commented on how he was sure that his grandchildren reached the Farplane thanks to Yuna's sending. Go back and speak to him again, and it becomes clear he has dementia: he's apparently forgotten about the death of his grandchildren because he speaks of them as if they were still alive, says that he's going to to the temple to pray for their future, then, shortly after starting to go to the temple, he stops, says that he forgot what he was going to do, and returns to where he was before.

** Hell, the whole Bevelle Cloister of Trials in general. It's nearly impossible to do without looking it up in a guide.

* DarkReprise: Two prominent examples. The first, "Otherworld", the opening, is remixed for [[spoiler:Braska's Final Aeon]] so that the song can loop. This second version has a distinctive opening and has a lot of echo in the song as if in a cave, compared to the original which is [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic pure metal]]. And the lyrics have a [[{{Foreshadowing}} much different meaning when listening at this point in the game]]. It's not as "dark" as some of the entries on the list, but it qualifies. The second, "Suteki Da Ne", the game's LoveTheme, is first played during the moonlight tryst between [[spoiler:Tidus and Yuna]] at the spring in Macalania Woods with a suitably lush and romantic arrangement [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments suiting the scene's mood]]. The second time, it's played in a much more melancholy sounding orchestral arrangement over the closing credits, and the lyrics, [[BilingualBonus if you understand Japanese]], take on a new, more wistful connotation, both shifts which fit the mood of [[BittersweetEnding the ending]].

* DarkReprise: Two prominent examples. The first, "Otherworld", the opening, is remixed for [[spoiler:Braska's Final Aeon]] so that the song can loop. This second version has a distinctive opening and has a lot of echo in the song as if in a cave, compared to the original which is [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic pure metal]]. And the lyrics have a [[{{Foreshadowing}} much different meaning when listening at this point in the game]]. It's not as "dark" as some of the entries on the list, but it qualifies. The second, "Suteki Da Ne", the game's LoveTheme, is first played during the moonlight tryst between [[spoiler: Tidus and Yuna]] at the spring in Macalania Woods with a suitably lush and romantic arrangement [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments suiting the scene's mood]]. The second time, it's played in a much more melancholy sounding orchestral arrangement over the closing credits, and the lyrics, [[BilingualBonus if you understand Japanese]], take on a new, more wistful connotation, both shifts which fit the mood of [[BittersweetEnding the ending]].
* DataCrystal: Spheres.

* [[DidNotGetTheGirl Did Not Get The Guy]]: In the ending, [[spoiler:played straight with Tidus disappearing and going to the Farplane]]. [[TheStinger A brief scene at the end of the credits]] shows him rising out of the water, which [[spoiler: [[MultipleEndings can]] [[GoldenEnding lead]] to an aversion in the sequel as this foreshadowing scene is followed up on and he's brought back if you fulfill certain conditions]].
* DidTheyOrDidntThey: [[spoiler: Tidus and Yuna]]. After a very touching scene involving the two is played, they talk about their future together. It's certain that they view themselves as a couple, and spend a while being intimate, but whether or not they actually did [[spoiler: given that she is essentially the Spira equivalent of a nun]] is left to the player to decide.

** Also, [[spoiler: the residents of Spira worship the almighty deity called "Yevon". It turns out Yevon is not a deity but a very powerful human known as Yu Yevon, and the final boss of the game]].

* DistressedDamsel: Subverted. It looks like Yuna is this because she's being forced to marry Seymour. However, [[spoiler: she's doing it willingly, hoping for a chance to send him]].

* DoomedHometown: Zanarkand. [[spoiler: Actually a weird zigzagging of this trope, since it turns out the Zanarkand you see in the opening scenes [[AllJustADream doesn't actually exist as a real place]], and while at the end of the game it does cease to exist even as a dream, this is brought about by the ''heroes'' rather than the villains and is presented as an act of mercy]].

* DramaticIrony: Used to great effect in the final act of the game, as the player knows that [[spoiler: defeating Yu Yevon will result in Tidus' death]], but with the exception of [[spoiler: [[HeroicSacrifice Tidus himself]], and [[SecretSecretKeeper perhaps Auron]],]] the characters do not. They only find out when [[spoiler: Tidus tells them right before the final battle]], and only fully comprehend what he means when [[spoiler: [[TheHeroDies he begins to fade away]] after Yu Yevon is defeated and Sin is destroyed]]. That said, Yuna ''does'' suspect something before then.

[[spoiler: '''Tidus''']]: I'm not!\\

* DreamWorld: It turns out that [[spoiler: Tidus' hometown is merely a recreation of the real Zanarkand, which was destroyed in a cataclysmic war 1,000 years before the events of the game, dreamed into existence by trapped spirits called Fayths]].
* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: Mika]] loses any will to live after the party informs him they [[spoiler: defeated Yunalesca and made it impossible to summon the Final Aeon]], as he just can't think of another way to destroy Sin, even less do so permanently. He hardly gets any sympathy though, with [[spoiler: Wakka especially]] viewing him as a DirtyCoward.

-->'''Jecht:''' You've really grown.\\

'''Jecht:''' Well, [[spoiler: I am Sin]], you know.\\
'''Tidus''': That's not funny.

* DuelBoss: When the party reaches Mt. Gagazet, [[spoiler: Biran and Yenke]] will appear and refuse to allow them to set foot on the mountain unless [[spoiler: Kimahri]] can defeat them to prove his strength. If you haven't been training him properly, this can make for a tough fight.

* EldritchAbomination: Sin is a giant aquatic beast that cannot be harmed by anything except OTHER {{Eldritch Abomination}}s. Even then, its core ([[spoiler:Yu Yevon]]) will just [[spoiler: possess the Aeon that killed Sin and grow into a new Sin within years]]. Some of the regular Aeons qualify as well. Anima might be terrifying when you see her face, but it's nothing compared to her full body. The fact that her power is based on pain itself doesn't help.
* EldritchLocation: [[spoiler: The interior of Sin itself]]. Given its nature, you might expect it to be a WombLevel, but it actually consists of a vast, featureless plain of water with a ruined, otherworldly city in its midst.

** "Brotherhood", the sword Wakka gives Tidus near the beginning, is upgraded part way through the game, when Wakka [[spoiler: talks to his brother (the original owner of the sword) on the Farplane]].

* ExactWords: In a sphere, Yuna explains that after Braska defeated Sin, Kimahri was told to take Yuna away from Bevelle, as the "wish of a man facing death". From watching Jecht spheres, Braska does tell Auron that he wants Yuna to live away from Bevelle, but [[spoiler: the phrase may also refer to Auron, who told Kimahri about Yuna just before he died]].

*** With that in mind, [[spoiler: the whole "Keeping The Land In The Dark Ages" thing and ruthless hunting down of dissidents combined with the Asian setting is not too far removed from the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.]]

* FedToTheBeast: The inevitable fate of [[spoiler: the Summoner's favorite Guardian. After a long, perilous journey protecting their lover/best friend/contractor, they become the Final Aeon, kill their lover/best friend/contractor, destroy the suit of armor (Sin) surrounding the now feral Summoner Yu Yevon and become feed for him to create a new Sin]]. Not the best of life choices; as such, it's kept secret from the world.
* FictionalSport: Blitzball.

* FinalBattle: And how. This IS a Final Fantasy, after all; [[spoiler: each of your beloved companion Aeons force you to fight them, sacrificing themselves in order to stop Yu Yevon from using their souls as basis for the new Sin. After all of them are defeated, Yu Yevon himself, now a feral, parasitic shell of his former glory, enters the fray. Your party utterly destroys him, removing the possibility of Sin's return, and brings the Eternal Calm]].

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: [[invoked]] After Tidus learns [[spoiler:that Yuna's pilgrimage will end with her sacrifice]], he reacts accordingly when he recalls certain events from earlier in their travels. Especially [[spoiler:remembering how Yuna acted when leaving Besaid]].
** In one of the most light-hearted scenes of the game, Rikku pokes fun at Auron, saying he always charges into things without a plan. [[spoiler: As it turns out, that's exactly how he got himself killed]].

** It wouldn't be a ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' game without a BonusBoss that is more powerful than the final boss, but the International/PAL versions of FFX take this to ludicrous levels. For example, the two final bosses in FFX, Sin and [[spoiler: Jecht]] have around 150,000HP. The WEAKEST of the Dark Aeon superbosses has almost EIGHT times that much HP, and the two strongest (Nemesis and Penance) have over 8 million HP each. To put it in perspective, for your characters to be strong enough to even stand a chance against them, they'll be capable of taking out the final boss in just one or two physical attacks.

* GhostCity: [[spoiler: Zanarkand]]. A war was fought and lost, and the thousand years since have left the city destroyed, waterlogged and, as an added bonus, filled with the memories of previous Summoners, which appear as literal ghosts.

* GodIsEvil: Played with. Adherents of Yevon believe that Sin is a divine punishment for their wickedness and [[AndManGrewProud hubris in attempting to build a technologically advanced civilization]], and as the game goes along it is suggested that Yevon will never see fit to end the suffering of the people of Spira, culminating in [[spoiler: Lady Yunalesca]] suggesting that humanity will never atone sufficiently to vanquish Sin permanently. However, it turns out that [[spoiler: Yevon is neither a god, nor actively malicious, but rather the spirit of a long-dead summoner who created Sin in a [[WellIntentionedExtremist desperate attempt to save his homeland]] and then lost both [[WasOnceAMan his humanity]] and [[GoneHorriblyWrong control of the creature he had brought forth]], and is no longer even conscious of his actions. The religion devoted to him, however, is [[CorruptChurch pretty clearly evil]]]].

* GoneHorriblyWrong: [[spoiler: In the backstory, the creation of Sin. Yu Yevon summoned it to protect the dream version of Zanarkand he had created, but Sin interpreted its mandate to destroy all advanced technology without any qualification and not only targeted the machina weapons of Bevelle but also immediately attacked and destroyed the real Zanarkand. The strain of summoning both Sin and Dream Zanarkand also destroyed Yu Yevon's mind, turning him into a parasitic being that can do nothing but continue to summon both]].

* GrewASpine: Yuna, after the revelation that [[spoiler: Maester Mika is Unsent]]. She decides she's had enough blindly following orders, and carves her own path. Since meeting Tidus, she'd been testing the boundaries little by little, but this event makes her [[spoiler: outright denounce the Yevon religion in favor of defeating Sin her own way]].

* GuideDangIt: The only hint as to the location of [[spoiler:Anima's Fayth]] is NPC chatter in Al Bhed and a hint from a few Guado in Guadosalam. And you still have to figure out how to get to Baaj Temple even once you've worked out that there's a Fayth there.

* HeroicSafeMode: Tidus's mental response to the understanding that [[spoiler: his father truly IS Sin, the being killing thousands of people for no real reason]] is to chase [[spoiler: him]] into the ocean, swimming without hesitation, single-mindedly determined to catch and kill [[spoiler:him]].

--> '''Wakka: '''Disappear on us, will ya? Rotten son of a shoopuf!\\
'''Wakka, again:''' She'll tell us when she's ready, so hold... your... chocobos until then, ya?!
* HolyGround: Spira is full of these places. In addition to the temples of Yevon, there's Mt. Gagazet, which is guarded fiercely by the Ronso, who hold it sacred, and the ruins of Zanarkand. All of them are difficult to reach, [[spoiler: perhaps because they hold secrets about the [[CorruptChurch true nature]] of Yevon]].
* HospitalityForHeroes: It's not universal (looking at you, Rin), but many folks throughout the game will give assistance (usually in the form of healing items) to Yuna and her guardians. This becomes much less frequent after [[spoiler: you kill Maester Seymour for the first time and your party is branded as traitors]].

* HulkSpeak: The Ronsos.

** Wakka becomes incredibly condescending and hostile towards Rikku when he discovers that she is Al Bhed, despite taking an almost brotherly attitude towards her earlier. Yuna's Al Bhed heritage is later revealed, but he immediately tries to justify treating her the same with 'Yuna is still Yuna'. He realizes the hypocrisy almost immediately after.

** A plant creature appears first as a mini-boss only to be a common aeon fodder mook in later areas

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Final Fantasy X'' is credited as the first truly cinematic [[EasternRPG JRPG]] experience, and was the first for many things in ''Final Fantasy'' as a whole, including voice acting. As a result, the game lacks quite a few quality-of-life improvements that would become commonplace in later such [[EasternRPG JRPG]]s, it has unskippable cutscenes before a boss battle, and [[LipLock awkward English voice acting that's set to Japanese mouth flaps]].[[note]]The latter is partly due to TechnologyMarchesOn and partly bad voice direction, as the dubbing team could not just change the lip flap as they can now with editing. They had to make the dialogue fit on the same amount of space as the Japanese dialogue and since the languages are very different this resulted in sounding awkward. Yuna's voice actor in particular tried to make her voice acting fit the lip flap exactly. James Arnold Taylor and John DiMaggio later proved themselves to be competent actors, so the FFX dub was not because of a lack of talent[[/note]] This is also the last game where you can rename a character however you want -- which unfortunately means no one in this game ''or'' the sequel can mention the ''main character'' by name out loud, even though the sequel is all about finding out what happened to him.

* DegradedBoss: After defeating a rock creature boss called Defender X, a weaker version called Defender with less HP can be found in the very next available area as a mook

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Final Fantasy X'' is credited as the first truly cinematic [[EasternRPG JRPG]] experience, and was the first for many things in ''Final Fantasy'' as a whole, including voice acting. As a result, there's quite a few quality-of-life improvements in later such [[EasternRPG JRPG]]s that are nowhere to be found here, like unskippable cutscenes before a boss battle, or awkward English voice acting that's set to Japanese mouth flaps. This is also the last game where you can rename a character however you want -- which unfortunately means no one in this game ''or'' the sequel can mention the ''main character'' by name out loud, even though the sequel is all about finding out what happened to him.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Final Fantasy X'' is credited as the first truly cinematic [[EasternRPG JRPG]] experience, and was the first for many things in ''Final Fantasy'' as a whole, including voice acting. As a result, there's quite a few quality-of-life improvements in later such JRPGs that are nowhere to be found here, like unskippable cutscenes before a boss battle, or awkward English voice acting that's set to Japanese mouth flaps. This is also the last game where you can rename a character however you want -- which unfortunately means no one in this game ''or'' the sequel can mention the ''main character'' by name out loud, even though the sequel is all about finding out what happened to him.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''Final Fantasy X'' is credited as the first truly cinematic JRPG experience, and was the first for many things in ''Final Fantasy'' as a whole, including voice acting. As a result, there's quite a few quality-of-life improvements in later such JRPGs that are nowhere to be found here, like unskippable cutscenes before a boss battle, or awkward English voice acting that's set to Japanese mouth flaps. This is also the last game where you can rename a character however you want -- which unfortunately means no one in this game ''or'' the sequel can mention the ''main character'' by name out loud, even though the sequel is all about finding out what happened to him.