Final Fantasy / Tropes E to H

This page covers tropes in Final Fantasy.

Tropes A to B | Tropes C to D | Tropes E To H | Tropes I to R | Tropes S to T | Tropes U to Z

---

E

• Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Nearly half a year before he became the protagonist of his own game, Luso Clemens showed up as a minor playable character in the remake of the original Final Fantasy Tactics, War of the Lions, even though the games are on competing systems. In what is either this or an Ascended Extra, Hurdy, a main character from A2, first appeared as an operator of the teleporting services in Final Fantasy XII.
  • The Final Fantasy VII Remake version of Cloud showed up in the Japanese Mobius Final Fantasy in 2015, along with the Guard Scorpion and Shinra soldiers to fight, and cards representing him, Barret, Jessie, Biggs and Wedge.
  • In Final Fantasy VII Remake, there is a minor character called Kyrie who has sidequests pretty late in the game. She first appears as an NPC on the train in one of the very early chapters and has cameos scattered throughout.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • As late as the Anthology release of V, Tonics restored HP, which was kinda weird even in the US version of VI. This was before they really standardized everything in the VIII translation, giving us Potions, Hi-Potions, Firaga and all that stuff.
  • Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy III had D&D style Spells per Day. Later games would use MP instead. Those two plus Final Fantasy II also had purely Turn-Based Combat, while later games would opt for a Combatant Cool Down System instead.
  • As of 11 (the first MMO), all encounters are pre-determined, with monster aggro similar to action RPG's.
• Elemental Crafting: Armor tends to go in the order of Leather -> Bronze -> Iron -> Mythril -> Gold -> Diamond -> Crystal -> Genji. Depending on the specific game, Steel, Platinum, Silver, Adamant, Dragon, and Onion, may be somewhere in there too.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors:
  • In the earlier games, Fire and Ice play off of each other, Lightning beats Water, Light beats Undead, etc.
  • In the later games, Water and Fire play off of each other, and ice and Lightning play off each other. Light and Darkness as well, and Earth and Wind.
• Elemental Tiers: Common on the series with the Summon Magic, since you go finding them in your way, each one tends to be stronger than the previous one regardless of elemental attributes, at the end of the game you'll probably end using only the last summons you got, and maybe some of the weaker ones that are used for a support role. Some of the games avert this by either allowing you to level up the summons or making their power directly proportional to yours on a more balanced way.
• Elite Four: The series has a recurring group of enemies often referred to as the Four Fiends, sometimes the Four Elemental Fiends. They usually double as a Classical Elements Ensemble, since the individual members are often associated with the elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. The characters themselves vary, but some variant of the same "Four Fiends" team has appeared in Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy IV (and its direct sequel, Final Fantasy IV: The After Years), Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Bravely Default (a Spiritual Successor to Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light), Final Fantasy Dimensions, Dissidia Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy All the Bravest.
• Empowered Badass Normal:
  • Final Fantasy V: The party start out as Freelancers who can only attack, defend, and chuck items. By the end of the game, they will probably be Freelancers... who have gained a multitude of unique abilities, magic, knowledge of chemistry, et cetera after mastering the job classes granted to them by the crystal shards.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Terra and Celes are the only two members with access to magic for the very first portion of the game (in fact, this makes them highly valuable to La Résistance). After meeting with Ramuh, the rest of the party gains access to magicite and start learning magic themselves.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Vincent Valentine was a Turk, one of Shinra's elite Men In Black who enforced the company's will and guarded their VIPs. And then Hojo got a hold of him and turned him into an unaging shapeshifter. Cloud was also quite skilled despite being an infantry as he managed to kill Sephiroth and lift the masamune even impaled, and that was before Hojo forcibly injected Jenova cells into him and make him a Super-Soldier.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Although the main party themselves don't really count, having been trained to use Guardian Forces and Junctioning, they do turn Laguna and his friends into this whenever they share a consciousness thanks to Ellone. They're already capable, well-trained veterans... but now they have access to para-magic, summons, and Junctions years before Garden made these things familiar to the world.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has the whole party turned into L'Cie, esper-like humans with magical powers, by Anima after defeating it. Anima is a sort of god like monster.
    • In fact, for one character, Snow Villiers, he becomes an Empowered Badass Normal twice. It's implied he always knew martial arts, but getting hold of an experimental bulletproof Badass Longcoat which enhanced his strength lets him make the most of his inherent strength and skill. And then, he becomes a L'Cie, granting him magic powers and the ability to summon ice spirits that can transform into a motorcycle, to put the cherry on the cake.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The Final in the franchise title gradually begins to refer to how each game deals with an apocalypse descending upon their respective settings.
• Epic Flail:
  • Selphie from Final Fantasy VIII uses a particularly long set of nunchaku for fighting, although her combat discipline mostly lies in Confusion Fu. Her use of this weapon marks their first appearance in the game since the very first game for US players, and the third overall (though only on the NES version). And like in the Soul Series, she is forced to use a tri-rod in the UK version.
  • Morning stars and flails are classified as a type of staff in Final Fantasy V. They're present so that the White Mage and Time Mage classes have a genuine method of attacking physically.
  • Morning stars and flails are present in Final Fantasy VI as weapons for Celes and Terra. Their main feature is that they're row-ignoring,
  • Reuben in Final Fantasy Mystic Quest makes use of a morning star as his sole weapon. As far as weapon weaknesses in the game are concerned, it's an axe equivalent.
• Escape Battle Technique: A staple of the series, usually in the form of the "Escape" spell or the occasional consumable item.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • From Final Fantasy IV: Rubicante was perfectly willing to serve Golbez/Zemus in conquering the world, even committing some atrocities, yet when Dr. Lugae turned Edge's parents into Chimeras, even he was disgusted with this.
    • He is also willing to kick your ass, but he heals your party before doing so, as he prefers a fair fight. If you cast Fire spells (which he absorbs) on him, he'll return the favor and cast Raise on your entire party.
  • Final Fantasy VI: The Gestahlian Troops were perfectly willing to torch a castle to get the occupants to surrender to their demands, as well as invade Narsche to steal an Esper fossil. However, when Kefka Palazzo orders them to poison Doma's water supply, even they were horrified at such a dirty tactic, especially seeing how there were still Imperial POWs in Doma.
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake: When Hojo suggests that they could have SOLDIERs "impregnate" Aerith Gainsborough to produce a "backup", the other Shinra executives react with either discomfort or outright disgust. Note that not even two minutes earlier, these same people were talking about torturing Aerith with the same level of enthusiasm one would see from a child on Christmas morning.
  • Gaius van Baelsar is the Big Bad of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, being a deadly Legate in The Empire who wishes to conquer Eorzea. Conquest, however, is as far as his ambitions go. Thus, in the original 1.0, he aids the Player Character and their allies in stopping a wayward Legate from attempting a Colony Drop using a small moon: you can't very well conquer a realm that's been flattened and its people all killed. Later, in Stormblood, it is also revealed that he had halted development of "Black Rose" for much the same reason: it was far too deadly to be used for anything other than genocide.
  • In the Dissidia Final Fantasy subseries, the Emperor was perfectly willing to betray Chaos and screw over his own allies to become god of the remnants of the universe when Chaos killed Cosmos.^note And that's not even getting into several of his atrocities from his own game. However, when facing Kefka in battle, he says "A taste of hell may be just what you need!" as his intro quote, implying that even he was extremely disgusted with Kefka's atrocities. Ditto with Cloud of Darkness and her saying to Kefka "We will not allow you your sordid cries!" in the same game. Sephiroth also expressed disapproval of the Emperor's plan when he attempted to recruit Sephiroth to his cause, and he's the guy who, in his own game, tried to ram a meteor into the planet to become a god (though this case is less about standards and more because Sephiroth didn't give a rat's ass about anything except for recovering his memories).
    • Another Dissidia example is Garland, the fatalistic Blood Knight and right hand to Chaos. He couldn't give a wet slap about all the scheming his teammates partake in, and also voices disgust at how Ultimecia revealed to Kuja that his memories are fake just to break his spirit (later, he even tries to console Kuja about it).
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Gafgarion expresses dismay when he finds out what his employers are up to, but not enough to quit his day job.
    • Wiegraf is the antagonist for Chapter 1, and it's clear that the Corpse Brigade/Death Corps don't care about killing Noblemen who raise weapons at them. However, when he learns that the Marquis and Teta were kidnapped, Wiegraf says that they are beyond that. He even kills Gustav for kidnapping the Marquis and tells Ramza, Delita, and Argath to take the Marquis to safety.
    • Wiegraf is an odd case. Excluding his ultimate fate, his backstory and actions could easily have allowed him to be the protagonist of the game. He is a Holy Knight fighting for the rights of the disenfranchised veterans of the previous war against an uncaring nobility. He most closely falls into being a Hero Antagonist, so he doesn't actually fall under "evil" himself.
  • Crime syndicate Duelhorn in Final Fantasy Tactics A2. They know they are nothing but criminals, but they say that they do not attack innocent people, and they even attack other criminals that go after innocents. Alys saves a caravan that is attacked by a band of thugs and Marquis had saved an innocent girl from Kahmja. Duke Snakeheart eventually conspires to break up his fellow bosses and take over the clan as the sole boss just because he doesn't agree with the whole "protecting the innocents" thing and he wanted more power. He even went and attacked the girl that Marquis saved, but Marquis got his revenge.
• Everyone Can See It:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Cloud and Tifa get a lot of this in sector 7 of Midgar, this includes neighbors listening in to their conversations and friends trying to not so subtly point out their relationship may be more than childhood friendship, but Cloud fails to understand and Tifa will act shyly.
    • When Aerith joins the gang and immediately warms to Cloud, causing slight strife with Tifa, Cloud will once again be oblivious despite having two young women attracted to him either way everybody can see it but Cloud himself.
  • By halfway through Final Fantasy VIII, even Squall himself can see that everyone he knows thinks he and Rinoa are perfect for each other (and is mostly annoyed at how obvious they're all being).
• Evil Counterpart: The games frequently employ this trope.
  • Final Fantasy IV has Cecil and Golbez. It's revealed that they're blood brothers, and Cecil thinks when he finds out that it could easily be him, that was possessed by Zemus to act as the villain. In the sequel they have mirror movesets, Cecil having White Magic while Golbez has Black Magic, and their Cover and Taunt abilities both draw attacks from allies in different ways.
  • Final Fantasy VI had Kefka as the Evil Counterpart to Celes and Terra. With Celes, they were both products of the same Super-Soldier project, and were both generals of The Empire. With Terra, they both have detachment from humanity and love no one, but Terra underwent Character Development to understand and find love, while Kefka decided it wasn't worth feeling.
    • There is also a clear contrast drawn between Kefka, a Bad Boss who harasses his troops and is generally a menace, to the honorable and beloved General Leo Cristophe.
  • Final Fantasy VII builds up Sephiroth as Cloud's, but while the link starts as fairly concrete at the start of the game, the reveal that Much of Cloud's backstory was a lie and was, in fact, the tale of his friend Zack pushes this aside.
    • If you compare how they react to revelations about themselves; Sephiroth thought he was special and awesome, only to learn that he was a laboratory monster. Likewise, Cloud thought he was this epic super-soldier, only to learn that everything he remembered about that was a lie. But where Sephiroth desperately tried to restore his pride through godly delusions, Cloud managed to (with Tifa's help) restore himself to a state free of delusions.
    • Spin-offs instead treat Sephiroth as more an Evil Counterpart to Aerith — he thinks he's the last Cetra, she actually is; both had fathers involved in the Jenova Project; Aerith has the White Materia to call Holy, Sephiroth seeks the Black Materia to call Meteor; Aerith is a benevolent protector of the planet, Sephiroth is more in line with an eco-terrorist. Word of God has said they were intended during development to be revealed as siblings, which is why they have similar hairstyles and both have green eyes. In a novella set before Advent Children, it's implied Aerith could have created avatars of herself like Sephiroth did, but she felt it more important to let Cloud handle things on his own.
    • Cloud and Sephiroth's appearances in Kingdom Hearts play this totally straight with them, with Sephiroth sporting a black angel's wing on his right shoulder and Cloud having a black demon's wing on his left shoulder. In the same series, it is even heavily implied, if not outright stated, that the Sephiroth in that game was actually Cloud's Enemy Without, an embodiment of his inner darkness.
    • There's also Dyne in relation to Barret. Both are men from Corel who lost their arms in a Shinra attack and got Arm Cannons to replace them. Also, they are both violent, but Barret directs his anger at Shinra while Dyne snapped and became an Omnicidal Maniac. It shows that Barret could have followed a very similar path to him.
    • On a lesser note there's Hojo against Gast Faremis. Both were scientists working for Shinra, but Gast was a kind man who used science to obtain wisdom when Hojo is an immoral Mad Scientist. Furthermore, Hojo is the father of Sephiroth, which is the evil counterpart to Aeris, Gast's daughter.
    • In Dirge of Cerberus, all of the Tsviets share something in common with Vincent. Shelke is immortal, Nero wields Darkness, Rosso has similar attire (red clothes, metal gauntlets) and fighting methods, Azul has the same shapeshifting powers, and Weiss is trying to attain the power of Omega, the antithesis to Chaos. Furthermore, he's the vessel for Hojo, who turns into monsters like Vincent, but has no morals or physical prowess to call his own. Oh, they also all use a combination of guns and martial arts, leaning towards guns. Except for Shelke. Rosso and Vincent lampshade this with their discussion on each other's "humanity."
    • In Crisis Core, Zack Fair's quest to become a hero contrasts with the same quest Genesis Rhapsodos undertakes, but whereas the latter's feelings of entitlement to the moniker of "hero" lead to obsession and downfall, Zack's quest to "become a hero" has less to do with personal glory and more with making the world a better place. Zack's will to become a hero motivated him to think for himself and to be guided by his moral compass and sense of justice, whereas Genesis's obsession with becoming a hero drove him to challenge those he saw as hindrances and a need to prove himself as superior to others. Both joined SOLDIER inspired by stories of the hero First Class Sephiroth, striving to emulate him, and both fall from Shinra's graces after learning of the company's corrupt ways. In an inversion of a typical hero-villain story dynamic, Zack dies whereas Genesis lives.
    • Genesis and his copies are associated with black wings, whereas Angeal and his copies are associated with white wings, alluding to angel/fallen angel imagery. Both struggle with the man/monster dynamic, Genesis embracing it as it gives him special powers he can exploit to attain his goals, whereas Angeal begins to loath himself.
  • Final Fantasy VIII. Seifer was an evil counterpart to Squall, both using gunblades and been trained at the same Garden. Although Seifer was more ambitious than evil.
    • And Ultimecia is this to Rinoa as they are both sorceress’s and their appearances contrast each other: Rinoa has black hair, blue clothing and white wings, while Ultimecia has white hair, red clothing and black wings.
  • Final Fantasy IX had Zidane to Kuja - both created by Garland to lead Gaia to war. Zidane is horrified when he thinks that if things had gone differently, he could be the one doing all the evil Kuja has been doing.
  • The Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2 duet has Tidus and Shuyin; one died while failing to protect his beloved, while the other gave his existence and succeeded. They even look alike, and fans speculate the fayth deliberately modeled Tidus after Shuyin in their dream-Zanarkand.
    • Both Yunalesca and Seymour are evil counterparts to Yuna.
    • Given his status as Unsent, Seymour was pulling double duty as the counterpart to Yuna and Auron.
  • Final Fantasy XII has the for most of the game evil Gabranth and the good Basch, who doubles as a pair with an Evil Twin.
  • The endgame quests from the Heavensward expansion of Final Fantasy XIV has the Warriors of Darkness, a group of five warriors siding with the Ascians against the Scions and the Warrior of Light. Subverted in that the Warriors of Darkness are not evil so much as desperate to save the world they came from and are willing to do whatever it takes, even if it means destroying another world.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has Illua, the Big Bad of the game and evil counterpart to Luso. Luso and Illua both have grimoires that have blank pages and are filling up with words as they go on their adventures. If Luso fills out his book, it will give him the power to return home, but if Illua fills out her book, then she gets to summon a great evil demon from another dimension to terrorize Ivalice with. Whether Illua succeeds in defeating Luso or not doesn't matter since once she is slain, her last efforts get recorded in the book and the demon gets summoned anyway.
• Evil Is One Big, Happy Family:
  • Final Fantasy XII: While not always evil, per se, the monsters in the countryside are, despite being feral beasts, very very capable of teamwork. When they're of the same species, like Wolves, that's fair enough. When it's a Wolf, a Crocodile, and a T. rex simultaneously, it sticks out. (Although the T. rex is likely to eat the wolves and crocodiles.)
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: All of the heroes and all of the villains are aligned into two factions. However, while they officially all belong to Chaos, there are plenty of sub-factions and personal plots involved. In its simplest form, the Emperor has a naked disdain for the "destroy the world" villains (like Exdeath and the Cloud of Darkness), Golbez is playing all sides, and nobody works well with Kefka.
• Evil Twin:
  • One of Final Fantasy XII's plot twists was that Basch, a leading soldier in the home nation's army, was framed by his evil twin brother in the murder of the king, resulting in Basch's imprisonment and nationwide condemnation.
    • He does become a little less evil right around the endgame, though.
  • The Manikins of Dissidia Final Fantasy, living (though not sentient) crystal lifeforms that can take on the form of anyone who gets too close might count.
• Exploited Immunity: Most games usually have spells which target everyone and require this trope to use properly;
  • In Final Fantasy VI, there are many different enemies that will attack the entire battlefield, including themselves, with powerful attacks. However, as they are either immune to the elements of those attacks or actually gain health from them, the disadvantages of these attacks are lost. This can also be done with playable characters, by equipping them with elemental immune items.
  • In Final Fantasy IX: Vivi's most powerful spell is Doomsday, which inflicts shadow damage on all allies and enemies on the field. Equipping your characters with gear that absorbs shadow will cause them to be healed by the spell instead. The Superboss Ozma also tries this, but it's possible to invert it: it has Doomsday in its arsenal and normally absorbs shadow damage, but one sidequest rewards you by making it weak to shadow instead, so if it does use the spell, it'll harm itself.

F

• Face–Heel Turn: The villain from the very first Final Fantasy, Garland's Backstory states that he was once a famous hero. That all changed when he kidnapped the princess of Cornelia in a bid to take over the kingdom.
  • Kain from Final Fantasy IV, partly because of brainwashing, but also partly because of his envy for his best friend, Cecil, who was the boyfriend of the girl he had a crush on.
  • Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII goes through a particularly malignant Face–Heel Turn in the main character Cloud's flashback...the awesomeness of which also made him the ultimate Draco in Leather Pants character.
    • The PSP game Crisis Core (where you play as Zack, the guy Cloud absorbed the personality of) portrays this moment at the end. You even get to see Sephiroth before he went batshit. There are quite a few of the villains that do a Heel–Face Turn.
    • Dyne is an Evil Former Friend to Barret. When Shinra betrayed and destroyed Barret and Dyne’s hometown in the Back Story, Dyne was seemingly killed, leading Barret to adopt Dyne’s daughter Marlene while joining the Eco-Terrorist group Avalanche to fight Shinra. Except it turns out that Dyne survived and subsequently went insane, attracting the attention of Cloud’s group by going on a murder spree through the Gold Saucer, and then threatening to murder his own daughter Marlene to force Barret into dueling him to the death. More or less, Shinra drove him so far past the Despair Event Horizon that he turned into an Ax-Crazy Death Seeker who ultimately turns out to be incapable of caring about anything or anyone anymore, and kills himself after Barret defeats him in combat.
  • Seifer in Final Fantasy VIII goes through a much more low-key version of this as well.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics A2 there's a pair of paladins who were known for the superb swordsmanship and skills in combat. However, one of the paladins, Frimelda, is superior to her other paladin friend, Luc Sardac, in battle skills. Luc Sardac tries his best to match his skills with Frimelda's, but he could never get any better. Rather than accepting his limitations, Luc Sardac decides to kill Frimelda so that he would be the superior paladin. It didn't stick due to Frimelda's sheer force of will keeping her alive, but as a zombie. When the zombified Frimelda and your party confront Luc Sardac over what happened, he decides to attack you.
  • A meta example with the Cids. For the first eleven games and the spin-offs that came out at the same time the Cids were aligned with your party, or at least weren't evil. Beginning with Final Fantasy XII and continued in XIII and Type-0, the Cids have begun to act as antagonists although the former was against his will and the Cid of Type-0 is actually the Big Bad.
• Failure Is the Only Option: In most games, no matter how hard the heroes try, the villain can never be prevented from becoming all-powerful. Their victory only comes after the villain has already brought the world to its knees.
  • Particularly, the plot of Dissidia Final Fantasy has an infinite number of possible worlds in which the characters are always fighting each other. When one side wins, things just start over.
  • Final Fantasy II also deserves special mention, because even when the heroes actually succeed in killing the BBEG, he just takes over Hell and comes back stronger. The heroes then kick his superpowered ass anyway.
  • In-universe in Final Fantasy X: summoners don't come back from their pilgrimages alive... and they aren't supposed to. Yuna does manage it, in the end, but not because she wasn't prepared to die — she just wasn't prepared to let someone else become Sin and start the cycle over again.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2: as revealed in the secret ending, all possible timelines lead to Caius winning. Realizing this sent Lightning over the Despair Event Horizon and she voluntarily crystallized herself.
• Fanfare: The battle victory theme.
• Fantastic Nuke: In a weirdly literal example, the Flare spell. It is, in most cases, non-elemental, but in some games Flavor Text for the spell refers to its power as coming from either fusion or fission. As well, the spell's name is reminiscent of solar flare, and we all know what powers the sun. Ironically, the translation of the spell as NUKE in the very first game probably has nothing to do with this.
  • That the Flare spell was called NUKE in the English version has to do with the game only providing four characters/signs per spell or item name. That's more than enough when you're using kana (Japanese lettering) but causes some troubles when you're going to translate those names and are still limited to only four letters.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the Espers are the Other race that is being literally used by the humans. Terra's existence as a 'mixed' lineage child and the problems she has because of this are obviously her working through the 'racism.' The empire treats Espers as basically magic batteries, not even acknowledging them as living creatures, and they're the only ones who are interacting with espers right now. Even the Returners talk about Terra in terms of her power and usefulness in their fight. Sometimes they don't even talk to her about it even though she's right there.
    • The town of Thamasa, founded by the last Magi after they were hunted down and killed following the war. When the party goes there, the townspeople refuse to let them use the shops because of their continuing mistrust of outsiders, although that changes after the party helps rescue Relm from a house fire.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, after he goes insane, Sephiroth first believes that the humans betrayed "his" species, the Cetra, and develops a hostility bordering on vendetta towards them. After he finds out the truth (that what he was "cloned" from was not one of the Cetra, but something quite different), he just becomes completely evil without any particular prejudice.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, the Burmecians are referred to as 'rats' and 'rodents' as a racial slur by those attempting their genocide.
    • Friendly NPCs are often shown to be afraid of Vivi because he's a black mage, and most of their experience with black mages involves them destroying their cities.
    • Nobody even once raises an eyebrow or disrespects any members of the Qu race, despite them being universally depicted as food-obsessed, bumbling, baby-talking clown-looking things. Though this may be due to their obsession with food making them great food critics and chefs.
  • In Final Fantasy X, the stateless Al Bhed tend to be looked down on by regular humans, with the Church of Yevon being particularly harsh due to the Al Bhed violating Yevon's restrictions on the use of technology. Even Wakka is shown throughout the game to be distrustful of Al Bhed, though he becomes less so the further along the story gets. For this reason, they use goggles to hide their distinctive eyes when outside their home. In the sequel, with the Church of Yevon severely weakened (when it's your god's fault everything was crap for so long, it's hard to keep worshipers) and machina usage slowly growing, the Al Bhed are slightly more welcomed... but one of the themes of the game is how hard it is to shake old beliefs.
  • Used to hell and back in Final Fantasy XI. Beastmen hate the player races, the player races hate Beastmen, Humes exploit African-Americans Native-Americans Galka, Elvaan are snooty to everyone, and even the cutesy Tarutaru have performed genocide on walking, talking frogs. To top it all off, the Precursors hate everyone but them. If there's a solid theme to FFXI, it's Fantastic Racism.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has this to some extent. Nearly the entire population of Cocoon have been raised in fear of invasion from the underworld of Gran Pulse. The depictions of Pulse as an uninhabitable and hostile wasteland are embedded into the minds of every Cocoon citizen, even though there isn't any proof of this, nor is anyone allowed to prove or disprove these claims. Being branded a Pulse l'Cie is the equivalent of a death sentence — for the Pulse l'Cie, and everyone else in their vicinity suspected to be one. No matter what the Pulse l'Cie's alignment or Focus is, they are immediately generalized as an enemy of Cocoon, and the likelihood is that the Sanctum will do everything in their power to kill them before the end of their Focus. On the other hand, being a Sanctum l'Cie is perfectly fine.
    • The beliefs held by the inhabitants of Gran Pulse seem to be a mirror of this. To them, however, Cocoon is interpreted as more of a false utopia.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, the main character Marche unknowingly refers to a bangaa (a race of reptilian humanoids) as a "lizard", which is soon revealed to be a form of ethnic slur against them. Though this is probably similar, if not equivalent, to someone calling you an 'ape' (Something that happens a few times to Humans in fiction, too) The lizard comment is used by some NPCs in Final Fantasy XII, and there are other indications of fantastic racism in that title, the most notable being a comment that "The Emperor is willing to overlook race for his more talented servants."
  • Final Fantasy XIV has some racial tension between the playable races, though it's very subtle and the majority of the characters get along for the most part. The beastmen, however, are hated by everyone due to said beastmen trying to capture people to be used as slaves that empower the primals for each beastmen tribe and using said primals to destroy and take over Eorzea. At first, the Slyph are the only beast tribe that are actually friendly with its neighbors and don't wish to cause any harm. As you progress in the main story, you get to see members of other beast tribes who are not hostile and are willing to work with other races to strengthen the relationship between the two sides (though the friendly beastmen are very small in number compared to their hostile brethren).
    • The Au Ra are noted as being the playable race most frequently subject to this due to their unusual appearance. For this reason, Yugiri opts to keep her face and horns hidden initially, believing it would only make it more difficult to earn the trust of others (Though once she does, she has no issues with leaving her mask off). On a more tragic note, the Ishgardians slaughtered most of the first wave of Auri refugees to arrive in Eorzea from overseas, mistaking them for a new breed of their mortal enemies, the dragons of Dravania, and disregarding the mercy they showed after an initial, failed attempt to exterminate them.
    • This trope is also some of the fuel between the conflicts of Eorzea and the Garlemald Empire. The Garlemald Empire came to be because the Eorzeans looked down and mocked them for being unable to use magic. In turn, when they were able to create Magitek, the Empire began to refer to them as "savages" because of their lack of technology. This passes down to those who work in service of the Garlemald Empire. You can see this in Fordola rem Lupis, an Ala Mhigan girl who works under Zenos yae Galvus: when she offers up a plan to deal with the Resistance, she's told to be quiet by one of the higher-ups and know her place and when she screws up and gets a major base captured, that same person mocks her for it. Interestingly, Zenos still listens to her, mostly because she has the same rage and bloodlust he does. And if the Wham Episode of Patch 4.4 is of any indication, this Fantastic Racism is built on a big damn lie orchestrated by the Ascian who called himself Solus zos Galvus.
    • Speaking of the Ishgardians from earlier, this is the major reasoning behind the Dragonsong War between the Ishgardian people and the Dravanian dragons. Long ago, the two groups used to live in harmony until someone betrayed someone and the dragon Nidhogg declared war against the Ishgardians. The Ishgardians are entirely hateful and fearful of dragons to the point where their religious dogma seek to smite anyone who want to do anything involving dragons, willingly or unwillingly. Of course, there's a lot of Dark Secrets behind this sort of racism: as it turns out, the Ishgardians — notabling King Thordan I and his Knights Twelve — murdered a dragon and consumed her eyes for their incredible power. Nidhogg attacked, as that dragon was his sister, but they defeated him and stole his eyes. It's a lot to take in and once the truth is revealed, it takes quite a while for the Ishgardians and Dravanians to stop strangling each other, though it takes the deaths of Archbishop Thordan VII, his Heaven's Ward and Nidhogg to finally break through.
    • If you don't catch the point that "beast tribe" is a meaningless distinction which exists only to fuel colonialism, Shadowbringers will crack it wide open for you when you travel to the First. One of the "beast tribes" there is the Dwarves, who you will quickly realize are identical to the spoken race the Source knows as Lalafell. Possibly very quickly, depending on your character's appearance.
    • For each of the allied beastmen stories in each expansion, there is a recurring villain that openly states he Hates Everyone Equally and the beastmen especially. He considers the beastmen no more than wild animals and holds contempt for anyone that allies with them.
    • One sidequest involves a male Hyur and a male Mi'qote that were exiled from their villages because their people did not like seeing two people of different races having an intimate relationship.
  • Gridania, one of the starting city-states, is incredibly xenophobic. This is in part due to the Twelveswood being ruled by the Elementals, who are more than willing to punish its corporeal residents if they perceive them to be misusing the forest, but it results in a lot of hostility towards anyone the Gridanians perceive as outsiders. Numerous NPCs warn the player character that it's only the Seedseer's word that keeps them from being ejected from the city on sight and even healing is denied to people if the Hearers believe that the Elementals would disapprove. The ones who are most victimized are the Duskwight Elezen, despite being ancestral residents of the Twelveswood, and Keeper of the Moon Mi'quote. More than one questline involves someone from these two races being driven over the edge by the bigotry they experience.
• Female Gaze: originally marketed to boys, has been marketed increasingly strongly to teenage girls ever since the relatively low-key Multiple Demographic Appeal elements in Final Fantasy VII took off. Currently the peak is Final Fantasy XV, which has a stylish Cast Full of Pretty Boys jokingly compared in the marketing to a Boy Band.
• Figure It Out Yourself:
  • Final Fantasy X has Auron say pretty much exactly this.
    Rikku: Hey, you know something, don't you? Spill the beans!
    Auron: Look not to others for knowledge. This is your journey, too.
  • At one point in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, when Lightning tires of her riddles and wordplay and outright asks Lumina what the hell she's talking about, Lumina's response is that Lightning has to figure it out herself or else it won't mean anything. Considering that Lumina is actually an aspect of Lightning's personality that she cast off, this isn't necessarily off the mark.
• Final Speech:
  • As far back as Final Fantasy II for the NES, a dying prince manages a straightforward "Tell her I love her" to the party — then recants and orders them to not say anything. She's still young, tying her to a dead man would be no kindness.
  • Gilgamesh from Final Fantasy V gets one heck of a speech when he comes in to perform Heroic Sacrifice for the heroes. He first tells a character that her grandfather was "a pretty strong guy" as a compliment, then tells the cross-dressing pirate to "fall in love, or something". Then he tells the Princess Classic to keep her pure spirit and the main hero that he'd have liked to fight him one more time. When the enemy boss standing three feet away, listening to the whole spectacle, tells it's time for him to die, Gilgamesh snorts and exclaims "I think that's my line!" before self-detonating. He will be missed dearly.
  • Averted in Final Fantasy VII. Really, Aeris had the perfect opportunity for one, and think of everything she could have said... and then be thankful she didn't, because it probably wouldn't have been half as dramatic as it ended up being.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: There are many recurring types of elemental attacks, but these three are by far the most prominent in the overwhelming majority of Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy II adds Poison as a fourth element to the set, opposed to Lightning in a similar manner to Fire and Ice's obvious dichotomy. Final Fantasy X adds Water to the mix, similarly set in opposition to Lightning.
• Fire Is Masculine: Ifrit, a fire-elemental summon who appears frequently in the games, is often characterized as hyper-masculine and aggressive. How demonic he looks may vary, but his masculinity and domain over flames remain consistent traits in every incarnation.
• Fire Stolen from the Gods:
  • Final Fantasy VIII: According to the lore, humans were created by a god called Great Hyne, but he decided humans had grown too populous and tried to reduce their numbers by either killing or kidnapping their children. The humans declared war on Hyne and overwhelmed him with sheer numbers, and he was forced to tear his own body in half and give half of it to the humans as a peace offering—hence the reason that sorceresses and magic exist, and why sorceresses are sometimes referred to as "Hyne's Descendants".
  • Final Fantasy XII: Nethicite is a Mineral MacGuffin with the ability to absorb Mist, the Background Magic Field of the setting, and thus nullify any surrounding magic. The mineral was once property of the Occuria who rule the continent of Ivalice, who occassionally entrusted it to select individuals as a means of manipulating the history of mankind... until one Occuria named Venat committed heresy by teaching an Archadian scientist how to manufacture artificial nethicite, in an attempt to undermine the influence of their kin. The Archadian Empire soon used its newfound power to conquer the neighboring kingdoms of Nabradia and Dalmasca, kicking off the main plot of the game.
• Fixed Damage Attack: The most notable of which is Cactuar's 1000 Needles, the former Trope Namer.
• Fluffy the Terrible: There are always a few terrifying enemies with rather innocuous names, such as Carrot, a Malboro Overking mark!
• Foil: The series are fond of this. To the point of having it's own page.
• The Fool:
  • Bartz in Final Fantasy V is even introduced to us as a handsome young wanderer going wherever the wind takes him with a trusty animal companion by his side (if a chocobo instead of the archetypical dog). He mostly ends up saving the multiverse because he fell into it, and while he's got an occasionally cynical side it's mostly to say the sort of things the player might be thinking.
  • Inspector Hildibrand in Final Fantasy XIV adds this to his status as the Cloudcuckoolander: he's genuinely well-intentioned and really wants to help people out, but his staggering... logic... as well as his tendency to rush in where even the Warrior of Light fears to tread, tends to lead to one trainwreck after another, complete with Stuff Blowing Up courtesy of his helpful assistant.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
  • The Turks from Final Fantasy VII fall into this category, with Tseng (the Cynic), Rude (the Realist), Reno (the Apathetic), and Elena (the Optimist).
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Hope (the Cynic), Snow (the Optimist), Lightning (the Realist), Fang (the Apathetic), and Vanille and Sazh (the Conflicted).
  • Final Fantasy XIV: In Heavensward, Estinien (the Cynic)), Ysayle (the Optimist), Alphinaud (the Realist), and the player (the Apathetic).
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Final Fantasy VI:
    • Melancholics: Celes, Shadow, and Cyan
    • Sanguines: Edgar, Relm, and Setzer
    • Cholerics: Locke, Mog, Sabin, and Kefka (with a bit of sanguine).
    • Phlegmatics: Terra, Leo, Gau, and Strago
  • Final Fantasy VII Remake:
    • Sanguine: Aerith, eternally playful and funny and a Blithe Spirit.
    • Choleric: Barret, an Avalanche leader, a community organizer, and an overwhelming hothead.
    • Melancholic: Cloud, cool and aloof, lives in a world of his own head, restrained, brooding, and self-conscious.
    • Phlegmatic: Tifa, empathetic and level-headed, always the first to look after the others, choose to stay with the group out of loyalty even when disagreeing with their moral actions.
  • Final Fantasy IX's first party: Steiner (choleric), Vivi (melancholic), Garnet (phlegmatic), and Zidane (sanguine).
• Four Is Death:
  • You can expect any game, character, event, place, etc. with an even remote connection to the dreaded number to be a Deconstruction or From Bad to Worse. Expect the game to have massive controversy and Urban Legend of Zelda centered around that game, etc. Examples: Final Fantasy II? A large majority of fourth party members perform a Heroic Sacrifice. Final Fantasy IV? Deconstruction with a focus on death. Final Fantasy VII? The fourth party character is Killed Off for Real. Final Fantasy XIII-2? The fourth game announced in the Fabula Nova Crystallis mythology.
  • You have a maximum of three party members out on the field in Final Fantasy XII. You occasionally get Guest Characters, bringing the total to four. The first is Ashe. The second pulls a Face–Heel Turn and dies. The third probably only avoids a bad fate due to plot necessities (like succession) and Improbable Infant Survival. The fourth character has a Dark and Troubled Past and commits a pretty explosive Heroic Sacrifice
  • Final Fantasy XIV is notable for a very botched launch which resulted in a reboot that picked up five years after the original version and one of the two moons falling on the land, the plotline for which deals with the aftermath of the calamity. In-Universe, The 4th Grand Company created, the Crystal Braves betrayed one of its founders and poisoned Ul'Dah's sultana into a death-like coma, framing the Protagonist for the assassination and setting up a series of Wham Episodes leading up to Heavensward.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Id: Barrett Wallace — Loud, Commanding, can be calm but is very much a man of action.
    • Superego: Cloud Strife — Aloof, Calm, initially only in it for the money.
    • Ego: Tifa Lockheart — Hopeful despite her emotional issues, good moral center to characters such as Cloud.
  • Final Fantasy VII Advent Children:
    • Id: Loz, being a Manchild with simplistic emotions.
    • Ego: Kadaj, being the comparatively level-headed leader but prone to fits of rage and anger.
    • Superego: Yazoo, being always calm and collected.
  • Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core:
    • Id: Genesis — The poetic and philosophical one, he's prideful, arrogant, and jealous of Sephiroth's fame.
    • Superego: Sephiroth — The Stoic who maintains a calm, professional demeanor under any circumstances, even in the heat of battle.
    • Ego: Angeal — The mediator who values honor and discipline, but has a casual and friendly side.
    • These classifications are made quite clear in the FMV sequence of the three sparring—Genesis goes all out trying to overpower Sephiroth, who calmly repels him without even breaking a sweat, and the two are eventually stopped by Angeal when it begins to get out of hand.
  • Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Id: Laguna Loire — A smart yet impulsive and offbeat man who often makes reckless decisions.
    • Superego: Kiros Seagill — Level-headed Deadpan Snarker who most often tries to get Laguna's head out of the clouds and back onto the mission at hand.
    • Ego: Ward Zabac — Respects the other two's opinions but will side with whoever's actually making sense.
  • Final Fantasy X: The main cast doesn't have a strong example (you could argue for Tidus-Yuna-Auron) but looking at the pilgrimage of Tidus' and Yuna's fathers gives a great example.
    • Id: Jecht — The headstrong and impulsive jerk, who mellows a bit by the end of their journey.
    • Superego: Auron — Has a strong sense of tradition and decorum, and is exasperated by Jecht's antics.
    • Ego: Braska — He has some traits of the Superego (quiet, thoughtful, logical), but his main role is in mediating between Jecht and Auron.
  • Final Fantasy X-2:
    • Ego: Yuna — Leader (tending to Id occasionally)
    • Id: Rikku — Genki Girl ditz.
    • Superego: Paine — Snarky monotone warrior.
  • Final Fantasy XII. Though the main cast consists of six-party members, Vaan and Penelo are Tagalong Kids, and Fran isn't given much spotlight. With them aside, the remaining three consist of:
    • Id: Ashe — The Hero in practice who swore to see Dalmasca restored. A bit of a bitch when first met and often has harsh words for the Empire. Her desire for revenge and the power to fulfill it drives much of the plot, several times she's called out on blindly pursuing vengeance. (but Character Development turns her into the Ego by the end of the game)
    • Superego: Basch — Ashe's bodyguard who swore to protect her, he's The Stoic and is silently devoted to doing anything he can to see her safe. In the meantime, he's calm, rational, and level-headed, acts as Ashe's voice of reason in her more heated moments and keeps his emotions close to the vest.
    • Ego: Balthier — A Sky Pirate and Gentleman Thief, he acts based on his desires and is concerned with his own interests. However, he tempers it with wit and cunning, has his own personal set of standards and morals that he keeps to, and is fundamentally a good man.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015) have a side-story called Secretum with the Warriors of Materia:
    • Id: Tidus — Cheerful and headstrong, is the first willing to help out the amnesiac guy aka Locke.
    • Superego: Squall — Cynical and cool, immediately suspicious of the amnesiac guy aka Locke.
    • Ego: Cloud — Calm and rational, often having to mediate between the two.
• Fragile Speedster: Thieves and Ninjas are generally limited to light armor, making them far more fragile than other fighter-types, but high Agility or Speed stats, granting them higher evasion and/or more turns in games with an Active Time Battle system.
• Friendly Shopkeeper:
  • In Final Fantasy XIII-2, Chocolina is the energetic and everpresent merchant appearing across time and space to sell her wares to the heroes. While she always insists on collecting a fee, her services in buying, selling, and synthesizing items prove invaluable, and she has somehow set up shop in every era of history simultaneously. It's later revealed that Chocolina is in fact Sazh's chocobo chick, who got lost in time and prayed to the goddess Etro for a form that would allow her to help Sazh and his friends.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has the eccentric hermetic Ezel Berbier. While his services cost a pretty penny, all of his antilaws work as advertised, nullifying the binding laws laid down by the judges. He's also friendly and supportive of Marche and co., pitching in during the final battle by handing Judgemaster Cid an antilaw to nullify Llednar's Nigh-Invulnerability.
• The Friend Nobody Likes:
  • Final Fantasy VI
    • Edgar is a resourceful young king who comes across as abrasive to both the ladies and his male friends alike. The only ones who have no friction with him at all are his brother Sabin (out of fraternal love) and the young girl Relm (who is infatuated with Edgar, to his dismay), although Sabin does get exasperated enough to ask if Edgar will ever grow up, showing that Edgar's behavior is not a new thing.
    • Setzer owns the Global Airship, but he's also a self-absorbed Dandy with (allegedly) hideous fashion sense.
  • Final Fantasy VII has Yuffie, who mostly just annoys everyone, and Cait Sith, who's generally unreliable. Vincent Valentine may also qualify, as Cloud mentions he didn't really expect Vincent to return for the final battle, since Vincent always seemed so cold and unapproachable. Later media like Dirge of Cerberus shows that they've all grown and are much closer than before. Yuffie, for example, is hinted as often dropping by to see Vincent simply to make sure he doesn't go back to being completely gloomy and friendless.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Seifer, who's nominally on the main characters' side for most of the first disc, as a fellow SeeD, but no one actually likes him except for his flunkies Fujin and Raijin, because he's a hot-tempered, arrogant jerkass. When he's seemingly killed, those who knew him try to say nice things about it, but it's such a blatant case of Never Speak Ill of the Dead that Squall notices and is disturbed. He stops being considered the party's "friend" once he turns up in the service of the villains, and eventually, even Fujin and Raijin refuse to blindly support him in his endeavors. Since he's known the party for a long time as a result of going to school together (even disregarding the fact that he and the other party members besides Rinoa grew up at the same orphanage), he's a case of Seniority, and to some degree, Proximity.
  • Crisis Crossover game Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia establishes Kefka as this. The other series villains all attempt to ignore him when he tries socializing with them in his Lost Chapter and generally view him with disdain and disgust. Along with finding his evil jester schtick obnoxious, they find his goal of destruction for the mere sake of destruction purposeless and wasteful when they're all trying to achieve multi-world conquest and whatnot.
• Frying Pan of Doom:
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Yang's Wife (later named Sheila in The After Years) gives the heroes a frying pan with which to hit Yang, and doing so cures his memory loss. It's hinted that this is because it reminded him of the many times it apparently happened before. It's even hinted that she shows her love with physical violence in the Japanese version, where the item is actually called the "Frying Pan of Love". The "Frying Pan of Love" returns with a ladle (meant for Yang and Sheila's daughter, Ursula) in The After Years. After Yang and Ursula take their beatings, they groggily mumble as though waking up, clearly believing that Sheila was the one who hit them. Luca is left utterly dumbfounded.
  • A variation is in Final Fantasy IX. A chef wants to use his frying pan as a hammer to help rebuild Alexandria, but he's told his work is just as valuable making sure everyone else is fed and healthy, so they can rebuild.
• Full Health Bonus: Ultima Weapon, a Recurring Element in the series, is a sword (usually an Infinity +1 Sword) that deals damage based on the proportion of its wielder's current health to their maximum health.
• Fun Personified:
  • Gilgamesh. A Large Ham Boisterous Bruiser with a ridiculous Noh theatre theme, multiple arms and high-top sneakers, he started out as a Goldfish Poop Gang boss in Final Fantasy V but was banished to the Void between universes by the Big Bad. Ever since, he's been popping up for silly cameos in other FF games, often as an Optional Boss or Hidden Character.
  • Bartz Klauser is used as this in Dissidia NT, with a significantly more goofy-looking fighting style based on taking RPG game mechanics and battle animations 1) literally, and 2) into the fighting genre.

G

• Gadgeteer Genius: Likely will be named Cid and invent airships.
• Gainax Ending: The series does this quite a bit. Usually, when this is done, it leaves the player in question whether certain characters are alive or dead.
  • Specific and notable examples include Final Fantasy VII, which has a kind of After the End feel, Final Fantasy X who reveals that the main character is a dream conjured by a bunch of dead spirits. He dies but then appears in a post-credit sequence, emerging from the ocean. Final Fantasy XIII-2 combines this with Downer Ending and The Bad Guy Wins. And then its direct sequel, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII gives us a happier example of the trope, as it features Lightning in the new world that was created (read: Earth), stepping off of a train in France, presumably to meet her friends and sister.
• Game Mod: The 16-bit trilogy has several critically acclaimed ROM hacks released for them. First is Final Fantasy IV Unprecedented Crisis, which diverges at a key point in the story, and lets you finish the game with Cecil as a Dark Knight. Next there's Final Fantasy VI Brave New World which restricts what characters can equip which espers, making the game more balanced. Then there's the Mega Crossover known as Return of the Dark Sorcerer.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: No, you can't use Phoenix Down to revive those killed in cutscenes. Or any NPC at all. They actually try this in Final Fantasy V, though it just doesn't work. In most games, though, characters with 0 HP are actually unconscious rather than dead, so Phoenix Down isn't really a resurrection spell.
• Gameplay Automation: The Pixel Remaster versions of the first three games added the auto-battle option, with characters spamming the last move they used.
• Genius Bruiser: The games provide several examples:
  • Golbez of Final Fantasy IV is an eight-foot-tall hulk of a Tin Tyrant with Shoulders of Doom and marked proficiency in the use of BFSs. And on top of that is well-spoken, a mage of great skill, and a masterful Chessmaster.
  • Cid from Final Fantasy IV is a much better example. As the game's resident Cid, he's the engineer in charge of the airships, but is also a formidable physical fighter too, preferring to bash his enemies in with hammers and wrenches.
  • Edgar of Final Fantasy VI is a talented engineer, having designed a castle capable of subterranean travel, a small arsenal of machine weaponry, and is capable of repairing practically any broken equipment you come across. Oh, and put a spear in his hands and he'll make shish kebab out of you in about 3 seconds flat. His twin brother Sabin is no idiot either, despite being a Bare-Fisted Monk and one of the stronger players in the game.
  • Cid Highwind of Final Fantasy VII is one of the best examples in the series. Featuring some of the highest HP and Strength stats in the game, the second-best limit break damage, serious muscles and a nasty mouth, he also has stacks of engineering blueprints in his house and a massive airship named after him, presumably because he designed the damn thing himself.
    • Oh, and he's the world's first astronaut (is hinted to have had a hand in building the rocket too), runs a town, has flown a light plane, a jet-powered airship & a more traditional zeppelin style one. He's quite possibly the most book-smart FF hero ever. And a powerhouse.
  • Zell Dincht of Final Fantasy VIII while at first glance Zell seems to be nothing more than a passionate, loud-mouthed fighter-type with energy to spare throughout the game it's revealed that Zell is an avid reader with extensive knowledge of world history, mechanical expertise, and jewelry making. He's literally referred to in-game as Mr. Know-It-All-Zell. He's also one of the strongest characters in-game. He once derailed a train accidentally by punching the floor of a train car. Later in-game, he steps forward as leader and pilot.
• Genius Ditz:
  • Both Zell Dincht and Selphie Tilmitt of Final Fantasy VIII come across as being not quite the brightest bulbs, or at least having very short attention spans, but the two of them turn out to be the most technologically savvy characters in the player's party and the designated pilots of the Cool Ship (after the party runs off with it courtesy of Selphie sitting down at the controls: "It just kind of took off!"). Neither of them are actually unintelligent though. Zell is quite smart and full of information, even having the nickname Mr.-Know-It-All-Zell. All SeeDs must pass rigorous mental and physical training before even being allowed to take the field exams to join the group. They just have a few personality quirks that make them seem like they wouldn't be smart.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Rikku, often clumsy (More so in X-2), can mix items to create deadly weapons. She's also a talented thief. This is almost assuredly obfuscating stupidity, since she's also a skilled mechanic and expresses pretty deep insight into matters on several occasions. Her brother, named oddly 'Brother', is a better example, as he's a total social inept, can barely speak the common language on the planet (granted, he didn't even know it till two years ago, but he's the only bilingual member of his people to have speaking problems), and oftentimes he just misses the point entirely, but he nearly singlehandedly excavated and repaired the airship he's letting you tool around in the second game.
    • In the case of Tidus the term 'genius' applies only very loosely. But his ditziness becomes the deciding plot point when only because of his ignorance and complete disregard about the customs and traditions of Spira, he is the first person to ask some very good question about some beliefs that had been unchallenged for a thousand years. It then falls to Yuna and Lulu to figure out that the entire cult of Yevon is just a massive scam to keep the people in line, but it's only Tidus's refusal to adapt to the local customs that get them to question the traditions in the first place.
• Genki Girl: Starting from FFV (Porom in FFIV was extremely collected so she avoided this completely), the series started employing this trope. We have Krile in FFV, Relm in FFVI, Yuffie in FFVII, Selphie in FFVIII, Eiko in FFIX, Rikku in FFX and FFX-2, Penelo in FFXII, and Vanille in FFXIII. Iris provides a slightly more subdued variation in FF XV.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: A lot of bosses are either built up with Five-Second Foreshadowing or just plain come out of nowhere. Usually this is just to ensure you are properly leveled to handle the area that comes next, so this isn't a bad thing. However, two of the Final Bosses do this!
  • Cloud of Darkness from III only shows up at the end with zero buildups, gives a vague philosophic Motive Rant, and then tries to kill you.
  • Zeromus from IV. You've spent 95% of the game thinking Golbez was behind it all, only for it to be revealed that Golbez was just being controlled by Zemus, who is sealed in the moon, and when you fight Zemus and use Golbez's crystal on him, he transforms into Zeromus.
  • Necron from IX appears after defeating Trance Kuja. At no point before had he even been alluded to, much less foreshadowed.
• Girly Bruiser:
  • Final Fantasy VII's Tifa seems to be the Tomboy to Aerith's Girly Girl, but is actually a Tomboy with a Girly Streak, having good domestic skills; being a Team Mom; showing gentleness to Cloud, the man she loves; and dreaming of a Damsel in Distress fantasy, despite being an Action Girl who can take care of herself. She's a Bare-Fisted Monk who's one of the physically strongest characters in the party, and capable of beating up enemies like giant robots and mutated monsters.
  • Final Fantasy X-2's battle system revolves around changing into different outfits to gain new powers. The arch-rival LeBlanc wears a pink outfit and has a steel fan as a weapon. One of her attacks is even called "Love Tap".
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak:
  • Final Fantasy VII's Aerith Gainsborough is a White Magician Girl who wears a long pink dress and sells flowers - but she also has a spunky, aggressive personality.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Selphie - a Genki Girl who loves cute things and is The Pollyanna to everyone. She's also Cute and Psycho, as she's a trained military SeeD.
  • Final Fantasy IX Garnet, the Princess Classic, White Mage, and lover of classic literature, has also got a highly adventurous streak and also proves to be a Plucky Girl.
  • Final Fantasy X has Yuna, though this side comes out more in the sequel. She's a soft-spoken Girly Girl in the first game, but gets slightly pluckier and can be any number of 'boyish' jobs - such as Warrior, Samurai, Dark Knight, etc. Her default job is as a Gunner.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Black Mages get some extremely powerful spells, but tend to have much lower health than other classes.
  • Ninjas can often deal truly ridiculous amounts of damage with thrown weapons or Dual Wielding, but tend to be restricted to lighter armor than other fighter-types.
• Global Airship: You get one at some point during almost any game in the series (some games have several).
• The Glomp:
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Rinoa does this to Squall when he is sent to wake her up on the Timber Forest Owls train.
  • Final Fantasy IX: Garnet/Dagger glomps Zidane in the final scene of the game, when she learns that he's still alive.
  • Final Fantasy X: This is what Yuna seems to be going for in the ending (towards Tidus, who reciprocates her feelings), but she just crashes straight through him and lands hard. The sequel has a much happier result. If you got the Good Ending.
• God Is Evil: If there is a being in a Final Fantasy game explicitly referred to as a god, you'll be fighting it before the credits roll. The sole exception to this is Etro in the XIII trilogy, who isn't evil, but does seem to be amazing incompetent and shortsighted, so she still manages to cause problems the party has to deal with.
• God Is Good:
  • Final Fantasy XII: Venat is trying to be this, she wants to liberate the mortal races from the control of her kin the Occuria who are Jerkass Gods. This is ultimately heavily zigzagged though, as good Venat’s intentions are her brutal and extreme methods cause a huge amount of collateral damage that require the protagonists to confront and defeat her, even though tragically their goals are the same.
  • Played for drama in Final Fantasy XIII-2. Etro is a kind figure and gives magical power without making the receiver a slave in exchange. However, the gifts she gives people suck because they're Cast From Life Span and her Divine Intervention to save the heroes in XIII-1 causes many of the problems in this one, like retconning Lightning out of existence. To put it lightly, this may be SE's darkest game yet.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics is a dark game that only really gets darker as it goes on. There's a demonic invasion going on, in addition to a civil war that's tearing the country apart. And then, after Rafa's brother is killed and she's tearfully holding the body, the Zodiac Stone that the previous boss had held, one of a number of stones that seemed to be powering the demonic invasion, channels the power of Heaven for once instead of Hell, and pulls off a resurrection.
    • Also, in terms of gameplay mechanics, a higher Faith stat means a character's magic will be stronger (at the cost of taking more damage from it).
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy: In stark contrast to how most deities are portrayed in the series, Cosmos genuinely tries her best to defeat overwhelming evil and pulls off not one but two Heroic Sacrifices.
• God of Good:
  • From Dissidia Final Fantasy, Cosmos, the goddess of harmony and the leader of the heroes. This is even more notable for the fact that the series is well known for its portrayal of evil gods. It does later come to light in the in-game documentation of 012: Duodecim that she and Chaos aren't really gods, but Manikins, empowered by Shinryu; Cosmos herself was a facsimile of the former of the wife of Cid of the Lufaine. In any event, she certainly plays well the role of Big Good for her chosen warriors in the cycles of conflict.
  • Etro of Final Fantasy XIII.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The Chocobos. Regular chocobos are yellow-orange, but there are other chocobo types characterized by different colors. Stronger breeds can swim and fly, but the gold chocobo is always the strongest.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny: Weapons and armor made of gold show up in some of the games.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!:
  • Final Fantasy IX - Zidane is prone to using 'heck' a lot in the English translation.
  • Final Fantasy X has a wonderful example. Rikku has just had her hometown blown up and The Team is flying away in an airship. Wakka tries to comfort her by saying 'Boom! Like happy festival fireworks, ya?'. Rikku says 'You can cram your happy festival, ya big meanie!'
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has its share of swearing; "ass", "damn", "bastard", from everyone except Yuna. The closest she gets to swearing is, "Oh, poopie". Rikku scolds her for saying something so vulgar. Yuna was copying Rikku! In Kingdom Hearts II, Yuna gets even more polite: "Oh, foofie".
  • Final Fantasy Type-0 - Mostly averted, since it was the first M-rated game in the franchise. There are plenty of "damns" and "hells" from various characters. But in a few jarring scenes, the word "frick" is used to replace all instances that "fuck" could be used.
    Aria: You frickers just got done telling me that I could 'speak freely'? Why don't you try keeping your damn word, frickin' cadets!
  • World of Final Fantasy have Lann. He would be the most fouled mouth protagonist this side of Cid Highwind if his choice of expletives didn't include words like 'honk' and 'shmup'. He does drop the former every time something happens.
    Lann: "What the honk?!"
  • Final Fantasy XVI averts this for the majority of its time and is no stranger to harsh language including many F-bombs throughout, as it is another M-rated game in the franchise. But this trope occurs in one moment in the game that jarringly stands out when Lord Margrace utters the words "Confound it!"
• Gratuitous Latin: The series has always loved putting in gratuitous Latin in places, but in recent years game titles have been subject to this as well (Dissidia, Dissidia Duodecim and Fabula Nova Crystallis, among others). An increased usage of Latin in later games may or may not have been due to Final Fantasy VII's Final Boss theme.
• Gravity Is Purple: The spells Gravity/Gravira/Graviga (occasionally known as Demi) are Percent Damage Attacks that are often colored purple and black.
• Guide Dang It!: Possibly the Trope Codifier; like many epic adventure games, certain parts are not easy to figure out without a guide, such as sidequests and how to find a Superboss.

H

• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold:
  • Aria Bennett, one of the Guest Star Party Members in Final Fantasy III. She's a priestess of the water crystal and a white-clad White Mage. Whenever you talk to her, she says very nice things about how the party is blessed with the light.
  • Krile of Final Fantasy V is a cute and sweet young girl who is a Friend to All Living Things with the ability to speak to them. She can also communicate with benevolent ghosts and plays the medium for her friends. She also becomes the youngest member of the party.
  • Terra/Tina from Final Fantasy VI, though her sprites have green hair, her concept art has her with blonde hair ^note Dissidia Final Fantasy makes it blonde as well she's a young, innocent, motherly, young woman who hates fighting, though she will fight to protect her friends and family. The game also has Celes, who is described as having a spirit as pure as snow, in spite of being a battle-hardened soldier.
  • Cloud from Final Fantasy VII after he gets over his cocky "in for the money" attitude and becomes the compassionate (even occasionally goofy) leader for his friends, hell the jerk mercenary act is just a cover for how much he wants to be accepted and loved (plus he has Fake Memories). Cloud also like Aerith has some Messianic traits, being raised by a single mother with no father, and being the chosen hero of the Gaia (the planet).
  • Zidane from Final Fantasy IX is very outgoing, generally friendly to those around him regardless of being a thief. Though he does lean towards being a Handsome Lech at times, though considering his otherwise good nature that makes Zidane more of a Chivalrous Pervert than anything else. Like Cloud, he also tries to conceal his insecurities and fight them alone.
  • Final Fantasy X has Tidus and Rikku who are the most childish and tender-hearted members of The Team. Tidus like other male examples above hides pains behind a mask of cheeriness, when the situation turns sour Tidus goes above and beyond to protect his loved ones. While Rikku is Yuffie-esque thief type, she is highly compassionate and sabotages the Yuna's pilgrimage only because Rikku knows it will result in the Summoner's death.
    • Worth noting Tidus technically bleached his hair blonde but since his character is meant to represent the Sun anyway the trope is still in effect regardless.
  • Lady Lunafreya, Prompto, and Cindy from Final Fantasy XV.
  • Cosmos from Dissidia Final Fantasy and its prequel. As part of her image as a deity of harmony, she is kind, beautiful, and vaguely motherly.
• Hair-Contrast Duo:
  • Final Fantasy VII has several by design, all with Cloud:
    • Cloud (shortish spiky hair, golden blond, pragmatic but unstable) and his rival Sephiroth (really long flowing hair, silver, otherworldly, and collected).
    • Cloud (short blond spiky hair, pessimistic, and more innocent) and his idol Zack (long black spiky hair, optimistic, and more experienced). Note also that Zack's hairstyle was actually based on an early design for Cloud's that was changed because it wasn't striking enough — Cloud is the main character, while Zack is a backstory character whose entire existence is obscured from the player, with the ironic concept that he's a more 'main character'-type person than Cloud.
    • Cloud, (male, short blond hair, cool and collected when he's not being mind raped) and Tifa (female, long brown/black hair, enthusiastic (but keeps a lot of secrets to herself, and suffers for it).
  • Final Fantasy VIII: Fujin (female, silver-haired, cool) and Raijin (male, brown-haired, enthusiastic).
  • Final Fantasy IX: Zidane and Garnet. It's hard to get more worlds apart when one is a thief and an alien while the other is a princess.
  • Final Fantasy X: Tidus and Yuna. Tidus is fun-filled, naive, and energetic, while Yuna is serious to a fault at times, and is (very poorly) hiding her own melancholy. They have equally dark back-stories. The fact that Tidus is from a dream-preserved memory of ancient Zanarkand helps the contrast along.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Fang and Vanille, as shown in the page image. Vanille is a happy-go-lucky and childlike Rose-Haired Sweetie who serves as The Heart for the main cast. Her childhood friend and fellow Gran Pulsian, the dark-haired Fang, is headstrong, wild, and mature.
  • Mobius Final Fantasy has white-haired Wol, who is The Chosen One with Incorruptible Pure Pureness despite his mean streak, and Maia, a summoner, heretic, and witch.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Several main characters, Terra of Final Fantasy VI and Cecil of Final Fantasy IV being the most iconic examples.
• Happy Ending Override:
  • In Final Fantasy VII, while it's implied all of humanity is extinct in the far future, Cloud resolved all of his personal issues and rebuilt his mind, became honest with himself about his flaws and insecurities, and gained a strong and intentionally funny personality. Come Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, and Cloud is severely depressed, having strange episodes again and alienating the friends he'd long since learned how to rely on.
  • After the Belated Happy Ending of Final Fantasy X-2, this came in full force with the Final Fantasy X-2.5 ~Eien no Daishou novella and Final Fantasy X -Will- audio drama written by Kazuhige Nojima. Tidus dies (again) while he and Yuna are shipwrecked on an unknown island, and though Yuna is able to bring him back from the Farplane, it's implied Tidus may have not returned fully intact. And the Farplane has become unstable, causing the dead to return to life. That means Sin is along for the ride, too, possibly willed back to Spira because of an unknown party's desires. Sin, the aforementioned Eldritch Abomination whose thousand-year cycle of suffering and Senseless Sacrifices only ended because of Tidus' Heroic Sacrifice. And Yuna calls off her relationship with Tidus because of petty jealousy over one of his friends, in spite of their romance being a pivotal part of the last two games.
  • Final Fantasy XII has this from a game it's a prequel to. The game ends happily ever after, the tyranny of the gods overthrown and the Empire now under the management of a friendly emperor... and then you check the backstory of Final Fantasy Tactics, set in the same world thousands of years later. Turns out there was an apocalypse knocking mankind back to the dark ages and driving all the nonhumans to extinction sometime later.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2. At the end of the first game, Lightning and friends managed to Take a Third Option and defeat the Jerkass Gods without destroying the world, Serah returns to normal and Lightning approves of her marriage to Snow. The sequel reveals that Lightning disappeared due to Time Paradox shortly afterwards, and Snow left to look for her, leaving Serah alone. A time traveler from the future arrives and reveals that he's the last of humanity living After the End. Furthermore, that crystal pillar holding up Cocoon won't hold out forever, and then, well... Thankfully, the third installment of the trilogy goes the opposite route, with the creation of a new world and all of the heroes, Lightning included, free to live out their lives in peace.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015): The original Dissidia ended with Chaos and his forces defeated and the heroes departed back to their worlds with Crystals in hand. But now they've been summoned again for a new war.
• Healing Boss:
  • Final Fantasy: If you don't take down the Final Boss, Chaos fast enough, he'll cast Curaja to completely heal himself.
  • Final Fantasy III:
    • Echidna can cast Drain to absorb HP from one of your party members.
    • Ahriman can cast Curaja to restore a considerable amount of HP.
  • Final Fantasy IV: Asura continually heals herself while countering physical attacks. To defeat her, and earn her as a summon, you must cast Reflect on her so her healing bounces to your party.
  • Final Fantasy VIII: The boss fight against Adel is made more difficult due to the fact that she has forcibly absorbed Rinona into her body, and will periodically drain Rinona's HP to replenish her own. If Adel isn't defeated before draining all of Rinona's HP, it will result in a Non-Standard Game Over.
  • Final Fantasy X: One of Yu Yevon's summons heals it for 9999 health every turn. However, the boss is not immune to the Zombie effect, which makes it all too easy to turn it into 9999 damage every turn, a fitting end for an Almighty Idiot.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics: Argath, the boss of chapter 1, has Auto-Potion as his reaction ability, meaning each time he's hit he has a chance to heal 30 HP. (And unlike the player, he cannot run out of potions.) So you'd best hit him with attacks that do at least 31 damage.
• Healing Potion: Usually used for healing set amounts of HP, and come in a variety of types, from the standard potion to the rare and powerful megalixer.
• Healing Shiv: The recurring Healing Staff and Healing Rod items, which restore the target's HP instead of dealing damage when used for physical attacks. Of course, Final Fantasy's strong tradition of Revive Kills Zombie means you can often weaponize them against undead foes to fairly potent effect.
• Healing Spring: Appearing in every game from III to IX, in varying capacities.
• Healing Winds:
  • Spells called this or similar have popped up in IX and XIV.
  • The White Wind ability is a monster-exclusive skill that heals the target for an amount equal to the user's current HP. It can also be used by the heroes should the monster be mind-controlled into using it on a Blue Mage.
• Heartbroken Badass:
  • Kain Highwind from Final Fantasy IV; with Porom's "Cry" augment.
    • Edward from Final Fantasy IV: The After Years continues to grieve over his dead girlfriend Anna while he handles almost every threat harming his castle and people when he's at it. He just got that better.
  • Vincent Valentine from Final Fantasy VII.
    • Also, Rude. His entire reason for being uncomfortable talking to people is because the girl he fell in love with was a terrorist who was only using him for information.
    • Cloud Strife spends most of Advent Children beating himself up over not being able to save Aeris.
  • Locke and Cyan from Final Fantasy VI (Fiancée killed by The Empire, wife and son poisoned by the same, respectively).
  • Lulu from Final Fantasy X (boyfriend killed by the local Eldritch Abomination).
  • Ashe from Final Fantasy XII (widowed by The Empire), in each case, the death of their loved one serves as their motivation to go after the Big Bad (Ashe comes pretty close to starting a genocide against the Empire).
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Celes betrays the Empire, and joins the Returners after Locke saves her from torture. Kefka's plan to poison the entire town of Doma crosses her Moral Event Horizon. However, burning down Maranda is simply Empire evil, because she did participate in that.
    • Emperor Gestahl pretends to pull one of these creating a Disc One Ending following a Disc-One Final Dungeon, but it's a trap. The party realizes this beforehand, but they underestimate how far deep they are in.
    • When the above happens, General Leo actually pulls this off, and dies for his mutiny.
  • After defeating Zidane and friends three times in Final Fantasy IX and getting a Pyrrhic Victory after the third battle upon realizing Garnet's condition, General Beatrix joins your party for a couple of fights and seeks to atone for what she has done.
    • An unusual, less extreme example, but it counts. Steiner, even though he's in your party for a greater portion of the game, spends most of his time trying to sabotage the party and deliver Dagger back to the queen. Zidane and the others win his loyalty, eventually.
    • Even Big Bad Kuja pulls this off before he dies at the end of the game. Just when Zidane comes to pull off a Heroic BSoD to pick him up just as the Iifa Tree is about to crumble.
  • Judge Gabranth in Final Fantasy XII sides with The Empire after believing that his brother, Basch, betrayed them and his men. He even fights the party a few times but near the Final Battle, he realizes who the true evil is and assists the party for one battle. Gabranth dies after the war is over and Basch lives on in his name.
  • Libertus Ostium in Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV was among those in the Kingsglaive that turned against King Regis. However, towards the end of the film, he realizes that the Niflheim Empire are the true antagonists, changes allegiance to Nyx, and helped get Luna to the borders while Nyx battles General Glauca.
  • Meliadoul in Final Fantasy Tactics (too bad this happens after Orlandu's already joined, however; everything she can do, he can do better). Also, Mediators can use their Invite skill on most enemies (as in, those who aren't plotting characters), recruiting them on the spot to your cause (well, with a bit of luck, anyway).
  • Terra, Cloud, and Tidus in Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. Terra was originally a lackey of Kefka, but thanks to some help from Vaan and a little meddling from Kuja, she turned to Cosmos's side. While Cloud was an Anti-Villain Type IV, as he shows concern toward his opponents in Prologus, warning Lightning not to underestimate the other Warriors of Chaos, and has no real motive (or incentive) to fight any of them, let alone Tifa. Since Cloud has been through several cycles already, and more importantly, remembers them, so he's burnt out and unmotivated because he knows it's a waste of time. It's not like fighting any of the heroes or getting killed by one of them is going to change anything, they'll all just be back in the next cycle. But after Sephiroth attack Tifa, he rebels against Chaos and got killed. His last wish to Cosmos was to keep Tifa safe. Cosmos is so touched by this that she choose him as her warriors on the next cycle. As for Tidus, he was originally suckered into fighting for Chaos, but after taking a fatal blow from the Emperor, his father Jecht sacrificed himself to save him and left himself open to being turned to Chaos, and Yuna helped him join Cosmos's army.
• Hell-Bent for Leather:
  • Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII fame, in black. His Gackt-Expy rival Genesis from Crisis Core shops at the same place, but goes for red.
    • Vincent Valentine wears some kind of leather suit, which is partially covered by the big red cape.
  • Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII has his famous black leather and lion fur jacket and matching pants. On the opposite side, The Rival Seifer wears a white leather trenchcoat.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Freely name-able party members (and sometimes summon monsters), resulting in this in every game until it was mostly dropped in the tenth; you could name the protagonist often, but none of the other characters (you could still name your summons, and at least one NPC had done so). It was fully discarded in the twelfth installment.
  • This concept is played with in the DS remake of IV. In the remakes up to then you could rename the characters, but come the DS release the cutscenes, which had voice acting, would make this confusing. Thus you can't change the names of your party members, causing Namingway, the character who performed this function in past versions of the game, to freak out when he tries to rename you and can't, inspiring him to embark on a journey to find a new purpose in life since his old one is now gone.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Nearly every protagonist in the series whose abilities are predefined specializes in using swords or at least sword-adjacent weapons, like gunblades or daggers. If not the main character, there's nearly always at least one party member in every game who uses swords or something similar.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In Final Fantasy IV: The After Years an interesting blend of this and Villainous BSoD happens to poor Cecil. First, the Maenad forces him be Brainwashed and Crazy, to the point that he, among other things, wreaks disaster on the world, attempts to have his friend Edward assassinated, and personally raises arms against his best friend, wife, and child. After this, her control over him is broken, and he realizes precisely what it is he has done. He goes completely catatonic as a result. Fortunately, he can be snapped out of that, too.
  • Late in Final Fantasy V, the normally-optimistic and easygoing Bartz snaps and nearly destroys the airship when Exdeath apparently destroys his hometown with the Void.
  • Terra has one of these in Final Fantasy VI when she realizes that she's half-Esper. The player (along with the rest of her party) doesn't find this out until significantly later in the game, so the fact that she transforms, flies away, and becomes completely incoherent seems completely random when it first happens.
    • Terra also has another the end of the world, though not for the reason you might think. After adopting a village of orphans, she starts feeling things she doesn't understand and it saps her ability to fight completely, so Celes and Sabin have to save her (and the kids) from the monster Humbaba. When Humbaba comes back for a rematch later, Terra realizes that she's feeling love for her new family and pulls a Big Damn Heroes for the party this time around.
    • Cyan, meanwhile, is introduced as a noble samurai... and then Kefka wipes out everyone in his home kingdom (including his wife and son). Cyan's first response? Charge into a nearby Imperial camp and challenge everyone present to battle. He manages to get a hold of himself, but if you revisit Doma in the World of Ruin, you'll have to engage in what amounts to hands-on psychotherapy.
    • If Cid dies, then Celes winds up losing herself to despair and hurls herself off a cliff. Her suicide attempt fails and she wakes up to discover Locke's bandana, which causes her to realize she isn't alone and leads her to search to reunite with the rest of the party.
  • Final Fantasy VII
    • Sephiroth convinces the hero Cloud that he (Cloud) is not who he thinks he is; that he is in fact an attempt at "duplicating" the real Cloud, who had died several years earlier. The hero is so distraught at discovering he's the Tomato in the Mirror that he gives up the Weapon of Mass Destruction to his enemy. As all hell breaks loose, Cloud disappears, only to be found nearly comatose by his teammates a week later.
    • The prequel Crisis Core gives poor Cloud yet another BSoD during Zack's traumatic death scene.
    • Surprisingly, Sephiroth's current nature was implied to be the direct result of this, having found out his actual origins.
    • Though his BSoDs may pale in comparison to Cloud's, Vincent Valentine convinced himself that it was his fault for not protecting his beloved one, Lucrecia. So he laid in a coffin. For three decades.
    • In the original game, Barret has a good one in Midgar when one of the city's upper plates crashes into the slums below killing his friends and, seemingly, his adoptive daughter Marlene. All he could do is scream and shoot into the rubble, until Tifa recalled something Aeris had said and realized that Marlene was safe and alive elsewhere.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has Squall suffer an interesting version of it beginning with the third disc. Up until then, he'd been the taciturn and reluctant hero, doing what he'd thought everyone wanted him to do as a good soldier. Then Rinoa ends up in a coma from which she might never wake up. Cue abandonment of his friends and his post to go on a long journey with a minimal chance of success just for her, something that would have been completely antithetical to his beliefs only a week or so before.
    • The end sequence of FFVIII also involves a more standard version when Squall tries and fails to make it out of Time Compression using The Power of Friendship, getting stranded alone outside of time and having an epic Heroic BSoD complete with hallucinations.
  • Final Fantasy IX. After her mother's death (suffered whilst trying to kill her, after finding out that she never loved her and just wanted her powers) closely followed by her witnessing the epic destruction of her new kingdom on the eve of her coronation, Garnet/Dagger spends a good chunk of the later game completely catatonic, unable to talk and just dragged around by her comrades. Oddly enough, she could still join you in battle, though her hit chance went right down, and occasionally, she just gave up, with the notice "Garnet can't concentrate". Her depressed state also prevents her from using her Trance abilities, which is signified by having her Trance gauge removed from the interface.
    • And then she becomes catatonic after her homeland is nearly wiped off the map by an invasion of undead monsters and an incredibly destructive magical attack that had been stolen from Garnet herself. You can hardly blame Garnet for developing post-traumatic stress disorder after a trauma like that.
    • Also, during her death scene, Brahne apologizes for it and claims that she did it out of overwhelming (and recently realized) greed, not that she never loved Garnet in the first place.
    • Another prime case of Heroic BSoD occurs near the end of the game to Zidane. After finding out his true origins and the morbid purpose of his existence he goes temporarily insane, turning into a raging, foul-mouthed misanthrope who attacks everything in his path both verbally and physically.
    • He was having his soul sucked out by his creator. It'd put you in a foul mood. Before Garland did the soul drain, Zidane was shocked about his origins, but he immediately turned against his maker, on the grounds that his true place was with his friends; when the party finds him after the fact, he's slumped in a chair and when he walks, its at a slow stumbling gait.
    • Heck, most of the main cast suffers some form of the trope after experiencing a personal trauma. Steiner doesn't know what to do or feel after he finally sees and gets that the Queen is truly a monster bent on conquering other nations and was planning to kill her own daughter off. Freya has a minor breakdown after seeing that the love of her life lost his memories and has no idea who she is. Vivi goes into complete shock after seeing the Black Mages being mass produced in a factory and they look just like him. The only people that don't go into a meltdown are Quina (too simple minded to really care about many things), Amarant (has a personal score to settle and focuses on nothing else), and Eiko (already gone through some tragedies when she was younger, so she's mostly over it).
  • In Final Fantasy X Auron has a rather spectacular one when he finds out that the religion he has devoted his life to is all false and Braska and Jecht died for nothing because Sin can never truly be vanquished. His BSoD leads him to his death as he gets so angry that he attacks a pseudo-God.
    • Tidus also has a major BSoD when Rikku and the Al Bhed tell him that Yuna will die if she finishes the pilgrimage., Valefor comforting him is probably one of the most touching scenes in the game.
    • Though not to the same degree as the other two, Tidus has another one earlier in the game when Auron reveals to him that Jecht, Tidus's father who he had believed to have died ten years earlier, is not only alive, but is the Big Bad that the party is on a mission to kill. This is made especially clear when you compare Tidus's extremely depressed mood during his interaction with Yuna in the subsequent cutscene to the much more cheerful mood he had shown during all his previous interactions with her up to that point.
    • Yuna gets a brief one of her own (combined with a very healthy dose of Oh, Crap! that she shares with the rest of the party and first time players) during the Operation Mi-ihen cutscene. She obviously knew well before this that Sin's destructive power was unmatched by anything else in Spira, but this was the first time that she had actually witnessed the full extent of it firsthand.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, Larsa has a brief one when Al-Cid reveals that his father passed away.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, the Idiot Hero Snow has one of these when he learns that Hope, whom he previously though to be just an innocent Tagalong Kid, is actually son of the woman whom he let plummet to her death in the prologue and whose death has been gnawing at his conscience ever since. Not only that, but Hope actively hates his guts and really, really wants him dead (their previous lack of understanding is not helped any by Hope's inability to just spit it out and Snow living in his private happy-go-lucky world most of the time).
    • Every single character undergoes one of these as a plot point. Sazh's in Chapter 8 is probably the most memorable and chilling in the game, as the normally lighthearted, funny, friendly character is very nearly Driven to Suicide by the revelations of what happened to his son and having seemingly lost him forever.
  • Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates:
    • Chelinka goes actually catatonic for several years after Latov dies, which combines with the effect of using her power for the first time.
    • When you find Meeth after the Time Skip, she's slipped into extended one of these as a result of being The Aloner and unable to escape Rela Cyel to help the twins.
  • Yunita in Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light falls into a self-pitying slump after Aire berates her, Brandt ditches her, the good people of Urbeth con her out of everything down to the clothes on her back, and she is absolutely nowhere close to saving Horne. When Jusqua turns up in town, she initially refuses to join him because she assumes she'll just drag him down. She snaps out of it after helping him save the town from monsters and getting up the Tower of the Sky on her own. (Because Jusqua ditched her.)
  • In Final Fantasy XIV, Alphinaud Leveilleur crashes headlong into this in the second-to-final mission of the A Realm Reborn saga heading into the Heavensward expansion when his pet project company, the Crystal Braves, had been compromised since its inception, leading to the not-actually assassination of Ul'dah sultana Nanamo ul Namo, the false accusation to her assassination towards the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (which includes you, the Player Character) and the disappearance of the group save a handful, that handful being forced to escape into exile in Ishgard.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, Noctis enters one for weeks after Ardyn kills Luna as he watched helplessly from the sidelines as he had been waiting to finally see Luna for 12 years, only to not quite make it in time.
• Heroic Resolve:
  • A ways into Final Fantasy V we have Galuf break free of ExDeath's attack that has the entire party trapped and about to die, and takes the armored killer on one-on-one. ExDeath hits the poor guy with everything, I mean everything he has, and Galuf won't go down. Even when Galuf's HP reaches zero he still keeps fighting and clings to life long enough to drive Ex Death away before finally succumbing to his injuries. It's easily the awesomest and saddest moment in the entire game.
  • Cloud in the original Final Fantasy VII during the real flashback to the showdown with Sephiroth in the backstory. Even after he gets run through the gut by Sephiroth's giant sword and lifted into the air with it, he grabs the blade with both hands and uses it as leverage to hurl Sephiroth off the platform into the lifestream pit below. Not bad for a scrawny kid who couldn't make the cut for the Super-Soldier program and had to enlist as a lowly grunt instead.
    • Zack Fair, in the Final Fantasy VII prequel Crisis Core, who escapes with Cloud after four years of horrible experimentation by the Mad Scientist Hojo. Zack steadfastly refuses to give up hope on or abandon the comatose Cloud, taking care of him for nearly a year, then has an epic Last Stand in which he battles a massive force from the Shinra army and manages to whittle them down to three troopers, in order to protect Cloud. And then, after being absolutely riddled with bullets, Zack still manages to give Cloud a Take Up My Sword speech before going out with a smile.
  • In Dissidia: Final Fantasy 012, while some of his comrades set out on a mission to stop the influx of Manikins, the Warrior of Light acts as Cosmos' last line of defense... and faces down the Manikin horde, fully prepared to go down fighting to keep them away from Cosmos and take as many with him as he can. He faces at least as many Manikins as the other six warriors, and he holds out just as long if not more so.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Final Fantasy II has three separate Heroic Sacrifices. Josef holds off a falling boulder so the others can escape, Minwu gives his life to unseal the Ultima magic, and Ricard pulls a one-man You Shall Not Pass! against the resurrected Emperor.
  • Final Fantasy IV has so many of these it gets ridiculous (two of them are within 5 minutes of each other), even if all but one are Disney Deaths.
    • Five, to be precise.
    • It even gets Lampshaded.
      Kain: Why is everyone so ready to die?
  • Galuf of Final Fantasy V. He fights Exdeath, going waaaay beyond unconsciousness. The team tries to revive him, but fails. A poignant scene.
    • And Gilgamesh.
  • Deliberately avoided in Final Fantasy VII. Tetsuya Nomura and Yoshinori Kitase, the game's character designer and director respectively, found the idea of "heroic sacrifice" repellently artificial and gave Aerith an abrupt death which achieved nothing for the good guys (arguably the game would have ended with them victorious if she had survived at this point) to show how awful death actually is. Although they were highly successful, a certain subset of the fanbase was having none of it, with Japanese gamers going so far as to organise a petition, and one notable Internet hoax claiming her comeback was programmed in as a secret plot branch but not activated in certain versions of the game. The 3 original members of AVALANCHE (Biggs, Jessie, and Wedge) all died because they were left behind on the pillar as the Plate fell and crushed them. However, they went into battle defending the Pillar knowing they would probably die.
    • A less debatable example is the warrior Seto, Red XIII's father, who raced off alone to ward off the Gi Tribe. The spirits within the cave are the multitudes of warriors he bested while slowly turning to poisoned stone after being pierced by several petrifying spears. That Seto's statue sheds tears implies he was still alive and would eternally guard Cosmo Canyon.
    • In Crisis Core, Zack fights against a not-so-moderately sized army of Shinra Grunts (complete with artillery and air support) to protect a barely-functional Cloud, knowing that he's most likely going to die.
  • In Final Fantasy X, it quite soon becomes pretty obvious to the player that this is what Yuna's quest is all about. The main player character Tidus, never has the slightest clue until someone finally manages to speak out the terrible truth aloud.
    • The above case is ultimately avoided when Yuna learns that her sacrifice would not permanently destroy Sin and would in fact provide it with the means for its eventual return. However, Tidus ends up having to be the one to make the sacrifice when it's revealed that he's a dream projected by the Fayth, and that permanently destroying Sin will involve ending the dream, and his existence along with it.
    • Final Fantasy X-2 defies this, with Yuna rejecting a plan to destroy Vegnagun that involves this trope. Having seen her loved ones die in order to bring about the Eternal Calm, she aims for a solution where nobody has to die in order for peace to be achieved. Which is exactly what happens. Even better, should you achieve the Golden Ending, she ends up bringing Tidus back.
  • At the end of Final Fantasy XIII, Fang and Vanille become Ragnarok and save Cocoon from falling, creating a large crystal pillar that holds it up. In the process, they go inside the pillar and turn to crystal themselves.
  • Several characters sacrifice their lives in Final Fantasy XV. The prequel film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV has King Regis stay behind to fight General Glauca so that Lunafreya and Nyx can escape. Later on, Nyx also sacrifices himself to allow Lunafreya to escape. In the game itself, Lunafreya uses the last of her energy after summoning Leviathan and being stabbed by Ardyn to heal Noctis and protect him as the city crumbles around them. At the very end, Noctis sacrifices himself in order to rid the world of Ardyn for good and to put an end to the eternal night that had fallen.
  • In Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, the fairy Lilibelle sacrifices her life to resurrect Aire, one of the four eponymous heroes.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, Marach, after realizing that his sister Rapha was right about Barrington being the one who killed their parents and (supposedly) raped her, sacrifices himself Taking the Bullet to save his sister. He doesn't stay dead, though, as Rapha uses one of the Zodiac Stones to bring him back to life.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, Squall is performing a drawn out, non-lethal variation: turns out his standoff-ish "lone wolf" persona is a facade, and he really does care about his comrades in arms; he just thinks he'll be better able to protect them by acting alone, deliberately drawing the villains to attack him so his friends won't have to deal with them. Don't worry, he can handle it. When Ultimecia and Garland ambush and double-team him, he's happy, as he explains that he'll be able to make things easier for his friends if he brings one of them down with him — thankfully, Zidane arrives just in the nick of time to give him backup before he can pull off a real one. Also, in the prequel Duodecim, all the new Duodecim heroes — Lighting, Kain, Yuna, Tifa, Laguna, and Vaan — die permanently in a Bolivian Army Ending to seal away most of the Manikins and give the other heroes a better chance.
• Heroic Second Wind:
  • In a flashback of Final Fantasy VII, this happens three times between both the hero and villain within a single BFS-happy cutscene. First, Sephiroth fatally wounds Zack and confidently returns to Jenova, only to be impaled width-wise by Cloud's BFS. Then Sephiroth, who clearly should be dead, stumbles back into the room and impales Cloud through the chest with his own BFS. This leads to the third moment, where Cloud uses the power of leverage on the katana impaled through his chest to toss Sephiroth into the reactor. The best part is that this was all before Cloud received SOLDIER enhancements, meaning he did all that with nothing but his own strength.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy has this done by Firion, and then he gives his "No More Holding Back" Speech.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Cecil Harvey from Final Fantasy IV spends half of the game hating himself for accidentally destroying a village of innocent bystanders (and doing other evil deeds as well). Even after his redemption he still goes back to reminisce about it eventually.
  • Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII as well. (And how!) He didn't so much 'put up an image' of stoicism as attempt to adopt a totally different personality because he hated his own so much. He does this in the Kingdom Hearts series as well — more so in the second game, when Tifa is trying to cheer him up and encourage him to find his light, but Cloud essentially says, "Yeah, whatever...".
  • Vincent Valentine. While it turned out badly and was perhaps inadvisable, he sees his willingness to ignore his own feelings for the benefit of his love, Lucrecia, as his greatest mistake since he 'allowed' her to walk into danger. He basically takes all responsibility for it and sees the horrific mutilation of his body that followed as simply his just desserts. Even after helping save the world he pretty much looks down on himself as a monster and is still somewhat isolated from the team, despite maintaining contact with them over the phone.
  • Squall Leonhart, the hero of Final Fantasy VIII, acts like a stoic and a jerk in part to hide a constant struggle with crippling insecurity and a miserable self-image.
• Heroic Spirit:
  • Final Fantasy VII Compilation, especially Crisis Core - Zack Fair, who will just NOT quit, even in the face of impossible odds. It takes an army to kill him, and even then, he kills most of them.
  • Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood: A sentient war machine that seeks to pit itself against powerful opponents to further its own mechanical evolution, Omega has observed a certain, inexplicable anomaly: that of otherwise unremarkable individuals, "heroes", overcoming seemingly impossible odds to defeat vastly superior opponents. Realizing that this has happened too often to be dismissed as mere coincidence, it brought the Warrior of Light into its experiments in an effort to recreate the conditions for this phenomenon to occur and, in doing so, figure out how to incorporate it into itself. In other words, Omega actively seeks to analyze and exploit Heroic Spirit.
• Heroic Willpower:
  • Final Fantasy V deals with the dark side of this. Despite the loss of her Grandfather, Krile is driven entirely by willpower, refusing to take breaks from her quest, and it is her will (as the Hero of Hope) that is able to restore the World after it has been lost to the Void. However, once her heroic goal is fulfilled, she completely loses the will to live and remains in the Void, even as the others beg her to return to the World. She is eventually saved, but it's only by the will of her grandfather from beyond the grave.
  • Zigzagged in Final Fantasy VII. The great war hero Sephiroth has an absurdly strong will which enables him to be in full control of his Super Serum-The Virus-induced powers. Unfortunately, he retains this once he's not heroic, allowing him to keep his sense of self after becoming submerged in The Lifestream and even use it to spread his will. The game's hero, Cloud, does not have a strong will and has a lot of unexamined self-loathing besides, making his sense of self-identity malleable, his goals and feelings open to Sephiroth's More than Mind Control, and meaning that when he is submerged in Lifestream he is overcome by its information and completely loses his mind - a wilful villain and a hero with no will. Once Cloud understands this, he discovers his will and becomes immune to Sephiroth's control, cutting him to pieces in a spiritual battle when Sephiroth's dying spirit tries to take his mind down with him.
• Hesitant Sacrifice:
  • Final Fantasy Type-0
    • Class Zero, the young heroes of the game, have been preparing to sacrifice their lives for the war effort since childhood. But when the time comes and they're slowly succumbing to their wounds, they realize that not only is dying painful and scary but being child soldiers they've also never had a chance to truly live. Most of them break down in tears and confess they never wanted to die at this point... but they do, all twelve of them together.
    • In the very first cutscene of the game, Izana Kunagiri, the elder brother of Machina, is gravely wounded during the Militesi invasion of Rubrum. At first, he seems ready to accept his fate, but as the last of his life ebbs away, he becomes fearful and starts to sob before he succumbs to his wounds.
  • Final Fantasy XV's Noctis doesn't falter when the time comes to give his life to save the world, but he trembles violently at the idea of even wearing the ring that represents his fate for much of the game, looks horrified when informed of the nature of his sacrifice, and weeps openly when he tells his friends that he's going to die. In the end, his father Regis is the hesitant one; Regis' ghost refuses to look at his dying son until Noctis begs for his trust and passes him the sword that will end his life.
• Hidden Buxom:
  • In Final Fantasy V, Faris is actually a woman who pretends to be a man since it'd be a rather bad idea to be the sole woman on a pirate ship. A passing comment by Galuf states that she's actually very buxom and simply hides it under heavy clothing.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Aeris is actually bigger than Tifa in this area, if you compare their models. Her modest dress and jacket, compared to Tifa's tight tank top, go a long way towards hiding this. This might, however be an artifact of the simplistic models. Higher resolution depictions and official art more or less corroborate this. Tifa's a little bigger, but Aerith is by no means small.
    • It's even more◊ noticeable◊ in the FFVII remake, although Tifa's bust getting dialed back means Aeris's assets are no longer overshadowed.
• Hidden Depths: Lots of folks in the series are more complex than they let on.
  • Cloud Strife of Final Fantasy VII is introduced as an awesome ex-Super-Soldier mercenary, with the skills and smugness to match that resume. The truth is, he never actually made it into that supersoldier program. His "mercenary" personality is a mix of his old friend Zack Fair, his own idea of what a supersoldier should be like, mind-bending experiments with Jenova cells and Mako, and his deep sense of shame over not accomplishing what he'd told the girl he liked (Tifa) he would.
    • Meanwhile in the remake, it's shown that despite the fact that he protests about dancing in front of people, he can actually keep up with the owner of the Honey Bee Inn in a dance-off.
  • Squall Leonhart of Final Fantasy VIII appears to be an aloof, all-business warrior who doesn't give a crud about other people. He's acting like this on purpose. As a small boy, a close friend suddenly disappeared from his life, and he couldn't take the pain. To avoid ever feeling like that again, he adopted a persona based on what he thought an independent adult should be, trying to push people away so that he won't connect with them and thus get hurt by their inevitable parting. He confesses this to Rinoa, whose constant poking and prodding slowly got him to emerge from his shell... Sadly, she was comatose at the time.
  • Zidane Tribal of Final Fantasy IX seems like a selfless, heroic thief who lives by his own personal motto "You don't need a reason to help people". And he actually is like this... but the reason he devotes so much energy to other people is because he has no idea how to solve his own problems. He was brought into the thieving club Tantalus with no memory of where he originally came from, and this issue was never really resolved by the time we first meet him. So when the truth of this very mystery proves most unpleasant, he tries to confront it all by himself. Despite his attempts to leave his friends out of it, they counter with the trope namer of You Are Not Alone.
  • Lightning of the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy is cold, aloof and generally unpleasant to be around, constantly pushing people away and lashing out at others in a misguided attempt to make herself feel better. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her to raise herself and her younger sister. She confesses to Hope that she became a soldier to avoid facing her problems, adopting the name "Lightning" because she couldn't face being Claire anymore. She also tries to dissuade Hope from killing Snow, despite not being particularly fond of him herself, and even puts her life on the line to reunite the boy with his father.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It's in this page.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Several games have "Holy" as an element. Even without it being an element, the most common uses are the Holy spell and the Alexander summon.
• Homage: This series is famous for making allusions to Star Wars, even in the next-gen titles. (One half-expects Gabranth to jab his finger in Ba'Gamnan's chest and bark, "NO DISINTEGRATIONS"). The games contain a few nods to The Thing (VII's Jenova) and Blade Runner (IX's Genomes and Black Mages) as well.
• Honor Before Reason:
  • Angeal and his SOLDIER Honor from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. He even gives lectures about it to Genesis, Sephiroth, and Zack. While both Genesis and Sephiroth are annoyed about it, Zack took the lectures to heart.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Early on, Tidus breaks a major religious taboo by entering the deepest part of a temple, a chamber normally only accessible by Summoners and their Guardians, in order to assist a summoner whose life may be in danger.
      Priest: The precepts must be obeyed!
      Tidus: Like I care! (charges into the temple as everyone else gasps in shock)
    • When Tidus later suggests the party hunts down a monstrous Chocobo Eater because "It's the right thing to do", Auron tells him his father, Jecht, often used exactly that phrase to convince his companions to selflessly help others, and if he did, it meant he was about to get them into a lot of trouble.
  • In Dissidia Final Fantasy, The Onion Knight learns this as An Aesop, as, though it went against his otherwise perfectly rational motto of not taking on any foe he wasn't confident about, he found he had to fight on regardless if it meant rescuing Terra.
    • More precisely, he learns that while his perfectly logical fighting style is effective, it doesn't allow him to exceed the limits he sets on himself. Only by ignoring reason and logic can he find the power to succeed despite overwhelming odds. He stubbornly refuses to believe that it changes his fighting style, though:
      Onion Knight: Don't get me wrong, I still won't fight anyone I can't beat. So I guess I'll just have to beat you!
• Hope Is Scary:
  • This is how Squall Leonhart feels throughout a good portion of Final Fantasy VIII.
    Squall: Everything doesn't work out the way you want it to. That's why... As long as you don’t get your hopes up, you can take anything... You feel less pain.
  • In Final Fantasy XIII, the incredibly ironically-named Hope Estheim was glad to throw himself into a nigh-pointless revenge vendetta he called "Operation Nora" so that he wouldn't have to process the horrors he'd seen, including his mother's death. He didn't take Lightning's urges to abandon this slow suicide for something more hopeful well.
    Hope: When I was fighting, there... there was no time to think about it. It felt good just to give in. But now... you start talking about hope!
  • Judging from her narration, this is Lightning's state in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
    Lightning: Each reunion is a twist of the knife. The joy is ephemeral; it leaves fear in its wake. A fear that all too soon the time will come when you must bid farewell again. Yet you cannot help but long for the next encounter.
• Hope Spot:
  • Lots in Final Fantasy II, given the sheer militaristic and magical might of the Palamecian Empire as compared to...well, everything else, especially La Résistance. The most striking example, though, is probably the whole affair with the Cyclone. As You Know, the game's story starts with the core of the party fleeing their hometown of Fynn as it is taken and occupied by the Empire. Near the end, though, La Résistance, headed by the Fynn princess Hilda, marches on Fynn and actually succeeds in ousting the garrison and freeing the city, managing to subvert Doomed Hometown Syndrome with a vengeance. This is, of course, the Emperor's cue to unveil his latest weapon of war, the Cyclone, and use it to pulverize the rest of the civilized world. And there is nothing the player can do about it.
  • Final Fantasy VI
    • There was a false ending where General Leo defeats Kefka and peace between humans and ESPERS is restored. But it turns out that Kefka was Not Quite Dead. He kills Leo, then the emperor, and destroys the world.
    • The whole first part of the game could be considered something of a slowly progressing hope spot that, with the small interlude for the Darkest Hour, is exchanged for a slowly progressing recovery from the Despair Event Horizon.
  • Used brutally in Crisis Core: Zack is within sight of the city in which Aerith is waiting for him. However, in between the two is the massive army of Shinra Corp. Zack puts up a good fight, but in the end, is overwhelmed no matter what you do.
  • In Final Fantasy IX this happens twice over. When Garnet sees that her mother, Queen Brahne, is locked in battle with Kuja, Garnet is determined to save Brahne, even though Brahne had committed may atrocities and even tried to have Garnet killed. Garnet seeks out an eidolon sealed at the Iifa Tree, only for it to turn out that said eidolon is Leviathan; since Brahne is on a ship and Kuja is flying on a silver dragon, the tidal wave Leviathan summons is more deadly for Brahne than Kuja. Brahne summons Bahamut, which manages to wound Kuja… who promptly turns Bahamut against Brahne, destroying her fleet and killing her.
  • In Final Fantasy X, the Awful Truth of the Final Summoning and the teachings of Yevon is that they will never provide true salvation from Sin. The teachings of Yevon are total hogwash that the Church itself doesn't follow, and the Final Summoning actually guarantees that Sin will be reborn. Yuna eventually rejects both, saying she wants to live and find a better way without false hope.
    • And then there's the ending. They destroy Sin permanently, without Yuna dying...only it turns out that with the Fayth finally letting themselves die, Tidus, who they dreamed into existence, disappears.
  • Final Fantasy XIII-2''s ending cutscene. Caius is dead, the paradox is resolved, the time gates are closing, Hope's new Cocoon is ascending, and Noel, Serah, and Mog are returning to Academia 500 AF. Then Serah has another vision, which kills her. Then Etro's Gate breaks open, unleashing chaos upon the world and turning Academia into Valhalla.
  • Final Fantasy XIV ended it's 1.0 run with a cinematic showing the Warriors of Light fighting alongside the united armies of Eorzea against the Garlean Empire to stop Project Meteor, which results in the awakening of the Elder Primal Bahamut, who burns a swath of destruction through Eorzea. Louisoix Leveilleur attempts to seal Bahamut away again, and for a moment, it seems to work. It fails, however, and Bahamut ravages Eorzea.
• Horned Humanoid: The Ifrit summons.
• Hotter and Sexier:
  • Final Fantasy IV is no stranger to fanservice, which is unsurprising given the franchise it's from, but compared to the rest of the series is pretty tame aside from the Stripperiffic Rydia and (in the sequel) Porom. The PSP remake of the game however adds visible sexual organs to numerous monsters, including asses to the Lamia and Succubus-type enemies and bare breasts to the Leshy, conveniently covered up by the positioning of her arms. In the game's defense though, these enemies always had these attributes, they just weren't as noticeable in previous releases due to the lower-quality graphics.
  • FFs I and III are sexless, and II, IV, V and VI include one or two mild humorous sexual moments each. FFVII, liberated from Nintendo's censorship policies, has an elaborate sidequest set in a Red Light District which involves hanging out with transvestites, pretending to be a prostitute, Cloud attempting to sleep with prostitutes, Cloud and Tifa having a heart-to-heart in a BDSM dungeon, and Cloud, Aeris, and Tifa threatening to chop, rip or smash a man's penis while interrogating him. There's also a later sidequest which calls back to this. And a Did They or Didn't They? between Cloud and Tifa.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 managed to combine this with Lighter and Softer by upping the fanservice and Les Yay to 11 while making everything more cheerful.
  • Final Fantasy XII, Penelo is fully covered until the ending sequence and the sequel, Revenant Wings, where Penelo wears a less revealing dancer costume. Vaan may be almost shirtless in both games, but in Final Fantasy Tactics A2, he gets a new getup that makes him look more badass and hotter at the same time. And fans totally agree that Basch looks younger and hotter after he shaved up and had some nice haircut.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy does this to several characters thanks to its higher-quality graphics allowing old concept art and low-quality sprites and models to be fully realized in PSP-level graphics. Terra is quite pretty in the face now and her outfits provide an escalation of fanservice, removing her tights to show off her legs, putting her in a leotard with her groin and butt on display, and putting her in a top and skirt that exposes her midriff. The Cloud of Darkness is no longer a Green-Skinned Space Babe, but looks like a normal human wearing nothing but a cape and a few strategically placed areas that cover her nipples and groin, otherwise, she's entirely nude and showing off a very shapely body. Ultimecia has a graphical update from her original game, allowing her to show off her fancy red evening gown cut down to below her belly button so she can show off some impressive cleavage. For the female fans, Warrior of Light and Firion have become full Bishōnen with silver hair and muscular builds, Zidane is quite handsome thanks to the more traditional art style, and Kain is simply gorgeous with a head full of long, flowing blonde hair. And that voice...
  • The cover of the original Final Fantasy VII has Cloud with his big sword slung over his back, staring down the Shinra Building. The cover of Final Fantasy VII Remake recreates the image near exactly, but alters Cloud's pose, the sword position, the lighting, and the overall image composition to draw the attention towards Cloud's butt.
    • Tifa's design in Final Fantasy VII Remake is both this and Tamer and Chaster at the same time. She now wears a sports bra under her classic white top which heavily downplays the Jiggle Physics that the character had long been infamous for, while her skirt is longer and heavier, and she's got biker shorts on underneath it. On the other hand, the graphics upgrade means she is much prettier in the face, and her thigh socks are potentially more suggestive than the shorter ones from her original design.
• HP to One: A favorite tactic used by almost all the Final Bosses in the series.
  • Also an important strategy in Final Fantasy VIII, especially in Selphie's case.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl:
  • Final Fantasy VII (mainly Dirge of Cerberus), Vincent Valentine (6'0") and Yuffie Kisaragi (5'2")(especially for those who are huge fans of Yuffentine). In Dirge of Cerberus, Vincent shares a lot of screen time with diminutive Shelke Rui, a woman with the body of a nine-year-old girl who stands between 4'6" and 4'10". For an even greater height difference, Shelke also has several scenes with Azul (9'5"), more than double her height.
  • Final Fantasy VIII, the Beta Couple Selphie Tilmitt (5'2") and Irvine Kinneas (6'0").
  • In Final Fantasy X, the villain who's interested in Yuna and does end up marrying her freaking towers over her. Official heights don't make sense and seem to vary between FMV-models and gameplay-models, but general fannish consensus is that Yuna hovers around 5'3", while Seymour is something like 6'4" with a fondness for hairstyles and clothing that makes him look larger than he already is.
  • Final Fantasy XI Elvaan and Galka males typically dwarf the females of all the other races. However, Fanon seems to have a particular fondness for Mithra/Male Elvaan parings, often exaggerating this element to extreme degrees. Most likely it's because the Mithra are cute little Cat Girl, and the Elvaan are towering Elf Bishōnen.
  • Final Fantasy XIII: Serah, who is around Vanille's height of 5'4" and just as slim, is engaged to Snow, who is 6'5 (or 6'7, depending on the source) and has a strong muscular build.
  • Final Fantasy XIV, The Sultana Nanamo Ul Namo is a Lalafell, the smallest race in Eorzea. Her right hand is the Flame General Raubahn Aldynn, a Highlander Hyru who's both large and strongly built. Raubahn will even carry Nanamo by having her sit on his forearm like a falcon.
    • The Au Ra can provide both sides of the trope, with their males being among the tallest of the races, while the females are the shortest (Aside from the Lalafell, who they still beat by a good margin).
  • Final Fantasy XV, siblings Gladiolus and Iris Amicitia stand 6'6" and 5'3', respectively - a 15-inch difference in height.
• Humanoid Abomination: Pretty much all of the Big Bads count as one in at least one stage of their life cycle.
• Humble Goal:
  • In Final Fantasy VI, the secret character Gogo the Mimic joins your party because they're bored.
  • In Final Fantasy IX, Quina joins your party just to travel the world and sample new foods.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer:
  • Downplayed in most games. While the warhammers aren't ridiculously large, they are still far larger and bulkier than real life warhammers.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • Warriors have access to a handful of war hammers in place of their usual axes. These hammers have heads the size of their wielders' torsos to go hand-in-hand with the superhuman strength granted by mastering one's Inner Beast.
    • The Magic Hammer spell used by blue mages drops an enormous mallet larger than any player character onto the target area, damaging any enemy struck, reducing the enemy's Mind and Intelligence stats, and restoring MP to the caster.
    • Godbert Manderville has the inexplicable ability to make his ordinary goldmsith's hammer grow to enormous proportions, making the haft and the head longer than he is tall. He uses this reach to batter his foes in mid-air before sending them careening down to earth.
• Hyper-Competent Sidekick:
  • Beatrix does all the heavy lifting in Final Fantasy IX, compared to Queen Brahne's incoherent rages.
    • That's why she's a general instead of a queen.
  • Thunder God Cid (Orlandu) in Final Fantasy Tactics, working under Duke Goltanna.
    • This carries over when he joins you, destroying the difficulty of the game if you actually use him.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV during the Hildibrand Manderville questlines, you have to be this for the Gentleman Detective since his sidekick Nashu tends to be clueless at best and eager to use her bombs at worst, and you're basically the Primal-slaying hero.