| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yugioh_vol2.png]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:Cover of the second Japanese volume.]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | -> ''"In a Shadow Game, your heart's weakness is what ultimately causes you to lose!"'' |
| 5 | -->-- '''Dark Yugi''' |
| 6 | |
| 7 | The ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' manga by Creator/KazukiTakahashi tells the story of Yugi Mutou, who is pulled into the world of high-stakes gaming after completing the Millennium Puzzle and awakening the Pharaoh within, gaining a darker personality known as Dark Yugi. The title of this manga means "Game King" in Japanese and thus it contains a number of games, all of which happen to have at least one thing that's being [[WagerSlave wagered]]. These games are usually played as Shadow Games, games in which the loser receives a dark punishment called a Penalty Game, which may or may not result in death. There is also a strong theme of friendship and unity between the main character and his circle of friends, and also the meeting of hearts through the medium of games. |
| 8 | |
| 9 | The manga was originally serialized in ''[[Magazine/ShonenJump Weekly Shonen Jump]]'' from 1996 to 2004, and compiled into 38 volumes. The first seven volumes have the most variety in games; from then on, the most common game that appeared was ''Duel Monsters/Magic & Wizards'', the [[TabletopGame/YuGiOh Yu-Gi-Oh! card game]], in response to favorable reader reception. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | The early episodic stories found in much of the early volumes are collectively referred to as the High School chapters. In Creator/{{Viz Media}}'s edition of the manga, the stories up to Monster World are simply called ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'', Duelist Kingdom to Battle City are called ''Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist'', and the final story arc is called ''Yu-Gi-Oh! Millennium World''. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | The manga was the basis for the [[Anime/YuGiOhFirstAnimeSeries Toei anime]] and NAS [[Anime/YuGiOh Duel Monsters anime]]. ''Anime/YuGiOhTheDarkSideOfDimensions'' takes place six months after the manga (or a year after the anime in the West), and is the first ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' anime adaptation with direct involvement from Kazuki Takahashi. There's also a two-part continuation of the manga called ''TRANSCEND GAME'' written by Takahashi, which serves as a prequel to the movie. |
| 14 | |
| 15 | See also the manga adaptations of the spin-off sequels to the ''Duel Monsters'' anime: ''Manga/YuGiOhGX'', ''Manga/YuGiOh5Ds'', ''Manga/YuGiOhZEXAL'' and ''Manga/YuGiOhArcV''. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | ---- |
| 18 | !!TROPE START! |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 21 | |
| 22 | [[folder:A-M]] |
| 23 | * AbandonedWarehouse: The manga has a warehouse in the Hirutani stories and Mokuba's Capmon game. |
| 24 | * AbsurdlyHighStakesGame: A lot of the games end in death, insanity, or getting trapped in inanimate objects for eternity. |
| 25 | * AbusiveParents: |
| 26 | ** Ryuji Otogi's father raised Ryuji to take his revenge for him. |
| 27 | ** Seto's stepfather, Gozaburo. One flashback panel of the manga shows him with a dog collar as a little kid while being forced into tons of strict educational regimens for the gifted under his father's strict eye, which was a regular day during his childhood. Gozaburo really did create his worst enemy. |
| 28 | ** Jonouchi's father is an alcoholic and apparently owes a lot of money in gambling debts. |
| 29 | ** Marik's father treats Rishid like a slave while abusing him, and forces Marik to undergo the tomb keeper ritual. |
| 30 | * AdaptationDyeJob: In-universe example; Mana's Black Magician Girl spirit had brown skin and an Eye of Anubis. In the card game designed by Pegasus, her skin is light and she wore a pentagram. |
| 31 | * AdoptiveNameChange: Seto and Mokuba gain the surname "Kaiba" after being adopted by Gozaburo Kaiba. Their original surname is never revealed. |
| 32 | * AnAdventurerIsYou: The character classes that the gang chooses for their party characters during the Monster World RPG have very archetypical gameplay roles, naturally from being based on ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. |
| 33 | ** [[TheBeastmaster Beast Tamer Yugi]] is able to use his magic to change an enemy creature's alignment and turn them into one of his TrueCompanions - as long as he rolls a high enough check. |
| 34 | ** Jonouchi's Warrior character, like his player, was in charge of the brawn and physical damage output for the party. He also had the highest HP out of all the party members. |
| 35 | ** [[ActionGirl Magician Anzu]] wields powerful offensive magic, especially on critical hits, but also has some healing magic. |
| 36 | ** Magic Gunman Hiroto deals ranged damage with magic bullets. |
| 37 | ** White Mage Bakura, level 13, can heal the entire party of their wounds and cast powerful barriers to block enemy attacks. [[CastFromHitPoints Depending on how powerful he wants the spells to be, it's sometimes at the cost of his own health]]. |
| 38 | * AnAesop: Games are meant to be fun. If you're using games as tools to obtain status or push someone into servitude, you'll never be happy. |
| 39 | * AllThereInTheManual: ''The Gospel of Truth'', a 2002 databook containing profiles on every character (even minor ones), a list of every game played, every Duel Monsters card and the variations of its rules, and official names for every Penalty Game. |
| 40 | * AlternateContinuity: Certain characters are dead in the manga and alive in the anime, and backstories and personalities are different between adaptations as well. |
| 41 | ** The 2016 movie ''Anime/YuGiOhTheDarkSideOfDimensions'' isn't necessarily non-canon to the DM anime, but it is first and foremost set in the continuity of the manga. |
| 42 | * AmuletOfConcentratedAwesome: Yugi's Millennium Puzzle has the soul of a 3,000 year old Pharaoh in it who takes over Yugi's body to play games. Most of the Millennium Items fit this trope. |
| 43 | * AmusementParkOfDoom: Death-T was created just to kill Yugi and friends. |
| 44 | * AncientEgypt: A large chunk of the characters and artifacts come from this time period. [[spoiler:It's also the backdrop of the final Shadow Game.]] |
| 45 | * AndYouThoughtItWasAGame: Inverted. [[spoiler:What the Pharaoh and company think is the world of his memories, or possibly [[TimeTravel time travel]], in the ''Millennium World'' story arc turns out to be a TabletopRPG game set up by Bakura.]] |
| 46 | * AngelFaceDemonFace: |
| 47 | ** The differences in appearance between Yugi, Bakura, and Marik and when their Dark sides take over is pretty pronounced. |
| 48 | ** When Yugi, during the tabletop roleplaying game with Bakura, uses his ability to turn enemy creatures to the good side, they become extremely cute. |
| 49 | * AnimeHair: Yugi is the most famous example and provides the trope image. Almost all the supporting characters tend to be trying to outdo each other in outlandish hairstyles. |
| 50 | * ArcVillain: In order: Shadi, Kaiba, Dark Bakura, Pegasus, Mr. Clown, Marik, Dark Marik, and Dark Bakura as the final villain [[spoiler:in a BigBadDuumvirate with Akhenaden and with [[GreaterScopeVillain Zorc Necrophades behind them]]]]. |
| 51 | * ArcWords: "Something you can show, but can't see" gets repeated quite a lot, at least early on. Originally it referred to the Millennium Puzzle in the first chapter, but it's used to refer to many different things since then, by slightly altering the way the line is interpreted. |
| 52 | ** In the first chapter, Jonouchi uses it to refer to friendship (it can't be seen but can be shown by actions), becoming Yugi's friend from that point forward. |
| 53 | ** Dark Yugi uses it to describe a duelist's deck (the deck itself can be seen but you don't know which card you will draw from it next). |
| 54 | ** When Yugi starts losing against Mai during the Duelist Kingdom finals, she throws this question back to him, with Mai telling Jonouchi that his cheesy answer of friendship isn't the answer here. Mai uses this riddle to encourage Yugi, with the answer she interpreted being "weakness" (you can show weakness but you sometimes can't see it yourself). |
| 55 | * ArtEvolution: Many of the early character designs got significantly changed as the manga went on and Takahashi's overall aesthetic changed. Jonouchi's hairstyle changes from a Leonardo [=DiCaprio=]-esque style to the signature Jonouchi style, Dark Yugi appears increasingly less deranged and psychotic-looking, Kaiba goes from being kind of short to one of the tallest characters in the series, Mokuba goes from being chubby and mean-looking to a more Moe appearance, etc. Any piece of art by Takahashi released in the mid-2010s, including the pieces included in the [[UpdatedRerelease bunkoban]] and illustrations for the card game, show a marked improvement in Takahashi's painting ability, making the characters look more realistic. |
| 56 | * ArtifactName: The "Duel Disks" were originally throwing disks that projected holograms onto the playing field. Since Battle City and in every spinoff since, Duel Disks are armbands with card slot attachments. |
| 57 | * ArtifactOfDoom: Millennium Items tend to give their owners awesome PsychicPowers of some sort. However, more often than not, they will also harbor or lead to the development of their owners' evil slide, or at least contribute to their FaceHeelTurn. |
| 58 | * AscendedExtra: Seto Kaiba was originally supposed to be a one-off villain, but got promoted to main antagonist of his own arc when Kazuki Takahashi decided to have Duel Monsters make a reappearance. This role was ultimately what made him become one of the manga's most well-known characters, and ultimately what makes him get another promotion as a main character during the Duel Monsters arcs. The anime adaptations extends his role even further, making him even more popular by extending his significance in filler arcs and rewriting a chunk of the last arc to include him. |
| 59 | * AssholeVictim: |
| 60 | ** Every bully who Dark Yugi fights is this. Special points go to Prisoner 777 who, after taking Anzu hostage, Dark Yugi tricks into setting himself on fire. |
| 61 | ** Bandit Keith cheats, steals, beats up his underlings and eventually pulls a knife on Pegasus. He meets his end by having his hand turned into a gun and is forced to shoot himself. |
| 62 | ** [[spoiler:Marik's father]] is skinned alive after years of abusing his children. |
| 63 | * AstonishinglyAppropriateAppearance: Goes from mild (Dinosaur Ryuzaki and Insector Haga have dinosaur and insect themed Duel Monsters decks, respectively) to bizarre ("Ghost" Kotsuzuka, who looks like a zombie, has an all zombie deck). |
| 64 | * AttemptedRape: What Kokurano clearly planned to do to Anzu after drugging her before Dark Yugi shows up and challenges him to a Shadow Game. |
| 65 | * AuthorAppeal: Did you know Kazuki Takahashi likes games? Because it says so in every volume of the manga. |
| 66 | * AwesomeButImpractical: The manga version of Dark Necrofear has an absurd inherent summoning requirement from hand that required Bakura to let three monsters be destroyed in Attack Mode within 5 turns.[[note]]In exchange, she was better than the anime version since her possession effect that activated upon being sent to the Graveyard was her own effect rather than that of Dark Sanctuary and did not require a Tribute to maintain. Also, [[TimeDelayedDeath Ouija Board]] did not require extra Spirit Message Cards, only that she was in the Graveyard. Moreover, Dark Necrofear wasn't actually a Nomi monster, as it can be Special Summoned by any other ways, when Bakura discarded it with Multiple Destruction's effect and revived it with Puppet Master.[[/note]] In the otherwise likely event that Yugi drew a third monster, he would have lost without even getting to play Necrofear since he didn't have protection cards like Waboku. The anime and OCG / TCG version is more accessible, simply requiring 3 Fiends to be banished from the Graveyard, but [[AdaptationExplanationExtrication this also makes viewers wonder why Bakura didn't put his monsters in Defense Mode instead.]] |
| 67 | * AxeCrazy: |
| 68 | ** The Chopman from the Death-T saga. |
| 69 | ** Dark Bakura and Dark Marik. And although well-intentioned, Dark Yugi seemed a little too happy inflicting Penalty Games in the first few chapters. |
| 70 | * BadassAdorable: Yugi. Especially during the Dungeon Dice Monsters saga, where he manages to turn a game around without the Puzzle's help. |
| 71 | * BadassLongcoat: |
| 72 | ** Dark Bakura's black trenchcoat during the Millennium World arc. |
| 73 | ** Seto Kaiba wears long, flowing trenchcoats after he wakes up from his coma after Death-T. |
| 74 | * BadassLongRobe: Thief King Bakura wears a red robe with white trim. |
| 75 | * BadassNormal: |
| 76 | ** Yugi eventually develops into this. Even without the milennium puzzle he pulls off some amazing feats like beating Ryuji at his own game, breaking through Jounouchi's mind control and [[spoiler:defeating Atem, the titular King of Games, in their final duel.]]. |
| 77 | ** Jonouchi as well, who's the most normal of the main duelists but manages to beat multiple skilled opponents and makes it into the top four in two tournaments. |
| 78 | * BelievingTheirOwnLies: The phony prophet, Kokurano, in chapter 5. |
| 79 | * BewareTheNiceOnes: Ryou Bakura is a very sweet, shy, polite guy with a SuperpoweredEvilSide that he's only vaguely aware exists. |
| 80 | ** The same goes for Yugi. He is nice and weak, until his psychotic side wakes up. |
| 81 | * BigBad: Dark Bakura serves as this for the whole series, working out an evil plan to [[spoiler:resurrect Zorc Necrophades]]. While other characters may serve as an ArcVillain, Dark Bakura's scheme goes on throughout the series. |
| 82 | * BilingualBonus: The Egyptian text throughout the series is accurate. [[spoiler:Atem's name is written as "Atemu"]] and the carvings on Rishid's face and Malik's back are genuine hieroglyphs. |
| 83 | * BitchInSheepsClothing: |
| 84 | ** Kaiba in his first appearance. He pretends to befriend Yugi, but has Yugi's grandfather's Blue Eyes White Dragon switched with a copy. When Yugi figures this out and calls him out on the switch, Kaiba loses the facade and whacks Yugi in the face with a briefcase. |
| 85 | ** Kaiba does it a second time during Death-T. He pretends that he has forgiven Yugi and simply wants to let him and Jonouchi have a good time; once Yugi discovers that his grandfather is in the battle arena, Kaiba drops the pretense of being nice. |
| 86 | ** Nezumi claims that a gang of bullies attacked him and that he needed help in dealing with them. In fact Nezumi was ordered by Hirutani to lure them to the abandoned warehouse so that Jonouchi could be forced to re-join Hirutani's gang. |
| 87 | ** Dark Bakura pretends to have reformed post-Monster World, but it was a lie to lure Yugi and friends into his final game. Yugi is ''devastated'' when he learns the truth. |
| 88 | ** Marik pretends to be nice and friendly as Namu, but is scheming against Yugi while having Rishid pose as Marik to avoid suspicion. |
| 89 | ** Ms. Chono. To the teachers and staff, she's an incredibly nice and beautiful teacher who does incredibly well in getting her students to behave, and the only flaw she has is her poor track record for arranged dates and marriages always being called off. To the students, however, she is the "wicked witch of expel" who expels students for even the slightest twitch and has taken delight in starting dates with men just to tug at their heart strings and then shatter them to pieces. |
| 90 | * BlackCloak: Marik Ishtar and the other Ghouls wear hooded robes and cloaks. |
| 91 | * BlackMagicianGirl: TropeNamer due to the "Dark Magician Girl" card, which is actually named "Black Magician Girl" in the Japanese version. |
| 92 | * BlandNameProduct: Most of the fads, toys, and games in the early parts of the manga. Magic & Wizards (Duel Monsters) is clearly a BlandNameProduct of TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering, as is Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons (Dungeon Dice Monsters) to ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'. Yugi also alluded to another RPG called "Mazes & Monsters" during Monster World. |
| 93 | ** Sory and Panazonic are obvious takes on Sony and Panasonic. |
| 94 | * BlindIdiotTranslation: [=ViZ's=] translation of Yami Yugi's Death-T duel with Kaiba translates Saggi the Dark Clown's "Dark Light" as "Dark ''Glide''". |
| 95 | * BookEnds: |
| 96 | ** For Dark Bakura's involvement in the overall story. [[spoiler:Both the first and last games the Pharaoh plays against him are [=RPGs=] with the souls of his friends at risk]]. |
| 97 | ** [[spoiler:Yugi's winning card in the last duel of the series is Golden Sarcophagus; it's [[LampshadeHanging pointed out]] that the card looks just like the box the Millennium Puzzle was in, [[InvokedTrope and that the box that brought Yugi and the pharaoh together would be the very thing to bring them apart.]]]] |
| 98 | * {{Bowdlerise}}: |
| 99 | ** Starting around volume nine or so, Viz started censoring bits of the manga, like Jonouchi giving the finger to Bandit Keith. They also went back to the early volumes to censor bits of dialogue like Ms. Chono's reference to condoms. |
| 100 | ** The Viz translation also initially used Marik's ''dub'' reason for wanting to defeat Yugi rather than his reason in the original before fixing it in subsequent volumes, turning it into a bizarre and unintentional case of CharacterizationMarchesOn. |
| 101 | ** The Japanese bunkoban re-release made a few adjustments to the art in some places. For example, Zorc's infamous dragon-phallus was edited to look like it's wrapped around his body, while Bobasa stores the Millennium Items in [[https://ms.yugipedia.com//7/74/Yu-Gi-Oh%21_Duel_282_-_bunkoban_-_JP_-_color.png slots on his outfit]] rather than [[https://ms.yugipedia.com//5/56/Yu-Gi-Oh%21_Duel_282_-_tankobon_-_JP.jpg his bare chest.]] Keith calling Pegasus "okama yarō" (essentially "faggot bastard") was changed to "Pegasus[[UsefulNotes/JapaneseHonorifics -chan]]". |
| 102 | * {{Brainwashed}}: The Millennium Rod can control multiple people at once. Marik uses it to brainwash Anzu, Jounouchi, the normal Bakura, and his whole organization of thieves. |
| 103 | * BrainwashedAndCrazy: Marik does this to his enemies, especially Jonouchi and Anzu. |
| 104 | * BreakoutCharacter: The Black Magician Girl is far more popular than any other monster from the original series, save for the iconic Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Black Magician. She's even playable in some of the video games. |
| 105 | * BreakoutVillain: Kaiba and the card game were meant to be seen only twice, and went on to have major story arcs revolve around them. |
| 106 | * BreakTheHaughty: Kaiba gets this a lot. |
| 107 | ** Anyone who is foolish enough to face Dark Yugi gets this. |
| 108 | * BrickJoke: A truly long term one. In one of the first chapters of the manga, Jonouchi gives Yugi a (rather pixilated) porn tape. In the first chapter of the final arc, Jonouchi asks Yugi if he can have the tape back, but Yugi says his mom found and confiscated it. |
| 109 | * BrokenBird: Mai Kujaku grew up alone and only had herself and games for company, deciding to rely solely on herself until she ran into Yugi. |
| 110 | * BroodingBoyGentleGirl: Priest Seto and Kisara in Ancient Egypt, Dark Yugi and Anzu in the main timeline. |
| 111 | * ButNowIMustGo: [[spoiler:Atem goes to the afterlife after losing the Ceremonial Battle.]] |
| 112 | * CallBack: |
| 113 | ** The finals of Duelist Kingdom make several references to Shadi, and to Death-T. |
| 114 | ** Chapter 9 of the manga, where Kaiba and Duel Monsters first appear, is titled "The Cards with Teeth". Six volumes later, the chapter where Kaiba recovers from his Mind Crush-induced coma and duels Yugi once more is titled "The Cards Bare Their Teeth". |
| 115 | ** During Dark Bakura's battle against Dark Yugi on Kaiba's blimp, Yugi comments that he "never expected to play a game of cards with Dark Bakura." Dark Bakura replies with, "Heh, I had fun playing tabletop role-playing games with you," referencing their battle in the Monster World arc. [[spoiler:During the Millennium World arc, Dark Bakura reveals that the Monster World game was a warm-up for the Shadow RPG]]. |
| 116 | ** [[spoiler:The Millennium World arc not only has several references to the Monster World RPG, but also has several references to Shadi's Shadow Games with Yugi at the very beginning of the series. ]] |
| 117 | * CallForward: The first chapter of Millennium World is set before the first chapter of the series. Sugoroku Muto is a skilled gamer that says that if he ever loses a game, he'll trade his suit and fedora for a pair of overalls and a bandanna, and will open a game store. Apparently he lost at some point. |
| 118 | * CallingYourAttacks: When Marik uses Lava Golem, summoning it to Jonouchi's side of the field, he tells Jonouchi that its attack is called "Golem Volcano". Jonouchi insists that since it's on his side of the field, he'll name the attacks, and hits Marik with a "JONOUCHI FIRE" instead. |
| 119 | * CalvinBall: Duel Monsters is this in Duelist Kingdom, since rules that would be nonexistent happen frequently, such as Kazejin blowing away an attack yet it still affecting the other monsters, Normal Monsters having effects, and Yugi activating a spell from his hand during an opponent's turn. In general, the field system that Pegasus set up for Duelist Kingdom seems to draw heavily on role-playing game logic. Battle City was better about this but still had odd moments here and there (it's especially bad in Jonouchi's duel with Kajiki Ryota, whose entire strategy ''still'' revolves around nebulous field advantages). |
| 120 | ** Quick, how many sacrifices does the Giant God Soldier of Obelisk need to be summoned? It all depends on how many pages Kazuki Takahashi feels like drawing for this particular chapter. |
| 121 | * CameBackStrong: [[spoiler:During the Memory World Shadow RPG, Priest Mahado is killed by Thief King Bakura and comes back later as a Monster Spirit, an even stronger sorcerer.]] |
| 122 | * CaptainErsatz: An assassin hired by Kaiba during the Death-T arc looks remarkably like Duke Togo of ''{{Manga/Golgo13}}''. |
| 123 | ** Zombire is a fairly transparent takeoff on Comicbook/{{Spawn}}, and the favorite superhero of a minor character. |
| 124 | * CardGames: Duel Monsters and Dragon Cards. Duel Monsters in particular plays a large role in all arcs concerning Kaiba, and eventually became the main focus of the anime adaptation. |
| 125 | * CarnivalOfKillers: Seto Kaiba creates an almost literal carnival of killers with "Death T", the "Theme Park of Death" he made specifically for Yugi. |
| 126 | * CastFromHitPoints: |
| 127 | ** During the Monster World RPG, WhiteMage Bakura converted his hit points to magic points in order to cast a barrier spell to protect his friends from Zorc's attack. |
| 128 | ** And in the Memory World RPG, the [[HitPoints Ba Gauge]] served as both hit points and magic points for the character cards, since the real life versions of these characters used their life energy (Ba) to summon and power-up their Monster Spirits (Ka). |
| 129 | ** Within Duel Monsters a few spells, traps, and monster abilities require the player to sacrifice some of his/her life points. |
| 130 | * ChainedByFashion: |
| 131 | ** Exodia's pieces wear chains to limit his power. Getting all five results in an automatic win. |
| 132 | ** After "Duelist Kingdom," Yugi starts wearing the Millennium Puzzle on a chain around his neck. |
| 133 | * ChainsawGood: The Chopman from Death-T uses a chainsaw as a weapon. |
| 134 | * CharacterCatchphrase: Dark Yugi's "Game Start!" would count as one, though it's said a few times by Dark Bakura as well. |
| 135 | * CharacterDevelopment: The Yugis get the most development, but everyone gets a decent amount at the least. |
| 136 | * ChastityCouple: Yugi and Anzu, though the former does have a crush on the latter, and the latter has a crush on the former's SuperPoweredEvilSide. |
| 137 | * CheatersNeverProsper: The whole nature of Shadow Games. Cheat during one of Dark Yugi's Shadow Games, and you'll be subject to horrible MindRape. Also, very early on, Kaiba tries to sneak Grandpa's stolen Blue-Eyes White Dragon that was in his pocket into his hand during the duel, only for it to disobey him and cost him the game. |
| 138 | * ChekhovsGun: |
| 139 | ** In one of the early chapters, Yugi's Puzzle psychically located Jonouchi's whereabouts when he was captured by his old gang. It seemed like a one-off power never to be mentioned again, until he uses it to track down Jonouchi during Duelist Kingdom. |
| 140 | ** Dark Bakura's avatar in the Monster World RPG is Dark Master Zorc, and he mentions how they're one and the same. [[spoiler:The main antagonist of the final arc turns out to be an ancient demon that Dark Bakura is trying to revive, also named Zorc, who fused with Thief King Bakura to make Dark Bakura]]. |
| 141 | ** When a character specifically singles out or is shown acquiring a new card before a duel, it's bound to be important in the upcoming match. In the Duelist Kingdom Arc Jonouchi is seen trading for Sword and Shield, which he later uses against Ghost Kotsuzuka to pull off a win. At the same time he got Kunai Whipchain and Salamandra, which he used to defeat two troublesome monsters in the team duel with the Meikyu Brothers, as well as Baby Dragon, which combined with the Time Wizard given to him by Yugi ended up finishing off Mai in his first duel with her. |
| 142 | ** Kuriboh made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Yugi's duel with Haga to diffuse one of Haga's traps, before Yugi brought it back in in his third duel with Kaiba to hold off Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. |
| 143 | ** An earlier chapter of Battle City has Bakura joking around with Jonouchi and trying to scare him by showing off the Occult deck he built, commenting on how many of the cards Jonouchi's won are scary and how he'd like to have them in his deck. [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes Jonouchi does ''not'' want to duel him ever]]. Later on, Dark Bakura uses this very same deck for the rest of his duels in the manga and [[NightmareFuel the monsters are indeed as horrific as Ryo described them]]... and nearly kills Jonouchi with it in the Shadow RPG. |
| 144 | * CherryTapping: |
| 145 | ** In Jonouchi's duel with Esper Roba, Jonouchi wins by having ''Baby Dragon'' attack Roba directly. It's not the weakest monster by a longshot, but it's still pretty embarrassing. |
| 146 | ** Yugi has a thing for using weak monsters to stymie his opponent. He once managed to stall Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon with Kuriboh, labeled as the weakest monster in the game. Whenever he played Capsule Monsters, the game was rigged so that Yugi's monsters were all weaker than his opponent's, yet he destroyed them anyway. |
| 147 | * TheChessmaster: Kaiba in the Death-T arc even has a chessboard as he plans out his moves to take Yugi down. |
| 148 | * ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Tomoya Hanasaki, Yugi's friend from the early chapters who had an obsession with the American superhero, Zombire. Despite having a whole character development chapter for himself and being close enough to the main group that he offered to look after Yugi's grandpa in the hospital during the Death-T saga, he's never mentioned or seen again after that. |
| 149 | * {{Chuunibyou}}: In one of the earlier chapters, one VillainOfTheWeek was a classmate who claimed he could see the future (and arranged for his predictions to come true). When exposed by Yugi, it turned out his predictions were all prewritten, such as "There will be an earthquake". In Japan. |
| 150 | * ClothesMakeTheSuperman: Averted in the Zombire story, which ends with an {{Aesop}} about what being a hero really means. |
| 151 | --> '''Dark Yugi: '''The true hero's face was hidden behind the mask...the face that got bruised defending your friend. |
| 152 | * ColdBloodedTorture: Dark Marik prefers to make his enemies suffer as much possible before their deaths and rub it in while he's doing so. His Penalty Games also reflect this, trapping Mai in an hourglass full of scarabs that slowly devour her skin. |
| 153 | * CoolBigSis: Mai Kujaku becomes this after some CharacterDevelopment, especially towards Shizuka. |
| 154 | * CombatSadomasochist: Dark Marik is characterized by this trope. Not only do the conditions of his Shadow Games satisfy his sadism, but the conditions also satisfy his lust for pain. While the good guys have their stamina destroyed due to the pain of feeling their monsters' limbs being chopped off, Marik wallows in the pleasure. |
| 155 | * ContinuityNod: When Jonouchi uses Kaiba's Duel Disk in Duelist Kingdom, he compares it to using a yo-yo, stating that he's ''good'' at using yo-yos, referencing the yo-yo battle in chapters 48 and 49. |
| 156 | * ContrivedCoincidence: In the Death-T arc, Anzu is fired from her waitress job and gets hired at [=KaibaCorp=]'s laser tag game, and is put on the one playthrough that has actual danger in it so she can help Yugi win. Making it even sillier is that she's Kaiba's classmate and he didn't recognize her, nor did his employees. |
| 157 | * CoolAndUnusualPunishment: The price for losing or cheating one of the Pharaoh's Shadow Games is to receive a "Penalty Game" that would deliver LaserGuidedKarma. This ranges from seeing nothing but hallucinations of money, to having your vision censored like a mosaic. |
| 158 | * CoolOldGuy: Through background stories, we learn that Sugoroku Mutou, Yugi's grandpa, was a master gambler and game expert back in the day, not unlike his grandson. We see shades of this in the prologue to the Millennium World arc, where in a hat and tuxedo, he conquers the deadly Shadow Games in the tombs which housed the Millennium Puzzle. Some time after that, he was challenged to a Shadow Game by Ryuji Otogi's father in which he bet years of his life and ''won''. |
| 159 | * CosmicChessGame: [[spoiler:What Dark Yugi and Dark Bakura are revealed to be playing in the Millennium World arc. It isn't actually Ancient Egypt we were seeing; it was a recreation done as a tabletop game.]] |
| 160 | * CovertPervert: Yugi. In the first manga arc, right after he's made friends with Jonouchi, they're seen talking about some porn videos they've been exchanging. Talking about 'squinting at the pixels' really leaves little else it can be. He's also shown imagining someone's panties after hearing what Anzu has to say about boys peeking up girls' skirts while playing basketball. Even in the Millennium World Arc, Yugi and Jonouchi are still exchanging videos... |
| 161 | * CrapsaccharineWorld: Easier to spot in the early chapters, where it seemed like every corner of Domino City was populated by bullies (or worse) out to get our heroes, and adult authorities are either [[AdultsAreUseless useless]] or nonexistent. When the series starts to get more arc-based, most of the wrongdoings are concentrated into {{Big Bad}}s and their henchmen, but the adult authorities are still useless. |
| 162 | * CriticalFailure: In the Monster World RPG arc, Ryou Bakura plays a tabletop game with Yugi and his friends, wherein they use percentile dice for every roll. When Dark Bakura takes over, rolling a 99 carries the penalty of having your soul trapped in your figurine. |
| 163 | * {{Crossover}}: Dark Yugi apparently lives in Manga/BoboboboBobobo's afro. And in Issue 2 of the American ''Shonen Jump'', Kazuki Takahashi drew ComicBook/{{Hellboy}} (he's a big fan), and Mike Mignola drew Hellboy in a Dark Yugi shirt in response. |
| 164 | * CurbStompBattle: A ton of them throughout the series. |
| 165 | ** Various games Dark Yugi played with the earlier villains involved his opponents having a pretty much sealed fate from the beginning. |
| 166 | ** The first Kaiba vs. Jonouchi duel ended with Kaiba only taking 600 damage. |
| 167 | ** The Kaiba/Pegasus battle became one as soon as Toon World was played. |
| 168 | ** Otogi to Yugi during their game of Dungeon Dice Monsters/DDD, until Dark Bakura intervenes and gives Otogi a HannibalLecture. |
| 169 | ** The first battle between Dark Yugi/Kaiba VS two of Marik's Ghouls. Kaiba summoned Lord of Dragons AND special-summoned all three Blue Eyes and a spare dragon in just the first move, then summoned Obelisk on Round Two and sacrificed his remaining monsters to activate Obelisk's TotalPartyKill special ability to defeat both opposing players. |
| 170 | ** The Winged God Dragon of Ra versus basically anything. Except for Mai's failed attempt at using it. |
| 171 | ** {{Final Boss}}es Dark Master Zorc [[spoiler: and his precursor Zorc Necrophades]] in both the Monster World RPG and [[spoiler:the Shadow RPG of the Millennium World arc]] pretty much beat down the parties with little effort and would have totally did a TotalPartyKill in both instances had it not been for unexpected surprise inferences. |
| 172 | * DarkerAndEdgier: When compared to its two anime adaptations, which tone certain things down, including the atmosphere. Most of Dark Yugi's Penalty Games in Toei's anime are turned into illusions, while they are turned into Mind Crushes in the Duel Monsters anime. More characters are also KilledOffForReal in the manga. [[spoiler:Particularly, Pegasus and Bandit Keith]]. |
| 173 | * TheDarkSide: Many characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! fall into this, usually by trying to use an Artifact of Doom. Dark Yugi was even part of it at first before softening up. [[spoiler:Pegasus explicitly says that there is an evil influence inside all of the Millennium Items, and the Millennium World arc reveals that the evil influence is Zorc Necrophades.]] |
| 174 | * DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:It's heavily implied that Shadi has been dead long before the start of the first chapter. Eventually confirmed in the sequel, ''[[Anime/YuGiOhTheDarkSideOfDimensions The Dark Side of Dimensions]]''.]] |
| 175 | * DeathByChildbirth: |
| 176 | ** Mokuba explains that his mother died shortly after his birth. |
| 177 | ** Marik's mother dies giving birth to him. |
| 178 | * DeathByIrony: Most of Dark Yugi's Penalty Games, though not ''all'' of the victims necessarily die and they get less extreme as the series goes on. |
| 179 | ** One particularly disturbing example that doesn't involve death is his Penalty Game towards a crooked director. Earlier in the chapter, the director mentions using a mosaic to filter out the beaten Yugi's face. When he suffers his Penalty Game, he is forever blinded with a mosaic over his eyes. |
| 180 | ** Another good example would be during the Duelist Kingdom arc, where the Player Killer of Darkness threatens to kill Yugi with a noose if he lost and throughout the whole game, tries to seek safety within the darkness. He ends up being hanged by a noose at the end of the game, surrounded by nothing but darkness. This would be Dark Yugi's final Penalty Game before he decides to stop using them. |
| 181 | * DeathTrap: Kaiba's sadistic "amusement park," "Death-T," is basically a long series of increasingly difficult death traps designed to defeat and kill Yugi. |
| 182 | * DefeatedAndTrophified: |
| 183 | ** Pegasus seals the souls of those he defeats in cards as well as other objects. |
| 184 | ** Yami Bakura also seals the souls of Ryou's friends into role-playing figurines. |
| 185 | * DefeatMeansFriendship: |
| 186 | ** Mokuba Kaiba, though it takes two defeats before he warms up to the heroes. |
| 187 | ** Ryuji Otogi in the ''Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons'' arc. Defeating him at his own game and saving his father from the fire despite his father being a major {{Jerkass}} to him and Yugi) only cemented the friendship. |
| 188 | ** [[spoiler:Marik Ishtar]] later on after his evil side is defeated. |
| 189 | * DefrostingIceQueen: |
| 190 | ** Mai Kujaku during the Duelist Kingdom saga. |
| 191 | ** Kaiba is a male example. He becomes more amiable and less openly insulting towards the others, except for Jonouchi. |
| 192 | * DiscOneFinalBoss: |
| 193 | ** Seto Kaiba and Death-T are a conclusion to the episodic stories, leading the way for longer, detailed story arcs to play out. |
| 194 | ** During the Millennium World arc, [[spoiler: Thief King Bakura serves as one for Zorc Necrophades in Dark Bakura's Shadow RPG.]] |
| 195 | * DisplacedOrigin: The manga started out as the tale of a teenager whose dark side brings judgment on abusive people, with lots of horrific [[FateWorseThanDeath fates worse than death]] via SeriousBusiness games. Halfway into the series, particularly after the Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters arcs, everything from that point onwards becomes the tale of people beating each other in a SeriousBusiness game, but with said horrific fates worse than death being less frequent due to being issued by the villains instead. |
| 196 | * DisproportionateRetribution: |
| 197 | ** Dark Yugi does this all the time in the early chapters. He punched through a kid's soul for being a thieving coward, made a shop owner poison himself for running crooked, blew up a gang leader for injuring Yugi, and breaking his class' School festival stand... there are a ''lot'' of examples. |
| 198 | ** Ms. Chono does this all the time. She finds reasons to expel students for minor crimes, such as giving a present to a fellow student. |
| 199 | ** In Kaiba's first appearance, he stole the Blue-Eyes white Dragon and hit Yugi over the head with his briefcase when he noticed the switch, then tried to cheat in the following card game. As punishment, Dark Yugi gave him the Experience of Death Penalty Game, where he saw himself trapped in a card and was torn to shreds by monsters over and over. Kaiba then spends the next six months putting together a ridiculously elaborate series of death traps to kill Yugi, then kidnaps Yugi's grandpa and forces ''him'' through the same experience as bait. When Yugi's friends arrive to help him, including Honda's baby nephew, Kaiba tries to have them killed too. |
| 200 | ** Mokuba challenged Yugi to a game of Capsule Monsters at gunpoint to get revenge for Kaiba's first loss, and then later played a very unorthodox rigged version of Russian Roulette with Yugi and Jonouchi for ''his'' first loss. |
| 201 | * DrivenToSuicide: |
| 202 | ** Gozaburo Kaiba jumps out a window after Seto takes over Kaiba Corporation to teach him that losing means death. |
| 203 | ** While we never see the outcome, [[spoiler:Marik uses his Millennium Rod's magic to scan Pandora's mind for any past suicidal thoughts/feelings and brings them onto the surface tenfold after Pandora lost to Yugi. Marik is sure that his former minion will definitely commit suicide once he regains consciousness.]] |
| 204 | * DubInducedPlotHole: |
| 205 | ** The Viz translation had it that Dark Marik was around for 1,000 years, while in the original he was around for "a long time." This led to speculation as to whether Dark Marik was an Item-connected spirit or not. |
| 206 | ** Marik's motivations also line up with the English dub at first, wanting to take the Pharaoh's power rather than kill him. |
| 207 | ** The Viz translation often re-writes the descriptions on the cards to make them more in line with their real world equivalents. This leads to problems however, as a lot of the time the real life cards work differently than they did in the manga. For example, “Electro Whip” is translated as only being able to be used on a thunder-type monster, but Mai is still able to use it on her Harpie Lady. |
| 208 | * DubInducedPlotlineChange: The Viz translation features some changes, from having Mokuba call Seto "Kaiba" regularly to having Jonouchi doubt Yugi can win in the final battle when in the manga he said the opposite. Other lines, such as Kaiba "carrying the cross of collectible card game defeat" were added because the translators thought it'd be funny. |
| 209 | * DubNameChange: The manga-exclusive characters received English names for the ''Dungeon Dice Monsters'' video game. |
| 210 | ** The Viz translation uses the dub name Maximillion J. Pegasus instead of Pegasus J. Crawford. |
| 211 | ** The English manga uses the anime names for the Duel Monsters and Dungeon Dice Monsters games, presumably for familiarity or product placement for the real life games. In the Japanese manga, they were ''always'' referred to as "Magic & Wizards" (or M&W) and "Dragons, Dice & Dungeons" (or DDD). |
| 212 | * DuelsDecideEverything: Dark Yugi would always play a game to resolve a conflict. Eventually, Duel Monsters was the most common game. |
| 213 | * DysfunctionJunction: Almost every major character experienced a tragic and/or depressing event early in their life, especially the villains. |
| 214 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: |
| 215 | ** Shadi mentions "bringing the Millennium Puzzle home to his family" once during his first appearance. It is never brought up again. |
| 216 | ** Kaiba originally had no special bond with the Blue Eyes White Dragon. In his first appearance, the card refused to obey him because he stole it; in the second, he acquired his three copies through extortion and destroys the fourth. Not exactly the sort of behavior conducive to a ReincarnationRomance. |
| 217 | ** Dark Yugi mentions different levels of Shadow Games in one chapter. This is never mentioned again. |
| 218 | ** The Chinese Dragon Cards are dangerous artifacts that grant the wielder the same abilities as the Millennium Items, despite being completely unrelated to them. The Devil's Board Game in the Dungeon Dice arc (which takes place later in the manga) shares this characteristic, though at least it came from Egypt. |
| 219 | ** Early arcs used completely different rules for playing Duel Monsters, with the series often functioning with NewRulesAsThePlotDemands, playing more like an RPG than a trading card game. There are too many to list, but examples include Yugi being able to "beach" Ryota Kajiki's sea creatures, being able to target separate parts of monsters, attacks being able to "miss," etc. Battle City and the Memory World also have this, albeit to a lesser degree. |
| 220 | ** In the earlier volumes, we see Dark Yugi is a scary force to be reckoned with who challenges people to Shadow Games, which were regular games turned into high-stakes duels with otherworldly consequences. When adapted into the first anime, some of the most terrifying outcomes of those games are toned down or cut out completely because of how scary they can be. Post-Duelist Kingdom, these tend to be started by the *villains* instead. |
| 221 | * EarlyInstallmentCharacterDesignDifference: Jonouchi looked completely different on the first chapter compared with the rest of the series, having a different haircut. Dark Yugi also had ankhs on his sleeves which disappeared after the first few chapters (in addition to him becoming less deranged-looking and more heroic to match his development). |
| 222 | * EasilyForgiven: |
| 223 | ** Subverted with Jonouchi towards Kaiba and Shadi. He always brings up Death-T in regards to Kaiba and brings up Shadi's Trial of the Mind when Bobasa, supposedly Shadi's underling, shows up. |
| 224 | ** Played straight with Yugi though. After all the hell Kaiba has put him through, Kaiba ends up receiving the least fatal Penalty Game Dark Yugi has ever given anyone, one that actually makes him a better person. |
| 225 | ** Also, [[spoiler:everyone forgives Marik despite the fact he put them through a living hell, even when his SplitPersonality wasn't at surface]]. |
| 226 | * EnemyWithin: Dark Marik and Dark Bakura to their good halves, though Marik was initially bad to begin with. |
| 227 | ** [[spoiler: Priest Seto after High Priest of Darkness Akhenaden merges his soul with his in order influence Seto to overthrow Pharaoh Atem. Seto manages to overcome it with the help of Kisara's spirit, though.]] |
| 228 | * EnvironmentalSymbolism: Whenever Shadi [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind goes into someone's Soul Room]] with his Millennium Key, which reflects their personality and mental state. |
| 229 | * EvilCounterpart: The Millennium Ring/Dark Bakura serves this role to the Millennium Puzzle/Dark Yugi. Especially in his first appearance, where Dark Bakura appeared and inflicted a Penalty Game on a teacher who was picking on Ryou, much like how Dark Yugi appeared and inflicted Penalty Games on bullies who tried to do harm to Yugi and his friends. The difference? Dark Bakura uses his host to serve his own ends, twisting his wish of playing games with his friends by trapping their souls into game figurines for all eternity, and not giving impaling body parts to silence his host a second thought. Contrast to Dark Yugi, who only sincerely wants to protect Yugi and his friends and genuinely cares for Yugi's well-being. |
| 230 | * EvilVersusEvil: The duel between Dark Marik and Dark Bakura is this. |
| 231 | * ExactWords: When Ms Chono asks about the love-letter puzzle placed under Miho's desk, Yugi jumps up and says that he wrote the letter. Immediately, Jonouchi admits to having placed it under her desk, and Honda stands up to reveal that the feelings the letter conveys are his. Ms Chono says that they can't ''all'' be right and two of them must be lying. They aren't. Honda has a crush on Miho, but asked Yugi to write the love letter. And Jonouchi was the one to put the gift-wrapped puzzle under Miho's desk. |
| 232 | * ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: A lot of the cards, like "Red-Eyes Black Dragon," "Man-Eating Treasure Chest" and "Dark Magician," just to name a few. |
| 233 | * ExtraEyes: Pegasus' Thousand-Eyes Restrict. |
| 234 | * ExtremelyShortTimeSpan: Though the series itself lasts more than a year in-universe time, no individual arc takes longer than three days. In fact, there is the strange situation in which Battle City (the longest arc by number of chapters) is actually one day shorter than Duelist Kingdom (the longest arc in-universe). |
| 235 | * EyeScream: The manga seems to love this trope. [[spoiler:Pegasus and Akhenaden (as the owners of the Millennium Eye)]] have pretty gruesome moments. Then there's Jonouchi stabbing Zorc in the eye during the Monster World arc in the manga. |
| 236 | * FailureIsTheOnlyOption: Even though they're playing a game, of which the consequence of losing would normally only be a hit to the loser's ego (if that), the main characters are frequently involved in "shadow games" where the gist is losing = death, making Failure Is the Only Option (for the villains)/Boring Invincible Hero played straight |
| 237 | * FakeDangerGambit: One chapter featured a boy who loved superhero comics but wasn't strong himself. His father wanted to make him more self-confident so he hired some kids to pretend to attack someone while the boy was in a superhero costume. It worked, but then the hired kids turned it around and started really hurting the boy in order to get more money out of the father. |
| 238 | * FieldPowerEffect: Duel Monsters has various boosting and nerfing cards, as well as terrain that can strengthen or weaken monsters. |
| 239 | * FightingSeries: Using various games instead of punches, though Jonouchi and Honda could land a good smack down when the situation calls for them to let loose. |
| 240 | ** Chapter 25 has Yugi conquering a FightingGame at the arcade, which ends with him getting beaten up by a Bruce Lee fanatic, leading to Jonouchi playing a more physical fighting game with the perpetrator outside. |
| 241 | * FlawedPrototype: The original Duel Disk was a quantum leap above the technology seen before, but it was also a weird, clunky affair that could only play an oddball variant of the standard game and required the user to repeatedly throw what amounted to a giant metal frisbee-top that also periodically spat out their cards. This may have been intentional on Kaiba's part, as it was designed to counter Pegasus's mind-reading and he's shown using the device's unwieldy nature as an advantage, but this resulted in Pegasus refusing to play with it at all without acting through a proxy. The Battle City Disk, designed for actual mass-market use, was far more compact and convenient, and could actually play the standard game, with the only limitation being that it couldn't fit more than five cards onto the field (and even that weakness was absent from the anime). |
| 242 | * FlawExploitation: Dark Yugi's Shadow Games, particularly his early ones, had him play on his opponent's inherent flaws in order to win. Dark Yugi's final Shadow Game in Duelist Kingdom returned to form with this, with Dark Yugi playing on Player Killer's DirtyCoward tendencies of hiding in the shadows even in Duel Monsters and scaring him as he did to others. |
| 243 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: Takahashi managed to sprinkle a lot of hints towards later arcs during the course of the manga's run. |
| 244 | ** The final StoryArc, Pharaoh's Memory, is foreshadowed in ''volume two'', [[spoiler: with the Millennium Puzzle's Labyrinth game being revisited and Yugi finally being able to open "that door" - the secret of the Millennium Puzzle, which Shadi spoke of as he departed back in the earlier chapters, ultimately leading to the World of Memories in the final arc. Shadi lost the original "Labyrinth Treasure Hunt" game, but Dark Yugi told him ItHasOnlyJustBegun, and it turns out that via Bobasa, Shadi finally ''did'' conquer the puzzle's labyrinth during the final arc's "Mind's Labyrinth" game with Yugi and his friends as companions.]] |
| 245 | ** [[spoiler: The power of the Millennium Puzzle that Shadi discovers in the initial arc, [[PowerOfFriendship the power of unity]], also comes to full force with his participation in the Memory World.]] |
| 246 | ** As early as the Monster World arc and before the Battle City arc, Dark Bakura had alluded to himself as a thief, and Dark Yugi a king. [[spoiler: Flash forward to the final arc, with Thief King Bakura and Pharaoh Atem. His avatar's role in the RPG also foreshadowed his role throughout the entire manga, a BitchInSheepsClothing revealed to be a part of Zorc, with a good soul, White Mage Bakura or Ryo Bakura, trapped deeped inside of him and pulled back to the surface with the help of his friends]]. |
| 247 | ** Planning on self-destructing Dark Master Zorc, despite being tied to his soul within the Shadow Game, Dark Bakura monologued that as long as the Millennium Ring existed, even if his avatar died his soul would continue to live forever. The group seemingly kills him during Monster World, but he resurfaces in the middle of Duelist Kingdom. [[spoiler: He's killed ''again'' in ''another'' RPG at the end of the series, but the Millennium Ring's evil is still shown to live on in ''The Dark Side of Dimensions''.]] |
| 248 | ** At the beginning of the Battle City arc, Anzu had to drag Bakura out of bed because he stayed up all night working on his next big tabletop role-playing game. [[spoiler: The very next arc, it's revealed that Dark Bakura manipulated him into building a ''very'' elaborate RPG diorama as a backdrop for the final Shadow Game, even more meticulously crafted than the Monster World campaign.]] |
| 249 | * FormulaWithATwist: This series blended the best elements of sports manga and shounen manga by having all of its conflict based around games -- particularly "Duel Monsters", a card game which is simple to understand and allows for any number of unique and interesting things to happen. It started a trend of imitators that introduced their own contests using cards, board games, {{Mons}} and anything else which could carry similar appeal. |
| 250 | * FreudianExcuse: |
| 251 | ** [[spoiler: The reason Thief King Bakura tries to summon Zorc in the first place is because he saw the Kul Elna genocide firsthand and was its only survivor, trying to enact revenge on the previous Pharaoh, his son, and his royal court by killing everyone using the very Items they created.]] |
| 252 | ** Also Seto Kaiba, given his orphaned childhood and [[AbusiveParents history with Gozaburo]]. |
| 253 | * FriendlessBackground: Before Yugi finished the Millennium Puzzle, his only friend was Anzu. |
| 254 | * FriendshipMoment: Friendship is one of the key themes of the series, so moments where Yugi and his friends affirm their friendship show up a lot. |
| 255 | * FunHatingConfiscatingAdult: The school guidance counselor not only confiscates a toy from Yugi, but threatens him, Jonouchi and Honda with expulsion if they can't find where he hid it within a time limit. The other Yugi triggers the toy's beeping, which reveals that the vain teacher hid it under his wig, and reveals to everyone that the teacher is actually bald. |
| 256 | * FunSize: Yugi Mutou and Dark Yugi are both very short, as is Ghost Kotsuzuka . |
| 257 | * TheGameComeToLife: During the Monster World arc, Yugi and his friends ''become'' the pieces of the tabletop roleplaying game they were playing with Dark Bakura. Also, the Shadow Game versions of Duel Monsters feature the monsters coming to life via shadow magic. In general, the Shadow Games have the potential to make any game become real, no matter how mundane. |
| 258 | * GameMaster: Dark Bakura appears as this. Of the [[KillerGameMaster evil]] variety. Talk about taking the fun out of Tabletops. |
| 259 | ** The normal Bakura may be a better version of this, but we never actually get to see him DM-ing a game. He's definitely an avid DM, though, as Anzu and Jonouchi had to drag him out of bed during the first day of Battle City since he stayed up all night writing a scenario for a TRPG. |
| 260 | * GameWithinAGame: In-universe, [[spoiler:Yugi plays a Shadow Game of Duel Monsters with Dark Bakura while he was an NPC in Dark Bakura's Shadow RPG, making it a Shadow Game within a Shadow Game]]. |
| 261 | * GenreSavvy: During the Millennium World story arc, there's a moment where Yugi disappears while the other characters are still discussing what to do to look for clues to find the other Yugi and/or his true name. When Anzu asks where he went, Honda said Yugi went to the tavern to collect information, since a tavern is ''the'' place to collect information in role-playing games. |
| 262 | * GeoEffects: Duelist Kingdom's version of Duel Monsters has "Field Power Bonus", but dies out to only Field Spell Cards by the finals. |
| 263 | * GeorgeLucasAlteredVersion: In Japan only, digital re-releases of the early volumes redrew Yami Yugi's crazy-eyes to resemble those of the later, more heroic version. |
| 264 | * AGodAmI: Ms. Chono refers to herself as the goddess of the classroom at one point. |
| 265 | * GratuitousEnglish: In the Japanese manga, Pegasus J. Crawford spouts random English from time to time, being American. |
| 266 | ** In the Japanese edition of the manga, the Millennium Items are referred to as the "''Sennen'' Items" (''Sennen'' Puzzle, ''Sennen'' Ring, etc.), "Sennen" meaning "Millennium" in Japanese. Japanese Pegasus still calls his the "''Millennium'' Eye", not the Sennen Eye. |
| 267 | * GreaterScopeVillain: [[spoiler:Zorc Necrophades, the being that the Pharaoh originally destroyed 3000 thousand years ago. He is the dark intelligence in the Millennium Items, and Dark Bakura is trying to release him.]] |
| 268 | * {{Greed}}: |
| 269 | ** The hall monitor, Tetsu Ushio, exemplifies this. He tries to become Yugi's bodyguard to extort money from him. Dark Yugi challenges him to a Shadow Game in which the players use a knife to stab as many bills of money from their hands as they can, without stabbing their hands. When Ushio's greed got out of control, he couldn't control the force of his hand and tries to stab Yugi instead. For cheating, he receives a Penalty Game instead, in which he is made to think piles of leaves and garbage is money, making him look like a lunatic in public. |
| 270 | ** Because of his greed, Professor Kanekura failed Shadi's "Weighing of the Heart" Shadow Game using the Millennium Scale and his soul is eaten by the Egyptian demon, Ammit. |
| 271 | ** In chapter 8, Yugi plays a Shadow Game against the shoe store owner, who hired street punks to steal back sneakers he had sold to Jonouchi. The game involved getting the most coins out of the sneaker without getting stung by the pet scorpion in it. For each coin he got, the larger the sum of the money the store owner would receive if he won the game. The store owner's greed causes him to hastily grab all the coins inside the sneaker, and gets stung by his pet scorpion which he tried to stab seconds before. |
| 272 | * GreedMakesYouDumb: Early on, there are plenty of villains that Yugi comes across who are so greedy that Dark Yugi [[LaserGuidedKarma exploits their nature to punish them in Shadow Games]]. |
| 273 | ** In the very first chapter, Hall Monitor Ushio self-appoints himself as Yugi's bodyguard and then goes on to beat up both Honda and Jonouchi (Tristan and Joey in the English dub of the anime), and then charges Yugi with 200,000 yen as a fee. When Yugi defends the defenseless Honda and Jounouchi, Ushio beats up Yugi as well, then threatens him with a knife to bring the money or else. When Yugi manages to complete the Millennium Puzzle and unlock its power, he challenges Ushio to an AbsurdlyHighStakesGame: use Ushio's knife to stab at a stack of bills on top of their hands, with whatever the knife gets is what they keep (Yugi even bringing 400,000 yen instead of 200,000 like Ushio asked). Ushio's true nature comes out at the end of the game, where he finds himself unable to stab at the money without also getting his hand. In the end, he tries cheating by stabbing Yugi, which ends with him getting inflicted with a Penalty Game (fittingly called "Greed, the Illusion of Avarice"). He suddenly sees everything around him as money, when in reality he's grabbing onto dead leaves and trash, while Yugi walks away with all the money he initially brought as "payment" for his bodyguard services. |
| 274 | ** In Chapter 8, Yugi discovers that the shoe store owner hired some street punks to steal back a pair of popular high-tech sneakers he had just sold to Jonouchi. In retaliation, he challenges the owner to a Shadow Game that involved getting the most coins out of the sneaker without getting stung by the owner's pet scorpion inside it. For each coin that the store owner got, the larger the sum of the money Yugi would have to pay him if he won the game. The store owner, in his greed, hastily tries stabbing at the scorpion inside the shoe and then grab all the coins inside the sneaker. When he realizes that his hand is stuck, he then hears his pet scorpion still shuffling inside the shoe, as he missed. The store owner ends up getting stung by said scorpion, is taken to a hospital to be treated, and Yugi takes the shoes back to Jonouchi. |
| 275 | ** In Chapter 42, Jonouchi is looking to win a million yen by entering a GameShow, being selected as one of its participants. He however was selected by the TV producers since his background of a poor family and an abusive alcoholic father made them believe that he could get them high ratings. During the show, it becomes obvious that he has no intention of giving Jonouchi money if he wins, making sure to rig the final wheel spin to make him lose. Yugi, overhearing this, takes matters into his own hands by playing a game with the producer, and subsequently deals a penalty game. Said penalty game causes the producer to get in front of the live television cameras and demand money from the audience, ruining the production company and bankrupting them. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Yugi's efforts also unfortunately also cause problems for Jonouchi]], as the production company's bankruptcy [[YankTheDogsChain makes the check of one million yen that Jonouchi won legitimately worth nothing]] as an unintended side effect. |
| 276 | * HalfHumanHybrid: Yugi's character in the Monster World RPG is a half-elf. |
| 277 | * HammyVillainSeriousHero: Yami Yugi tends to be very stoic and serious as he battles the many AxCrazy and [[EvilIsHammy hammy]] villains like Pegasus, Yami Bakura, Yami Marik, Dartz, and Zorc Necrophades. |
| 278 | * HandStomp: Thief King Bakura drops the Pharaoh into a gorge by doing this, causing the Memory World to go dark. |
| 279 | * {{Homage}}: |
| 280 | ** The Duel Monsters card game was originally intended as a homage to ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', of which Takahashi is a fan. |
| 281 | ** Takahashi is also a fan of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', which Bakura's Tabletop {{Role Playing Game}}s and Otogi's Dungeon Dice Monsters are based on. |
| 282 | ** Zombire appears to be an homage of Comicbook/{{Spawn}}. |
| 283 | ** An important plot device of the entire series, the concept of "Penalty Games" (the Japanese term being "Batsu Game"), is inspired by the real life Penalty Games used in Japanese ''owarai'' stage comedy and variety shows, which involved losers of certain challenges and bets to experience rather unpleasant things. ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' takes this concept and PlaysItForHorror, as opposed to the real-life versions, where they're actually pretty funny because of the reactions but are humiliating to the receiving end of the punishment nonetheless. |
| 284 | * HealthcareMotivation: Jonouchi's reason for tagging along with Yugi on his trip to Duelist Kingdom: To save his sister's eyesight. |
| 285 | * HeelFaceTurn: Ryuji Otogi, Seto and Mokuba Kaiba, and Marik's good half. During the Monster World RPG, Pokii and Pao are monsters that were brainwashed using Yugi's abilities to turn good. |
| 286 | * HeelFaceRevolvingDoor: Dark Bakura, at least from Yugi’s perspective. It's never genuine and is all part of his plans, but he claims to have changed and occasionally helps Yugi out, like giving him a pep talk during the DDM arc and handing him the Millenium Eye. Yugi is initially distrustful, but does seem like he really wants to have faith that Dark Bakura is able to have a change of heart and genuinely wants to help his other self regain his memories. In the end, when Dark Bakura reveals who is ([[spoiler: A part of Zorc, not ''just'' the spirit of the Thief King]]) and why he helped Yugi gather the Millennium Items in the first place, Yugi visibly feels betrayed, exclaiming "I trusted you!". |
| 287 | * HeroicSacrifice: Ryou Bakura in the Monster World RPG arc. |
| 288 | * HilariousInFlashback: In a flashback to his younger days, Sugoroku declares that if he ever loses a game, he will give up adventuring and will wear overalls for the rest of his life. He must have lost at some point. |
| 289 | * HiveMind: [[spoiler:Dark Bakura's personality within the Millennium Ring is the Thief King's soul that has been consumed by the influence of Zorc, meaning he has become a part of Zorc. And by essentially infecting certain objects with portions of his soul like he did with the Millennium Puzzle and his role-playing dice, he further spreads Zorc's influence in a way. At the same time, when Akhenaden made the contract with Zorc to become the High Priest of Darkness, he also became a part of Zorc.]] |
| 290 | * HopeCrusher: Ms. Chono lives to crush the hearts of men, and delights in expelling students on technicalities. |
| 291 | * HotBlooded: Katsuya Jonouchi. |
| 292 | * HotTeacher: Ms. Chono, though the students note she wears too much makeup. |
| 293 | * IAmYourOpponent: Frequently said by Dark Yugi whenever he emerges when Yugi's friends are in danger. |
| 294 | * IdiotBall: |
| 295 | ** Despite all the weirdness Yugi & Co. have experienced (magic multiple personalities, shadow games, Kaiba Land, etc.) when Bakura tells them everyone who plays "Monster World" with him goes into a coma, they presume it's a coincidence and insist he play anyway. Even after the mean gym teacher suddenly goes into one! |
| 296 | ** During Death-T, in that room where the living Tetris blocks were falling down and Honda's jacket gets caught between the blocks, why couldn't he have just ''taken it off''? Granted, that seems to be the case a few chapters later when you see him alive and well, but still... |
| 297 | ** The potential hazards of the Shadow Game with Dark Marik against Dark Yugi could have been avoided if Dark Yugi had started his own Shadow Game instead, within rational conditions. It wouldn't have contradicted the character development he received after his battle with Pegasus, as losers of Shadow Games don't always have to be subject to a Penalty Game (which Dark Yugi decided to stop doing). In fact, he could have done this from the outside to keep Mai and Jonouchi from getting hurt by Marik's Shadow Games in the first place, like when he secretly started a Shadow Game with Ms. Chono during class. Though there wouldn't be much of a plot or conflict otherwise. |
| 298 | * IGotBigger: By the end of the story, Yugi is noticeable taller than he was at the beginning (though he's still shorter than his friends). |
| 299 | * IKnowYourTrueName: "Names are power." [[spoiler:The key to winning Dark Bakura's ultimate Shadow RPG was learning Dark Yugi's true name, Atem.]] |
| 300 | * INeverSaidItWasPoison: When "Bandit" Keith loses to Jonouchi he accuses him of using someone else's entry card to try and get him disqualified. Jonouchi admits that he is using Mai's... but there was no way Keith could have known that, unless he was sabotaging the competition and was the one who stole it. |
| 301 | * ImprovisedLockpick: When Jonouchi is chained to the AxCrazy Chopman as part of Kaiba's Death-T challenge, he uses a metal candle stick to pick the lock and free himself. |
| 302 | * InconsistentDub: The Viz translation of the manga is very inconsistent with naming. Mokuba calls his big brother "Kaiba" when he called him "nii-sama" in the original version, though there's still a few instances where he calls him Seto, Pegasus switches from being Pegasus J. Crawford and Maximillion J. Pegasus from one chapter to the next, they refer to Mai Kujaku as [[VideoGame/TheKingOfFighters Mai Shiranui]] a few times, and a mistranslation involving Dark Marik made it seem like he was around for a thousand years. Monsters are also all over the place. While most default to their TCG names, a few (like Battle Warrior/Grappler Ultimator) use their OCG names, and a few (like Summoned Skull and Celtic Guardian) use not only both but also odd combinations of the two, sometimes even on the same page! |
| 303 | * InformedAbility: Despite claiming to be an expert at all games, we only ever see Kaiba play Duel Monsters and chess. The only thing that tells us of his prowess at gaming is his high scores on every arcade machine at the Domino Arcade. It's mentioned in the manga that the arcade high scores are linked, so he has the highest score on all those games in all of Japan. |
| 304 | * InnocuouslyImportantEpisode: Most events of the series can be traced back to Yugi's first defeat of Kaiba, which is rather low-key in the grand scheme of things (all Yugi wanted was to get his grandfather's Blue-Eyes White Dragon back) and at first appears no more important than the other games against [[MonsterOfTheWeek Monsters of the Week]], yet leads to the events of Death-T, and from there to Duelist Kingdom and then Battle City, which in turn provides Yugi with important information that he needs for the Pharaoh's Memory. |
| 305 | * InSeriesNickname: The "spirits" all have different nicknames of referring to their "hosts". Dark Bakura uses ''yadonushi'' (meaning "landlord") while Dark Marik uses ''shujinkaku-sama'' (literally meaning "Mister Main Personality") and both cases indicate a sarcastic attitude. This makes Yami's ''aibou'' ("partner") nickname stands out, because he is the only one whose relationship with the host is genuine friendship with mutual respect. |
| 306 | * JekyllAndHyde: The relationship between Yugi and Dark Yugi started out like this in the manga, as did the relationship between Bakura and Dark Bakura. |
| 307 | ** GollumMadeMeDoIt: The Bakura/Dark Bakura relationship basically develops into this after Monster World. |
| 308 | * KickTheDog: Ms. Chono had a bad ''omiai'' where the guy turned her down before she could break his heart. She decides, after applying makeup to hide her reddened angry face, to find an excuse to expel some students. When she finds a gift in Miho's desk, that Miho didn't know, she proceeds to assemble the puzzle, and mocks the love letter. Yugi steps up, all ready for TakingTheHeat, but Jounouchi and Honda both claim their part in the present. Rather than be touched by this display of friendship, Ms. Chrono gloats that she'll find out who the sender was by completing the puzzle. While Yami Yugi takes care of the teacher, Miho understandably turns down Honda for what happened when he asks her out. |
| 309 | * KillerGameMaster: To extreme levels with Dark Bakura in his first appearance as Monster World's GM, also acting as one in the final arc. He's usually a particularly evil one, purposefully screwing things up for the adventurers so he could kill them/trap their souls into their game pieces. Not to mention his scenarios always seem incredibly biased towards the players. Amusingly enough, he seems completely unwilling to actually create UnwinnableByDesign scenarios, to the point that [[spoiler:he informs Dark Yugi of a way to beat him (though he doesn't expect it to work) in the final arc because otherwise it "wouldn't be fair"]]. |
| 310 | * KillerYoYo: Hirutani's gang wield these in their second appearance. |
| 311 | * LaserGuidedKarma: Yami Yugi does this to Chono. She's a ProudBeauty that hides her flaws with makeup, while being a bully to her students. As Ms. Chrono prepares to humiliate Honda and expel him, Yami Yugi proceeds to remove the makeup and reveal the teacher's ugly soul on the outside. He says no amount of foundation or lipstick will cover it up. |
| 312 | * KingOfGames: TropeNamer; it's the title the main protagonist has for his mastery of gaming. |
| 313 | * LetsFightLikeGentlemen: Played to a much creepier effect in the early volumes of the manga, where the games were often improvised based on the environment around them, and nearly always ended in death, insanity, or grievous bodily harm (compared to the later over-reliance on {{Tournament Arc}}s). |
| 314 | * LifeEnergy: Ba in Ancient Egyptian beliefs, which served as the life force used to summon and empower their Ka (Monster Spirits) in the Pharaoh's (Dark Yugi's) kingdom. In Dark Bakura's recreation of this kingdom (as a Tabletop roleplaying game, Memory World, the Shadow R.P.G.), Ba served as the characters' [[CastFromHitPoints Hit Points and Magic Points]] (and probably represented their level as well). When Priest Akhenaden turns into the High Priest of Darkness, he levels up and receives two more bars to his Ba Gauge. |
| 315 | * LightDarknessJuxtaposition: This dynamic is seen several times in Memory World: |
| 316 | ** Pharaoh Atem is a beacon of hope and commands the light-themed Winged Dragon of Ra. Thief King Bakura is a shady thief who plunders and murders; he uses Diabound as his monster which has several darkness based abilities such as turning invisible in shadows and walking through walls. |
| 317 | ** The parallel is once again seen with the Pharaoh and Zorc's guardian spirits: Hasan the Spirit of the Tablet who gives off an ethereal glow, and Akhenaden the High Priest of Darkness who serves as Zorc's minion and is able to project [[CastingAShadow dark energy blasts]]. |
| 318 | ** To defeat Zorc in the FinalBattle, the Pharaoh summoned the three Egyptian Gods: Obelisk, Slifer, and Ra, who [[FusionDance fused together]] into Horakhty the Creator of Light. He was able to smite the dark demon Zorc with one devastating light blast. |
| 319 | * LighterAndSofter: The manga has a reputation for being DarkerAndEdgier than either anime, but there are a few instances where Takahashi went for something more low-key while the anime ramped things up. |
| 320 | ** In the manga, Yugi's grandpa wasn't really ''kidnapped'' by Pegasus; his soul was instead sealed inside a video tape, and Yugi could talk with him through a camcorder whenever he liked. The anime makes it a straight case of YourSoulIsMine, and anime!Yugi is appropriately angstier about the whole affair. |
| 321 | ** While the manga makes it clear that receiving the Millennium Eye was ''[[EyeScream not]]'' pleasant for Pegasus, the actual insertion was done off-panel. The anime, on the other hand, lets the audience see every second of Shadi painfully jamming it in the poor guy's eye socket. |
| 322 | * LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler: Towards the end of the Shadow RPG, High Priest of Darkness Akhenaden reveals to Priest Seto that he was his father all along, and tries to make Priest Seto join him and become the King of Darkness]]. |
| 323 | * MakeupIsEvil: Seen with Ms. Chono, who uses so much makeup it's like a mask. Her Penalty Game involves her makeup cracking off to reveal her ugly face and intentions. |
| 324 | * MeaningfulName: Not only does Yugi's name mean "Game" in Japanese, if you combine the first character of Yugi's name with the first character of Jounouchi's name, you get "Yujyo", which means "Friendship." |
| 325 | ** The title, meaning "Game King," could also be taken as "King Yugi," referring to the main character who ''is'' the Game King. It also serves somewhat of a double-meaning later. ([[spoiler: Yugi's alterego, Dark Yugi, is the spirit of a gambler who was once the King of an Egyptian Dynasty named Pharaoh Atem.]]) |
| 326 | ** Sugoroku (Yugi's grandfather) is named after a Japanese board game similar to backgammon. |
| 327 | * MentalWorld: Shadi's Millennium Key allows him to enter a person's mind, which projects rooms that reflect a person's personality -- their ambitions, complexes, etc. He can also, um, [[MindRape arrange things]]. Yugi has ''two'' of these rooms (likewise for Bakura too, probably). His room reflects his innocence and love for gaming, while Dark Yugi's room is filled with mazes and traps, reflecting the complexity of his soul. And, as Shadi described, [[ChekhovsGun like a Pharaoh's Tomb]]. |
| 328 | * [[MetaGame Metagaming]]: As it applies to role-playing games. [[spoiler: During the Shadow RPG of the final arc, while Dark Yugi's characters were subject to paralysis for several rounds (due to Dark Bakura's Time Stop ability), Zorc Necrophades was about to launch its [[TotalPartyKill Zorc Inferno]]. Priest Seto being one of the characters in question that was within the target range of Zorc's ultimate AOE damage spell, Dark Yugi tries to convince Dark Bakura as a role-player to have High Priest of Darkness stop Zorc from attacking, because he's Seto's father. In a horrifying break from his previously-characterized obsession with the concept of players "becoming their characters" in his {{Tabletop RPG}}s, he calls Dark Yugi a fool for thinking that would work and says that ''he'' is in control of Zorc, launching his attack anyway before being blocked by Hassan (an NPC controlled by Shadi).]] |
| 329 | * MindControlEyes: The Millennium Rod's brainwashing induces this. |
| 330 | * MindRape: PENALTY GAME! Every single one that does not involve dying. |
| 331 | * MindScrew: The Millennium World arc is a mild version. In general, things make sense and you can follow what's going on, but some really bizarre stuff happens too. |
| 332 | * MikeNelsonDestroyerOfWorlds: Everything that's happened is because Yugi wanted a friend, poor kid. |
| 333 | * MoodWhiplash: The conclusion of the Duelist Kingdom arc. Kaiba and Mokuba are reunited, and Yugi and Dark Yugi have a heartwarming friendship speech...[[spoiler: and the next page is the dead body of Pegasus with his Millenium Eye ripped out.]] |
| 334 | * MoralityChain[=/=]MoralityPet: Mokuba Kaiba. As the Season Zero/manga version of Kaiba shows [[AxCrazy exactly what happens to his personality without Mokuba holding him back.]] The manga is pretty explicit in stating that Mokuba is the last and final piece of his rebuilt heart. |
| 335 | * MsFanservice: Anzu, Ms. Chono, Mai, and Black Magician Girl. Anzu is probably the standout example as her casual clothes almost [[LegFocus always show off her legs]]. Her {{Shorttank}} tendencies also sometimes go to the very limit of acceptible skimpiness; while her tank-top outfits already get to show off a lot of skin, one alternate look has her wear a tube-top. Incidental clothing includes a waitress outfit as well as a bikini she wears during a water park visit. |
| 336 | * MundaneMadeAwesome: Who knew yo-yos could be used that way? |
| 337 | ** It should be noted that drawing cards and placing them down isn't as ridiculous as it is in the anime, judging by how calmly it's drawn in the manga. Dice rolling, however, is still taken to epic proportions in the manga. |
| 338 | ** "UNMEI NO DICE ROLL!" The dice roll of ''LIFE OR DEATH!'' |
| 339 | * MyLittlePanzer: Capsule Monsters Chess, Digital Pets, Monster World, Duel Monsters, etc. are such a safe games for little kids, aren't they? |
| 340 | ** {{Subverted}}: By themselves, the games are perfectly safe; it's the gamers like the Ghouls that add in their own, more dangerous, rules or invoke the dark magic of the Millennium Items that make it so [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment dangerous]]. |
| 341 | * MysteriousProtector: Dark Yugi before the Death-T arc, where he takes over Yugi's body in order to solve Yugi's conflicts and his existence was relatively unknown to Yugi's friends. |
| 342 | * MythArc: Shadow Games, the Millennium Items, and the identity of Dark Yugi/uncovering the Pharaoh's memories all play important parts in all of the {{StoryArc}}s in this manga. |
| 343 | [[/folder]] |
| 344 | |
| 345 | [[folder:N-Z]] |
| 346 | * {{Necromantic}}: [[spoiler:Pegasus got his StartOfDarkness after his beloved Cyndia passed away and he vowed to bring her back.]] |
| 347 | * NewRulesAsThePlotDemands: |
| 348 | ** Duelist Kingdom is this writ large. Some make at least a bit of sense, like flying monsters having an advantage over land-based monsters, or machine monsters rusting due to a mist over the field. Others just plain have no basis in fact at all (at least as a regular card game), most prominently the infamous Catapult Turtle move Yugi uses to defeat the Player Killer of Darkness, as well as Giant Soldier of Stone attacking the moon(that move got turned into a card in the real card card game a few years down the line). However, Duelist Kingdom is stated to use custom rules specific to the tournament, though they're so far removed from almost anything else we see it border on being more of a battle simulator than an actual card game. |
| 349 | ** Once the rules were written and pinned down in Battle City as the "Expert Rules", this turned into "New Cards As the Plot Demands," with duelists producing cards never before seen at just the right time. Many of these cards exist for RuleOfCool, as there are other pre-existing cards that do the same thing as the new card but don't fit the theme of the duelist's deck. And lapses of the random new rules still occurred: Jinzo is supposedly immune to Time Wizard's effect due to being made of special metal, for example, and Flute of Summoning Dragon lets both players summon Dragons from their hand if they want. |
| 350 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: Yugi's first Penalty Game against Seto Kaiba, the Experience of Death, was meant to teach him how the cards felt in the hopes it would make him a better gamer. Not only did it reinforce Seto's losing equals death philosophy, it made him bitter and revenge-crazed, leading him to try and kill Yugi, his grandpa, all of his friends, a random baby, and his little brother. |
| 351 | ** Yugi's Penalty Game for the TV producer who tried to rig the game show Jonouchi was playing so that he would lose causes the producer to rush onto the stage, insult the viewers and demand that they send him their money. Though Jonouchi wins the ¥1,000,000 jackpot, the entire debacle causes the studio to delcare bankruptcy before he can cash in his check. |
| 352 | * NobleDemon: Seto Kaiba. |
| 353 | * NonHumanUndead: In the first tournament, Yugi defeats Seo Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon by fusing his Mammoth Graveyard into it... which, because both are incompatible types, slowly weakens the resulting fusion and will cause it's eventual death. After this, the rule is never referenced again. |
| 354 | ** Another example are Ghost Kozuka's monsters brought back from the grave. |
| 355 | * NonLethalWarfare: Subverted with the Shooting Stardust game during Death-T. Yugi and his friends think it's a harmless laser tag game at first -- and it certainly is for them with the toy guns they're given -- but the people Kaiba hired to play against them were professor killers, and the guns they used shot out electrical currents, which were amplified to lethal levels when they hit the sensors. |
| 356 | * NotADate: Anzu goes on one of these with Dark Yugi (who originally thought it was going to be a straight-up date with normal Yugi) after the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc. Even earlier than that, she goes on one of these with the regular Yugi at an amusement park. |
| 357 | * NotJustATournament: Virtually every TournamentArc has something shady going on, with varying degrees of life-threatening stakes. |
| 358 | * OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Yugi and Jonouchi duel immediately after Battle City, and it's heavily implied Jonouchi won. Both mediums skip the duel. |
| 359 | * OhCrap: Characters are guaranteed to have this reaction whenever Yugi manages to turn the odds around in a game. Perfect example would be the escaped convict who held Anzu hostage, realizing that he was going to burn to death. |
| 360 | ** Dark Bakura has an OhCrap moment when he realizes that the real Bakura regained control of his left hand during the Monster World RPG. Also, when the real Bakura's soul breaks his dice. |
| 361 | * OlderThanTheyLook: Yugi. One chapter has a amusment park employee give him a hard time because she thought he was an elementary schooler. |
| 362 | * TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou: Presented by Dark Bakura in the original manga (volume ten of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duelist), when he interrupts the match of DDM between Yugi and Ryuuji Otogi to prevent the former from losing the Millennium Puzzle. |
| 363 | ** Seto Kaiba also treats Yugi as such. |
| 364 | * OnlyTheChosenMayWield: The Millennium Items are very unforgiving to those who plan on wielding them, but are not the ones that are "chosen": |
| 365 | ** Shadi forced a thief to wear the Millennium Ring to see if he was the one destined to wear it. [[spoiler:He clearly wasn't, as the ring punctured his chest and [[BodyHorror set the insides of his body on fire]]]]. Likewise, Shadi had [[spoiler:gauged Pegasus's eye out with a knife to test if he was worthy of wielding the Millennium Eye. Had Pegasus not been the chosen one, he would have most likely have been left for dead with an empty eye-socket]]. |
| 366 | ** The Millennium Puzzle itself is a little friendlier to its attempted wielders, at least before it was put together by [[ChosenOne Yugi]]. They would merely find the puzzle too challenging to complete, and even before that, get killed by the Shadow Games in the tomb it was hidden in rather than by the Puzzle itself. However, after Yugi had completed the Millennium Puzzle, those who attempted steal it/put it back together through force/cheating would incur the wrath of the Millennium Puzzle. An example would be [[spoiler:Otogi's father, who had attempted to put together the pieces of the broken Millennium Puzzle, only to find himself trapped in a [[MindRape maze of illusions]]]]-- though even that lasts for only a few seconds. |
| 367 | * OrgasmicallyDelicious: [[http://kokorononaka.net/FAQ/v23-143s.jpg Bakura's steak]]. |
| 368 | * OrphanageOfFear: According to Kaiba, at least. |
| 369 | * ParentalAbandonment: Mai lost her parents at a young age. |
| 370 | * PhantomZonePicture: Pegasus gave Seto and Mokuba Penalty Games, which involved their souls getting trapped into blank cards. |
| 371 | * PintsizedPowerhouse: Yugi. |
| 372 | * PlayerKilling: Pegasus's "star chip assassins" that are hired to eliminate players in the Duelist Kingdom game are called Player Killers. Because of their dirty methods and being just as screwed in the head as Pegasus, two of them have the unfortunate honor of being the final victims of Dark Yugi's Shadow Games and receiving his final Penalty Games. |
| 373 | * PlotDevice: The various games and gambles used to further the plot and character development. Most notably Duel Monsters in the tournament arcs. |
| 374 | * PlotTumor: The Duel Monsters card game after volume eight. After Duelist Kingdom, Ryuji Otogi is introduced and the plot briefly goes back to its formula of switching games for several chapters, introducing Bar Bet games and Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons. After DDD is over and done with, the card game returns the major plot device during Battle City. The Memory World, while an RPG, uses Duel Monsters and duel-related concepts alongside its own monsters and concepts, and the Ceremonial Battle is a game of Duel Monsters. |
| 375 | * PokemonSpeak: In Volumes 6-7, the Monster World characters Pau and Pokii speak using their own names. |
| 376 | * PoweredByAForsakenChild: [[spoiler:Creating the Millennium Items required a sacrifice of 99 human lives.]] |
| 377 | * PowerMakesYourHairGrow: When Yugi, Bakura and Marik become possessed by the spirits of the Millennium Items (or in Marik's case his SuperPoweredEvilSide), their hair gets even more ridiculous than usual. |
| 378 | * ThePowerOfFriendship: Friendship is one of the key elements of the series. Dark Yugi can suddenly get lucky after invoking the belief in his comrades or his hand, especially when a FriendshipTrinket is at stake or one of the game pieces turns into an EmpathicWeapon. Yugi also learns to rely on others after his FriendlessBackground, which always helps him against adversaries who believe only in strength or pride. |
| 379 | * PrettyBoy: Marik Ishtar and Ryou Bakura are really pretty. They even share the same fangirls at different points in the manga. |
| 380 | * PsychoticSmirk: Dark Yugi, and the villains, have this down to an art. |
| 381 | * PsychicPowers: The Millennium Items give their owners a variety of psychic powers, depending on the item. Some examples being [[MindRape mind raping]], locating and identifying other Millennium Item holders, [[{{Telepathy}} mind reading]], [[JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind visiting someone's mental landscape]], [[SpiderSense seeing the future]], and [[BodySnatcher possessing other people]]. |
| 382 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: |
| 383 | ** Kaiba gives these to anyone unfortunate enough to lose to him. Jonouchi was a victim at one point. |
| 384 | ** Anzu gives one to Kaiba at Duelist Kingdom after he threatens suicide to force Yugi to lose. |
| 385 | * RebelRelaxation: Mild-mannered {{nice guy}} Ryou is seen [[http://i.imgur.com/N1iirbf.png leaning insouciantly against a tree]] while everyone else watches Mokuba having a tantrum. |
| 386 | * {{Reincarnation}}: Several major characters are reincarnations of the ancient Egyptian characters introduced in the Millennium World arc. |
| 387 | * {{Retcon}}: |
| 388 | ** In the first chapter, Sugoroku Mutou tells Yugi and Anzu that the Millennium Puzzle was found by a team of British archaeologists who died after uncovering the puzzle, with their last words being "The Shadow Games." In the Millennium World saga, it is revealed that this British team of archaeologists died while trying to get the Millennium Puzzle (their last words still being "The Shadow Games") and Sugoroku himseld ended up finding the Puzzle after conquering the tomb's Shadow Games. |
| 389 | ** The first chapter of the Millennium World has Yugi trying to hide the fact that "another him" exists from his grandpa even though Sugoroku was already well-aware of the other Yugi's existence during his stint as a video tape in Duelist Kingdom and during Dungeon Dice Monsters. |
| 390 | * RevisitingTheRoots: After nothing but Duel Monsters post-Dungeon Dice Monsters, the manga switches games during the Millennium World arc, showcasing an elaborate tabletop RPG, as well as showcasing a flashback with Yugi's grandpa taking on a room game within the Pharaoh's tomb among other things. |
| 391 | * RiddleMeThis: ''All'' of Shadi's Shadow Games involve riddles or puzzles (fitting, as his very existence is a riddle). And the Labyrinth Coin game that Dark Yugi and Dark Bakura played against the Meikyuu Brothers during Duelist Kingdom was a way to destroy their UnwinnableByDesign riddle. |
| 392 | * RightBehindMe: When a game shop opened in front of the shop owned by Yugi's Grandfather, Yugi went there to buy the new game and Yugi asked his friends not to tell his grandfather. Yugi even complained about Grandfather being old-fashioned and it being the reason his shop had no business. Then he learned his Grandfather was behind him. |
| 393 | * RoaringRampageOfRevenge: [[spoiler: Thief King Bakura, against Pharaoh Atem and his priests]]. |
| 394 | * RousseauWasRight: Less prevalent than in [[Anime/YuGiOh the second-series anime]], especially since manga!Kaiba remains a huge {{Jerkass}} (bar the occasional PetTheDog moment with Mokuba), Pegasus ''at best'' gets a RedemptionEqualsDeath, and most of the one-shot villains (who survive their encounters with the Pharaoh) remain assholes to the bone, but there's still something to be said about how both Yugi and the Pharaoh absolutely ''refuse'' to give up on Marik - up to that point one of the most monstrous individuals they've run into, even subtracting his psychotic split-personality - and ultimately win his friendship. |
| 395 | * RuleOfThree: The Three Gods, Kaiba and his three Blue-Eyes, the English manga being split into three parts, and of course, out of the six Millennium Item wielders, three of them (Yugi, Bakura, and Shadi) are the only ones who utilize general Shadow Games or play games other than Duel Monsters. In fact, Shadi ''never'' plays Duel Monsters. |
| 396 | * RussianRoulette: |
| 397 | ** Yugi, Jonouchi, and Mokuba play a variation of this... with poison food instead of a revolver. |
| 398 | ** "Bandit" Keith Howard plays this during his depression after losing to Pegasus. His Penalty game also involved his hand turning into a gun and being forced to play Russian Roulette, killing him. |
| 399 | * SadistTeacher: Ms. Chono delights in expelling students on technicalities and tormenting them by revealing their secrets. |
| 400 | * SatelliteFamilyMember: |
| 401 | ** Yugi's grandpa, Sugoroku Mutou, is usually seen with Yugi or his friends, with not much characterization beyond explaining the current game or offering insight about the duel. He also becomes a mentor for Jonouchi when it comes to the Duel Monsters card game. Sugoroku has also been used as a motivator for Yugi twice: the first time is when he became hospitalized due to Kaiba subjecting him to Death T's penalty game. The second time is when Pegasus J. Crawford stole his soul, forcing Yugi to participate in his Duelist Kingdom tournament. The Millennium World arc reveals that he was once an adventuring archaeologist who played plenty of games, which is how he discovered the Millennium Puzzle. After he retired from his adventure, he would give the Puzzle to Yugi, kicking off the events of the entire manga years later. The [[Anime/YuGiOh the NAS anime]] expands on his archaeologist traits, with {{Filler Arc}}s and Episodes focused on him and his friend Professor Hawkins. Yugi's mother also makes a few appearances in the manga (she only appears once in the NAS anime) and is characterized as being worried about her son [[TalkingToThemself talking to himself]] (when in actuality he is talking to Yami Yugi). Yugi also has an unnamed father who is away on a business trip according to Kazuki Takahashi. |
| 402 | ** Katsuya Jonouchi/Joey Wheeler has a mom, sister, and dad, who don't get much characterization beyond their relation to him. His father is introduced by the reader only seeing his boots and him throwing a bottle at the door. From there, we learn that Jonouchi's parents are divorced, with his father being an [[TheAlcoholic alcoholic]] and [[TheGamblingAddict gambling addict]]. It characterizes Jonouchi as the underdog, looking to do anything to help clear up the debts, including doing several part-time jobs or entering a game show to win a million yen. Jonouchi's sister came under his mother's custody after their divorce. Shizuka Kawai/Serenity Wheeler is used as a motivator for him as well, where by the time the Duelist Kingdom arc rolls around, she needs an expensive eye surgery to prevent her from going blind. Jonouchi enters Pegasus' Duelist Kingdom tournament to win the prize money that would be able to pay for the operation. After Duelist Kingdom and during the Battle City arc, Shizuka becomes a RecurringCharacter, though mainly to support Jonouchi. The NAS anime has her dueling against Big Five member Soichiro Ota/Nezbitt during the Virtual World Filler arc but is an inexperienced duelist whose character revolves around being protected by her brother, or Ryuji Otogi/Duke Devlin and Hiroto Honda/Tristan Taylor's love triangle shenanigans. |
| 403 | ** In the manga, Gozaburo Kaiba is the catalyst that explains why Seto Kaiba is the way he is and not much else. Gozaburo was looking for an heir to his company, with Seto challenging him to a Chess match with the stipulation of adopting him and Mokuba if Seto won, which he did. Gozaburo then raised him through an abusive accelerated learning program, which motivated Seto to overthrow him as [=KaibaCorp=]'s CEO. Gozaburo then taught him what happens to losers, where he then threw himself out of a window, with Kaiba becoming a cold-hearted and ruthless person himself. The Battle City arc in particular reveals that Seto built the Duel Tower over the remains of his stepfather's military facility, looking to destroy everything he knew about the past and his abusive stepfather, with his victory against Yugi during finals intending to be representative of that. |
| 404 | *** The Virtual World filler arc of [[Anime/YuGiOh the NAS anime]] reveals that Gozaburo digitized his mind into the same world as his biological son Noah and that he was the orchestrator behind the arc's events. This arc frames his adoption of Seto as finding a proper vessel for his sickly son, though his plans changed so that he could become the true CEO once again. He's defeated by Seto once again in a Duel and is destroyed by a missile that was fired by Noah, which they both perish in. This opens a slight plot hole regarding Seto's reason for defeating Yugi in the Battle City finals above, as he had defeated his Stepfather again in this arc. |
| 405 | * SchoolUniformsAreTheNewBlack: Yugi. One chapter even lampshades this by having Jonouchi ask Yugi why he's wearing his school uniform during the weekend. [[http://38.media.tumblr.com/38cfb71fc5e002a52fa65319766ac884/tumblr_inline_n0cpf9TYCu1r9pg5v.png He's surprised to hear that that's supposed to be weird]]. |
| 406 | * ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Kaiba does it, of course. |
| 407 | * ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem: Pegasus makes special cards that never go into circulation just so that it gives him an advantage as the creator of the Duel Monsters card game. |
| 408 | * SealedEvilInASixPack: |
| 409 | ** An in-universe fictional example is Exodia, a monster so powerful it takes multiple cards to contain him. The individual pieces are worthless, but a player who reassembles Exodia by getting all five parts in play wins immediately. |
| 410 | ** The Pharaoh was trapped in the Millennium Pendant, which was then broken up into pieces. They were all kept in one place, but putting it back together was a complicated process (which is why it was then renamed the Millennium Puzzle). |
| 411 | * SelfMadeOrphan: Already being orphans when their parents died, Seto and Mokuba become orphans again after the former drives their abusive stepfather to suicide. And [[spoiler:Marik's SplitPersonality killed his father when he tried to kill his adopted brother, Rishid]]. |
| 412 | * ShaggyDogStory: In ''Get the Million!'', after Dark Yugi inflicts a Penalty Game on the ZTV producer, Jonouchi successfully wins a million yen (which he intends to use to pay off his father's debt). Unfortunately, due to the producer's Penalty Game (where he goes on a rant on-air mocking his viewers), the TV station goes bankrupt, leaving Jonouchi's check worthless. |
| 413 | * ShoutOut: Multiple: |
| 414 | ** In the very first chapter, Yugi makes a reference to ''Manga/DragonBall'' when he talks about the Millennium Puzzle granting one wish. |
| 415 | ** And one to ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'' as well. Twice in the 3rd volume of the final arc someone is seen with a Nu hankerchief. |
| 416 | ** Chapter 41 "Let's Find Love" has the same plot as one episode of Manga/YuYuHakusho (hero will be expelled if he doesn't find an item that a teacher hid somewhere in the school- and actually hid on his own person). |
| 417 | * ShownTheirWork: Though occasionally the exact details are fuddled, the mythological concepts explored throughout the franchise show that Takahashi did his research: |
| 418 | ** Egyptian research in the manga: |
| 419 | *** While he mixed up the "ka" and "ba" concepts, Kazuki Takahashi did and showed. |
| 420 | *** The baby Pharaoh has a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidelock_of_youth sidelock of Youth]]. |
| 421 | * SlasherSmile: Dark Marik is so murderous that he has this face on 90% of the time. Dark Bakura pulls off a few pretty good ones, himself. |
| 422 | * SmugSmiler: Kaiba and Dark Yugi. |
| 423 | * SoulJar: A literal one in volume six, in the chapters about Imori and the Dragon Cards. |
| 424 | ** Dark Bakura's Penalty Games involve the losers being trapped in lead R.P.G. figurines. Likewise, Pegasus's Penalty Games involve trapping souls/minds into inanimate objects, i.e. a miniature TV screen for Yugi's grandfather and cards for the Kaiba brothers. |
| 425 | ** Dark Bakura's Millennium Ring allows him to create Soul Jars by transferring parts of his soul into any object. Yugi's puzzle piece is one example. |
| 426 | ** For both Dark Yugi and Dark Bakura, the normal Yugi and Bakura are their living Soul Jars. If they allow their host's bodies to die, they'll die as well. |
| 427 | * SplitPersonality: Dark Yugi and Dark Bakura are kind of like this to the regular ones, especially Dark Yugi during the earlier chapters since he shares Yugi's memories. Dark Marik is more of a traditional example. It is implied that the Millennium Items have the ability to induce this naturally by using the [[StartOfDarkness darkness in your heart]]. |
| 428 | * SplitPersonalityMakeover: Yugi's face changes from cute to sinister when Dark Yugi takes over. Same thing with Bakura and Dark Bakura. Though normal Marik also looks sinister, but less sinister than Dark Marik. The makeovers include, among other things, their hair getting wackier (with Dark Marik's almost doubling in size) and a tendency towards [[SlasherSmile slasher smiles]] |
| 429 | * StepfordSmiler: Ryou Bakura tries to look happy all of the time, but that's hard when you have a malicious spirit possess you and try to kill your friends. |
| 430 | * SuperpoweredEvilSide: Dark Yugi, Dark Bakura, and Dark Marik are the evil counterparts to their hosts, though Dark Yugi grows much more heroic as time passes. |
| 431 | * SwallowTheKey: Mokuba does this to save [=KaibaCorp=]'s documents, with the Big Five having to regularly check when he goes to the bathroom. Unfortunately, they eventually [[CuttingTheKnot sidestep it altogether]] by using an ultrasound to reconstruct a perfect model of the key. |
| 432 | * TalkingToThemself: Starting from the conclusion of the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yugi frequently has bro-talks with the other personality residing within the Puzzle, Dark Yugi, to the point where his mother starts to worry. Dark Yugi even gives some [[FreakyFashionMildMind hilarious fashion advice]] to Yugi at the beginning of the Dragons, Dice, & Dungeons saga. |
| 433 | ** The same goes to Bakura, somewhat. He only ever directly communicates with Dark Bakura during the Monster World RPG and the middle of Duelist Kingdom when the spirit convinces Bakura to put the Ring back on. After that, direct communication between the two is no longer shown on-panel. |
| 434 | * ThinlyVeiledDubCountryChange: The Italian translation of the manga changes the currency used to a local currency, while still keeping it set in Japan. So people will refer to cents instead of yen, despite the coins and bills appearing clearly being yen coins and bills. [[InconsistentDub Only in two chapters far apart from eachother, one in Volume 3 and one in Volume 19]], while Yen are mentioned with no problem in every other chapter. Also, in both the chapters money was clearly shown. Indeed, [[SarcasmMode that silver coin with "500" on it is clearly the famous 4,60 € coin]]. |
| 435 | * TinyGuyHugeGirl: Yugi/Dark Yugi and Anzu. |
| 436 | * TrainingFromHell: |
| 437 | ** [[spoiler:Mahado]] is implied to have gone through this in the afterlife, coming back as [[spoiler:the Black Magician]], stronger than ever before, in order to serve his king once more in the battle against Zorc. |
| 438 | ** Kaiba's backstory. In order to make him a suitable heir to [=KaibaCorp=], his adoptive father Gozaburo put him through a brutally intense period of schooling from age 10 onward. Judging from what is shown in the manga, it involved leashing him to a desk and the occasional beating with a switch. This leads him on his descent to madness until receiving the [[RedemptionQuest Mind Crush]] Penalty Game from Dark Yugi. |
| 439 | * TrueCompanions: Yugi's friends' bond is so deep and powerful that Jonouchi, Honda, Anzu, and Bakura are able to block Pegasus's Mind Scan with it, helping Dark Yugi in defeating him. |
| 440 | * TwoPersonLoveTriangle: Yugi likes Anzu, who in turn, has a crush on his OlderAlterEgo that shares the same body as Yugi. |
| 441 | * UncannyValleyMakeup: Seen with Ms. Chono, who wears so much makeup it's like a mask. After her Penalty Game it cracks off, revealing her true, ugly face. |
| 442 | * UncattyResemblance: Everyone's (but especially Yugi's) virtual pet in the manga, as well as their Monster World figurines. |
| 443 | * UnsoundEffect: In Polish translation there are effects like "SIT!" or "STARE!". |
| 444 | * TheVamp: Ms. Chono and Mai flirt with men to get them to let their guards down |
| 445 | * ViewersAreGoldfish: In Duelist Kingdom, Yugi and his friends forget that Pegasus really ''can'' read minds despite having seen him use it on Kaiba the day before, and Pegasus explaining to Yugi directly how his Eye worked after their first game and Yugi relaying the information to his friends afterward. Card effects also tend to be explained even if they're staples. |
| 446 | * AVillainNamedZrg: Dark Master Zorc. [[spoiler:As well as the real Zorc Necrophades.]] |
| 447 | * WaterloggedWarzone: Dark Yugi once fought a gang in an abandoned building that had leakages, with puddles of water all over the floor. He took advantage of this to trick the thugs into electrocuting themselves with their tasers. |
| 448 | * WeWillMeetAgain: After her Penalty Game, Ms. Chono swears revenge. [[AbortedArc She never gets it.]] |
| 449 | * WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Dragon Cards is never brought up after its sole appearance, and Dark Yugi can only hope no one else finds it and unseals the dragons. |
| 450 | * WhatIsEvil: Thief King Bakura asks this to Pharaoh Atem's court during their first battle. |
| 451 | --> "''What is 'evil'? If I'm loyal to what you believe is right, is that all it takes for me to be 'good'?''" (Viz Translation) |
| 452 | * WhiteHairBlackHeart: Dark Bakura has white hair and is a wicked villain. Marik and his SplitPersonality have platinum-blond hair but it's close enough to white to count. |
| 453 | * TheWorfEffect: Mai Kujaku is a top-notch duelist who gets paired off against the most dangerous opponents, and ends up being MindRaped by Dark Marik. Despite being a very skilled duelist, she keeps going up against super-powerful opponents to show the viewers how hard it'll be for the other heroes to win. |
| 454 | * WorldOfHam: Games are serious business, and everyone's dialogue reflects that. |
| 455 | * WritersCannotDoMath: Directly addressed in the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc, where Takahashi miscalculated the probabilities of the card trick Yugi and Otogi play; the ''tankoban'' collection not only fixes this, but admits it in an Author's Note, and [[SelfDeprecation adds a little panel of Yami Bakura mocking Takahashi]]. |
| 456 | * YouAreNotAlone: From the very first chapter, this has been a staple of the series. |
| 457 | ** When Kaiba had Yugi on the ropes with three Blue-Eyes White Dragons, Yugi was too scared to even draw at first, until he envisioned his friends standing with him. The confidence they gave him allowed Yugi to draw Exodia the Forbidden One and beat Kaiba. |
| 458 | ** When Yugi and Pegasus duel and it becomes a Shadow Game, Yugi was slowly dying due to the game's energies. Dark Yugi couldn't play alone due to Pegasus having the ability to read his mind, but when Yugi's friends focused their feelings on him, they managed to block the Mind Scan and enable Yugi to win. |
| 459 | ** In the Millennium World, the Pharaoh was fighting the bandit king Bakura, whose powers were too much even for him. Just when Bakura was about to kill him, Yugi and his friends stepped up and offered their energy so he could summon Ra to vanquish Bakura. |
| 460 | ** Zorc Necrophades was able to kill off most of the Pharaoh's priests and soldiers, and managed to seriously wear the Pharaoh down, but then Yugi and friends made a second reappearance and gave him the key to awakening Horakthy, destroying Zorc in one hit. |
| 461 | * YouCantFightFate: Destiny plays a big role in the series, with the main characters generally following the path fate led for them. Averted in Kaiba's duel with Ishizu, where he manages to change fate with his own will. |
| 462 | * ZergRush: At one point during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yugi uses Multiply, which causes Kuriboh to multiply each turn, in conjunction with Kuriboh's special ability allows it to nullify the damage done by one enemy monster. Due to there being no limit on how many monsters can be summoned with one magic card in the manga and anime's version of the game, this allows him to create a virtually impenetrable barrier of the little guys. |
| 463 | [[/folder]] |
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