Final Fantasy XIV / Tropes M to O

Final Fantasy XIV
Tropes: A to C | D to F (Foreshadowing) | G to I (Gameplay and Story Integration) | J to L | M to O | P to R | S to U | V to Z

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• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Late in the 3.0 story line, the Warrior of Light and their allies discover that the Big Bad, Archbishop Thordan VII, is seeking Azys Lla, an ancient Allagan facility, and that a key to it is located in the Sea of Clouds. There, they discover that it was consumed by the primal Bismarck. So the Warrior of Light does what they do best: they slay the primal and retrieve the key. Naturally, the Archbishop and the Ascians arrive, incapacitate the Warrior with dark magic that renders them helpless, and take the key, gaining uncontested access to Azys Lla.
• Mad Scientist: Marcette is a naturalist, essentially an ecologist and biologist rolled into one, who does some incredibly questionable research such as torturing a mole pup.
• Mage-Hunting Monster: Voidsent are ravenous fiends from the void, a world of eternal darkness, who are constantly starved of aether. As such, they continually try to cross the rift between worlds to feed on the denizens of other worlds and possess their bodies. Mages like thaumaturges and conjurers are especially tasty snacks for voidsent, as mages are required to possess more internal aether than other people in order to cast spells. Morno, a powerful succubus and the focus of the thaumaturge questline, immediately begins murdering and feasting upon every thaumaturge she can get her hands on once she's freed from her cage. Her taste for thaumaturges is so profound that Cocobuki is able to lure her out of Cocobusi's body by allowing her to gorge upon his aether. This gives the Warrior of Light and the other thaumaturge guildmasters time to fight and kill her without harming Cocobusi.
• Magic Feather: During the final Crystalline Mean quest for Blacksmith/Armorer/Goldsmith, you help Iola get back her father's ring from a loanshark who is asking for an obscene amount. A Nu Mou helps you out by giving you an enchanted ingot with the idea that you will craft it into a ring that you'll trade for the other ring with. When you show it to him, he instantly becomes enamored with it and quickly trades you the other ring for it. Iola's assistant assumes the metal was somehow enchanted to make him become obsessed with it, but the Nu Mou clarifies that his obsession with the ring was purely because of the Warrior of Light's craftsmanship. The enchantment on the ring is actually a curse that will soon cause the loan shark's financial situation to take a downward turn. The assistant is disturbed at this revelation.
• Magic Must Defeat Magic: Merlwyb witnesses a Sahagin priest developing the power of the Echo and tries to shoot him dead. To everyone's alarm, the Sahagin is able to Body Surf into the bodies of his subordinates no matter how many of them she shoots. It's not until the Sahagins finish summoning Leviathan that the primal, a magical construct in the shape of the Sahagin's god, devours the soul of the priest completely that the priest stays dead for good. This is what inspires the Scions and Moenbryda to use white auracite to imprison an Ascian's soul long enough to blast it with a Blade of Light, an enormous surge of aether, to put the undying chaos bringers down permanently.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: The Eorzea vs. Garlemald conflict is fought between the Eorzeans, who use magic in their day-to-day lives, and the Garleans, are unable to cast any magic whatsoever. Outside of Ironworks Industries and the airships (both of which are mainly headed by a Garlean defector), Eorzea's technology is rather primtiive compared to the Garleans, who overwhelm most forms of resistance with its superior air force and ceruleum-powered magitek weaponry.
• Magitek: Present and accounted for. The Garleans use all manner of high-tech weapons and gadgets, up to and including magitek armor. The long-lost Allagan civilization had even more advanced magiteknology, from cloning and genetic manipulation to means with which they could harness the power of primals.
• Mana Burn:
  • There are a few enemies that can damage your TP (what physical classes use to execute attacks), though they're blessedly rare. It used to be averted for MP, but patch 2.1 added the Zu fight in the Pharos Sirius—the boss will spawn additional monsters called Zu Cockerels, which will drain MP, and naturally almost always head for the healer first.
  • The final boss of Alexander: Gordias (Savage) uses an attack called "Perpetual Ray", which in addition to doing a lot of damage, will also drain 30% of MP and (prior the gauge's removal) TP if not stunned properly.
  • The last enemy before the final boss in the hard version of the Great Gubal Library can use Magick Hammer, which cuts your HP, MP, and TP in half if you get caught.
• Mana Potion: Ethers, Hi-Ethers X-Ethers, and Max Ethers restore varying amounts of MP with the high quality versions restoring more than their normal counterparts. Elixirs can also restore MP along with HP.
• Marathon Level:
  • Castrum Meridianum and Praetorium, the final dungeons in 2.0, can take a good hour or so just to complete due to their length and cutscenes. A patch made the cutscenes completely unskippable, so you'll have to set aside some time if you plan to tackle those dungeons. The roulette that contains the two dungeons does give higher rewards to compensate the longer run time however.
  • Going for the 200th floor in the Palace of the Dead. Even if you start from the 51st floor, it'll still take you several hours to reach if you don't take a break. You can take a break on every 10th floor and return another day, but just having one Total Party Wipe will end your run (and you'll also be locked out from the floors beyond 100 if you wiped earlier) and you'll have to restart from the beginning to have another shot. Heaven-on-High, which is also another deep dungeon, softens the blow by only having 100 floors total.
  • The Ultimate tier fights are all much longer than the average raid length. The average raid length is about 10 minutes or so. The shortest Ultimate, the Weapon's Refrain, is about 15 minutes. The Unending Coil of Bahamut, the longest ultimate fight thus far, is twenty minutes long. And there are naturally no checkpoints, so you have to clear the entire fight in one go.
  • The Baldesion Arsenal, the final dungeon of the Eureka exploratory zones, requires multiples parties entering (up to 6 parties of 8 players and one more joining during the run for up to 56 people inside) and takes about an hour to complete. Players can't be resurrected normally during all this time (it is advised to use a self buffed called Spirit of the Remembered that let you roll the dice and avoid your fate in case of death, and if you do die, another player has to cast a sacrifice spell to get you up and hope that his own Spirit of the Remembered buff works in his favor). Also, the final boss in the dungeon can kick you out of the fight entirely with no coming back if you fail a particular mechanic. And if too much people fail that mechanic, that's a Total Party Wipe and everyone going home without reaching the end of that hour long dungeon.
  • The Savage versions of Criterion dungeons, which are already difficult in and of themselves, add this factor to up the difficulty even further. If the party wipes in a normal Criterion dungeon, they can raise and restart where they left off like a normal dungeon. However, wiping in a Savage Criterion resets the entire duty, requiring the party to start the run from the very beginning with all enemies and bosses respawned. On top of this, the Savages have a soft enrage mechanic; after approximately 25 minutes, every remaining enemy in the dungeon—bosses included—will receive a buff that massively buffs their damage and defense, making them hit like trucks and you hit like a wet noodle. So not only do you have to do the duty all in one go, you have to do it quickly.
• Market-Based Title: Each expansion has its own Japanese title:
  • A Realm Reborn is Shinsei Eorzea (Eorzea Reborn)
  • Heavensward is Souten no Ishgard (Heavenly Ishgard)
  • Stormblood is Guren no Liberator (The Crimson Liberator)
  • Shadowbringers is Shikkoku no Villains (Villains of Pitch Darkness)
  • Endwalker is Akatsuki no Finale (Daybreak's Finale)
  • Dawntrail is Ogon no Regashi (Gilded Legacy)
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest:
  • Main quests are pretty light on these, with a very-early-game quest tasking you to kill three each of three different types of low-level mobs around your starting city being the most the game will ever demand before you can continue. FATEs, however, regularly take the form of spawning half a dozen of one or two enemies and tasking you to kill them several times over. In most cases, it's explained that the outbreak is caused by the species reaching high enough numbers to be invasive to the environment, justifying the need to cull the population to a normal amount.
  • There's a sidequest in Thanalan's Camp Drybone that plays this for tragedy. You're tasked by a woman to go kill several wild dogs in the immediate area, then report back to her. After you do so, you talk to another person, who reveals why she sent you on this quest: his brother, who was the woman's fiancé, was slain by those same dogs, and now she tries to work through her grief by sending adventurers to kill them.
• Mass Super-Empowering Event:
  • A massive amount of people who witnessed a meteor storm back in 1.0 was gifted with some form of the Echo, allowing them to, at the very least, fight against primals without fear of being tempered by them, with some Echo gifts further developing into unique branches. Shadowbringers reveals witnessing the same meteor shower is a pre-requisite for awakening the Echo, as it causes a Ghost Memory of the Amaurotine's final days to stir in the soul of reincarnated Ascians, which is why it seems random as to who it actually awakens. It also makes people able to hear the voices of Hydaelyn and Zodiark, instead of being something gifted by them as was thought for the longest time. Another one happens in 5.2, and Elidibus states outright it doesn't even have to be a real event; an illusion works just as well, and Hydaelyn is all too happy to pull comets down from space to create the same effect when she needs new Warriors of Light.
  • In Heavensward, it's revealed that, technically, everyone who is in Eorzea, regardless if they're a native or an immigrant from another part of the world, has been washed in Bahamut's leftover aether from his destruction, giving 2.0 summoners an excuse as to why they can access the Dreadwyrm Trance even if they didn't witness the Calamity or kill Bahamut in the Binding Coils. A similar excuse is used for the Level 72 Firebird Trance, as Louixsoix as Phoenix coated Eorzea in his flames of rejuvination to help the land recover from Bahamut's rampage.
• Masochist's Meal: Zero prefers her curry hot when ordering from Merhyde's Meyhane. Despite being accustomed to spicy food, at least one Hannish local collapses from sniffing the tingly, burning scent alone. Those brave enough to eat the curry itself have steam pouring out of their ears before falling unconscious. Even the Made of Iron Warrior of Light can say that their life flashed before their eyes while enjoying it.
• Masquerading As the Unseen: In patches 3.4 and 3.5, the storyline between the end of the Dragonsong War and the start of Stormblood, a rabble rouser called the Griffin starts becoming a major figure in the Ala Mhigan resistance, leading a faction known as the Masks due to their tendency to wear them. When the Warrior of Light and Alphinaud go to hear the Griffin speak, they are told by friends in the crowd that the masked man giving the speech is not the Griffin, but someone likely in his close confidence speaking on his behalf, as the Griffin is known to be extremely cautious. The final cutscene of the game patch that introduces the Griffin has him and his double having a conversation while both are in full costume.
• Mauve Shirt: The Scions of the Seventh Dawn are a diverse cast of decently fleshed-out extras that fill the Waking Sands and have their own tiny stories that play out over the course of the 2.0 storyline. Nearly all of them are slaughtered when Garlean troops raid the Waking Sands.
• May It Never Happen Again:
  • This is invoked by Alexander itself at the end of the Alexander raid series. Only one instance of a primal can be summoned at a time, preventing multiple factions from summoning the same primal. With full knowledge of this, Alexander suspends itself in a single moment in time after trapping itself in a Stable Time Loop, ensuring that Alexander can never be summoned again to threaten the world with its potential to drain the land dry of aether.
  • Nidhogg's eyes are used as a source of aether to summon the primal Shinryu, a being that threatens to bring about another Calamity with its sheer potential for destruction. After the events of Stormblood, Estinien destroys the eyes with his lance at the site of Shinryu's demise, ensuring that they can never be used for evil again.
  • In the later patches of Shadowbringers, Merlwyb sees the opportunity to end Limsa Lominsa's Forever War with the Kobolds and the Sahagin when Alisaie and G'raha develop a cure for tempering. Now able to negotiate with the leaders of both tribes, Merlwyb swears to end the feud and is willing to let patriarch Za Da shoot her if it means another peace treaty can be signed. This approach soon extends to the rest of the city-states, who offer reconciliation and peace to end the constant cycle of war and primal summoning. By the end of Shadowbringers, executive leaders representing each of the tribes arrive in Ala Mhigo to pledge their support for the Grand Company of Eorzea's offensive against the Telophoroi. This cements the tribes' new friendship with the city-states and marks the end of regular primal summoning in Eorzea.
• Meaningful Name: The final area of Endwalker is named Ultima Thule. Thule was an island mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature as the farthest north location known to them. The hypothetical "Ultima Thule" ("final" or "farthest" Thule) was believed to be the last landmass found before the edge of the world, just like in-game Ultima Thule is found "at the edge of the universe". This also parallels the "Ktisis Hyperboreia" dungeon - Ktisis means "creation from nothing", obviously relating to its role in Elpis, but Hyperboreia is Greek for "farthest north".
• Mecha-Mooks: The Garleans make use of many Magitek-powered mechs. Azys Lla is swarming with Allagan security robots.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Each class has something that sets them apart well-enough to be considered this, but Ninja and the New Jobs in Heavensward take the cake, see the character page for specifics.
  • Fishing is this among the gathering classes, working entirely differently from the ground up. Until Heavensward, it didn't even have any abilities that use GP.
  • Blue Mages, introduced in Version 4.5, differ from every other combat class in the game in significant ways. Unlike other jobs introduced from Heavensward onwards, it starts at level 1 (as opposed to 30 with the Heavenward jobs and 50 with Stormblood) and was introduced with a level cap of 50 (as opposed to 70 with other jobs, as of Stormblood). Furthermore, instead of learning new skills through leveling up and completing job-related quests, Blue Mages earn new skills by defeating monsters that possess specific skills they can replicate. Because of the sheer versatility of the class, it doesn't fit anywhere into the traditional Damager, Healer, Tank trinity. As such, they cannot use the Duty Finder to form parties for Dungeons and Trials without being in a pre-formed and/or undersized party first.
• Medicinal Cuisine:
  • Food produced by a culinarian offers stat boosts to the consumer on top of a 3% bonus to experience gained in combat, by crafting, or by gathering for 30 minutes. While low-level recipes offer minuscule bonuses, high-level recipes can offer sizable stat buffs that can lead to a much sharper increase in performance comparable to major buffing skills or multiple materia melds.
  • When an amaro named Skip is poisoned by poachers, Bethric, head of the Facet of Nourishing, commissions the Warrior of Darkness to prepare a series of delicious and highly nutritious meals to assist in the amaro's rehabilitation process. This proves especially important as Skip has lasting trauma from having his fodder poisoned. As such, he won't eat anything unless the Warrior prepares it and someone else tastes it in front of him to prove it's safe to eat.
  • Frithik, head of the Facet of Fishing, notes that there's been an uptick in disease at the Crystarium. His scholarly research points to a nutritional deficiency caused by a lack of food variety. So he asks the Warrior of Darkness to catch varieties of fish consumed before the Flood in hopes of correcting this nutritional deficit. This includes catching eighteye eels to treat "night blindness", creamy oysters to treat pica, and longmirror clams to treat heart palpitations and dizziness. Their efforts work with flying colors.
  • The Sharlayan dish "archon loaf" is designed to be a compact, easily-made foodstuff packed with all the nutritions one could possibly need. Unfortunately, it's also disgusting, and its successor panaloaf is even worse. The Faculty of Medicine Studium Deliveries revolve around Debroye's efforts to make it palatable so Sharlayan doesn't suffer a Fate Worse than Death by having to eat it constantly in the event of a food crisis.
• Medieval Stasis: Invoked. The Ascians have a habit of triggering Calamities whenever civilizations manage to develop significant power, whether through magic, technology, or both. As a result, most of Hydaelyn's history is characterized by medieval-to-early-Renaissance levels of social and technological developments interspersed with brief ages of prosperity before the next Apocalypse How goes off and humanity is forced to start over again. In the most recent cycle, firearms are a recent development and most of the more advanced technology fielded by the likes of the Garleans wasn't developed independently, but rather reverse-engineered from Allagan relics, and they frequently note that even they don't entirely understand how it all works.
• Megaton Punch: Final Heaven, the level-3 Limit Break for Monks, takes the form of an explosive punch.
• Mellow Mantas: The Kojin of the Blue, who live in the Ruby Sea, tame manta rays to use as mounts to speed their way through the ocean. These rays are depicted as largely docile and help their masters find treasure. One quest even has the Player Character help a manta ray find a mate. Averted with the rays tamed by the Kojin of the Red, which are aggressive and will attack the player on sight.
• Men Are Strong, Women Are Pretty: As is typical for both JRPGs and MMOs:
  • Roegadyn women are taller and more muscular than the women of other races, but are still comparatively petite next to the extra-beefy Roegadyn men.
  • Taken to the extreme by the Au Ra, who as a race are split between small, petite women with delicate features, and fierce, towering men.
  • Shadowbringers introduced two gender-locked races, male-only Hrothgar and female-only Viera. Hrothgar are a male-dominant race of anthropomorphic big cats with large, muscular bodies not unlike male Roegadyn; while the female-dominant Viera look comparatively close to humanoid (large rabbit-like ears notwithstanding) with delicate faces and voluptuous figures.
  • Averted with the male Viera introduced in Endwalker. The male Viera are very effeminate to the point they can be mistaken for female Viera on the first look. They are also a head shorter on average than their female counterparts.
• Mental World: Ultima Thule, The Very Definitely Final Dungeon of Endwalker turns out to be a variant of this, due to the strong presence of Dynamis in the area. The obstacles the Scions face to progressing have less to do with physical impediments and more to do with the despair permeating the place, with progression being essentially locked behind determining whose despair is blocking their path.
• Merchant City: Each city state has an area dedicated for business, but Ul'dah is all about merchants and even the leaders of the city are composed of merchants.
• Mercy Invincibility: When a player is revived, they will be immune to taking damage as long as they don't attempt to enact an action, represented by the Transcendent status. They are still vulnerable to the unsavory secondary effects of any attacks during this time, such as knock-back, petrification, paralysis, heavy, etc., so players have to be careful when to accept the revive. It's not uncommon to see reckless players get back into action in haste, squander the invulnerability, and proceed to get knocked out immediately. Previously, players had no such thing, making it possible to be downed again as soon as you get up. In cases where players are spirited away to another area of a fight, such as Alexander, the party members who return back to the main arena receive mercy invincibility to prevent them from being killed off by poorly-timed raid-wide attacks.
• Mercy Kill: It is the policy of the Eorzean Alliance to put down anyone who becomes tempered by a primal. Anyone tempered will become utterly and completely devoted to the cause of the primal that tempered them, and will do everything in their power to bring the primal more aether crystals and bodies to be tempered as well. There is no known way to removed a tempering, and the tempered can't be allowed to serve the primals, so being euthanized is the only solution the Alliance sees. It doesn't help that those that are tempered are often enemies of the primals, so they would no doubt wish to be put out of their misery than be forced to serve their enemy.
  • The policy becomes a real concern in a post-Heavensward patch. A kobold child accidentally summons Titan in his grief after seeing his parents' dead bodies, killed by the other kobolds as a sacrifice to Titan. Afterwards, he is completely unresponsive to anyone's attempts to talk to him. This makes everyone worry he has been tempered and would have to be put down if so. After a while, he does start responding to Alisaie's attempts to get him to respond, leaving everyone hopeful that he is indeed himself still.
  • The level 30 to 50 Summoner storyline deals with the fallout of this as well. The main antagonist of the storyline is an Immortal Flames soldier who was part of a unit that fought Ifrit. His brother was tempered by Ifrit and the soldier volunteered to mercy-kill him. The trauma of having to kill his own brother drove him mad, and an Ascian was able to convince him to become a Summoner and cause chaos using the same power that had taken his brother.
  • This is also a policy in some parts of the First. In the deserts of Ahm Araeng is a small settlement called the "Inn at Journey's Head", where volunteers take care of those who have been corrupted by the light, offering them sympathy and hospice. When they are close to turning into sin eaters, the volunteers prepare a final meal for them that is laced with poison, so that they may die before transforming into a dangerous monster and spare them any further suffering.
• Meta Twist: Near the end of the Return to Ivalice raid series, Alma starts getting called by the voice of Ultima, a demon that lives beneath Orbornne Monastery. Eventually Ultima straight up possesses her and pulls her through a magical portal. Players of Final Fantasy Tactics may think that Ultima plans to use Alma's body as her new host to escape imprisonment. Then it turns out Alma was little more than bait, Ultima plans to use the body of YOU, the Warrior of Light, to escape imprisonment. When Ramza succeeds in saving Alma from being taken through a portal to the monastery depths, Ultima happily grabs Ramza instead.
• Metal Slime:
  • The Goblin Adventurer rarely appears in the Aquapolis and never attacks the party. If he is attacked, he'll actively run away to make it harder to hit him and if he is not slain in time, he'll teleport to escape. If the party does manage to kill him, he can drop up to 30,000 gil and also drops a ton of elemental crystals and clusters (items needed to craft). The Canals of Uzair and the Dungeons of Lyhe Ghiah have similar enemies in the form of Namazu Stickywhiskers and Gold Whiskers in the former, and Fuath Tricksters in the latter.
  • Inside the Palace of the Dead are some passive Korrigan mobs that give a lot more experience^note Useful since the mechanics of the Palace of the Dead resets your character's level to 1 while inside the instance then the other mobs on the floor, likely to drop Silver Chests if a Pomander of Fortune was used and dies in one hit; the catch is that they need a Pomander of Alteration to spawn and that there is a chance that the same Pomander will spawn the more deadly Mimics instead.
• Mid-Battle Tea Break: The Sip Tea emote, which can be bought from the Mogstation, allows players to have a cup of tea whether they're fighting hordes of enemies or fighting for the fate of the universe.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Gladiators/Paladins use heavy armor and shields.
  • Marauders/Warriors fit the trope even better, with heavy armor and hard-hitting two-handed weapons.
  • Heavensward brings us the ponderously-slow, weighted swings of a Dark Knight's claymore.
  • Shadowbringers introduces the gunbreaker that's more of a Lightning Bruiser: able to take the hits and rack up the damage in return.
• Mini-Game: There are a wide array of minigames to partake in across Eorzea, mainly from the Manderville Gold Saucer or via the Toy Chest found at inn rooms (or purchasable for your own home).
  • Gold Saucer Minigames include (but are not limited to):
    • Triple Triad, a Collectable Card Game taken from Final Fantasy VIII
    • Chocobo Racing
    • Lord of Verminion, a competitive Real-Time Strategy game using collectable minions as commandable units (inspired by Lord of Vermilion)
    • Dohman Mahjong
  • Toy Chest games include:
    • Parley, a game introduced in the 1.0 version of the game^note It was originally used as a means of communicating with beast tribes who may not speak the same language as the Spoken races. With the introduction of the Echo in ARR, the game was relegated to an optional diversion revolving around collecting tiles in straight lines to earn points.
    • Slide I+XIV, a sliding puzzle game similar to the hidden minigame found in Final Fantasy
    • Concentration, a card-matching game
    • Cheap Dungeon, a simple 3D maze game
    • Egg Hunter Riggy, a rudimentary run-and-jump game where players control a spriggan collecting ore while avoiding monsters
• Minigame Zone: The Manderville Gold Saucer has a variety of minigames and events to partake in, including Chocobo Racing, basketball, strongman games, and Triple Triad.
• Mini-Mecha: Magitek armor stands about twice as tall as the average hyur male.
• Miserable Massage: In the sidequest "Ancient Goblin Secrets", a goblin gives an adventurer an "ancient secret goblin massage" that is apparently "quite painful and quite embarrassing" to receive, to the point that Notched Bones initially mistakes it for torture. To its credit, the massage does work, though the thought of actually getting it is enough to elicit a Big "NO!", as Notched Bone describes it as being the most painful thing he's ever experienced in his life.
• Misfit Mobilization Moment: The open world events called FATEs tend to cause this. Success usually depends on everyone knowing what they should be doing without a word spoken.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Adamantoise and related species are not native to Eorzea, and are suspected of being smuggled from Thavnair. There's also quest where you have to eradicate Thavnairian diremites due to fears that they might become an invasive species.
• Mistaken for Insane: Quinfort, a member of the Night's Blessed, raves about how he's going to be the Rak'tika Greatwood's chosen savior, worshipping an oversized worm as "the Great Serpent of Ronka" and insisting that the markings on its body are harbingers of impending disaster that must be thwarted. His Childhood Friend Valan is exasperated by Quinfort's antics and even the Warrior of Light can consider Quinfort a lost cause. But they soon find that Quinfort's visions and claims are all coming true and listen to him despite his quirkiness and fervor bordering on insanity.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Gunblades, a Final Fantasy staple, are present as the weapon of choice for the Garlean Empire, essentially consisting of long muskets with a blade along the underside of the barrel. The Gunbreaker job in Shadowbringers also use gunblades of their own, albeit of a different design that function more like regular swords that forego long-range projectiles (while the class does have a ranged attack like the other tanks, it takes the form of a Sword Beam rather than firing the gun at an enemy) with a firing mechanism that flash-heats the blade and casts a variety of supportive spells, not dissimilar to the weapon's depiction in Final Fantasy VIII.
• The "Mom" Voice: the often aloof Y'shtola sometimes descends into a stern, almost motherly tone when scolding others she's worried about. It happens often enough that in the Eorzea Academy High School AU spinoff, the characters all call her "Mom" behind her back and she's the one Alphinaud thinks of when tasked with finding a "mother" for a scavenger hunt.
  Warrior of Light: [reluctantly going to rest] Yes, Mother...
  Y'shtola: Hah. None of that cheek, or I will take you across my knee.
• Money Spider: Zig-Zagged. Enemies usually don't drop gil when defeated, but they do drop a small amount if you fight them in a dungeon. However, certain dungeons don't have enemies drop gil at all and have the bosses drop a large amount of gil when defeated instead. Played straight in treasure map dungeons, where there's a random chance one of these guys^note Goblin Adventurers in the Aquapolis, Gold Whiskers in the Lost Canals of Uznair, Fuath Tricksters in the Dungeons of Lyhe Ghiah, Golden Supporters in the Excitatron 6000, and Gymnasiou Lampas in the Shifting Gymnasion Agonon. spawn, and can potentially drop 10,000 to 30,000 gil upon defeat. The catch is that they can flee if left alive for too long, and they like to run all over the place.
• Mons as Characterization: The brutish and money-grubbing Daguza is accompanied by a menagerie of equally brutish lions, peistes, and cyclopses. After watching in awe of the red chocobo's destructive power, he goes on to train dozens of them for use against the Bozjan Resistance, including one particularly destructive chocobo named "Red Comet II", after the red chocobo whose rampage is compared to the second coming of Dalamud.
• Monster Whale: Bismarck, the Primal worshiped by the Vanu Vanu as "the White", is a massive, whale-shaped monster with no eyes, wing-like fins covered in feathers, and a massive gaping maw with More Teeth than the Osmond Family. Unusually for this trope, this whale flies, forcing the Warrior of Light to do battle with it atop a small floating island as it's pulled through the sky by airship to lure the beast out.
• Moon Logic Puzzle: There is a riddle in part of a quest chain that asks you "SWORD+SWORD=DAGGER, bring me the X of Y (as in variables)". You're given a list of items but zero context is provided other than that they range from 0 to 8. What you're suppose to do is assign the numbers to each letter until the equation matches and then find the item that corresponds to the variables.
• Morale Mechanic: The Bozjan Southern Front uses an alternative to Experience Points known as Mettle. Mettle increases from victories in FATEs and Critical Engagements. Dying, however, reduces it (and the shame of having to return to your spawn point without being resurrected decreases it even further.)
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Goobbues have three rows of teeth in very large mouths.
• Morph Weapon: The lore bit for the Ragnarock Zodiac Weapon states that it was originally a fiend's sword. When a hero took the weapon after slaying the beast, it eventually transformed into a battle ax to better fit its new master.
• Morton's Fork:
  • The Ishgardians' preferred method of hunting down those they believe to be traitors, reflecting the real life witch-hunting practice of "dunking." They take the accused to a cliff and throw them off. The innocent will die, be remembered as heroes and given a proper burial. The guilty will transform into a dragon or call on their dragon allies to save themselves, at which point they will be shot and killed by waiting archers.
  • A more lighthearted variation comes from the story quest "A Hero in the Making", where you're sent off to travel to sequential remembrance services in all three city-states to hear speeches about their respective Grand Companies before deciding which one you wish to join. Tataru says that Gridania is supposed hold its speech first, while Ul'dah holds its one second, then Limsa Lominsa third, but also claims that "with your record of impeccable timing and luck, the schedule may well change in favor of your preferred travel plans" - sure enough, you're given the objectives for all three speeches at the same time and can listen to them in whatever order you please.
  • As the game tends to do, one sidequest in Shadowbringers has the Warrior of Light themselves lampshading the frequency in which they're given an option to say one of two or three things, only for that option to not matter.
    Konogg: Everyone knows you're the soul of generosity! A sinner who cannot help but render aid to his/her fellow sinner in their hour of need! Not for fame or fortune or any other reward, but simply for the joy of it! Am I wrong?
    Warrior of Light: ...This is another one of those moments where it really doesn't matter what I have to say, isn't it?
• Motivation on a Stick: The fat chocobo mounts have their riders dangle a head of Gysahl Greens in front of them. To get the fat chocobo to fly, the vegetables are swapped out for a nice, rich slice of cake.
• Muggles Do It Better: The Garlean Empire are composed of people who cannot use magic due to their genetic makeup. The Garleans make up for their shortcomings by being highly advanced in weapons and technology, and they do it a lot better than most of the nations in Eorzea.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The "In The Company of Heroes" quest is this on its face, in essence making a quest out of enjoying the celebration that you had set up, worth eight thousand experience points by itself, and even ramps it up further at one point when you taste the meal you provided for the party. Even playing the victory theme from the original NES/Famicom version of Final Fantasy. Lampshaded by Y'shtola, who thinks they're wasting time on the frivolity of the Hidden Purpose Test, when the threat the hero has to face is looming with little time to spare.
  "Tasting the exotic feast triggers a divine revelation. In that brief transcendent moment you glimpse the true form of reality, comprehend its fleeting nature, and cry out to the heavens in celebration."
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Character size, physique and musculature is entirely cosmetic and racial stats matter a fraction of a percentage at the highest levels, when the main stats are in the thousands. A Lalafell can hit just as hard as a Roegadyn or male Au Ra when assigned a heavy hitting melee job. The reverse is also true. Anyone can be potent with magic, regardless of the race's cultural affinity for it.
• Musical Pastiche: Good King Moggle Mog's theme is an obvious riff on "This Is Halloween".
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Several minor antagonists (especially those met early on in the story) come to regret their actions and turn themselves in to the authorities. Gaius also has this in the form of shock when he realises the true destructive potential of the Ultima Weapon.
  • In "Corpse Groom", Paiyo Raiyo admits to the player that he hated the fact he decided to agree with Edda Pureheart's grief-stricken assumption that she caused her fiance's death.
• My New Gift Is Lame: The 2022 Starlight Celebration event involves numerous characters acting as the Saint's little helpers and distributing gifts to the good children of Gridania. Beatin, an Eccentric Artist and the guildmaster of the Carpenters' Guild, offers a child samples of some of the finest lumber in the Twelveswood. Given that it's not a toy or sweets, the child is disappointed until Fufucha instead describes them as building blocks.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • Player characters have fixed rules on how quickly they can cast their spells based on the global cooldown and MP limitations. Computer enemies can cast much faster and in rapid succession. The result is especially scary for light armor wearers, who often have less magic defense than casters or tanks, on top of Squishy Wizard-level HP. Enemy AI also have infinite MP (you can absorb their MP all you want and they'll never run out) while players have to rely on Regenerating Mana to keep up.
  • Battling an NPC at a game of Triple Triad has shades of this. You're not allowed to have multiple rare cards in your deck for balance purposes, but an NPC is free to use as many rare cards as they please, making some of them become Unwinnable unless you can get better cards or play the regional rules in your favor.
  • This can actually work out in your favor, sometimes. As an example, enemies with Area of Effect spells and abilities will have cast times for them, even if the player's version of the same spell or ability doesn't, simply so that players have a chance to get out of the way.
  • If you are turned into a toad, imp, or chicken, you won't be able to do anything (the imp does have a unique attack but that's it). In the Palace of the Dead, you can turn monsters into a toad/imp/chicken, but they can still attack you.
  • NPCs can wear any combination of outfits while player gear/glamours are restricted based on class and sometimes race or gender. The restrictions are sometimes eased in a later patch where the developers may reuse a gear model with a slightly different appearance and flag it to be worn by different classes.
  • Some NPCs that belong to specific classes will have abilities that their classes shouldn't (or no longer) have access to. This is especially common in the ARR areas and quests, and especially class and job quests, and likely is a holdover from prior versions of the game where the class or job either had that ability or had the ability to learn that ability through the cross class skill system. However, this also is another example where this can benefit the player, even if they can't do it - this allows for allied NPCs in class quests to be healers even if they aren't in a healing role, letting the player focus on the enemies.
  • The player cannot use a Level 3 Limit Break as a base class such as Thaumaturge - they need to equip a Job Crystal to transform the base class into a Job before using Level 3 limit breaks. And yet, when fighting Ultima Weapon with a party of Duty Support NPCs, one of said NPCs will use a Level 3 limit break despite being a Thaumaturge (though she only does if the player is a tank or a healer).
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Every beast tribe across Hydaelyn has a fringe group with sympathetic motivations that accept help from the players;
  • Amalj'aa: The Brotherhood of Ash are a clan of Proud Warrior Race Guys who put their faith into their own power, living a harsh minimalist lifestyle that guarantees only the strongest come out on top. They accept the player character's aid because they despise the mainstream Amalj'aa for relying on Ifrit to give them power and comfort, and seek to topple their primal-worshipping brethren as well as find a cure for Tempering.
  • Sylph: The Sylph are an inversion as they've always been kind-hearted, and evil Sylph only became an entity after the botched summoning of Ramuh five years ago. The player is actually introduced to the good sylph early on as part of the main story, but the main arc of the Sylph questline has you foiling Touched Sylph pranks as well as Garlean infiltrators, all while learning of a "chosen one" who will decide the fate of the Sylph as a whole.
  • Kobolds: The Kobolds of the 789th order are... the bottom of the barrel. While Kobolds as a whole are hard-working devotees of Titan, the 789th are full of slackers and cowards who would prefer to cheat their way to a higher rank. The player helps them in their endeavors to become a higher ranked order so that they can strike against the leader of the 13th order, one of the major leaders of the race as a whole (which is okay, since he's kind of a jerk)... and also because the Roegadyn who asks you to help them just finds them so pathetic that she feels the need to whip them into shape.
  • Sahagin: The Sahagin of Novv's Clutch don't desire war with humanity like most of their kind do, they just want to be left alone to raise their children in peace. They enlist aid of the player character to help them protect the children and fight off a cruel warband called the Coral Tridents (who aren't above hurting said children), while also showing the world that there are Sahagin who don't want to kill everything that walks on the land in hopes of forming some kind of alliance with Limsa Lominsa.
  • Ixal: The Ixal of Ehcatl Nine are crafters who find war with humans and trying to please Garuda a pointless effort; instead they spend their time building a special airship, so that they can fly above the clouds as they once did when all Ixal had wings.
  • Gnath: The Non-mind Gnath are a splinter group detached from the Gnath's Overmind, having individual perspectives, thoughts, personalities, and tastes. They mainly seem concerned with ubiquitous (for them) sensory experiences, relishing bizarre and unique foods when compared with the other Eorzean races - though being unique from each other, they can disagree on the subjectivity of those experiences.
  • Vanu Vanu: Split into two factions, the war-like Vundu, and the peaceable Zundu. The Zundu lead a monk-like ascetic lifestyle, concerned with the harmony of the body and spirit in juxtaposition to the natural world. Each member of the Zundu must pass a coming-of-age ceremony to determine the skill and ability they'll be able to contribute to the broader community. The Zundu reject the aggressive nature of their Vundu counterparts, seeing the Vundu's worship of the primal Bismarck as misplaced devotion made to a corruption of the Vanu Vanu's creation god.
  • Kojin: They're divided into two factions: the Blue, which are merchants and traders, and the Red, which are fighters and mercenaries who sided with the Garleans. Once Doma has been freed, the Blue were cut off from their treasure hoard by the Red that remained loyal, and create a team to help find and bring back new treasure.
  • Namazu. The first Namazu met by players sells them out to the Garleans and leads them almost being captured, then arrested by the local authorities for disturbing the peace. However, when you run into them in Yanxia, they seem on the whole more amenable, making the initial troublemaker out to be an outlier (and in fact, he eventually works for the Warrior of Light and their allies in a future quest... possibly under some coercion, but it shows they aren't an enemy so much as opportunistic). It is only after gaining access to the northern half of Yanxia that you run into catfish people of similar nature who are outright hostile.
  • Shadowbringers completely subverts this. The First is home to many beast tribes, even those analogous to ones on the Source, but most of them are allies or at least neutral to the "spoken" races. The Zun, who are parallel to the Amal'jaa, are fairly peaceful herdsman; the Mol, akin to Kobolds, are all merchants and run the largest settlement in Amh Arang, and though a few are devious or underhanded, these are outliers and often more doing it for money than out of malice or hatred for others. The Ondo are mostly separated from the surface but willing to trade with surface dwellers, and when they interact with the people of Khoulusia there's little to no shock at their presence, where their Sahaguin cousins would normally inspire fear in the average Lominsan. The Pixies are mischevious and have a Blue-and-Orange Morality system that can make them dangerous, but they still love people, and their Nu Mou and Amaro neighbors both have similar affection for mortals. The Qitari are similar to Qiqirn, but are actually a race of scribes and historians. Finally, there are the Dwarves, who are really just Lalfells who never take off their helmets.
  • The Dwarves case ALMOST fits the bill, as the Dwarves at Tomra are initially friendly and seem to have a rivalry with the nearby town of Komra, and the plot does involve you in their conflict a bit. However, while a bit ruder on the whole, the Komra Dwarves really have no issue with you or other people under normal circumstances; they just hate the Tomra Dwarves.
• Mysterious Purple: The World of Darkness, better known as the Void, is a realm consumed by darkness-aligned energies. The plane is inhabited entirely by voidsent, a form of twisted Eldritch Abomination starved of aether and seeking to cross over to other planes to feast on the aether of others. Owing to how difficult it is breach the walls of reality that separate it from the world of Hydaelyn, the place is largely cloaked in shadow and mystery. Holes in reality that allow voidsent through are typically wreathed in purple to emphasize the bottomless darkness on the other side. When the Warrior of Light and their friends venture inside to confront the Cloud of Darkness, the path is lit with sickly purple and green lights to emphasize how alien the place is.
• Multiplayer-Only Item: The game contains a set of abilities for each class that are only usable in PvP and cannot be used in PvE. There used to also be stats that only affected PvP and had no effect otherwise, and materia to boost these stats, but they were removed as part of a movement to simplify the mode and get more people playing it.

N

• Named Weapon: Far too many to list, but the most famous ones are the "relic weapons", the term coined by A Realm Reborn. Each expansion has one per class, and there's a name for the base form, sometimes a major mid-stage form, as well as their complete and final form. Here are the ten relic weapons (and their Zodiac incarnations) from the "A Relic Reborn" series:
  • The reliquary longsword Curtana, sister blade to the lost Oathkeeper. Paired with the Holy Shield.^note Interestingly, while the name of the weapon is taken from an actual mythical named blade from a set of three (see the main page for details), the backstory as presented is actually closer to one of the sister blades, Durandal.
    • Curtana transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Excalibur, paired with the Aegis Shield.
  • The heavy war axe Bravura, crafted to aid the users strike with its weight.
    • Bravura transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Ragnarok.
  • The Sphairai, metal knuckles designed in a coeurl motif, with aether-channeling crystals to enhance the user's strikes.
    • The Sphairai transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Kaiser Knuckles.
  • The heavy spear Gae Bolg, whose dragon motif aids dragoons in executing jumps.
    • Gae Bolg transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Longinus.
  • The Artemis Bow, designed to serve as both weapon and instrument.
    • The Artemis Bow transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Yoichi Bow.
  • The staff Thyrus, treasure of the Cant family, crafted from petrified wood.
    • Thyrus transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Nirvana.
  • The Stardust Rod, a weapon crafted from and containing the destructive power of a meteor.
    • The Stardust Rod transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Lilith Rod.
  • The Veil Of Wiyu, an Allagan-era tome of the summoning arts.
    • The Veil Of Wiyu transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Apocalypse.
  • The Omnilex, a tome containing all of the strategies of the Nymian military.
    • The Omnilex transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Last Resort.
  • The paired ninja-to set Yoshimitsu.
    • Yoshimitsu transforms into the Zodiac Weapon Sasuke's Blades.
• Narnia Time: The passage of time varies between the Source and the thirteen Shards. For example, in what was at most a few months that pass between the defeat of the Warriors of Darkness and the beginning of Shadowbringers, more than a century has passed on the First Shard. Fortunately, the speed of time has lined up once the player arrives on the First, so we don't have to worry about any dramatic time shifts during normal gameplay.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: For the most part, this trope is few and far in-between as mage robes are long and flowing while armor is big and bulky whether your character is male or female. That said, there are several outfits that feature this for female Player Characters (and a few NPCs). The most notable examples are the variations of the Bard's level 50 Artifact Armor◊ and, on female player characters, Scylla's armor from the Syrcus Tower dungeon, which features a long, fur covered robe that exposes a lengthy vertical section of the body, from neck to navel, mirroring the boss of the same name you get the armor from◊.
• Nerf: Par for the course in an MMO, in order to keep gameplay on the same ground. Nerfs usually come in potency adjustments whenever moves feel a little too strong, but there are some major cases listed here.
  • Generally speaking, each patch after a raid is introduced adds increasing echo buffs to it, increasing HP, Damage, and Healing by up to 30%. This allows players who are not part of hardcore progression groups to complete the content eventually.
  • Patch 2.1 nerfed a lot of things, such as Holy and Medica II having reduced power and a dungeon having a reduction in the Mythology Tomes awarded. A hotfix for 2.1 also reduced the difficulty for the Pharos Sirius dungeon due to the enemies being too strong and overwhelming for the intended difficulty. Every other major patch also includes reduced difficulties for certain content so that struggling or new players can catch up to the current content.
  • Heavensward nerfed many AoE attacks that were staples of mobbing. Flare and Holy were hit the hardest as they were made to deal lower damage whenever they hit a new target. Since this expansion also introduced several dungeons that feature impassable roadblocks that only disappear when enemies before them are killed, this was presumably done to discourage speedrunning tactics.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Done deliberately to preserve a plot twist.
  • Near the end of 2.4, you see the Archbishop of Ishgard sitting at the throne with Lahabrea standing right behind him. This led many people to assume that the old man was being controlled by the Ascians. When Heavensward was released, the story reveals that the roles were reversed; it was Archbishop Thordan manipulating Lahabrea by playing along with his plans, and then betraying him at the last minute by becoming a primal and using Nidhogg's eye to absorb Lahabrea's soul, effectively killing him!
  • Done accidentally for the trailer of Heavensward that shows the Warrior of Light fighting Hraesvelgr. It turns out that the team in charge of the trailer was given the wrong art assets and used Hraesvelgr as the dragon fought by the Warrior of Light instead of Nidhogg, who is the actual antagonistic dragon in the story. By the time the main development team found out about the mistake, it was too late to fix the mistake and they decided to just roll with it.
  • In the trailer for the Under the Moonlight patch, there is a shot of Gosetsu and Zenos clashing swords, making you think Gosetsu may have recovered enough and is going to fight Zenos. In actuality, this all happens during the Tsukiyomi trial, and they are both specters created by Yotsuyu's empowered mind, Zenos to cause her suffering and Gosetsu to protect her. Mechanically, it happens during a phase where you have to quickly kill the Zenos specter while Gosetsu holds him in place.
  • In the Prelude to Violet trailer, it looks like we're going to see some of Sadu's and Magnai's pasts through an Echo hallucination. In truth, these were present-day events given the Echo's screen filter, done to hide that Sadu was a story boss.
  • In the cinematic trailer for Shadowbringers, Urianger calls Y'Shtola "Master Matoya", the name of Y'Shtola's mentor. This had players speculating whether something had happened to her or if Matoya was possessing her body somehow. It turns out to be nothing of the sort, Y'shtola was just taking up temporary residence among a religious tribe that considers saying your true name within the light to be dangerous. She had simply taken on Matoya's name as an alias as was custom within the tribe.
  • In the same trailer for Shadowbringers, a gremlin is seen taunting the Warrior of Light as they are about to be attacked by a massive sin eater. In the game proper, the sin eater shown in the trailer is a semi-common enemy type, rather than the massive final boss-scale threat the trailer played it up to be. While you can find gremlins in the First, they only have a minor cameo as dungeon mooks in the main story; the lines spoken by a gremlin in the trailer are spoken by another character entirely, Emet-Selch.
  • In the launch trailer for Shadowbringers, there are a few points that make it seem like Alphinaud might turn on the Warrior of Light. Particularly, at one point a narration by Ardbert asks resignedly what everything they did was for over a shot of Alphinaud standing in a seemingly defiant stance opposite of the Warrior of Light. In context, the scene was actually Alphinaud begging the Warrior of Light to let them delay their pursuit of Vauthry who had fled Eulmore so they could take care of all of the Eulmore citizens who had been injured by Vauthry's mind control, something the Warrior of Light ultimately has little issue with. Similarly, earlier in the trailer, there is a shot of Alphinaud turning around with a glare on his face while the narration says "This world has had its fill of heroes", but in context Alphinaud is calling out Vauthry and Eulmore in general for how horrible they all are.
  • In the story trailer there was a scene where Estinien and Gaius are seen in the same star-mapped projection of the cosmos and the thirteen shards that the Crystal Exarch uses as part of his info dump on the universe's metaphysics, making it seem like the two would join the Warrior of Darkness' adventures in Novrandt and possibly even be trusts. In the final game this scene is just between the Exarch and Warrior, and while the other two go on to be a Hero of Another Story, neither of them ultimately come to Novrandt.
  • Once more in the full trailer for Shadowbringers, the movie opens with the Warrior of Light and Zenos actually Elidibus having one final showdown, with the Warrior of Light coming out triumphant. The actual battle ends with a draw when the Warrior staggers from being Called and has to be rescued by Estinien. Though it turned out this wasn't a lying trailer, it was the diverging moment, because this scene is what did happen, and Elidibus dying there was a severe enough morale blow that the Garleans decided to break out Black Rose.
  • The Hildibrand trailers do not fully reflect what will actually happen in the actual questlines. For example, one shows Hildibrand and Nashu confronting Gilgamesh when in reality, it's you and seven other players who does that.
  • Done again with the Endwalker Trailer: The Endwalker trailers paint Zenos and Fandaniel as the main antagonists of the Expansion and heavily build up the confrontation with Zodiark as the final boss. They also heavily suggest that Anima is the first Trial Boss. However, come the actual expansion and it turns out that Anima is actually the second dungeon's final boss, and the first trial is fought against Zodiark himself at Level 83 after he merges with Fandaniel, and Zenos pulls a Villain: Exit, Stage Left to go and come up with another way to have his big battle with the Warrior of Light. Then it's revealed that Zodiark was a Load-Bearing Boss and that by killing him, we have set in motion the ''True'' Final Days, exactly as Fandaniel wanted.
  • The trailer for 6.1 has a scene where it shows several cultists in the process of summoning demons, implying that the destroyed and mostly forgotten about Lambs of Dalamud may have been making a resurgence and causing problems with Voidsent. In reality, the scene is just a visual example the players are given alongside Y'shtola's exposition about summoning Voidsent of greater power than your common imp. and then it's subverted when cutaways reveal the next major antagonists are Voidsent, meaning the trailer was technically true in regards to Voidsent becoming a bigger problem
• Newbie Immunity: If your character is at level 10 or lower, repairing your gear is free, which is perfect for new players who probably don't have much money to begin with.
• New Game Plus: XIV has a version that allows players to replay previously completed main scenario quests, including cutscenes, dialogue, and battles. It was introduced in Patch 5.1. When you are in New Game Plus mode, your quest list is replaced with a New Game Plus guide. This will tell you what your next quest in your currently selected chapter is called, and clicking on its name will show you the location of the current quest target. Replaying it will let you replay story quests and Role Quests, with what you have at the time, but instanced battles will be level synced and no quest rewards will be given.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • The Garlean Empire:
    • The Garlean Empire successfully manage to conquer Ala Mhigo, but accidentally make things far worse for both themselves and the entire planet: they kill off the guardian Midgardsormr, which opens some Sealed Evil in a Can and allows the beastmen to summon their primals. Not only are the primals themselves such an unknown factor that the Garlean Empire wants them eliminated just as a precautionary measure, but the process of summoning a primal distorts the natural flow of aether so much that - left unchecked - it could destroy the ecosystem of the world. Nice job, Empire.
    • This being the Garlean Empire, they decide to try and "fix" that previous foul up, by unearthing ancient Allagan tech, in the form of the Lunar Transmitter. While testing it, and trying to discover its purpose, they find out it controls the smaller moon Dalamud, when it performs a Kill Sat attack on the Garlean city they're experimenting with the device in, destroying most of it. Cid Garlond decides to perform a Heel–Face Turn and flees to Eorzea to redeem himself, while Nael van Darnus loses it and decides he'd rather use it as a kill-sat on Eorzea for allowing the beast tribes and Primals to exist. Except for two problems: A) Dalamud is really a prison for Bahamut, and B) as Dalamud gets closer, Bahamut begins to temper Nael with the plan of being released from it. End result, the Battle of Carteneau between the reformed Eorzean Alliance and the Garlean Empire ends with Bahamut freed, severe casualties on both sides, and the various regions permanently changed from the destruction, leading to a 5-year lull in any major aggressive actions aside from the Garleans consolidating, and building bases. Two for Two, Empire.
    • Apparently, not able to take a hint that they suck at "saving" the world, the Garleans decide to try yet again for A Realm Reborn's storyline. This time, they unearth the Allagan "Ultima Weapon". With some help from the Ascians, they get it functioning again, and use it to destroy and absorb the essences of Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda. Except the Ascians have their own plan in using the power source for the Ultima Weapon, to release the spell Ultima and destroy parts of the world with it and bring chaos. While the players do destroy the Ultima Weapon, its short time of use causes panic amongst the Beast Tribes, who begin summoning even stronger versions of the Primals.
    • As if to hang a lampshade on the previous examples, late in the 4.x storyline it's revealed that the root of the Empire's incompetence was deliberately baked into the system by the first emperor, an Ascian who continues to rule from the shadows even after he allowed his human guise as the first Emperor to die of old age. And while the current emperor is aware of this, he plays along because he hopes to turn Solus's plot to his own ends of creating a unified world with a single, perfect human race.
  • At the conclusion of the quest around Amdapor Keep's Hard Mode version, it is speculated that before the Warrior of Light's previous visit, the cultists inhabiting the site had already performed the rites and incantations to summon the voidsent and dark powers that have twisted the local wildlife since then. The only thing missing was a blood sacrifice, which the Warrior of Light unwittingly provided by coming in and slaughtering them all. Whoopsie!
  • The ending of Heavensward has a couple. While Archbishop Thordan VII and his Heaven's Ward were able to not be tempered or manipulated by the Ascians, their transformation into Primals by draining Azys Lla weakened the seal on the Warring Triad, three ancient Elder Primals. For context, Bahamut, a single elder Primal, was the being that razed a continent to the ground. Real good job creating your "world of order" there. The Warrior of Light also arguably has one, their overpowering might forces the Ascians in a desperate bid to balance Light and Dark to summon the Warrior of Darkness, the champion of their dark god.
  • Shadowbringers:
    • The plan to dispel the Light threatening to destroy Norvrandt is to have the Warrior of Light destroy the Lightwardens and absorb their power, the heroes believing that Hydaelyn's blessing would prevent them from turning into another Lightwarden. Unfortunately, about halfway through the process, it turns out that the blessing was not protecting them, and that the accumulated Light would eventually turn the Warrior into probably the strongest Sin Eater ever seen. They continue on regardless, for lack of a better plan (and with the Crystal Exarch having his own plan to perform a Heroic Sacrifice to ensure the Warrior doesn't turn).
    • In pursuing Emet-Selch towards the end of the main storyline, the Scions of the Seventh Dawn follow him to the Tempest, an area found at the bottom of the ocean. They find a way to do this, but doing so involves creating a massive bubble of air that significantly disrupts the ecosystem in general and the lives of the Ondo fishmen that live there in particular. As a specific example, one set of sidequests involves the Ondo clutchmother's upcoming egg-laying being made significantly more difficult due to the sudden lack of seawater. Both story quests and side quests taking place in and around the Ondo Cups, the Ondo village, involve helping repair the damage you've caused or otherwise helping the Ondo adapt to their new situation.
  • In Endwalker the warrior of light kills Zodiark, which you think would be a good thing as he has been the source of most of the troubles in the story up to this point. Well turns out his existence was all that was keeping the final days from ancient times at bay. Once he dies they start right back up again.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Heavensward:
    • Late in the 3.1 story line the priests in Ishgard take some refugees hostage, as they disagree with the revelation that their ancestors started the Dragonsong War and do not want peace between Ishgard and the dragons. One of these priests dangles a child above a large drop and then lets her go... only for her to be saved by a dragon which had been invited to visit Ishgard. How this event is perceived by the people of Ishgard is not clear, but it undoubtedly puts the priests' cause back quite significantly.
    • At the end of Heavensward, Thordan's ascension is a problem unto itself, but he does do the player one favor. The Warrior of Light had a single vessel of white auracite, and was able to use it and the power of the Eye of Nidhogg to end one of the two Ascians they faced, Igeyohrm. However, Lahabrea was still there, and the eye was mostly spent of its charge. Using the OTHER Eye of Nidhogg, Thordan became a Primal, per the Ascian's instructions... and promptly slew his mentor Lahabrea in such a way that he has yet to return and is considered vanquished by all the other Ascians we meet.
  • In The Stinger of Shadowbringers Zenos essentially derails the Empire's plans to use Black Rose by driving Elidibus out of his body followed by killing Varis. He states that he doesn't want the Warrior of Light to be killed by cowardly weapons.
• Nitro Boost:
  • The "Choco Dash" chocobo racing ability that greatly boosts the chocobo's space upon use without expending the chocobo's stamina for a short time. This can also be picked up as the "Speed Shoes" powerup on the course itself.
  • Near the end of the Endwalker Allied Tribe quests, the Warrior of Light snatches a narrow victory over their competitors in the Wacky Racing segment by punching the nitro button in the final leg of the race. This dramatically increases their Hyper Hopper's speed and pulls them just ahead of the previously untouchable first place racer.
• No Final Boss for You: Reaching the final floor in the Palace of the Dead has a monochrome looking area that seems to appear rather peaceful with grass, trees, and some weird structures. At the end of the path is a bench you can sit on and an orange orb. Interacting with the orb automatically renders the duty complete, along with the usual victory fanfare. All you have to do is touch the orb to beat the final floor. It's played totally straight, too; there's not even a Zero-Effort Boss or some other incredibly easy encounter. There's just plain nothing there — no boss fight, no enemies, no puzzles, no traps, nothing. Players might be expecting something to just pop out at the last second, but there really is nothing there. This applies to every other Deep Dungeon in the game, with Heaven-on-High being a sky island-esque landscape with just an empyrean shrine, and Eureka Orthos housing the legendary weapon Excalibur.
• No Flow in CGI: The Lightning Strikes event has an odd case of it being averted, but then not. Lightning's outfit features a long cape, and on Lightning herself, the cape's fabric physics work much the same as they did in her home games. However, with player characters the clothes fabric physics, at least to the extent needed for Lightning's cape, are nearly non existent, so when female PCs obtain the outfit for themselves, instead of foregoing the cape, it is tucked into the belt, to make its stiffness less obvious, and possibly keeping it from clipping.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Over and over again, this theme comes up. It tends to come up a lot in the post game to segue the protagonist and supporting cast away from the direction they've been going and onto the path of the next expansion.
  • Save Eorzea from Gaius van Baelsar, the Ultima Weapon, and Lahabrea? Get framed for regicide by the Crystal Braves, which forces most of the Scions to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to make sure you escape, and you're forced to flee to Ishgard.
  • End the Dragonsong War in Ishgard by killing both Archbishop Thordan VII and Nidhogg? The Crystal Brave's leader, Ilberd, uses Nidhogg's eyes, given to him by the Warriors of Darkness, and creates Shinryu, which forces Papalymo to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to awaken Omega and stop it.
  • Spare an amnesiac Yotsuyu despite everything she's done to all of Doma? Her jerkass brother Asahi, manipulated by Elidibus using Zenos's body, has her regain her memories and attack the peace treaty to ensure war by becoming a Primal. Even when she's stopped, Asahi proceeds to brutally shoot her over and over, mocking you that if you attack him, then the treaty will all be for naught. Even when Yotsuyu takes him down with her, the treaty is denied anyways by Emperor Varis.
  • Save the First from the Flood of Light and the machinations of Emet-Selch? Elidibus takes advantage of the people's renewed faith in the Warrior of Light to walk around in Ardbert's corpse and convert regular people into Warriors of Light themselves, bolstering his own strength, allowing his endgame of hijacking the Crystal Tower and summoning spectral warriors to ravage the land. When you defeat him, this allows Fandaniel to openly rebel against the Ascians and work with Zenos to destroy everything.
• No Hero Discount: Zigzagged. After progressing the main story quest far enough, the innkeepers of the Adventurer's Guilds will reserve a room for the Warrior, explaining that talented adventurers get free room and board as thanks for their efforts and to help them keep adventuring. But everyone else will still charge you full price for everything even if you've saved Eorzea time and time again.
• Noodle Incident: In the level 60 Summoner quest, Y'mhitra fails to make a planned meeting with the Warrior at Saint Coinarch's dig. When they meet her instead in Revenant's Toll, the only explanation she gives is she had some unavoidable business. A later Tales from the Storm story would un-noodle this, explaining that Y'mhitra had been visiting Y'shtola after she was badly injured by Zenos and the delay was due to her chewing her sister out for putting herself in harm's way again.
• No Saving Throw: Played with. Primal tempering affects the target with Mind Control. There is no way to prevent, dodge, or block being affected by a primal's tempering unless you have the Echo, and only a small handful of people do. Also, there is no known way to reverse the process. Tempered victims are routinely killed off by the good guys as a result of this. It's treated by the heroes as a Mercy Kill, because they view it as a Fate Worse than Death. Plus, leaving the primal's thralls alive only serves to potentially strengthen the primal that has them under control. A boss battle against a primal even requires you to play defence at one point with NPCs, as even the resident Badass Normals will still be tempered if they're hit. The in-universe creation of a cure for tempering in patch 5.4 is seen as something of a miracle, as it was thought to be impossible. However, a cure isn't the same as prevention, there's still no in-universe way to prevent it besides the Echo, and it's still possible to be too far gone for the cure to save. So people still have to be careful.
• Nondescript, Nasty, Nutritious:
  • Shadowbringers introduces the Archon Loaf, favored sustenance of overworked Sharlayan scholars. This bread, made from blended fish and vegetables, was designed solely for nutritional value with no regard to taste. The result will keep you going, but it's an acquired taste at best. G'raha Tia and Krile find it nostalgic since it reminds them of home, and Urianger unironically likes it. But most non-Sharlayans would rather find something else to eat.
  • Endwalker's Faculty of Medicine role quests one-up the Archon Loaf with "panaloaf", a project commissioned from Professor Galvaroche by the Sharlayan Forum as a food supply for emergencies. Their only requirements were two — that a single serving contain all necessary daily nutrients, and that it be possible to create only with locally-available ingredients. So Galvaroche started with Archon Loaf and jammed in more ingredients to up the nutritional value, making an already-unpleasant foodstuff so much viler that his test subjects — the same people who already subsist on unmodified Archon Loaf — literally couldn't keep it down. His assistant, Debroye, who is much more passionate about food as an enjoyable experience, has been charged with making the thing palatable without sacrificing its nutrition, and as an Alchemist or Culinarian, you help her out by providing various flavor improvers.
    The initial flavor is like a numbness in the tip of your tongue, which gradually transitions into an overall sense of crushing emptiness. It is quite possibly the worst thing you have ever eaten.
• Non-Indicative Name:
  • "Rabbit Pie" is made from marmot meat. The item description lampshades this, and clarifies that it is "formed to resemble a rabbit, but not necessarily containing any meat of leporine origin".
  • "Warrior's Stew" boosts craftsmanship and control, which are crafting-exclusive stats useless to warriors.
  • Velodyna pugils from Stormblood aren't actually found along the Velodyna river - they're up along a much smaller creek coming out of Rhalgr's Reach that eventually flows into the Velodyna.
  • Doman Steel Armor sounds like Steel Armor from Doma. As pointed out in several levequest descriptions, it is actually Western style armor using Doman Steel.
• Non-Standard Character Design: All the bosses in the Deltascape areas during the Omega raid look like updated versions of their original Final Fantasy V incarnations, which are bright, colorful, and have really exotic designs compared to the standard character models that, while still colorful, are rendered more realistically. Even the chocobo Alpha looks vastly different compared to normal chocobos by looking brighter and more cartoony along with having cartoony eyes. Exdeath takes it a step further where his Fire III, Thunder III, Blizzard III, Flare, and Holy spells have their animations look more like how they did in Final Fantasy V then how they would have looked in this game.
• Non-Standard Game Over: In the Steps of Faith and Limitless Blue trials. Fail the former, and you watch as the boss destroys the gates to Ishgard, unable to stop him. Fail the latter, and the giant whale primal who had been whittling away at the island you were fighting it atop finally eats you.
• Noodle Implement: In the Dravanian Hinterlands FATE, "Metal Gears Rising," you're tasked with collecting a number of Illuminati Whizzlepops.
  It whizzles. It pops. All else is a mystery regarding this Illuminati-crafted contraption.
• The Nose Knows: Shamani Lohmani, a former member of the Company of Heroes that helped slay Titan, lost his sight during the fierce battle. Although distraught over the loss of his vision, he was later found by a kindly man named Drest and nursed back to health, upon which Lohmani discovered that he can still interact with the world by honing his sense of smell. By the time you meet him in the story, he can tell you're and adventurer by the sent of sweat, blood, and grime, as well as how you're trying to help put together a feast for Gegeruju by the stench of goblin gouda on you.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The All Saints' Wake events heavily imply that the Great Gourd, the legendary evil patron of the holiday who would lead hordes of monsters to torment humanity... is actually just interested in trying to make sure everyone has a good time, whether monster or otherwise. It's not clear if it did a Heel–Face Turn at some point, the legends were exaggerated or outright false, or they were accurate but the result of misguided early attempts by the Gourd to achieve its ends.
• Not So Above It All:
  • In the Hildibrand questline, Inspector Briardien, the cool-headed, suave Foil to our favorite buffoon, eventually gets fed up with his incompetence and stupidity and starts chasing him around in a rage.
  • During the Stormblood Hildibrand questline, Hildibrand infiltrates a private meeting as a geisha. Nearly everyone in the room is confused and angered by his presence. Everyone except Yojimbo, hired to guard a priceless treasure for the host. Yojimbo proceeds to be completely smitten with Hildibrand in makeup. Notably, Yojimbo has never been treated as a comical character in the franchise before this and has generally had an air of coolness and professionalism about him. This is a hint towards his true identity as Gilgamesh.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: For the bulk of the game, the goblins were very much the comic relief of the game's beast tribes, obsessed with explosions and possessing a sprawling conspiracy dedicated to keeping secret the process of cheesemaking. Even the appearance of Alexander in 3.05 didn't help, with the raid swiftly becoming seen as That One Level by much of the playerbase. And then 3.2 brought us the second wing of Alexander. Completing it reveals that the leader of the Goblin Illuminati, Quickthinx Allthoughts, had restored Alexander because it had the potential to rewrite history. A potential that he had already begun to utilize.
• Not-So-Small Role: Throughout the role quests in Shadowbringers you get to know the original Warriors of Light from the First, seeing their pasts via the echo. By the end you'll have a general idea of all of them... save one, an elf woman who is in each of the flashbacks but never elaborated on. After finishing all 4 role quests, she comes up, in a big way.
• Not That There's Anything Wrong with That: During the Heavensward Hildibrand questline, at one point you are searching for the mammet Vivi and talk to a guard to see if he's seen him. The guard confuses the mammet for a lalafell (which are not common in Ishgard at all) and refers to them as being "funny little buggers". If the player is a lalafell, he immediately stumbles over his words to say that he of course wasn't referring to you. He then has an extra line awkwardly talking about how lalafells are a fine and hard working race of people. Later in the quest, another character refers to rumors about how Lalafells are all scheming moneygrubbers who would stab you in the thigh for some gil, only to quickly say (if you are a lalafell) that he doesn't actually believe such rumors, of course. Ahem.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…:
  • If you're not in combat, falling damage can bring you to one HP remaining, but it won't kill you no matter how long the drop. If you are in combat, falling damage will be fatal if you fall from a great enough distance. Rogues/Ninjas have a passive trait that lets them take less falling damage, but a great drop will still wreck them. The Stormblood expansion introduced deep water, but in an aversion of Soft Water, falling into water hurts just as much as falling onto land.
  • The Frontlines PVP mode has a few places where a player character can fall far enough to take damage. And since you're always considered to be "in combat" during a PVP match, falling damage is always lethal. The Warrior's "Blota" and the Monk's "Enlightenment" can even yank or push someone over a cliff respectively, and the falling damage will still kill the target if the drop was great enough.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Cleric Stance was an ability for healers that let them swap their Intelligence (magic power) and Mind (healing power) stats around so that they can do damage comparable to a DPS class. The intended purpose behind the ability was to let players be able to defend themselves properly when playing solo, but skilled players started to use the ability in dungeons and raids to boost the damage output by the party and then turn Cleric Stance off when they needed to properly heal. The developers noticed how people were using Cleric Stance in group content and were impressed by it, but they still made content without taking healer DPS into account so that healer players aren't forced to DPS in order to clear content. However, the devs did take action against the use of cleric Stance in PvP by disabling the skill for that mode since healers that could DPS and heal made them too strong in comparison to other classes.
    • Healers in general could do some basic DPS so healers can do quests and fates without needing to bring together a party or switch to another class to advance the storyline. The developers were adamant that all content is created with the healer (and tank) doing 0 DPS. This didn't stop more hardcore players from insisting that healers juggle their role and that of a DPS during dungeons. After Cleric Stance was removed from the game and more DPS options were given to Healers, the content was rebalanced to expect healers to pitch in damage in order to speed up the fight or to beat the Enrage timer.
    • Similarly, Tanks originally had a buff that would cause them to do 20% less damage in exchange for taking 20% less damage and generating threat — tank stance. The same hardcore players would insist that tanks need turn this ability off in dungeons to increase their DPS. In Shadowbringers, this ability was retooled to be a pure threat generation buff, and the increased defense became a passive that cannot be turned off.
  • Tanks using accessories that boosted strength was something the developers didn't expect to happen. Since most raid scenes have high DPS checks, tank players would forego vitality based accessories in exchange for strength ones since vitality only boosted HP while having more strength meant the tank can do more damage, kill things faster, and maintain aggro. Patch 3.2 changed the tank design by having their attack power be based on their vitality stat so that tank players would use vitality based gear to boost their HP while still being able to do a decent amount of damage. This seemed to be a quick fix, however, as in 4.0 strength once again became the primary damage stat for tanks with careful consideration to game balancing.
  • Before it was changed in 5.0, the Warrior ability "Raw Intuition" caused the Warrior to automatically parry all attacks from the front, but always take crits from the side and rear. That latter was meant as a Necessary Drawback, but it turned out to also apply to heals — so if the healer stood behind the tank, you had guaranteed critical heals for 20 seconds.
  • An In-Universe example from the second battle of the Omega raid. Knowing that you're going up against the gravity-manipulating Catastrophe, Nero lends you a magitek levitation device to give you an edge. Afterwards, he notes that the device was not intended for use on living creatures.
  • When used in instanced content, Return will warp you back to the entrance of the instance. This is probably meant for players who have gotten turned around and have no idea where they're going — but at a certain point in Haukke Manor, it's the fastest way to move forward, as the next objective after beating the second boss is right by the entrance. Eventually, the devs added a warp point directly into the instance.
  • Levequests are intended to help players level up their jobs and earn a little bit of gil on the side. However, by the events of Shadowbringers, players figured out how to essentially automate the crafting process with macros and the gil rewards scaled up considerably for tradecraft leves. As a result, players began mass-producing coffee biscuits and dwarven mythril files to turn in to rapidly make gil independent of market forces. This caused a surge of inflation in the player economy, which forced the devs to nerf the gil rewards in Endwalker.
  • The Blue Mage spell "Malediction of Water" has the unique side-effect of dealing knockback to allies in its range, not just enemies. A few cheeky players used this to play "Lalafell Soccer", building a field at their Free Company house and knocking around a party member who volunteers to be the ball.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: The demons aren't demons, they're "voidsent". Usually. For some reason they still use the adjective "demonic" to refer to them at times. The quest to finish Haukke Manor uses it to refer to someone.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In Endwalker's final area, the last location discovered is just a few buildings and a bar with cafe tables around. Not only were there no residents found, living or dead, but not even any spirits, essences or residual emotions were discovered by Meteion to pose her question. When the surroundings are investigated it's noted the bar bottle stacks indicate a once lively atmosphere and the cafe tables seem to be freshly set out, except for the fact that everything is covered in a thick layer of dust. Everyone just disappeared in an instant with no evidence as to what caused this.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Many of the playable areas from 1.0 were revamped in 2.0 and was justified by the Calamity caused by Dalamud/Bahamut. This mostly meant a lot of large areas were sealed off in some manner while others got some touch ups to make them fit with 2.0's direction, but Coerthas gotten the biggest change by becoming a frozen wasteland when it was once a mountainous region filled with lush grass and trees, along with certain old areas being sealed off. The Coerthas Western Highlands, once it was made open by 3.0, also shows how much had changed since 1.0; not only is everything frozen over, but a lot of the old settlements are now frozen wrecks. Even an atheryte in one of the old settlements is frozen solid and knocked over to show that things have changed and are probably never going back to how it used to be.
  • On the positive end of the spectrum, the end game settlements (Mor Dhona in 2.0 and Idyllshire in 3.0) started off as derelict villages, but with each major content patch showed the settlements building up into respectable towns in their own right. Idyllshire in particular, as it hits some of the characters slightly hard (as it likely won't be the same for them), but they end up accepting what's become of it because the alternative would've been worse.
• NPC Random Encounter Immunity: Averted, Lampshaded, and then made into part of a questline. Mor Dhona is a high-level area (with level 40+ aggressive monsters), but that's fine since most of the people who go there are badass adventurers, including the NPCs. But when exhausted Doman refugees are forced to relocate to that area, you have to escort them because they explicitly can't handle the wildlife.

O

• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Patch 2.1 brought about changes to certain items to prevent people from farming them and selling them for lots of gil by making said items much easier to obtain.
  • Collectable Synthesis: "Use existing recipes to create collectables without increasing step count." Those last four words mean you can't toggle it on and off mid-craft to freely fish for Good or Excellent conditions.
  • The 2018 Moonfire event had platforming challenges and a jumping puzzle, both which were ruined by players using mounts to troll others by blocking the paths and using multi seater mounts to carry friends across and to the top. The event's return in 2019 added a unique debuff where players could not summon or ride mounts when doing the platform challenges.
  • In trials where a Quick Time Event is involved, players have to mash the buttons to succeed or be killed instantly. It's possible for players to die before the event and skip it or purposely botch it knowing they will get revived by a healer anyway. In the trial against Elidibus's Warrior of Light form, any player that had died before the QTE will be revived automatically so that they are forced into actually doing the event. If one player messes up in the event, everyone dies and the fight has to be done over again.
  • There's a dwarven house in Kholusia that can only be entered by Lalafellin players, because everyone else is too big to fit. To preserve the "must be this tiny to enter" logic, a debuff preventing the use of mounts will be applied while inside the house.
• Ocular Gushers: After learning the truth about Godbrand's alien origins and last request, Hildibrand and Godbert are both crying waterfalls of Manly Tears.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Y'shtola in the beginning of 1.0's Limsa Lominsa storyline, when a sea serpent attacks the ship she and the player are on.
    Y'shtola: Gods Forfend.
  • After the heroes steal an imperial reaper, more imperial troops come to retrieve it, only to realize that they're up against Cid Garlond and you, the eikon-slayer.
    Imperial Centurion: Oh, bollocks...
• Oh, My Gods!:
  • "By the Twelve!" and "Seven hells!" are used more-or-less interchangeably across Eorzea to express surprise or shock.
  • "Thal's balls" frequently gets used as a swear in Ul'dah, related to Nald'thal, one of the Twelve and god of the underworld and commerce. Nald'thal is also the patron deity of Ul'dah, which is why it's a common phrase there.
  • Ishgardians naturally tend to swear either directly or indirectly by their patron goddess by saying "By the Fury!" whenever they're surprised or upset.
  • "Nophica's tits!" or "Matron's teats!" have been heard as an exclamation in Gridania where they worship Nophica the Matron, made extra amusing in patch 6.3 when you get to see for yourself that they're worth swearing by.
  • In the Far East cultures visited in Stormblood, "by the kami!" is used isntead, as the culture there is more akin to real-life Shinto animism as the driving belief system of Doma.
  • In the First of Shadowbringers, the Twelve and subsequent belief systems aren't touched upon very often. Instead, the people of the First say "Wicked white!" instead, since the world has been overtaken by too much light, and darkness and night are valued rather highly.
• Older Is Better:
  • Present on anything of Allagan origin, thanks to their status as Precursors. They reached levels of technology that far surpass anything made in the game's current era, and so any piece of old Allagan machinery found is guaranteed to be better than whatever Eorzea's best engineers can make.
  • Many endgame bosses utilize "Ancient" variations of staple Final Fantasy spells (such as Ancient Holy or Ancient Quaga) that are clearly better than what the player can do.
  • The final act of Shadowbringers shows that the Ascians' society before the world was split was on a scale near incomprehensible to the Scions, with vast metropolises, no war or conflict, and the citizens being near immortal with The Power of Creation to an extent. Little wonder why Emet-Selch and the other Ascians find the sundered worlds wanting.
  • Shadowbringers shows use that this is true in the First as well. The empire of Ronka seems to have held a similar role, at least in the Rak'tika Greatwood, and their culture still impacts the present hundreds of years after their fall. During the Role quests, you flashback to members of Ardbert's party at various points in their career. The Magic DPS quest gives you control of Nyellbert for a bit, and though his spells are reminiscent of typical Thaumaturgy/Black Magic, they all have the Ronkan prefix and hit WAY harder.
• Old Magic: The lore is divided into perpetual cycles of prosperity (known as "Astral Eras"), followed by apocalyptic cataclysms that lead to sharp decline (known as "Umbral Eras"). Many of these cycles were thus dominated by different forms of magic.
• Old Shame: As a child, Y'shtola invented a cutesy water-based familiar called a Nixie, and gave it a Magical Girl-esque rhyming poem for a summoning ritual, all of which clashes humorously with her far more mature self-image of the present. When she has to dig it back up to investigate Vrtra's voidgate, she expresses regret that her younger self hadn't made the ritual a little more dignified.
• Once an Episode: During every Hildibrand story arc:
  • A card from the Man of a Thousand Faces will find itself lodged into either Hildibrand or inspector Briardien's heads. 2.3's arc plays with this by the thief throwing a decoy card first, than nailing Hildibrand afterward.
  • During the preview for the next arc, a Coblyn will wander across the screen, even (especially) in areas where it would make no sense for one to be.
  • In the conclusion to the 2.5 portion of the Hildibrand storyline, a Coblyn shows up... and gets a card logged in its head.
  • Hildibrand will suffer Clothing Damage.
  • Hildibrand will slam headfirst into the ground with only his legs and lower torso sticking out.
  • Hildibrand will be sent flying into the region the next expansion takes place in (or in the case of the end of the Stormblood questline, sucked into the Rift).
• Omniglot: Those possessed of the Echo, as a consequence of their ability to touch the souls of others, are capable of speaking and understanding most any language.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The final boss theme of the seventh umbral era. While there's actual words being sung, a developer stated that the words have no actual meaning behind them because he used a random word generator when making the song.
  • Subverted on the theme of the Aetherochemical Research Facility; what sounds like latin chanting is just plain english masked by the chorus and a very strange pronunciation of the word "fury".
  • Present on the theme of Heavensward's final boss, singing the expansion's Recurring Riff.
• On the Next: After each of the Hildibrand story arcs, the player gets treated to a teaser of the next one done in this style.
• One-Gender Race:
  • In 1.0, male Miqo'te, female Roegadyn, and female Highlander Hyur weren't playable, though the lore made it quite clear that they all exist. Nearly all male Miqo'te live in solitude, and even the females rarely end up living in cities. Female Roegadyn and Highlander Hyur just don't seem to appear, though one important NPC is a female Roegadyn. They all became playable in A Realm Reborn.
  • Shadowbringers introduced male-only Hrothgar and female-only Viera. Like with the Roegadyn, female Hrothgar exist in the background, but the Viera's previous appearances have all played the trope very straight. Endwalker, in a first for the series, introduced male Viera, and it was confirmed that female Hrothgar would be coming in a subsequent patch.
  • The Anantas, which are snakemaiden races native to Gyr Abania plays this trope dead straight, as they are explicitly an all-female race which does not need males to reproduce.
• One-Hit Kill: Each primal has some sort of mechanic or condition during their battles that must be fulfilled to reduce their Astral Flow damage down to survivable numbers. Complete failure to do so means an unavoidable 9999 (or higher!) damage hit.
  • Ultima Weapon in the second round will cast Ultima after a few seconds once its HP is low. If it pulls off the move, everyone is hit for unblockable high damage that no one can survive.
  • Odin brings back his famous Zantetsuken attack which will instantly kill everyone participating in the FATE battle against him if they don't defeat him in time.
  • In both Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus tower, the third boss from each (King Behemoth in Labyrinth, Amon from Syrcus) have arena wide attacks that will inflict enough damage to kill the entire alliance in one hit, the trick to surviving being that the alliance has to hide behind objects placed on the battlefield from previous attacks of theirs (Comet rocks and allied players frozen in a large chunk of ice respectively) to avoid the damage.
    • Glasya Labolas from Syrcus Tower also has this as a feature. The first version of his attack requires the alliance to interrupt the flow of energy to him to reduce damage from Clockwork Wrights and destroying them, while the second time requires the alliance to position Clockwork Knights to act as linkages on generators charging up pads that launch the alliance to safety to survive the second one.
  • Alexander Prime deserves special mention because it requires the usage of a level 3 tank limit break in order to survive it. Anything else and your party is getting wiped.
  • Many bosses in higher-end content have what's known as a "Tank Buster", which does damage that can take out at least 80% of a Tank's HP if they're full. For anyone else, it's a one-hit kill regardless of how much HP they have.
  • Yojimbo makes a cameo appearance as a boss, and similar to his mechanics as a summon in his home game, he will wipe the party if you let him get paid in full.
  • Special mention goes to a particular boss in Endwalker. Having defied her literally smashing a planet into your party by a combination of the Tank Limit Break, Shield Spells and Massive Healing... the Endsinger just rears up and throws another one at you.
• One Size Fits All: With some absurd degree.
  • With a handful of exceptions, player characters do not need to worry about whether a given piece of equipment will fit or not. This also applies for quests that require you to give a piece of clothing to an NPC; even if you wore a pair of pants made for a Hyur, you can still give them to a Lalafell (the small folk) NPC and they'll magically resize themselves.
    • Lampsided by an NPC outside the Sunsilk Tapistries in Ul'Dah. "One size fits all, or half your money back!"
  • The resizing also applies to mounts and weapons so that they look proportionally correct no matter who uses them. This gets absurd with the Amalj'aa (a race of 9 foot tall lizardmen) and their bow and arrows. The bow and arrows that the Amalj'aa use are so huge that it would probably be easier for them to just jab the arrows at you like a spear rather than firing them. It gets even sillier with Amalj'aa bosses that appear in FATEs since their model is scaled up to be larger, which also means their weapons get scaled up in size and they attack you with bow and arrows that are nearly the size of a small house.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: You have several base stats (strength, vitality, dexterity, mind, intelligence, and piety), but the game automatically prioritizes whichever one is most beneficial to your class whenever you level up because that one stat dictates 90% of what that class is supposed to be doing. The game particularly exemplifies this with more recent patches, since several classes now have one stat handle more than one thing depending on what that class needs - tanks have both their high health and their damage scale off of vitality, healers have both their healing potency and their magic damage scale off of mind, etc. - and gear encourages this by having several sets of gear that are restricted to one role that would most benefit from its stats. Beyond that, players can improve other stats through gear and/or materia, and at least as of 6.0 the current meta is to focus on Skill/Spell Speed, to get abilities out faster, and Critical Hit, which increases the frequency and scaling of crits both for damage dealt and healing.
• Only One Name: Averted. Unusually, especially for an MMORPG, player characters have both fore and surnames, and have people refer to each appropriately^note For example, your name is John Smith. The Scions will refer to you as John, while your Grand Company compatriots will call you Private/Sergeant/Lieutenant Smith.
• Only Sane Man: If you think about it, it's hard not to believe that the Scions of the Seventh Dawn are entirely composed of the Only Sane People in Eorzea.
  • In a weird sort of way, Ramuh also counts as this, as he is the only one of the primals that doesn't wish to temper or destroy the other races of Eorzea. He is still dangerous, but only to those who encroach on his territory, something the Gridanians are glad not to do. He even tells the sylphs that the only time they should summon him is when the forest is in danger.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In A Realm Reborn, very few characters with a British accent manage to keep it for an entire scene (sometimes not even for an entire sentence).
• Order Reborn: The story line of the Legacy 1.0 "7th Umbral Era" revolved around this. With the Garlean Empire knocking on Eorzea's door, and building its first fort in Mor Dhona, Castrum Novum (Latin for "The New Fortress"), Gridania, Limsa Lominsa, and Ul'Dah all decide to reform their individual Grand Companies, respectively the Twin Adders, Maelstrom, and Immortal Flames, one of which the player joins. However, initially, they refuse to work with each other, all trying to secure resources for themselves, or refusing to accept assistance. However, as the threat became more dire, the leaders of the Grand Companies began to question their methods. Between the player's help and a bit of a push from the Circle of Knowing, they become convinced to put aside their differences and reform an even greater order, the Eorzean Alliance. This almost backfires spectacularly at the end of the storyline, when the leaders of the Grand Companies realize that they have to unite to respond to Garlemald's ultimatum, but fail to realize that they can unite their forces to share the burden of battle, still thinking of the Alliance in terms of their own forces rather than the combined might. As a result, they almost surrender when in fact they are more powerful than the Garlean forces in Eorzea.
• Orphaned Etymology: The Last Stand serves huge, decadent hamburgers known as "Archon Burgers". But Germany, much less Hamburg, doesn't exist in the fantasy setting, leaving the origin of the dish's name a mystery.
• Orphaned Punchline: There are a few callbacks in Hildibrand's 2.x missions towards the 1.x missions. However, they'd go over your head should you have not played 1.x.
• Orphaned Reference: The Haurchefaunt emote is a reference to a meeting with him where he made a big grin yelling "Ii~~~!" ^note Japanese for 'good'. This scene was altered in non-Japanese versions.
• Our Dark Matter Is Mysterious:
  • Dark Matter is a "catalyst" item used to repair gear, coming in various grades of purity that allow it to be used on higher and higher levels. Repairing your own gear with Dark Matter lets you increase its durability above 100%, which you can't get from NPC Menders.
  • In Endwalker, a rather important plot point is a form of energy called Dynamis, which makes up 68.3% of all energy in the universe, and is responsible for things on a large scale, but invisible on small scales where aether overrides it. If one is even passingly familiar with the real-world science on dark matter, it's obvious that this is a reference to it.
• Our Demons Are Different: The Voidsent are a seemingly limitless horde of demonic creatures that hail from the Void, which was created when Igeyorhm accidentially triggered a Flood of Darkness in the 13th Shard. They come in many shapes and sizes, and prey on the terror, anguish and misery of the spoken. While most Voidsent are mindless beasts, several of the more powerful ones possess cunning intellect and near-bottomless ambition.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Dravanian Horde, the ancient enemy of Ishgard, is composed of many different kinds of dragons, from western style dragons to giant turtles. Bahamut himself is the Elder Primal of an ancient dragon horde that existed alongside the Allagan Empire. As far as dragons go, their biology is extremely unique, they don't have the same kind of gender as mortal races, any dragon is capable of asexual reproduction (this makes "mates" like Nidhog and Tioman, or even Hraesvelgr and Shiva, matters of pure, spiritual love instead of carrying on families). They're also capable of changing form many times over their lives and grow into whatever environment they find a taste for (a nondescript hatchling who favors fire will grow into a red fire-breathing dragon, same for ice, poison, lightning, ect. ect). Also, they possess an extremely distorted sense of time because of their long lifespans, which is why the Dragonsong War has continued well beyond when the mortals responsible for starting it have died, to a dragon's mind it may well have happened yesterday.
  • There is an hostile mob called a Dragonfly but in reality, they are scalekins along other dragon-like animals such as biasts. First introduces dracos in some FAT Es that resemble winged dragons but not much is known about them or whether or not that they are also considered scalekins.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Reconstructed, implied and avoided. The sort of dwarvish, sort of gnomish Lalafell are an enterprising people known for leading the ore and mining trade as well as most of the Eorzea market, but they pioneer fields such as thaumaturgy/black magic. Their lifespan definitely seems a bit dwarven. One felon stayed 100 years in prison. It is also elf-like in that they don't age past their late teens and only a fellow lalafell can tell the difference between an adult and an older adolescent. Played straighter in The First, where they call themselves dwarves and live by a more dwarvish culture of drinking and mining. Their beards are fake though, as much as they obssess about them.
• Our Elves Are Different:
  • Many traits of the elezen race are superficially elf-like, with a few major differences: They live only about 20 or so years longer than a hyur, as opposed to living for centuries. They also visibly age, albeit they're late bloomers and grow tall during their 20th year or so. In a way, this makes them more like pointy eared humans similar to Hylians from The Legend of Zelda.
  • The Duskwights can be summarized as "marginalized people who live underground." They're an analogue to dark elves in many ways.
  • Gridania is full of Wildwood, which problematizes the "xenophobic and superior to humans" trait. They seem to be a mixture of high elf and wood elf traits. They also coexist in harmony with many hyur in the present day, but they used to consider themselves superior. Ironically, the most revered peoples of Gridania are the Padjali, a kind of youthful horned hyur offshoot chosen by the elementals. This drops the typical elven pompousness down several notches.
  • Heavensward introduces players to the inner workings of Ishgard, which plays the high elven stereotypes straighter: They are a civilization primarily of ambiguously Wildwood folks, whose social structure is heavily dominated by elitism, be it because of race (no hyur, the other race prevalent in the area, hold positions of power) or class (the conflict between high and lowborn of Ishgard is second only to their unending war with the dragons).
  • Viera take the roles that elves normally take, only they generally only associate with their own sex among viera and have rabbit ears. They are dwellers of the forest who generally uphold a strict culture, keep a great many secrets and can easily live 3 times as long as an elezen, whose life expectancy is around 100 to 120 years, considering they live 20 or so years longer than a hyur.
  • Shadowbringers shows that elezen's twins on the First are called Elves, calling this out.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are short, long-eared, ratlike humanoids who wear protective suits that completely cover them and live in a complex tunnel system beneath Mount O'Ghomoro. They are skilled, mining-obsessed craftsmen and alchemists and believe the wealth of the earth to be a gift to them from the primal Titan they worship, and as such are extremely protective of their mineral rights. The kobolds the player can befriend fall under Lovable Coward, but it doesn't seem to be a species trait.
• Our Mages Are Different: Ninja have Ninjutsu, which draws from the elements around them to deal magic damage, but the damage is entirely based on the ninja's physical damage stats. This can be equated to Eastern magic and mysticism being vastly different. Consequentially, a ninja could benefit from magic buffs and is one of the few truly hybrid jobs.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Miqo'te Seekers of the Sun are as far from orcs as you can get appearance-wise, but their culture echoes orcs quite well. They exist as a patriarchal society in which there is generally one breeding male per tribe (or Nunh, used in place of a last name) with all the non-breeders called Tia (again, used as a last name). The title of Nunh can be challenged by a Tia, usually through combat, which need not be lethal but sometimes is. A female's last name is simply her father's first name. Keepers of the Moon miqo'te are matriarchal by contrast.
  • The Roegadyn are visibly similar to orcs from other universes - larger than the human equivalents and well muscled, to a person. They have two main cultures - the Hellsguard who are based in Abalathia's Spine, and the Sea Wolves, a maritime-based culture with strong pirate associations. However, like with many spoken races are extremely varied - though some play similar roles as orcs in other worlds (i.e. hired muscle or brutish bullies), and there are plenty of physically-oriented Roegadyn NPCs among friend and foe, there's plenty of variation in the culture. Of note, the assistant (and acting) guildmaster of the Arcanist Guild - which also doubles as the Lominsan customs office, due to their skill with numbers and observation, is herself a Roegadyn. Though many Roegadyn of both groups prefer the axe as their weapon (and with one helming the Marauder's Guild which trains in axework), they also have some of the best gunners in the world, with the Admiral of Limsa Lominsa being a master pistol duelist and the tutor of the Machinist's guild being a former Roe pirate as well. Finally, Roegadyn skin can vary significantly; some may have the orc standard colors of green or grey, especially among Sea Wolves, but they can also be red or brown (especially Hellsguard), or even have natural tones. If their tone isn't too extreme, it's entirely possible for a Roegadyn to pass for an exceptionally large Hyur.
• Our Souls Are Different: While souls are understood to be the real source of a person, the true extent of it is only clarified in Endwalker: an individual's core self and personality are actually their soul itself, however they can express themselves differently across lifetimes depending on circumstances, despite being the same being at core (on top of losing most of their memories at each rebirth). While a lot of people tend to stay quite constant across their lifetimes, it can also leads to complicated situations like Fandaniel's. Throughout Endwalker, he keeps on insisting that he's a whole different person from his previous incarnation, Hermes. Yet, when the Warrior of Light meets the man in question, it turns out they're actually very similar. This denial of a part of himself in turn hurts Amon in the worst of ways, and at the end of Aitiascope, he's all but stated to have stopped fighting the fact that he really hasn't changed that much, and that doing so only brought him an answer he truly didn't wish for.
• Our Zombies Are Different:
  • They're blue-skinned and have glowing tattoos covering their body and a hunger for brains, though they don't share any differences in animation compared to players. They seem to be able to recover intelligence and personality after they've been around for some time (according to the Encyclopedia Eorzea, the reason zombies regain their personality and intelligence is due to the unstable shift in the aether caused by the fall of Dalamud), but they don't lose their hunger for brains, which makes them a big problem. One of the FATEs in Thanalan involves you dealing with a band of zombies who have become extremely dapper thanks to a Back from the Dead Hildibrand, who thinks he's a zombie due to digging himself out of his own grave.
  • More traditional shambler zombies show up in Pharos Sirius, the revenants of those who were drowned by the Siren's song. They also seem to have been mutated somehow by the fallen piece of Dalamud that pierced the lighthouse, and have massive growths of corrupted crystals jutting out of them.
• Outcast Refuge: Idyllshire is a "free city" founded by Slowfix Cointoss in the ruins of the Sharlayan colony. Slowfix only imposes one rule: everyone who settles there is a friend and you should always respect your friends. As a consequence of this and the city's location deep in Dravania, it became a haven for all sorts of misfits. Known settlers include adventurers, homesteaders, refugees, sky pirates, those fleeing Loan Sharks among others. So long as no one infringes on each other's quest For Happiness, all are welcome to stay in Idyllshire.
• Outrun the Fireball: Your character, after beating the Final Boss of A Realm Reborn, escapes the explosion from the ruins of the Empire's base by fleeing in a mech.
• Outside-Context Problem: Yo R Ha The Dark Apocalypse raids deal with a threat originating from a completely different franchise.
• The Outsider Befriends the Best: The Warrior of Light is introduced as either a fresh-faced adventurer coming to Eorzea by boat or carriage or one of the adventurers at the Battle of Carteneau transported forward in time. Their possession of the Echo and heroic feats get them recruited by the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. From there, it isn't long before the Warrior becomes Fire-Forged Friends with kings, admirals, seedseers, and sultanas.
• Overly Generous Time Limit: Every multi-man instance is on some sort of time limit, but it's so lenient in all cases that you almost never have to worry about it. Dungeons and trials generally have a time limit of an hour, while 24-man raid dungeons have a time limit of two hours. Generally speaking for Normal and Hard difficulties, dungeons can be completed in about twenty minutes, 24-man raids will take around half an hour, and a Trial might take ten minutes. In all cases, pressure to complete the duty before the time limit runs out is technically always there, but cases of parties running out of time are almost nonexistent in practice. The only duties that regularly run up to the time limit are Savage and higher content, which might need multiple lockouts' worth of practice before the team gets it down, and solo runs of Deep Dungeons.
• Overworld Not to Scale:
  • An NPC near Vesper Bay complains that he is miles away from Vesper Bay while in-game, it's just a walk away. It's also implied the world is bigger than what's presented.
  • The gap between the port city of Hingashi and the mainland of Othard is presented as comparable to the gap between Japan and the Asian continental mainland. However, the Ruby Price, the Hingan outpost, is evidently close enough to teleport to via the Aethernet, which in other cities usually deposits you just outside the gate - the longest such distances tend to visible from either side as a long bridge, as in the Steps of Faith and the Middle La Noscea entrance to Limsa Lominsa. The presence of the Confederacy and the Garleans does make crossing tricky regardless of the distance, but the game space between Hingashi and Othard feels like a few miles at most as opposed to a near 600 mile gap (as between Japan and South Korea at their closest points).