Destiny Islands Trio (Sora | Riku | Kairi) | Disney Castle Trio | Clock Tower Trio (Roxas | Axel | Xion) | Wayfinder Trio (Terra | Aqua | Ventus) | Party Members and Summons | Xehanort's Incarnations (Master Xehanort) | Organization XIII (Xigbar | Saïx | Vanitas) | Disney Villains (Maleficent's Council and Allies | Other Disney Villains) | Independent Villains | Enemy Creatures (Heartless) | Ansem and his Apprentices | Kingdom Hearts χ[chi] Characters | Supporting Original Characters | Supporting Square Enix Characters | Supporting Disney Characters
Due to lengthy periods between releases and the prevalence of Late Arrival Spoilers, spoilers from installments before 2010 may be unmarked. Read at your own risk.
Terra, Aqua, and Ventus were three best friends training to be Keyblade Masters under Master Eraqus. Ten years before Sora, Riku, and Kairi began their journey, a threat known as the Unversed threatened the world. The three set out to defeat the Unversed and find answers, setting in motion events that would define the battles of the entire Kingdom Hearts series.
- Armor Is Useless: Their Keyblade Armor counts. In-universe, the armor is meant to protect them from the darkness as they travel the Lanes Between, but in gameplay, the armor doesn't affect your defense stat or give any extra resistance to Dark attacks.
- Badass Cape: They sport capes on their Keyblade Armor in the secret endings of II and II Final Mix. The capes had to be removed for gameplay in Birth by Sleep due to the multiplayer elements, and the capes would slow things down with several players involved in the Mirage Arena. This continues in HD 2.5 ReMIX, but Terra has the cape appear once he defeats Xehanort to maintain continuity with his later appearance as the Lingering Will. As of Kingdom Hearts III: Re𝄌Mind's Limit Cut episode, all three have capes when they use their armor.
- Badass Crew: All three are powerful and talented Keyblade wielders who are very good at fighting.
- Beam Spam: Ragnarok launches a salvo of light-based projectiles, with the right timing adding more projectiles to the salvo.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: Terra's the tallest and most muscular of the three (Big), Aqua's a slender young woman (Thin) and Ventus is the smallest of the three due to his young age (Short).
- Blade Spam: Their Sonic Blade is a rapid series of charging slashes. Terra's exclusive Chaos Blade is a dark version of this.
- Butt-Monkey: A rare, not Played for Laughs example. Constantly prone to Nice Job Breaking It, Hero and Pyrrhic Victory moments, more so than any other characters. And as of 3D, you can add Senseless Sacrifice and Shoot the Shaggy Dog to the list.
- Combined Energy Attack: They have their own version of Trinity Limit in Birth By Sleep, but you can only use it once in the main story (multiplayer is another matter). Aqua uses something similar in the final battle of her scenario, calling out to Terra and Ven to lend her their strength. She uses this power to destroy the X-Blade and defeat Vanitas.
- The Corruptible: At some point or another, every one of them has temporarily been taken over by some form of darkness due to the machinations of Xehanort.
- Dance Battler: When using the advanced variant of the Cinderella D-Link, their finisher is the aptly-named Miracle Dance.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After 12 years of separation, the trio have a tearful reunion during the confrontation at Keyblade Graveyard, and later return to the restored Land of Departure.
- Elemental Hair Colors: Brown for Terra (earth), blue for Aqua (water), and blonde for Ven (wind/light).
- Elemental Powers: They run the gamut. They get Fire, Ice, Lightning, Aero, Cure, the Zero Gravity and Magnet series, Poison, Light, Slow and Stop, and Pure Energy. Each member can manifest it in various individual ways and their exact powers vary between them. Terra is more into Earth and Darkness, Ven uses Wind and Light, and Aqua Fire, Ice, Lightning with a thematic focus on Water.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: Terra is the Fighter (strong physical stats, weak magic), Aqua is the Mage (strong magic stats, weak physical stats), and Ven is the Thief (focuses on fast attacks, otherwise middling stats).
- Flash Step: Terra can use Sonic Shadow and Chaos Blade to rapidly dash around attacking, while Aqua has the Ghost Drive Command Style and Magic Hour Deck Command for Teleport Spam attacks. Ventus brings back the Reversal Reaction Command from II, allowing him to Flash Step behind an enemy and then attack from his new position.
- Full-Contact Magic: They all have some attack that relies on physical contact to hit enemies with some sort of magic.
- Gratuitous Latin: Their names are all Latin words.
- The Hero: They are all the main protagonists of Birth By Sleep, however Aqua is ultimately the last one standing after the battle at the Keyblade Graveyard and goes on to fight the Final Boss Terra-Xehanort.
- Heroic Resolve:
- Ventus: As he lies frozen and helpless on the ground, Vanitas strikes Aqua down and prepares to finish her off. Through nothing more than sheer willpower, Ven thaws himself out just in time to stop him and engage him in combat.
- Terra: After Master Xehanort commits Grand Theft Me on him, he begins to walk away, when a barrier suddenly surrounds the plateau. The camera pans over and we see Terra's armor has reformed itself, through what is apparently his lingering emotions and will. Terra's Lingering Will proceeds to battle Xehanort on its own, giving us a very satisfying This Cannot Be! moment.Xehanort: Your body submits, your heart succumbs— so why does your mind RESIST?!
- Aqua: Despite everything that happens, she keeps on going long after the other two, and even spends eleven years alone in the realm of darkness without cracking—although she did come close, but it was fortunately averted by the timely arrival of Ven and Terra's Keyblades to give her the drive to keep going.
- History Repeats: Each one of the trio is revealed to have suffered the same fates as one of the Destiny Islands trio. Terra, like Riku, ends up becoming body-hijacked by a version of Xehanort. Ventus, like Kairi, loses his heart, but because there is no darkness within him, he is merely rendered comatose. Aqua, like Riku and Sora, falls into the Realm of Darkness. However, whereas the Destiny Islands trio suffer these for a short time, the Wayfinder trio has the bad luck of experiencing theirs for 12 years.
- Ineffectual Loner: Though they're tight friends who make several new ones through the course of their journey and value the Power of Friendship, they're far more prone to facing major antagonists on their own than Sora who's most impressive victories are always with the physical presence and direct assistance of highly capable allies such as Donald, Goofy, and Riku. Riku himself also had King Mickey to help him in his darkest moments. While the Wayfarer Trio are not exactly the only examples in the series, it's more noticeable with them due to the direct parallels their journey has with the main characters of the first game and how much more tragically said journey ended in comparison. It's most noticeable with Aqua since she's the most vocal about trying to deal with physical threats on her own.
- Instant Armor: All three are equipped with a shoulder piece that covers them from head-to-toe in Keyblade Armor if they slam it with their hand. Its primary purpose is to protect the wielders from the corrupting effects of the Darkness while traveling between worlds with their Keyblade Gliders. However, this protection isn't perfect, as Terra still gets bodyjacked by Xehanort even though he manages to activate his armour right before Xehanort's heart reaches him.
- Invisibility: The "Vanish" command makes them, well, vanish from sight.
- I Shall Taunt You: The "Taunt" command, which causes nearby enemies to attack only the user. Not very useful in the main game, since you usually fight solo (and thus the enemy will always target you anyway), but it can be helpful in multiplayer. Due to the lack of multiplayer it was removed entirely from the 2.5 version of the game.
- Laser Blade:
- Terra and Aqua's Blade Charge command style covers their Keyblades in massive cloaks of energy for this effect.
- Ven's Wingblade command style gives him six shorter light blades to work with, though he swings them two at a time and controls the rest using magic.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: In the early game of Birth By Sleep, Terra excels due to his powerhouse attacks that let him effortlessly crush mobs of normal enemies, and his starting Form Change powers his attacks up even more and makes them hit quicker. Aqua, meanwhile, has weak Keyblade strikes and is reliant on spell commands to deal decent damage, which at this point are slow to recharge and don't deal much damage. But in the late game and against the Mysterious Figure and the Mirage Arena fights, Terra struggles because he has the worst dodge and block commands of the trio, and his high power isn't so great now as to offer an appreciable advantage over the others, while Aqua will have a variety of spells to take on either bosses or mobs of normal enemies, and her stronger Form Changes patch up her subpar physical attacks. Ventus stays fairly in the middle of the two throughout the game and ends up being able to use a mixture of physical and magical abilities with decent power and utility.
- Magic Knight: They each have great aptitude with both Keyblade combat and magic, Terra and Ven more with the Keyblade and Aqua with magic.
- Magic Missile Storm: Meteor Shower, launching a series of star-like projectiles at the target. Using the right timing can cause more meteors to fall. Several Shotlocks are like this, but Meteor Shower by far has the highest number of projectiles.
- Morph Weapon: They can each transform their Keyblade into a glider for travel between worlds. Terra also transforms his into a cannon for his Ultima Cannon attack. As the Lingering Will in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix +, he ups the ante with additional forms like a whip and a bow and arrow. Notably, the trio was doing this nine years before it was a gameplay mechanic in III.
- Musical Assassin: The Rhythm Mixer command style exclusive to Final Mix has them spin and fly through the air to attack with dance-like attacks, and create a trio of symbols and beat them to send out soundwaves as a finisher.
- Mysterious Past: Ven remembers some of his during the game, specifically when he was Master Xehanort's student and had his heart extracted to create Vanitas but that only goes back four years, when we see Terra and Aqua were already in training with Eraqus; their lives before this point are a blank slate. To make things even more confusing, Ven appears in Kingdom Hearts χ, which takes place hundreds if not thousands of years before Birth by Sleep.
- Nice Guy: All three of them are generally kind, selfless people who will always help and protect those who need it.
- Older Than They Look: As of III, Terra's body bereft of his heart did not aged to the 30 year old Xemnas but returned to his regular 20 year old self when he was recompleted again; Ventus, because his heart is sleeping inside Sora; and Aqua, because the weird physics of the Realm of Darkness means she spends a lot shorter time inside than outside. A visual shorthand is Lea/Axel, who is Ven's equal in Birth by Sleep, yet he eventually grows up into a tall, fine young man, whereas Ven does not.
- Original Generation: Before the Destiny Island trio took up the call of adventure, it fell to these three to defend the Realm of Light from Xehanort's schemes.
- Parental Abandonment: The Destiny Island kids have Invisible Parents. These guys have no parental figures at all besides Master Eraqus, and their lives before their training are a complete mystery.
- The Power of Friendship: As usual with the series. It also allows Aqua to smash the Keyblade equivalent of Excalibur by turning her own into a lightsaber of friendship. It gives Ven the power to leech Vanitas's abilities off of him and use them to defeat Vanitas, and it gives Terra the ability to control his own armor even after his heart and body have been taken by the big bad. Finally, it allows Ven (who's currently comatose) and Terra (who's currently trapped in his own body while another controls it) to magically transport their Keyblades to the realm of darkness to one-shot Darksides and save Aqua while also giving her the will to live again.
- Gameplay-wise, D-Links are basically the invoking of The Power Of Friendship, in which characters tap into the powers of characters they've interacted with. Most of these actually involve friendship (Experiment 626, Zack and Mickey) while others a bit less so (Maleficent for Terra; Vanitas for Ven).
- Ret-Gone: Can weaponize this in the form of the "Warp" command, which takes the target from the battle completely, but also erases any rewards that might come of it.
- Similar Squad: For the Destiny Islands Trio. Terra acts like Riku, Ven like Sora, and Aqua like Kairi. Ven also looks like Sora's Nobody, Roxas (though it's really the other way around as Roxas looks like Ventus because of Ventus's connection to Sora), and Aqua looks like an older version of Kairi. This is played with more later on when Ven and Aqua effectively switch roles; Ven has a heart of pure light that makes him critical to Xehanort's plans, just like Kairi, while Aqua ends up being The Hero of the game and finishes what Terra and Ven started in the individual worlds, usually by beating the Disney villains that are responsible for the conflicts that happen.
- Space Cops: Terra, Aqua, and Ventus are all Keyblade wielders, which automatically makes them this category. The trio attempts to protect other worlds from The Unversed and try to figure out what's causing them to appear. They try to protect the Realm Of Light from Xehanort's schemes.
- Speed, Smarts and Strength: They play like this - Ventus relies on high speed movements and moving around the enemy attacks, Aqua is the intelligent mage that attacks with wide area magic, and Terra conquers oppositions with his sheer strength.
- Spellblade: For their Command Styles, they infuse their Keyblades with some sort of magic to power up their attacks.
- Status Effects: A part of their arsenal, with a special focus on "Stop" spells. Other spells cause "Poison", "Burn", "Paralyzed", "Blindness", "Confused", or "Frozen".
- Stuff Blowing Up: Has the "Mine" series of spells to create explosive traps. Aqua has exclusive access to Seeker Mine, which creates homing mines, while Terra has his Ultima Cannon.
- Super Mode: Command Styles, which boost offensive power and are activated when the command gauge fills. There are a few shared styles between them as well as unique ones.
- Theme Naming: Their names are Latin; Terra, Ventus, and Aqua, respectively mean Earth, Wind, and Water. It's reflected in their elemental themes, but also connects them to the original Destiny Islands Trio's Theme Naming with the Japanese words for land, sky, and sea.
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Like all Keyblade wielders, they can use Strike Raid to throw their Keyblades at foes.
- To Be a Master: All of them share a dream to become Keyblade Masters. The story of Birth By Sleep starts with Terra and Aqua taking the "Mark of Mastery" exam (before they even go on any world-saving adventures). Aqua passes, while Terra doesn't, and from then on his main goal is to redeem himself by finding Master Xehanort. What he doesn't know is that Xehanort sabotaged him in the first place.
- Took a Level in Badass: At the beginning of the game all three start with limited abilities and a scarce resource of spells, but towards the end, if properly developed, you can clearly see the clear distance between the beginning and the end of their development.
- Unwitting Pawn: All of them play right into Xehanort and Vanitas's hands. If it wasn't for The Power of Hate making Terra and The Power of Friendship making Aqua and Ven just a little bit stronger than anticipated, the villains' plans would have gone off without a hitch.
- Vague Age: Terra and Aqua seem to be in their late teens, possibly very early twenties, but it's unclear. At the least, they're each several years older than Ventus, who presumably is the same approximate age as Roxas and Sora during II (14-15) due to his physical resemblance to the former. This is not helped by a flashback where Master Xehanort brings Ventus to Eraqus, and the three of them use the same character models despite this scene being approximately four years in the past.note Word of God finally revealed their approximate ages after a couple years after Birth by Sleep was released — Terra is 20, Aqua is 18, and Ventus is 16.
- Wreathed in Flames: They have the Fire Surge and Fire Dash commands, which cloaks them in fire for a Dash Attack. Terra has a variant called Dark Haze, which uses Darkness instead of Fire. The Thunder Surge variant uses lightning instead.
