Characters / Kirby - Kirby

Kirby Main Character Index
Main Series: Heroes and Supporting Characters (Kirby | King Dedede | Meta Knight | Magolor) | Enemies (Major Recurring Enemies) | Recurring Bosses | Villainous Factions (Dark Matter | Another Dimension | Haltmann Works Company | Jambandran Religion | Beast Pack) | Other Major Antagonists | Other Bosses
Other Continuities: Kirby: Right Back at Ya! | Light Novel Characters

Kirby

Debut: Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy, 1992)

Voiced by: Makiko Ohmoto (all appearances since 1999), Mayumi Tanaka (Mario & Kirby Masterpiece Video, 1995), Taeko Kawata (Kirby's Adventure Drama CD, 1994)

"Hiii!"

Kirby, Kirby, Kirby, that's the name you should know!

Kirby is a young, pink alien from the Planet Popstar. Cheerful and carefree, he lives by his basic instincts, eating whenever he is hungry and sleeping as soon as he gets tired. However this childlike nature hides surprising strength and bravery that shows itself whenever his home is threatened. With a stretchy mouth and vacuum breath, he can consume anything including his enemies and he can absorb the abilities of certain things he has eaten.

This page is for tropes that apply to his counterpart from the games. For tropes that apply to his anime and light novel counterparts, go to the character pages for Kirby: Right Back at Ya! and Kirby (Light Novel).

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Kirby himself

• Adaptational Jerkass:
  • While he's still a friendly All-Loving Hero for the most part, the manga Kirby of the Stars: The Story of Dedede Who Lives In Pupupu and by extension, Kirby Manga Mania has Kirby be far more prone to selfish behavior, ranging from cheating against Dedede in an election to rule Dream Land, to willingly helping a burglar rob others' homes, even knocking the homeowners out if they're about to notice them.
  • There's also Kirby's Avalanche; he's still heroic, but here he acts as a snarky, sarcastic Mascot with Attitude who taunts his opponents, a far cry from his usual friendly Cheerful Child self from the main games.
• All-Loving Hero: Downplayed; Kirby is nice, caring, and perfectly willing to forgive his enemies if they desire to reform; if one chooses to refuse his offer of redemption, he will end you.
• Adorable Abomination: Kirby is a small, adorably plushy alien with a Cannibalism Superpower and borderline inexplicable amounts of strength, and is capable of influencing Void, an omnipresent force of primordial chaos.
• Ambiguous Gender: Although localized with masculine pronouns, Kirby's gender is generally seen as more androgynous in the original Japanese, likely in order to better appeal to boys and girls in that market. Kirby dresses up as Kyary Pamyu Pamyu in the 2014 New Nintendo 3DS artwork and an Empress doll in the 2017 Hinamatsuri artwork, and is depicted alongside both the girls' and the boys' groups in the 2018 Valentine's Day and 2019 White Day art, respectively. This also happens in the games, with the more recent Kirby Fighters and Team Kirby Clash spinoffs having alternate costumes with gendered characteristics such as the Magical Girl outfit. It should be noted that Kirby prefers the first-person pronoun boku in the few speaking occasions and is usually said to be referred to as -kun by other characters such as Ado/Adeleine, which are typically identifiers for a young male in Japanese speech (though can also apply to the tomboy archtype); however, even Masahiro Sakurai once teased that Kirby could actually be female, and Japanese sources, including the 20th Anniversary book Pupupu Taizen and Makiko Ohmoto, have stated that Kirby's true sex is unknown.
• Ambiguously Related:
  • The final boss and epilogue of Star Allies very heavily implies that Kirby has some sort of connection to Void Termina and, by extension, Dark Matter, but no clear cut answers are ever given. Later info provided implies that all of them are potential forms that Void can adopt, making them somewhat related.
  • The Reveal in Meta Knight's fight in Kirby's Adventure seems to have been intended to confirm that they're of the same species, but Divergent Character Evolution as soon as MK's second appearance put a certain amount of doubt on the idea. Similarly, Galacta Knight and Morpho Knight at the very least look very similar to both of them, but any further connection is theoretical at best.
• Angry Eyebrows: He doesn't just sport these on the boxart either. Kirby will commonly adopt this expression when he's had enough and it's time to get serious.
  • In some of the games since Kirby's Return to Dream Land, there'll be times where, after Kirby hops on a Warp Star, he'll look at the screen with such brows and a determined nod before the star brings him to his next destination.
  • Kirby: Triple Deluxe has him briefly sporting one in Hypernova form right before he vaporizes Queen Sectonia with her own reflected Wave-Motion Gun.
  • "Your people have unfortunately been identified as... obstacles." You should not have said that, Susie.
  • He also uses this expression in Kirby Star Allies when he's fighting on the Star Allies Sparkler against Void Termina.
• Badass Adorable: Don't let his cute appearance fool you. He fights tyrannical despots and vicious monsters on a regular basis, and he (in some cases, literally) eats Eldritch Abominations for breakfast, many of which would have made countless other heroes weep with fear. Planet Robobot has a reality-warping omnicidal AI struggle to try to calculate his power level before settling for listing it as infinite. His mere walk in 3D games is pure badass, especially when he's carrying something. Star Allies has him kill Void Termina in a Beam-O-War with an energy beam made from The Power of Love itself.
• Bad Powers, Good People: Characters with a Cannibalism Superpower aren't usually part of the heroes, and even rarer are heroic characters that treat such an ability casually as a simple way of life. But despite eating living beings and assimilating their abilities being his entire powerset, Kirby is still a sweet and friendly guy who's always up for helping whenever a crisis occurs, and has close friendships with numerous characters, including former enemies. It helps that, barring rare instances of Deader than Dead, none of the characters permanently stay dead, with implications that almost every boss has a form of Resurrective Immortality, since every successive mini-boss and recurring boss description talks as if they're the same character each time, with some like Kracko outright confirming their cases, so outside rivalries and working for villains, him eating them causes no hard feelings. It's even suggested that normal enemies, even ones that were swallowed, don't really die, since they'll reappear in the exact spot they were in if the player backtracks... but only if they were defeated in some way. In short, Kirby is pretty much what you get if you gave a vorarephile the status, power, and mentality of The Chosen One.
• Barbarian Long Hair: Wild Hammer provides Kirby with incredibly scruffy and rugged-looking hair that covers up the entirety of his back. Although Wild Bonkers' hair is around his head, it's justified for Kirby to possess this type of hairstyle as he's 8 inches in height.
• Be the Ball: Kirby is forcibly transformed into a ball in Canvas Curse that you have to guide around. Kirby also learns in Rainbow Curse how to tuck his arms and legs into his body in order to willingly become a ball, which also can be guided around. Earlier on, he also had the Ball power from Kirby's Adventure, which lets him change into and function as a Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Villains would last a lot longer if they just left Kirby and Popstar alone. Unfortunately, Popstar is a Weirdness Magnet.
• Big Eater: Kirby loves to eat and it fits his abilities too. In Gourmet Race in Kirby Super Star, he even races against his equally gluttonous rival King Dedede to see who can eat more.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Not only is his tummy a Pocket Dimension, but Kirby Mass Attack reveals that his heart is a star.
• Black Bead Eyes: In earlier appearances. He now has dark blue irises, but his eyes are still bead-like, to the extent that Kirby's Epic Yarn outright makes them beads.
• Black-Hole Belly: The current page picture for the trope. Kirby can inhale things larger than himself as his mouth stretches to fit them. However, he's unable to inhale boss-sized foes, and mini-bosses must be KOed before they can be inhaled^note in the anime, Meta Knight explains that Kirby can't inhale excessively large or heavy objects. The Hypernova ability from Kirby: Triple Deluxe makes this pretty much literal.
• Blush Sticker: Kirby's are permanent.
• Blow You Away: After inhaling a gulp of air to fly, Kirby can release the compressed air held in his mouth to damage a foe in front of him. It's pretty weak, unable to damage most bosses and mid-bosses, serving primarily as an Emergency Weapon.
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: In the "Kirby of the Stars ~ Manpuku Pupupu Fantasy" comedy manga, Kirby is usually the Boke to King Dedede's Tsukkomi.
• Breath Weapon: After consuming a Mint Leaf (Sweet Potato in the Japanese version) in Kirby's Dream Land, he'll puff out continuous Air Bullets from his mouth for a temporary usage. If he ever dares to eat the scorchingly hot Superspicy Curry, it gives Kirby the ability to launch an array of Fireballs out of his gullet. Fittingly enough, you can stop Kirby from shooting fireballs by jumping into water.
• Butt-Monkey: Most cinematics not related to the plot involve Kirby getting into some kind of trouble. Case in point, the level title cards in Dream Land and Adventure, and the blooper reel in Super Star Ultra.
• Can't Shift While Shifted:
  • In games where Power Copying by inhaling enemies is available, Kirby usually can't do this when already having a copied ability, so he would need to discard it if he wants to get another one.
  • Kirby's appearance in all Super Smash Bros. games, where the button for "Inhale" ability for acquiring copy targets is used for the neutral B-moves of copied opponents, with power discarding needed to revert to Inhale.
• Captain Crash: Every flight on the Warp Star ends with it colliding with the ground or being destroyed in some form.
• Cartoon Creature: The name of Kirby's (and presumably Meta's and Galacta's) species is never revealed. The closest we ever get are endearing descriptions like "Puffball", "Marshmallow", and "Balloon".
• Character Catchphrase: Two: "Hiii!" and "Poyo!". The latter was introduced and primarily used in the anime, though it's also heard in Kirby's Epic Yarn, Kirby Mass Attack, and Kirby and the Rainbow Curse.
• Cheerful Child: His cheerful and innocent personality contrasts amusingly with his powers, making it easy for foes to dismiss him as Just a Kid.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Has shades of this, as shown in Kirby 64 and Return to Dream Land where his immediate reaction to finding out someone's problem is to offer his aid to them.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He's a happy-minded individual and always thinks of eating and sleeping, to the point where in Kirby: Squeak Squad, where Kirby only saves the world because his cake is missing.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He's a pink puffball who acts like a child and is often subject to slapstick. Doesn't stop him from being one of the most badass and destructive characters in all of gaming, with him killing gods and other sorts of Eldritch Abominations on a regular basis.
• Cute Little Fangs: He has a right one in "Kirby of the Stars Moretsu Pupupu Hour!"
• The Cutie: Just look at him! His large innocent eyes, portly physique, and cheerful personality, makes him absolutely adorable. It really shows in cutscenes, where during peaceful moments he exhibits child-like wonder and happiness that provide calming cuteness.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Star Allies heavily implies that Kirby is an incarnation of Void, whose other reincarnations tend to be Eldritch Abominations or beings of darkness and malice. The difference with Kirby, however, is that he was born from positive emotions such as love and compassion rather than negative emotions such as hatred and envy, making him a particularly bright variant of The Sacred Darkness.
• Deathbringer the Adorable: According to Shigeru Miyamoto, he was named Kirby because of the amusing contrast between such a manly name and his cute appearance.
• Death Glare: Yes, you read that right.
  • Kirby shoots a hilarious one◊ at the camera when the tutorial calls him a "jolly fellow" in Super Star.
  • He also does this in both Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot, to Queen Sectonia and to Susie respectively.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Kirby, the titular protagonist of the series, is implied to be much more powerful than he lets on. He's the only one who can stand up to many of the evil abominations that threaten Dream Land. Kirby: Squeak Squad shows that the inside of his body is a Stomach of Holding where he converts the things he swallows into bubbles to be used later.
• Dinner Deformation: Kirby weaponizes this trope in Kirby and the Forgotten Land. After falling through a mysterious vortex, Kirby gains the Mouthful Mode ability which allows him to inhale large objects. Instead of swallowing them like he would with enemies, Kirby's body takes the shape of the object and he becomes able to manipulate the object for uses such as driving (if he inhaled a car), ground pounding (if he inhaled a cone), and shooting soda cans (if he inhaled a soda dispenser).
• Discard and Draw: The limitation of Kirby's Copy Ability. He can only use one Ability at a time and must discard his current ability if he wishes to obtain a new one.
• The Ditz: Despite his immense power, Kirby is ridiculously gullible and simple-minded, often thinking of nothing more than food and helping anyone he comes across, without considering any ulterior motives or potential consequences. Possibly justified, as Kirby is implied to be a young child, so being naïve (and constantly hungry) is somewhat expected.
• Does Not Like Spam: While Kirby can and will eat almost anything, his most consistently disliked "food" is the caterpillar-like Capillers, which always damage him when eaten. Swallowing the Mariel enemy in Dream Land 3 and Kirby 64 will also damage him.
• Dreadful Musician: Kirby loves to sing. Unfortunately, he is completely tone deaf, not to mention loud, to the extent that it becomes a screen-clearing Smart Bomb attack. The early games' description for the Mike copy power and the microphone item from the first game state that Kirby is at least aware that he is not a good singer.
• Dub Name Change: Earlier Kirby games in the west referred to his basic ability as "Star Spit", but with the series' renaissance period from Return to Dream Land onward, localizations began using the more accurate translation of "Star Bullet", which puts a bit more respect and gravitas on Kirby's standard attack method.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: When selecting Soul Melter EX difficulty in The Ultimate Choice, Kirby is given blank eyes, looking similar to Void Termina's core's "main" face.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Two Kirbys appear in the opening of Arcana, one full month prior to Kirby's Dream Land.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: Early on, Kirby had completely black eyes instead of blue eyes and his blush stickers were instead a simplistic blush. His face compared to his body was also smaller back then, making him look puffier and rounder. This design is even available as an unlockable update bonus in Kirby Star Allies.
• Eating the Enemy: Although Kirby's heroic, he's certainly not above eating any foe unlucky enough to get in his way.
• Eldritch Abomination: On top of being an extraordinarily powerful creature capable of swallowing almost anything and slaying literal gods, Star Allies takes this a step further and implies that Kirby is an incarnation of Void, the progenitor of Dark Matter. Luckily, Kirby is a rare unambiguously heroic example, as he's far too kind and simpleminded to even consider using his potentially cataclysmic powers for evil.
• Establishing Character Moment: Forgotten Land gives him one for newcomers as he's riding around Planet Popstar on a Warp Star and sees the mysterious portal sucking everything into it. After a brief look of shock, his face changes to a Let's Get Dangerous! expression and rides the Warp Star towards the portal.
• Evil Counterpart: Subverted. In The Amazing Mirror, Shadow Kirby actually just wants to protect the Mirror World, much like Kirby to Dream Land. In Triple Deluxe's Kirby Fighters mode, he's the Final Boss, and is the final boss of Kirby Fighters 2's Single-Handed Mode.
• Exotic Eye Designs: In Star Allies, Kirby now has what looks like starry vistas in the blue part of his eyes.
• Exposed Extraterrestrials: He sometimes wears hats, masks, and even coats, but he never wears any form of pants.
• Extreme Omnivore: There are a select few things he will not eat, such as the "fuzzy" caterpillars from Twin Woods, but for the most part, he is fine with swallowing anything he can get into his mouth.
• Famed In-Story: According to Magolor, Kirby is known as "everyone's hero", who beats the bad guys, helps those in need, and does incredible things all over the universe. It's unclear whether he was just saying this to manipulate Kirby, though.
• Fingerless Hands: Kirby is able to wield swords, hammers, umbrellas, and still more weaponry with his stubby little arms.
• Flight: Kirby can fly by sucking in air and flapping his arms. It's not very fast, though, so he uses his Warp Star when he needs to travel quickly.
• Goggles Do Nothing: While riding on Wheelie Rider or Robobot Armor, he wears a helmet with goggles, but he doesn't put the goggles on his eyes.
• Good Is Not Soft: Ironically, his general behavior in the games indicates something like this. If he thinks someone's up to no good, he won't hesitate to beat them up, and if somebody refuses his offer of redemption and friendship even after having their butt kicked, then they might as well give a sorrowful goodbye not just to their life, but to their very soul.
• Hard Head: He can crush blocks and damage minor enemies above him simply by jumping beneath them. He can also damage enemies by falling headfirst (i.e after a long jump).
• Hat of Power: Inverted, in that the power creates the hat. Starting from Kirby Super Star and consistently since Nightmare in Dream Land, Kirby gets a specially-themed hat when copying an ability, though it's not until Nightmare in Dream Land that the hats become a staple. Since then, the ability hats evolve in different ways in multiple games. In Team Kirby Clash Deluxe, Super Kirby Clash, and Kirby and the Forgotten Land, this is played straight, with more elaborate hats giving Kirby greater power. In Kirby Fighters Deluxe, Kirby Battle Royale, and Kirby Fighters 2, Kirby can get alternate hats for his abilities, which are mostly cosmetic.
• Hero Protagonist: He's the main character and the one saving the day in all of the games.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Sword appears to be one of Kirby's go-to abilities, given that he starts off with it by default in Kirby Battle Royale and the Kirby Clash games (though it can be swapped for one of the other roles in that one). It is also one of only three abilities (the others being Bomb and Staff) available at the start of Kirby Fighters 2.
• Heroic Mime: In most games, he can't manage more than a "Hi!" or a "Poyo!" He does speak in Epic Yarn, but only with narration. In earlier games, he narrated the instruction manual to the player, and in the Game Boy Advance games, the pause screen descriptions for his Copy Abilities is delivered in first person. In Avalanche, Kirby speaks in full sentences when delivering trash-talk to his opponents before a match. He also sometimes calls his attacks with certain copy abilities, especially in Super Smash Bros..
• In-Series Nickname: In Japanese, Chinese and Korean: Hoshi no Kirby/Xīng Zhī Kǎbǐ/Byeorui Keobi ("Kirby of the Stars").
• Inexplicably Awesome: It's a mystery as to what Kirby is or where he came from, or why he has his powers.
• Innocent Blue Eyes: His blue Black Bead Eyes help clue in his innocent and naive nature.
• Instant Expert: His Copy Ability lets him learn any ability near instantaneously. He even shows this on occasion without his Copy Abilities. In Planet Robobot, despite never seeing the Robobot Armor before, he's able to quickly get the hang of piloting it.
• Jumped at the Call: When a threat comes to Planet Popstar, or a stranger is in need, Kirby will always be there to help.
• Kid Hero:
  • His age is never specifically stated in the games, but the first game's instruction manual refers to him as a "little boy". This and his high-pitched voice and childish mannerisms suggests he's young.
  • Despite typically appearing young, a cancelled game called Kid Kirby for the SNES or N64 would have been about Kirby as a child, which would have suggested his current age is at least a teenager.
• Killer Rabbit: Kirby's fighting skills contrast greatly with his cute appearance.
• Kindhearted Simpleton: Kirby is a very simple-minded being: he enjoys eating food and helping others, no matter the cost.
• Lost Food Grievance: Stealing Kirby's food is a pretty easy way to piss him off. In the first game he volunteers to get the food back that King Dedede stole and in Squeak Squad the pursuit of his strawberry shortcake, stolen by the titular mice, remains his primary motivation in spite of everything else happening around him. In Rainbow Curse, the intro shows Kirby so distraught over his de-colored apple, Elline has to smack him to turn his focus over to the real problem. Once that's done, Kirby can't help but gaze longfully at his apple again, which implies one of his motivations to save Popstar is so he can eat again.
• Luminescent Blush: In the Golden Ending of Crystal Shards, Kirby's whole face goes bright red after Ribbon kisses him.
• Made of Iron: The games don't lie, he's one tough creampuff. Kirby can be squashed, electrocuted, knocked into the fourth wall, sucked into a black hole. He'll take damage, but he'll bounce back like it was nothing. The finale of Kirby and the Forgotten Land has him suck up an entire semi-truck, the biggest object he's sucked up in the game. Despite how uncomfortable it looks, the Gotcha figurine for it states that Kirby seems to be completely fine.
• Me's a Crowd:
  • Because of the events of the Amazing Mirror, there are at least three other versions of Kirby running around. Provides an in-universe justification for why there's multiple Kirby's that can be played at the same time in future games.
  • During Mass Attack, the Big Bad turns the one normal sized Kirby into 10 much smaller ones, who then have to work together. Unlike Amazing Mirror, they're suggested to still have some sort of inate connection.
• Mr. Vice Guy: He has a bit of a gluttony problem, though obviously not to the same degree as King Dedede.
• Nice Guy: Kirby is by-far the nicest guy you could ever meet. The tutorial in Super Star even calls him a "jolly fellow", which he seems to resent.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Kirby's Adventure, Kirby fights King Dedede and his minions to get the Star Rod back, thinking Dedede was acting selfishly by breaking the Star Rod and causing Dream Land to be unable to dream or have restful sleep. Kirby, convinced that Dedede is the bad guy, collects the Star Rod's pieces and then puts it into the Fountain of Dreams, which unwittingly releases Nightmare, who Dedede was trying to keep from being unleashed. In the end, after Kirby defeats Nightmare, it's revealed that Dedede did what he did for good intentions (although the part about bathing in the fountain is quite questionable, to say the least).
• The Noseless: Though like with his Fingerless Hands, it does not preclude him doing things that require one. He sneezes in game cutscenes, wipes his nose in imitation of Knuckle Joe (who also doesn't have a nose) in the anime, and snorts up an entire Wapod in the manga.
• No-Sell: The description for Morpho Knight Sword in Forgotten Land mentions that said weapon contains the dangerous power of its host... and that for Kirby, handling this power is "a breeze". This may be related to how the butterfly representing Morpho Knight has often landed on Kirby with no lasting harm.
• One-Man Army: While Kirby excels with the help of his friends, he can certainly hold his own in a serious one-on-one battle, as Meta Knight, Galacta Knight, and many a Soul-boss can attest to.
• One-Track-Minded Hunger: Kirby spends the majority of Kirby: Squeak Squad in pursuit of his stolen strawberry shortcake, completely oblivious of what's going on around him. He's at least better at it in Rainbow Curse and Battle Royale, although food is still his primary motivations there.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Considering how cheerful he normally acts, you know shit's about to get real when he gives a Death Glare to Queen Sectonia right before he blasts her away with her Wave-Motion Gun. He does a similar Death Glare to Susie when her words offend him.
• Out-of-Character Moment: In Avalanche, he's often sarcastic and rude to his opponents.
• Pocket Dimension: His stomach is implied to be one in the anime. Squeak Squad uses this as a gameplay mechanic, letting you store spare copy abilities and items for later in a starry void within his stomach.
• Power Copying: Starting with Kirby's Adventure, Kirby is able to absorb the powers of certain enemies he eats.
• Protagonist Title: He is the protagonist of his eponymous series.
• Red Baron: According to The Arena's description, Kirby is also called the "Pink Wonder" (in Super Star), the "pink terror" (in Ultra), or even the Pink Demon (in Planet Robobot).
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Kirby's the red to Meta Knight's blue, it's even reflected in their colors. Kirby; pink with red feet is young, cheerful, innocent and (at times) impulsive, while Meta Knight; blue with purple feet is cold, calculating and serious. He can also be considered the red to Bandana Waddle Dee's blue.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Oversized head? He is all head. Big, pink colored, stubby limbs, a big smile, large eyes… no fur, but the chubbiness and softness more than makes up for it.
• Ship Tease: With ChuChu in Dream Land 3 and Ribbon in Kirby 64.
• Showy Invincible Hero: There's no question Kirby will win. The only questions are how he wins, how cool it looks, and how much fun the player will have.
• Signature Move: His Inhale ability as well as copying his enemy's powers.
• Silent Snarker: In Super Star, he gives the camera an annoyed look when the Tutorial calls him "A pretty jolly fellow".
• Skilled, but Naive: He's one of the strongest people in Dream Land in spite of still being a child; and there are hints that he has the potential to become even stronger as he ages. However, being young means that he's rather impulsive and easily manipulated by smarter villains.
• Sky Surfing: Kirby's Warpstar lets him do this. It can move at warp speed and he generally uses it whenever he needs to travel long distances quickly. He's not very good at landing it, though.
• Slide Attack: One of his basic moves is a quick sliding kick. It works as an attack and for an evasive maneuver. In the later games, this also helps Kirby destroy things while holding an item.
• Sleepyhead: He's described as one, and indeed, the games occasionally start with him in the middle of a nap when disaster strikes. In fact, one of his possible abilities is the Sleep ability, which puts Kirby to sleep and potentially leaves him a sitting duck. Kirby: Squeak Squad lets you augment this with Resting Recovery upon finding a certain Ability Scroll, while later games starting with Kirby's Return to Dream Land give you a way to wake Kirby up sooner. In Kirby Battle Royale, Sleep Kirby was added into the game and since this is a fighting game, he was revamped into a sleep walker who fights with a pillow.
• Spanner in the Works: Whenever Kirby's not being an Unwitting Pawn, he routinely enters the villain's scheme as an unintended variable. Taking it even further, barring Milky Way Wishes and the reappearances of Dark Matter where he knows full well how dangerous it and Zero are, Kirby himself never enters an adventure intending to end up in some epic clash to save the galaxy^note He enters the scene just because his peace has been disturbed and he'd like to know why, it just sort of ends up happening every time.
• Star Power: Kirby's mainly powered with the power of the stars. His most basic attack will make him spit stars at his opponents. Then there's the Star Rod, Starship, Triple Star (although it was Daroach's), Robobot Halberd Mode's Planet Buster, Friend Star and Star Allies Sparkler, all of them utilizing the star power in their own ways. Also the Sparkling Stars in Dream Land and the Milky Way Wishes in Super Star (the latter forms the Starship) and the Warp Stars that he uses to move around, even into space. Official artwork starting from Star Allies would show that there is even a starry expanse in his eyes. He isn't the "Kirby of the Stars" for nothing.
• Super-Empowering: Given the fact that, when he uses Mouthful Mode on various abandoned vehicles and other machinery, he's able to use them not only fully-powered but with enhanced capabilities (such as nitro boosts for the vehicles), it's implied that he passively generates an infinite amount of energy within his body, and the dimensional weirdness involved in gaining Mouthful Mode allowed him to imbue that "infinite power" into objects he half-swallows.
• Superpower Lottery: On his own, Kirby's pretty capable and relatively skilled, but when utilizing his signature power, the sky's the limit. Kirby's Power Copying (especially in later games) isn't just recreating a single move or technique — it is instant, total cognition of his ability and all of its applicable utilities; no training or learning required, automatic mastery. Kirby can quite literally do anything, with anything, from anything in any fashion. The only thing keeping it from being a Story-Breaker Power is that Kirby can only use one of these powers at a time, but even then, some games such as Squeak Squad and Star Allies have Kirby be able to combine his Copy Abilities making them stronger.
• Super Spit: His basic ability, Star Bullet, is him spitting out the inhaled enemy/debris/floating stars out as a projectile attack. It's moderately strong against bosses (stronger than many Copy Ability attacks), especially if Kirby manages to inhale two or more things before the spit.
• Super-Strength: Kirby displays this in both his base form and his various Copy Abilities. He's capable of cracking planets with his fists as Fighter Kirby, can swing giant swords and hammers with ease, and in the anime he chucked a monster clear out of orbit and into a black hole as Throw Kirby, and launches a monster to the sun and back on a frying pan.
• Super-Toughness: His soft, rubbery body is surprisingly durable in a fight allowing him to take all manner of punishment. Across the games, he's been flattened, blasted by missiles and cannonballs, burned by jet flames, DBZ-level Wave Motion Guns and planet-eclipsing explosions, sucked into black holes and more, yet he always comes bouncing back. Fittingly, the U.S. commercials for Kirby's Adventure and Kirby Super Star Ultra label him as "One Tough Creampuff" and "A Super Tough Pink Puff", respectively.
• Swiss-Army Hero: He has a different form for each of his Copy Abilities complete with their own hat. In Epic Yarn and Rainbow Curse, he instead has unique transformations that lets Kirby do various things in their respective games whilst Forgotten Land has "Mouthful Mode" that allows Kirby to transform into a given object without having to discard his current Copy Ability.
• Sympathy for the Devil:
  • Kirby has a longstanding history of easily forgiving enemies who have decided to ease off the bad deeds. Heck, he doesn't even seem aware that King Dedede fiercely begrudges him most of the time.
  • Back in Super Star, Meta Knight went ballistic and attempted to send Kirby down with the Halberd after undoing his plans to take charge of Dream Land. Nowadays, they're somewhere between rivals and friends outright.
  • When Magolor returns in Kirby's Dream Collection after trying to kill Kirby and friends, having manipulated them for his own ends, with no ill intent, it's essentially water under the bridge.
  • Even after everything Susie has done, Kirby is still worried about her when she gets knocked out by Star Dream in Planet Robobot.
  • Despite Marx using Kirby and wishing to rule Popstar in, then trying to get rid of Kirby as a loose end, Kirby lets him join up in Star Allies as a Dream Friend. It may have something to do with Marx's love of food and people who give it to him, according to a Pause screen blurb.
• Third-Person Person: A constant Verbal Tic that he has in the Kirby's Adventure CD Drama is that he'll excitedly blurt out his name a majority of the time.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Tomatoes, especially Maxim Tomatoes which fully heal Kirby's HP, and the Nightmare In Dream Land manual notes that Kirby also likes them because they're round and colorful like him. He's also incredibly fond of cake, to the point where the plots of at least three different games have revolved around him (and Bandanna Waddle Dee, in the second case) trying to obtain it.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness:
  • In Kirby's Adventure, this is the cause of Kirby's Nice Job Breaking It, Hero above.
  • In the Subspace Emissary of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, at one point, he sees King Dedede with the cargo of captured heroes and gives chase, not bothering to wait for the princess accompanying him who becomes separated accidentally allowing a chance for her to be kidnapped by Bowser.
• Transformation Sequence: Whenever he copies an ability, although it's quicker than most examples. It's made more elaborate in the anime, as well as with the Super Abilities in Return to Dream Land. A variant is for the Friend Abilities in Star Allies, especially the ones that mix an element into a weapon ability.
• Trash Talk: Yes, you read that right. In Kirby's Avalanche he gives his opponent a witty insult before every match.
• Unwitting Pawn: Kirby's naivete makes it easy for others to play him like a fiddle:
  • In Super Star's Milky Way Wishes, Marx tells Kirby to use Nova to stop the sun and moon from fighting each other. Kirby gathers the energy to summon Nova, only for his wish to be stolen at the last second by Marx (who was the cause of the sun and moon's fighting in the first place).
  • In Return to Dream Land, Magolor tricks Kirby into defeating a dragon named Landia to obtain the Master Crown for him, Magolor wants to use it to try and take over the universe and Landia was the only thing keeping him from doing so.
  • In Planet Robobot, Kirby's victory over Haltmann is used by Susie as an opportunity to steal Star Dream from him, with Kirby none the wiser. That plan goes out the window when Star Dream goes rogue, however.
• Vacuum Mouth: His signature "Inhale" ability.
• Villain Killer: Even among four of these, Kirby stands out. He has fought numerous enemies and has in fact killed several of them, many times by himself. Among the monstrous foes he's fought include evil star-shaped monsters that can possess people, a malevolent monster that can take a form that looks like Kirby himself, an evil witch that turned Kirby into a sphere and cursed the land to resemble paintings, and a fiery eyeball wearing a knight's armor that wanted to conquer the mirror dimension.
• Waddling Head: Kirby and his species. Also a common trait of many creatures on the Planet Popstar.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: In certain multiplayer games like Kirby Super Star and Return To Dream Land, Kirby's allies can suffer a lost life and the game will continue. If Kirby loses a life, the game resets back to the last checkpoint.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Among Kirby's new Mouthful Mode moves in Forgotten Land is the "Dome Mouth", an insanely situational technique where Kirby stretches his jaw over the top half of a spherical object and jostles it open. It's rarely used to open up pathways, and the secrets it unlocks are of modest quality, but it proves crucial in defeating Elfilis twice.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: According to a number of official sources, he's afraid of capillers, which damage him when inhaled. In the Super Star Ultra blooper reel, one falling on him while he's napping causes him to panic and faint.
• World's Best Warrior: He's been referred to as the greatest warrior in Popstar (with Meta Knight being the greatest in the galaxy, and Kirby being the greatest in the universe).
• You Are Who You Eat: Kirby takes this saying quite literally.
• Your Size May Vary: Kirby's height has been consistently given as 8 inches tall (20 cm), but in Kirby 64, he's only a few inches shorter than Adeleine, an average human girl. In Kirby's Dream Land 3, he stands at a similar height compared to Ado, while also standing higher than the knees of the 6-foot-tall Samus Aran, which would put him closer to 2 or 3 feet tall (somewhere between 60 or 90 cm). This is compounded by the fact that Kirby is larger in the Smash Bros. series than in his home series.

Kirby's Copy Abilities

Kirby has had a massive assortment of copy abilities over the years, each of them with several definable characteristics separate from Kirby himself. Here are the tropes relating to each ability.

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• Ability Mixing: Squeak Squad, Star Allies, and 64 allowed the combination of different abilities to make new ones sharing both traits. Squeak Squad allowed you to create Elemental Weapon abilities by mixing Bomb and Sword with the Elemental Powers, Star Allies expanded upon that by making all handheld-weapon-based abilities able to be imbued with each of the 5 Elemental Powers as well as some other specific combinations (like Stone and Ice making Curling Stone), and 64 allowed you to combine every ability with every other ability, including being able to mix two of the same ability.
• All Webbed Up: The Spider ability involves utilizing spider webs to attack and entrap enemies, with aspects of a Trap Master, as lingering webs will trap enemies that touch them, leaving them vulnerable to follow-up attacks. There are also attacks to use webbed-up enemies as weapons to attack other enemies, along with having a guard that encases Kirby in webbing and performs a Counterattack on any enemy that touches him in this state.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Smash ability gives Kirby access to his Composite Character moveset from Super Smash Bros., including Fighter's Vulcan Jab and Spin Kick, Cutter's Final Cutter, the Stone ability, Hammer's regular attacks, and Ninja's Air Drop, along with a somersault and Smash's Bubble Shield guard.
• Art Attacker: Artist allows Kirby to attack enemies with a variety of art-based abilities, similar to Adeleine, whether it's splattering enemies with paint or engaging in Art Initiates Life to create crude replicas of each of his allies or himself.
• Art Initiates Life: One of Artist's attacks involves bringing to life paintings of him, Bandana Waddle Dee, King Dedede, and Meta Knight. However, it's quite apparent that Kirby is a Terrible Artist, especially compared to Adeleine, as not only are his "art pieces" crudely done, they only last a short time before disappearing, unlike Adeleine's, which are near-perfect and last a while, especially her mount drawings that last until they take a hit.
• Attack Reflector: The Mirror ability is pretty much exactly what the name implies: while it does have offensive abilities (fairly decently damaging ones at that), its true value is that it can reflect attacks back at enemies. It can even be used to pretty effectively cheese some fights, such as Meta-Knight in Super Star.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Fighter ability is dedicated to granting Kirby access to Supernatural Martial Arts, including regular martial arts techniques along with Shoryuken and Kamehame Hadoken attacks.
• Battle Boomerang: The Cutter ability involves attacking with the boomerang-like blade produced by the hat, with it being throwable at enemies before being caught or letting it continue flying back to hit enemies behind you, or usable in a similar way to the Sword ability by holding it and slashing at enemies, even being able to slam it to produce a Sword Beam.
• Be the Ball: The Ball ability is all about this, allowing Kirby to transform into a bouncy ball, which utilizes momentum in order to harm enemies. Abilities like Metal also have turning into a ball as an attack.
• BFS: In addition to the Ultra Sword Limit Break from Return to Dream Land, Forgotten Land introduces the aptly named Gigant Sword upgrade that turns Kirby into a Mighty Glacier. Morpho Knight Sword also has a Charged Attack that takes cues from Ultra Sword by Sizeshifting the normal-sized blade into one four times as big as Kirby, only here it stays that way for a minute while massively boosting the damage of all slash attacks for the duration.
• Blow You Away:
  • Tornado is an ability that turns Kirby into a raging vortex of wind while active, blitzing around in an invulnerable state while damaging all enemies he comes in contact with. As a tradeoff, however, the only attack is both shortly lived and very difficult to control. Both of its ability upgrades in Forgotten Land boost the whirlwind duration to get more out of each use, with the addition of Fleur Tornado granting the more refined Dance Battler skills of Fleurina while Storm Tornado incorporates a little Shock and Awe by shooting out lightning while active.
  • The Cleaning ability is a limited example, as some of its attacks involve kicking up clouds of dust that damage enemies.
  • While its actual attributes are Feather Flechettes, Razor Wings, and Use Your Head, the Wing Ability is classified as doing air-elemental damage in Kirby Star Allies.
• Breath Weapon: A few of Kirby's abilities have breath attacks, such as Fire, Ice, and Poison. In fact, breath attacks were the only attacks of Fire and Ice in earlier games.
• Chef of Iron: The Cook ability grants a one-use attack which sucks in enemies and defeated mid-bosses and turns them into healing food items, with Star Allies also adding a charged version that damages all enemies onscreen. Meanwhile, the anime changes it up into a proper ability, where Kirby uses a Frying Pan of Doom in order to deflect attacks, boil/fry enemies, or instantly produce food.
• Composite Character: While not characters in the regular sense, several similar abilities across the series have been incorporated into singular movesets in many games, primarily in games with expanded movesets.
  • The Fire ability, which traditionally allows Kirby to breathe fire, would gain the attack of the Burning ability that let Kirby charge forward as a fireball.
  • The Ice ability, which originally only let Kirby expel icy breath, usually has the attack originally used by the Freeze ability, which let Kirby expel an icy field around him.
  • The Spark ability (which lets Kirby summon a field of electricity) and the Plasma ability (which let Kirby shoot chargeable amounts of energy) have occasionally been fused together, usually with the former’s name, giving Kirby the option of the electricity field or charging up electric blasts.
  • The Suplex ability is a fusion of the Backdrop and Throw abilities introduced in Kirby’s Adventure, having the former’s ability to slam opponents into the ground and the latter’s ability to use them as projectiles. The Wrestler ability in Kirby Fighters 2 is also a variant of Suplex with aspects of Fighter added in.
• Dishing Out Dirt: The Stone ability utilizes the creation of rock-based elemental Instant Armor for combat. While the primary application of it is turning Kirby into a near-invulnerable stone or statue, particularly in midair to crush enemies under his weight or sliding across the ground ramming into them, he's also capable of creating a Power Fist for use in a rocky Shoryuken.
• Deadly Disc: Cutter's ability upgrades turn its Battle Boomerang into circular spinning objects for constant cutting power, with Chakram Cutter having him dual wield chakrams that arc in semi-circles when returning to Kirby, while Buzz-Saw Cutter gives him a saw shooter where the blades will ricochet off walls while in flight.
• Deadly Doctor: The Doctor ability is a combination of this and Science Hero, utilizing various medical implements and some chemical concoctions in order to beat down enemies.
• Deadly Ringer: The Bell ability has Kirby use a pair of bells to fight, whether as a bludgeon or with the sound waves they create. He can also guard from damage using a giant bell as a shell.
• Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes: As a representation of being on the verge of passing out at the full command of the player, Deep Sleep gives Kirby constantly half-lidded eyes and a content smile.
• Elemental Weapon: Quite a few of the weapon-based abilities are able to enhance their attacks by being imbued with elemental power, the most common being Hammer's Hammer Flip move igniting itself to burn enemies. This really comes into play with games featuring Ability Mixing, though, where Squeak Squad lets you imbue Fire, Ice, and Spark into Sword and Bomb, while Star Allies lets you imbue any of the 5 elements into every present weapon Ability.
• Energy Bow: The regular charged attack with Archer when charged enough will instead shoot an energy arrow, which explodes when it hits something.
• Evolving Attack: Forgotten Land introduces Evolved Copy Abilities, which take regular abilities and upgrade their movesets, keeping the same qualities but amplifying their versatility and damage output.
• Extra-ore-dinary: The Metal ability turns Kirby's entire body solid metal, making him completely invulnerable to all normal enemies, along with hurting them by Collision Damage. As a trade-off, however, the ability makes him incredibly slow both on land and in air, and bosses are both immune to the Collision Damage and able to harm Kirby, making the two properly activated attacks the only method of damage.
• Eye Beams: The Laser ability utilizes a high-tech visor to shoot beams of pure energy, hurting enemies and lighting flammable objects on fire. Its first appearance in Adventure had it work as a Hand Blast instead, but all future games use the visor. Squeak Squad gave it the ability to be charged, producing a Wave-Motion Gun.
• Feather Flechettes: The Wing ability's base attack involves Kirby shooting his feathers out in front of him, dealing weak damage to enemies.
• Fighting Clown:
  • While in most games it's utterly useless, the Sleep ability gains a genuine combat-capable moveset in Battle Royale, and fittingly enough, it looks absolutely ridiculous. Kirby is implied to be Sleep Fighting with this moveset, his main method of attacking is to smack people with his pillow, he's able to weaponize his Snot Bubble as an exploding ranged attack, he has a Forced Sleep attack that involves invoking the normal version of Sleep on other fighters by slapping a nightcap on them, and he can invoke Resting Recovery by staying still for a bit. All the while, the ability deals some of the highest damage per attack out of the entire ability roster.
  • The Cleaning ability involves making a moveset out of cleaning supplies. Its first appearance included dusters, brooms, plungers, cloths, and water buckets, while its proper playable version sticks with brooms and water buckets, but also includes a vacuum cleaner. Its attacks include moving around and kicking up damaging dust, splashing around bucket water, utilizing the magical wind of a Flying Broomstick, and vacuuming up Friends to shoot back out as ammo.
  • The Circus ability is a near-literal example, given it's acquired from a clown-based enemy. It utilizes various circus-based implements in its attacks, such as somersaulting, fire-hoop jumping that temporarily sets Kirby himself on fire, potentially flaming baton juggling, trampoline acrobatics, and balloon art popping. All of which deals a decent amount of damage.
• Flaming Sword: A common Elemental Weapon in the series is taking the cutting skill of Sword and empowering it with the scorching heat of Fire. The first example comes from, oddly enough, the Burn-Cutter combo in 64 (Sword wasn't copyable in that game), which gives Kirby the ability to spit out endless fiery BFS's that turn him into a temporary Mighty Glacier and can be thrown with deadly precision, while the following examples in Squeak Squad and Star Allies involve enchanting the actual Sword ability with Fire, giving it the ability to more strongly hurt enemies and solve fire-based puzzles while retaining its regular versatility. Forgotten Land has its own, late-game Sword evolution that utilizes fire, in the form of Morpho Knight Sword, taking the Lightning Bruiser stats of Meta Knight Sword and bolstering it with powerful, scorching flames that just like Fire proper ignite enemies for some extra Damage Over Time.
• Flying Saucer: The UFO ability turns Kirby into one. It allows him to freely fly around without puffing up and attack enemies midair without falling, though he can't use ladders while it's active.^note In Planet Robobot, UFO Kirby can use ladders, but is unable to guard. It utilizes the attacks of Beam and Laser in its arsenal, with its laser attack being able to charge into an increasingly stronger Wave-Motion Gun. It also has an electrical Orbiting Particle Shield, a zigzagging Teleport Spam, and a Tractor Beam.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Several of the abilities have attacks that involve grabbing enemies and using them as an Improvised Weapon against other enemies, with the wrestling-focused abilities having a particular preference for this, since their movesets involve grabbing and throwing enemies.
• The Gunslinger: The Ranger ability allows Kirby to use a blunderbuss that shoots stars at a long distance, can be manually aimed, and also charged to fire a powerful shot. It can be upgraded to the Guns Akimbo Noble Ranger with fast firing rate, or the Space Ranger which causes a massive Sphere of Destruction on a fully-charged shot.
• Having a Blast: A number of abilities allow Kirby to rather… explosively deal with enemies:
  • Bomb allows Kirby to produce an infinite number of Cartoon Bombs, which can be thrown, rolled, or placed down, including on enemies' heads. It's somewhat unique in that the bombs can actually affect Kirby, with earlier games causing him to be damaged while later games harmlessly put him in an invulnerable daze. Its ability upgrades are designed to amplify its explosive effects, with Chain Bomb making the explosion stronger based on the number of bombs in a close space, while Homing Bomb both amplifies the strength based on numbers and makes them Homing Projectiles so that you don't need to be precise in placing or throwing them.
  • The Crash ability is a one-time use attack that creates a massive explosion that wipes out all enemies currently on the screen. In Forgotten Land, its ability upgrade Time Crash adds a Time Stands Still effect that can be extended by killing enemies utilizing the temporary Touch of Death aura granted after using it.
  • Missile turns Kirby into a... well, missile, with the missile being controllable in order to fly it into enemies, exploding and dealing major damage.
• Horn Attack: The Beetle ability is all about using its horn in various ways to attack enemies, whether it's slashing them up, skewering them before slamming or grinding them into the ground, or throwing the impaled bodies at other enemies.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Hammer is a recurring Copy Ability that lets Kirby attack with a wooden hammer whose head is roughly the same size as the protagonist's body. In Kirby's Return to Dream Land, it gets a Super variant called Grand Hammer, which can grow ridiculously large and send massive shockwaves across the screen.
• An Ice Person: Freeze and Ice are abilities that utilize chilling cold for attacking. Freeze simply creates an aura of cold that damages and freezes enemies that get close, while Ice has gained a number of attacks over the years, even assimilating Freeze as the dash attack, with other abilities being skating across the ground on literal ice skates, breathing a stream of cold air, encasing himself in solid ice, or sucking enemies up before spitting them out already frozen. Ice's ability upgrades Frosty Ice and Blizzard Ice instantly create frozen objects for kicking without needing to hit an enemy, along with Blizzard generating icicles as either a Spike Shooter or The Spiny.
• Improvised Weapon: Archer's dash attack has Kirby slashing at an enemy twice using an arrow as an improvised blade.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!:
  • The Spear ability has a move where Kirby twirls it rapidly like a helicopter to fly, which has the added benefit of damaging enemies that come in contact with it.
  • The Whip ability has an attack that makes Kirby spin the whip around, elevating him, but unlike the Spear variation, he doesn't have much control over his movement.
• Javelin Thrower: As Spear Kirby, he can throw multiple spears at an enemy.
• Joke Weapon: The Sleep ability in most games is not only completely useless, it often acts as an outright Poison Mushroom at times, having Copy Essences placed in locations solely to add some challenge to levels where precise movement is needed, as it leaves Kirby completely vulnerable to enemy attacks (or being blown out of a windy passageway, or being dumped into a bottomless pit by a collapsing platform…). Later games at least add the option of forcing Kirby awake earlier, with the added benefit of damaging enemies when the Snot Bubble pops. Kirby and the Forgotten Land gives it a Magikarp Power, as upgrading it to Deep Sleep fully heals Kirby and grants him a random benefit (boosted attack, boosted speed, or doubled health).
• Kamehame Hadoken: The Force Blast technique of the Fighter ability lets Kirby fire spheres of ki, as well as charge them up into the more powerful Mega and Giga versions. Performing the classic Hadoken input from Street Fighter lets him instantly fire a Mega Force Blast in Kirby's Return to Dream Land.
• Killer Yo-Yo: Naturally, the Yo-Yo ability gives Kirby one of these. He can perform some very impressive tricks with it and attack his foes simultaneously.
• Lightning Lash: The Beam ability produces a whip made of electricity as its main attack that, while weak, is capable of hitting through walls and deals constant damage while in contact with an enemy.
• Limit Break: The Super Abilities from Return to Dream Land are acquired by inhaling a "Super" version of a normal enemy, and they only last a short time before losing them, but all of them are Purposely Overpowered upgrades to their base versions, performing One Hit Kills on whatever they hit:
  • Ultra Sword takes Kirby's already-decently-big-for-him sword and turns it into a genuine BFS, the hilt alone being as big as Kirby's entire body.
  • Monster Flame takes his measly breath and fireballs and exchanges them for a giant fiery dragon.
  • Flare Beam takes the small and weak stream of electricity and amps it up into a massive, fully controllable ball of energy.
  • Snow Bowl takes a cue from the Rolling Snowball mix ability from 64 and transforms Kirby into an absolute spherical juggernaut made of snow, able to plow through everything, snagging enemies along, only stopping either by choice or from hitting a solid wall.
  • Grand Hammer takes the crushing power of regular Hammer and makes it where every use of it causes world-shaking tremors.
• Magic Mirror: The Mirror ability is all about utilizing mirrors and their properties in various ways, such as shooting out mirror projectiles, acting as an Attack Reflector, or splitting into multiple mirror images.
• Make Some Noise: The Bell ability involves using the soundwaves produced by ringing bells to attack enemies. While it usually involves Kirby shaking the bells, he can also slam them onto the ground or quickly spin around to amplify the sound, fling them behind him so that they bounce around, perform a Charged Attack that shoots out bell-shaped projectiles, or enlarge his head-bell and perform a sound-emitting Counterattack on any enemy that attacks him.
• Making a Splash:
  • The Water ability gives Kirby various attacks revolving around water, such as spitting a glob of it at enemies, summoning a wave to surf on, or hovering with a downward waterjet. It also enhances his regular underwater Water Gun attack.
  • The Bubble ability is a limited example, utilizing a bubble wand to produce a stream of bubbles, with the express purpose of creating Bubble items for use in Squeak Squad's Copy Palette game mechanic.
• Master Swordsman: The Sword ability grants Kirby a sword that he can use to cut enemies in various ways, such as slashing multiple times, performing stabbing thrusts, shooting Sword Beams, or engaging in Spin Attacks. Its ability upgrades in Forgotten Land naturally enhance the swordplay skills, with Gigant Sword turning him into a Mighty Glacier with a super-strong BFS and a sturdy shield that can negate almost all attacks, while Meta Knight Sword grants the same Lightning Bruiser skillset as Meta Knight, including fast-yet-powerful strikes and quite a few combo-based Special Attacks that deal extra damage. Then there's Morpho Knight Sword, which takes Meta Knight Sword's lightning bruiser skillset to the extreme, with all strikes being super fast and incredibly damaging, a unique teleport dodge that phases you out of reality for a few seconds, making attack avoiding and gap closing a breeze, along with several special attacks based on Morpho Knight's personal skills, including sword Sizeshifting, Summon Magic, and dual Spheres of Doom.
• The Medic: What the Doctor ability functions as in Team Kirby Clash Deluxe and Super Kirby Clash, with the title Doctor Healmore.
• Multishot: Archer's leaping air attack shoots three arrows diagonally down in front of Kirby, with the extra arrows dealing less damage.
• Ninja: The Ninja ability grants access to the stealthy powers of ninjutsu, including the Stock Ninja Weaponry of kunai, shuriken, and a katana, a few Flash Step attacks with the katana, a Wall Jump, a Reed Snorkel to shoot bubbles upward on water surface, a smokescreen to hurt and hide from enemies, a Doppleganger Spin that creates an explosion as a Counterattack, and a Paper Fan of Doom that conjures up Cherry Blossoms.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Downplayed with the Archer ability, as a regular shot will arc after a short distance, but charged shots will go in a completely straight line. Same goes for the Cupid ability.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Ghost ability turns Kirby into a Bedsheet Ghost that can float around freely without needing to puff up and make himself vulnerable. In its initial appearance, its only means of attack involved pulling a Grand Theft Me on enemies, using their bodies to attack for it, and it also prevented players from using ladders, requiring the loss of it to progress at times. It later shows up in Kirby Fighters, where, when enabled, defeated fighters turn into Ghost Kirby, and it's given a proper moveset, being able to smack and headbutt living players for minor damage and become intangible to avoid damage, along with reviving back into regular Kirby if he restores his health.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The Archer ability's Camouflage skill involves Kirby hiding behind an obviously crayon-colored and conspicuous cardboard piece of camouflage, but not only does it actually work at preventing enemies from noticing him, it makes him completely untouchable while active, meaning the enemies don't even think to try poking it out of passing curiosity.
• Parasol of Pain: The Parasol ability grants Kirby a red-and-white parasol for use in combat. In addition to slowing down his fall and passively guarding against attacks and enemies from above, he can also smack, stab, or drill through enemies, thrust it forward to act as a forward-facing shield, bounce enemies on top before hurling them at other enemies, and twirl it underneath him to become an invulnerable spin-top of death.
• Petal Power: The Leaf ability involves the use of leaves as a weapon, with all attacks giving a slight boost to his jump. He can toss some up to hit enemies in the air, spin around to create a mini cyclone before stopping to scatter the leaves all around, launch an upwards column of them, shoot a few towards the ground, and hide in a pile to become invulnerable.
• Playing with Fire: Fire and Burning are abilities that utilize flames for attacking. Burning was simply a Use Your Head attack, while Fire has acquired a number of uses over time, including assimilating Burning, with other attacks being fiery breath, engulfing Kirby in flames for various uses, or spinning around while producing a spiral of flames, which leads into becoming a rolling ball of fire that can ride up walls. Forgotten Land limits the moveset to the Breath Weapon and fiery dash, but alongside Volcano Fire and Dragon Fire making the flames increasingly stronger, generated flames will linger for a few seconds and cause Damage Over Time.
• Poisonous Person: The Poison ability functions very similarly to the Water ability, with the biggest difference being the Damage Over Time aspect of every attack, along with a few extra attacks that create temporary obstacles, like clouds or puddles, that constantly damage enemies that touch them while they last.
• Power Copying: Copy is a Copy Ability that copies abilities... Ahem, Copy is a somewhat redundant ability that uses an Enemy Scan in order to analyze an enemy and gain its power without swallowing them. While most of the time it's rather pointless, there are some situations where it is quite beneficial:
  • In the Milky Way Wishes mode of Super Star and Super Star Ultra, the fact inhaling enemies doesn't provide Copy Abilities, only Copy Essences Deluxe, means the Copy version is incredibly useful to find and collect, since its Scan ability lets you copy enemies normally.
  • Super Star and Super Star Ultra in general have the ability to sacrifice the Copy ability in order to create a Tac, which another player can control in co-op. This allows the second player to also copy abilities, which fully heals them when they do so, along with gaining a completely invulnerable guard move, and also dealing damage to enemies regardless of whether their Steal attack copies an ability or not.
  • Unlike his normal inhale, Copy Kirby can scan Scarfies, which has the benefit of giving the Crash ability in addition to causing damage.
• Psychic Powers: The ESP ability is all about using the powers of the mind to mentally manipulate electricity in order to attack enemies, with greater level of control than the other electrical powers due to being able to manually choose where and how the psycho-electric energy will move.
• Rain of Arrows: An upwards aimed charged attack with the Archer ability will also release a shower of arrows on both sides of Kirby, damaging any enemies close enough.
• Razor Wings: A downplayed example with Wing's Hover Flap and Beetle's Hover Wing, which do minor damage to enemies that the wings touch with each flap.
• Resting Recovery: While the majority of games have Sleep do nothing but instantly fall asleep until it wears off, some of those games at least have it constantly restore health while it's active.
• Rocket-Powered Weapon: The Jet ability involves the use of a Jet Pack in order to attack in a variety of fiery launching ways. He gets a Charged Attack that can be fired straight away or stored for later use, is capable of using Weaponized Exhaust, can perform an aerial Diving Kick, and can use the charged power to do a Rocket Jump.
• Rolling Attack: The entire point of the Wheel ability is turning Kirby into a speeding invincible tire of death and destruction. So long as it's active Kirby will phase through all attacks while decently damaging enemies, and unlike other abilities where the invincible attack lasts a short time before having to be re-activated, Wheel will stay active until it either is deactivated or hits a wall.
• Sand Blaster: Sand Kirby is all about using sand to attack, with attacks including summoning sandstorms, dumping balls of sand on enemies from above, and creating huge sandcastles (which is way more powerful than it sounds).
• Shock and Awe: There have been some abilities that utilize electricity in order to damage enemies:
  • Beam involves producing spherical energy balls and forming them into various attacks to zap enemies. These include a wall passing whip, a rotating conical blast, a downward diagonal thrust, a midair Spin Attack, a Wave-Motion Gun attack, and capturing an enemy in an electrical field that can be shot at other enemies with a blast of electricity.
  • Plasma and Spark involve generating electricity from Kirby's body. Plasma mostly deals with projectiles while Spark deals with producing a deadly aura, but both of them are capable of some form of Charge Attack that generates extra electricity in order to do more damage.
  • ESP produces electrifying attacks by way of Psychic Powers, whether it's creating a ball of controllable psychic energy or vanishing by turning into psychic energy.
  • The Storm Tornado upgrade adds to the usual Blow You Away aspect by shooting out lightning bolts for stunning and damaging enemies.
• Shoutout: Some of the copy abilities are references to other Nintendo IPs.
  • The hat Kirby wears when using the Sword ability is a deliberate nod to Link's hat, as it was Hal's way of returning the favor after Kirby made a cameo in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Beyond that, one of Sword's moves allows Kirby to shoot an energy beam from it when at full health, akin to the Master Sword in most Zelda games, and the games beginning with Return to Dream Land would give both Kirby and Meta Knight the Spin Slash, which is identical to Link's Spin Attack.
  • The ESP ability is one to Ness from EarthBound, with several of its moves having the PK name attached to it (just like many of Ness' moves in that game) and Kirby wearing a similar cap to Ness'. The ability description in Planet Robobot even alludes to Ness, by mentioning the ability allows Kirby to be like a certain boy with PSI.
  • The Yo-Yo ability is also a shoutout to EarthBound, giving Kirby a hat similar to Ness', and Yo-Yos were one of the weapons Ness could equip. In Kirby Super Star, the background for the Yo-Yo description also matches the background for the menu screen in EarthBound.
  • The Fighter ability can perform pastiches of the Shoryuken and Hadoken attacks from Street Fighter, in some games by performing the classic button input.
  • The hat of the Whip ability is a brown fedora that very blatantly references Indiana Jones, the iconic fedora-wearing whip-wielder.
• The Spiny: The Needle ability is the rare example of a player power counting for this. While having it active, Kirby is Nigh-Invulnerable to Collision Damage while dealing the same to enemies instead due to being coated in sharp spikes. Other moves include a Spike Shooter, a spiky Rolling Attack, and an upward aimed drill attack. Forgotten Land turns the rolling attack part into a constant feature, allowing Kirby to impale several enemies in the spikes while active, with the spike shooter implimented into the Clutter Needle and Crystal Needle ability upgrades, alongside Crystal Needle having Trap Master qualities by embedding sharp crystals in the ground that damage any enemies who runs into them.
• Stage Magician: The Magic ability utilizes various forms of magic tricks as attacks by summoning them from its hat. Initially it was simply a one-use Random Effect Spell, but its next appearance gave it a proper moveset, where in addition to the Random Effect Spell, it summons vanishing doves, throws sharp cards, and can produce a giant crushing clown head.
• Super-Scream: The Mike ability is all about taking Kirby's Dreadful Musician skills and turning them into a deadly attack, with it being a three-use ability that instantly kills all enemies currently onscreen and greatly damages bosses.
• Super Sliding: Kirby's ice form is able to slide along the ground instead of run thanks to the form's ability to produce ice at will. He can also skate and pirouette to spray his ice powers all around him.
• Super Spit: Some abilities give Kirby a variant of his Star Bullet, whether it's after inhaling an enemy or a regular attack, such as Ice's ice cube ejection, Water's various ranged attacks, or Poison's puddle-forming ball.
• Telescoping Staff: The Staff ability gives Kirby an extendable staff to pummel enemies with, whether it's with powerful jabs, twirling it around to repeatedly smack with, or using it as a polevault to get over enemies heads before stabbing into them from above.
• This Is a Drill: The Drill ability allows Kirby to tunnel underground and pop up to deal damage, or draw a "circle" that causes a huge quake to hit enemies within it. The Pencil Drill allows Kirby to fire a sharp pencil upon popping up, while the Twin Drill allows Kirby to also damage enemies he tunnels under.
• Tribal Face Paint:
  • Wing Kirby originally sported two red stripes on each cheek in place of his usual Blush Stickers as part of his costume's Native American war chief theme. Starting with Kirby's Return to Dream Land, this element of his design would be removed.
  • Wild Hammer in Kirby and the Forgotten Land gives Kirby streaky and zigzagged Facial Markings across his cheeks, thus making his appearance rather savage-like and primal. The gigantic stone hammer that he wields adds to the brutish feel.
• Tunnel King: The Animal ability grants Kirby mole-like digging powers, which also comes with sharp Wolverine Claws that can be used to either slash at or perform a heavily damaging pounce on enemies. An ability upgrade also allows it to spin like a drill, speedily tunneling through diggable ground while also obliterating any enemies in Kirby's path.
• Use Your Head: There have been several abilities where slamming Kirby's Waddling Head body into enemies was a major attack:
  • This was the only attack of the Burning ability, turning Kirby into a raging fireball and launching him in a chosen direction. Later games composited it into Fire's moveset, turning it into the dash attack.
  • High-Jump also has this as its only means of damage, with each of its attacks involving launching Kirby either up in the air or down to the ground, ramming into enemies.
  • The majority of Wing's attacks involve dashing into enemies headfirst, using the wings to produce and maintain momentum.
  • One of Jet's attacks involves ramming headfirst into enemies, with how much Kirby charged before attacking determining how much damage is done.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Several of the abilities have utilized wrestling moves in their movesets, up to abilities like Backdrop and Suplex being mostly wrestling moves. This reached its absolute pinnacle with the aptly named Wrestler ability, which has every one of its attacks be a legitimate wrestling move.

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"Poyo!"