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Franchise / Nasuverse

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/nasuverse_fate_series_kara_no_kyoukai_6.jpg
L - R: Mash Kyrielight, Shiki Ryougi and Artoria Pendragon
The universe(s) of the writings of Type-Moon'snote  scenario director, Kinoko Nasu. It's made up of several "sub-universes" ("franchises" that share characters) that share most (but not all) details between each other. Also of note is that the franchises themselves often include several alternate continuities, since the primary works are visual novels with multiple and very mutually exclusive paths.

Several of the earliest main works in the 'verse were/are H-games (a.k.a. eroge, marked as such), but many of the related works are not. And, after Type-Moon began achieving mainstream success with the 2006 Fate/stay night anime, they began trending away from erotic works to cater to a wider audience, with several works either re-released or slated to be re-released in Self-Censored Release form. (Given the h-scenes were gratuitous and largely unneeded for the overall plot, even old-school fans largely see this as a positive.)

A list of the works within the multiverse (and a short summary):

The Nasuverse:

Notes (Our Angels Are Different)

  • Also called Angel Notes; it's a short story featuring an apocalyptic future where The Ultimate Ones invade the planet and destroy the remains of humanity after the death of Gaia. Also notable for providing the foundation for some concepts in the 'verse, namely that "Gaia" is a living being and that each planet has an "Ultimate One".

The Garden of Sinners (Our Souls Are Different)

  • Protagonist Shiki Ryougi wakes up from a coma and finds that although she retains her memories, she cannot identify with them as her own. As she struggles through her own life like a stranger, Shiki begins involving herself in increasingly bizarre disappearances, suicides, and murders happening in her city in order to once again feel alive.
  • Three novels, divided into seven chapters and an epilogue. A series of seven animated feature-length films aired in theaters from late 2007 to 2009. The DVD editions for all movies are available as of December 2009, and the Blu-Ray editions (incidentally with English subtitles) were released in February 2011, together with an OVA of the epilogue.
  • Mirai Fukuin: recalled out summer, a bonus chapter released ten years after the original series. An animated adaptation was also released.
  • Being one of the first works written, this is the one work officially claimed to take place in an Alternate Continuity from the rest (due to major discrepancies, such as Shiki's eyes and Touko's goal). Most of the characters here can be considered the 'blueprints' for those in the rest of the 'verse. Every character from the other works is still present in KnK's universe (with the exception of anyone True Ancestor-related) and vice-versa, but they are slightly different, given the conflicting aspects of each universe having possibly changed their circumstances—excluding Zelretch, who can pop into any given universe at a whim. Shiki is included as a character in Melty Blood: Actress Again after getting pulled across dimensions, thus indicating that The Garden of Sinners and Melty Blood, at least, are Alternate Continuities. Meanwhile, Fate/Grand Order features Shiki as a limited-time character, and justifies why she's there without resorting to "alternate dimensions," implying that The Garden of Sinners has a place among the Fate timelines (a notion reinforced by later revelations about the multiverse).

Witch on the Holy Night (Our Mages Are Different)

  • Originally an unpublished novel; it details the past of Aoko Aozaki (the minor but important character in Tsukihime) and her mentor, Alice Kuonji. They meet Shizuki Soujuurou, a boy unfamiliar with city life. A Visual Novel adaptation was released (after a very long wait) on April 12, 2012. It is also Type-Moon's first all-ages visual novel. A fully voiced port to PS4 and Nintendo Switch was released in December 2022. It has the significant additions of Chinese and English translations. It is the first visual novel to be officially released in English.
  • Two sequels have been planned, but they may not appear for some time.
  • Clock Tower 2015, a short story written for the closure of Type-Moon's old mobile site. The two Aozaki sisters both end up in London due to the recent passing of an acquaintance of theirs.
  • An anime film adaptation by ufotable was announced in December 2021 slated for release in 2023.

Tsukihime (Our Vampires Are Different)

  • Tsukihime, an eroge visual novel. Features The 'Verse's other Shiki, Shiki Tohno, who was involved in an accident as a child that left him with a muddled memory, sickly health, and eyes with the strange ability to see red lines that allow him to cut anything to pieces with a simple touch. Eight years later, Shiki returns home after being left with distant relatives to recover, only to become embroiled in a series of supernatural murders related to a mysterious red-eyed girl and his family's past. Has a manga and anime adaption, complete with reducing sexual contentnote .
  • Tsukihime PLUS+DISC, a visual novel. A "fun disc" with a new short story (introducing two new characters, and finally revealing protagonist Tohno Shiki's face) and several other shorts discussing the 'verse. Also, sequel promotion.
  • Kagetsu Tohya, an eroge visual novel. Yet another "fun disc" sequel that doesn't specifically take place in any one particular ending of the original game. In any case, about 90% of it is a (very messed up) dream.
  • Melty Blood, a fighting game. Relatively story-heavy for its genre. Has several sequels, itself, some of them expanding the story considerably, mostly the update Melty Blood Re-Act. Supposedly takes place after an unreleased story route in Tsukihime.
    • Melty Blood: Type Lumina is based on the Tsukihime remake's continuity, serving as a Continuity Reboot for the series, and released in Autumn 2021.
  • Tsukihime 2 / the dark six, currently a running joke. A brief trailer is in Kagetsu Tohya, and there have been many short stories that expanded the characters (especially Tohno Shiki) far beyond their original roles.
  • A remake of the original Tsukihime was announced in April 2008. Though development was delayed for years due to multiple other in production projects, such as the wildly successful Fate/Grand Order, the first half (Near Side) was finally released in Summer 2021 for Nintendo Switch and PS4, now titled Tsukihime -A piece of blue glass moon-. The second half (Far Side) including the Ascended Meme / Running Joke Satsuki Yumizuka route, is currently in development as Tsukihime -The other side of red garden-
  • Hana no Miyako, a manga that follows Miyako Arima while she studies in a school where students are ranked by martial arts fights.

Fate (Our Magics Are Different)

  • Fate/stay night, a technically-eroge visual novel (though certain routes downplay the eroticism heavily, which has caused a long-lasting debate about whether it should truly be labeled an "eroge") released in 2004. Shirou Emiya, a high school student and mage-in-self-training, stumbles into the Fifth Holy Grail War – a Battle Royale contest wherein seven mages (Masters) summon Heroic Spirits from history (Servants) and have them fight to the death, with the winner obtaining the wish-granting Holy Grail. The story has three routes – Fate, Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel – with each one representing a branching alternate timeline. Has a PlayStation 2 port which is also on PS Vita, iOS and Android, all with the eroge elements replaced. The Vita port is slated for an HD remaster in 2024 for the 20th anniversary with English and Chinese localiztions on Steam and Nintendo Switch. Adapted twice as a manga, the first based on the Fate route and the second based on the Heaven's Feel route. Anime adaptations include a series mostly based on the Fate route airing in 2006 and a movie based on Unlimited Blade Works released in 2010, both by Studio DEEN; afterwards, the studio ufotable adapted Unlimited Blade Works as a full series airing 2014-15 and Heaven's Feel as a movie trilogy released 2017-20.
    • Garden of Avalon, a Light Novel focusing on Saber's backstory which was bundled with the Unlimited Blade Works BD-box and eventually adapted into a Drama CD.
  • Fate/hollow ataraxia: A sequel/fan-disc Visual Novel that was released in 2005. A more lighthearted story set six months after the conclusion of the Fifth Holy Grail War, it focuses on a magus called Bazett Fraga McRemitz, who finds herself trapped in a strange "Groundhog Day" Loop with a mysterious Servant called "Avenger". This would be the final Type-Moon-badged work to possess explicit eroticism in its narrative, which was itself removed for the 2014 Vita version.
    • Capsule Servant, a Lighter and Softer tower defense game released as part of hollow ataraxia's Vita port. Takes place in a Pokémon-esque world where Holy Grail Wars are replaced with Mons battles, with a younger Shirou and Rin both playing a part and running counter to the absurdity. It's largely an Affectionate Parody of both the Mons genre and Fate itself, and barely takes itself seriously because of it.
  • Fate/Zero: A prequel light novel published from 2006 to 2007 for four volumes that covers the events of the Fourth Holy Grail War, the fallout from which affected every character in Fate/stay night. Note that Fate/Zero assumes that you have read Fate/stay night, so beware of spoilers. Adapted as an anime series by ufotable which aired 2011-12.
  • Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA: A manga beginning in 2007 that features an Alternate Timeline storyline with Illyasviel (the resident Enfante Terrible) as the main character... and as a Magical Girl, complete with a spunky talking staff called Ruby. It is very much an Affectionate Parody, both of Fate/stay night and Magical Girl Tropes in general... initially. Eventually, it's revealed that the story takes place in a world where Kiritsugu and Irisviel stopped the Holy Grail War, and with it, carries all the baggage associated with the Nasuverse. Notably, the overall plot gets much more serious and borrows heavily from Angel Notes.
  • Fate/Apocrypha: A light novel written by Yuichiro Higashide published 2012-14 in five volumes, set in an Alternate Timeline that diverges during the Third Holy Grail War. Centers on a version of the Holy Grail War that is structured as a contest between two teams, "Red" and "Black", each consisting of seven Master-Servant pairs. The project was originally pitched as an MMORPG, but it never took off. An anime adaptation by A-1 Pictures aired July 2017.
    • Fate:Lost Einherjar: A light novel sequel written by Hikaru Sakurai set in the future during a Grail War where each Master summons two Servants. The main character summons as Archer Aslaug, daughter of Sigurd and Brynhildr, and her husband, Berserker Ragnar Lodbrok.
  • Fate/Prototype: A twelve-minute OVA included in the final volume of Carnival Phantasm in 2011. It is based on the first draft of Fate/stay night written by Kinoko Nasu in his high-school days, when it was conceived as a traditional novel instead of a Visual Novel. Currently has a series of Prequel Light Novels, Fate/Prototype: Fragments of Pale Silver and Blue by Hikaru Sakurai, with further spinoff novella, Fate/Labyrinth, also written by Sakurai, in print as well.
  • Lord El-Melloi II Case Files: A Light Novel series by Makoto Sanda published 2014-19 in ten volumes, starring Waver Velvet, one of the main characters of Fate/Zero. Now older and a professor of Modern Magecraft Theory at the Clock Tower, Waver and his assistant Gray go around solving mysteries relating to the world of mages. Set during the months leading up to the Fifth Holy Grail War. Features significant Character Overlap with each novel featuring a version of a certain character in the Fate/stay night timeline. A manga adaptation began in October 2017, and an anime adaptation aired in 2019.
    • Has a sequel series by Sanda, The Adventures of Lord El-Melloi II, which began in 2020, and follows Waver and Gray's adventures a few years after the Fifth Holy Grail War.
  • Fate/strange Fake: A Light Novel written by Ryohgo Narita (of Baccano! and Durarara!! fame) that focuses on a knock-off version of the Holy Grail War taking place in Nevada, several years after the events of Fate/stay night. Has been ongoing since 2015, with eight volumes published as of February 2023. Originated as an April Fools' Day joke in 2008, as a novella published on Narita's website (originally titled Fake/states night) that seemingly introduced the setting and characters of an upcoming role-playing game – afterwards, certain elements were reused in other works, and it was eventually greenlit to be turned into an official full Light Novel series, with the original novella expanded into the first volume. Also has a manga version published simultaneously.
  • Today's Menu for the Emiya Family: A Lighter and Softer manga that centers on all the Fate/stay night Masters and Servants as they live their daily lives and showcase local cuisine. An ONA by ufotable began airing in January 2018, with each episode premiering monthly.
  • Fate/stay tune was an internet radio show that was broadcast while the anime was on the air, hosted by Ayako Kawasumi (Saber) and Kana Ueda (Rin). A sequel show, "Fate/stay tune: Unlimited Radio Works" was broadcast for the "Unlimited Blade Works" movie, hosted by Jun'ichi Suwabe (Archer) and the aforementioned hosts.
  • Fate/tiger colosseum, a PSP exclusive 3D brawler, which serves as both a sequel and parody of the original games. Taiga Fujimura initiates a war for the Tiger Grail and the Masters and Servants compete for it once more. Followed by a stand-alone expansion pack, Fate/tiger colosseum UPPER, which added more playable characters from hollow ataraxia and zero, as well as Arcueid, Kohaku (both in Magical Girl form), and Neco-Arc, making it the first real Crossover between Fate and Tsukihime.
  • Fate/unlimited codes, a fighting game. Follows the general plot of Fate/stay night but proceeds into a different direction; "What if this character were the protagonist?". Also includes Luviagelita Edelfelt from Fate/hollow ataraxia, a surprise entry of Lancer from Fate/Zero, and Saber Alter from the Heaven's Feel route, as well as a "new" entry of "Saber Lily", an apparently "Bright" version of Saber to round off the trifecta.
  • Fate/EXTRA, an alternate timeline setting with a new Holy Grail War, released for the PSP in July 2010. It was localized by Aksys and brought over to the West in 2011. Set in a giant Artificial Reality on the Moon. Differs from the rest of the series in that the player can choose their character's gender and Servant (from Saber, Caster, or Archer).
    • Has a sequel in the form of Fate/EXTRA CCC, which was never localized. It focuses on an alternate version of Sakura who has kidnapped the player character, their Servant, and several other characters to the Far Side of the Moon, with the story mainly revolving around the cast's exploration of the mysterious Sakura Labyrinth, trying to get back to the Near Side. In addition to the original three playable Servants, Gilgamesh is a new fourth playable Servant.
    • A third game in this series on the PS4, Vita, PC, and notably the first work to be on a Nintendo console, Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star, an action game ala Dynasty Warriors with its roster of playable Servants expanded from 4 to 17. This game was localized by XSEED and came out on January 2017. The story revolves around the player character being mysteriously split up into three seperate people, paired with the original playable Saber, Caster, and a new Saber, Altera. These three Servants each lead a faction of Servants and go to war for domination over the Moon. Though it is officially the third game in this series, it is technically not a sequel to any of the Extra or CCC endings, instead using a new original route as the basis for its backstory. It also expanded on the universe's Alternate Timeline mechanics with far-reaching implications for every other work.
    • The fourth game in this series, Fate/Extella Link, was announced on August 2017. Still retaining the musou gameplay of last game with sixteen playable Servants returning, it takes place after Extella's Golden Ending and focuses on a new Saber, Charlemagne. It's described to be more of a side story than sequel, with the sequel to Extella being written separately from Link.
    • An anime series, Fate/Extra Last Encore, which follows an Alternate Timeline a la the game sequels.
  • Fate/Grand Order, the "Fate Online Project Reboot" RPG on iOS and Android based off of the scrapped Fate/Apocrypha online game written by Higashide, Sakurai, and Nasu. An English version handled by Aniplex was announced April 2017 and came out the same year in June. Detailing the struggles of the Chaldea Humanity Preservation Organization as it attempts to correct temporal anomalies caused by a wayward member and later as it attempts to protect human history and human life against the Seven Great Evils of Humanity, the Beasts, it began as a relatively simple project but its stunning success has led to it taking a prominent position in the wider Nasuverse, hosting several key reveals about the wider setting. It received an animated adaptation of its prologue arc on December 31st, 2016. It has received several manga series, with six official adaptations (two of the first arc, four of the interim arc), several manga anthologies, a series about the real world stories and histories behind the Servants, a series about the Servants cooking meals, similar to Today's Menu for the Emiya Family, a series with various stories about the Crypters from the second arc, Riyo's Learning with Manga! FGO gag series, and another gag series called Ritsuka Fujimaru Doesn't Get It. It also has an arcade game, VR spinoff, and tabletop game.
  • Fate/type Redline: A Darker and Edgier retelling of Imperial Capital Holy Grail Strange Story, which started out as a gag story arc from Koha-Ace, a manga from Type-Moon's official magazine, Type-Moon Ace. It portrays a Holy Grail War mostly featuring Japanese Servants and taking place in Shōwa Era Year 20, or 1945, at the tail end of World War II. Kanata Akagi, an Ordinary High-School Student from modern-day, is transported there by accident, and now has to find a way to survive Imperial Japan and come back to his own time.
  • Fate/mahjong night Seihai Sensou: A 4koma manga by Syatey. As the name suggests, it revolves around the Holy Grail War being fought through Mahjong.
  • Fate/Requiem: A book first released in Comiket 95, written by Meteo Hoshizora and illustrated by NOCO. It takes place in 2025 after a worldwide Holy Grail War that led to rising sea levels, and a new Status Quo in which everyone has their own Servant connected to a personal Holy Grail in their hearts. It stars Erice Utsumi, the only person with no Servant or Grail, who meets a young boy who is the very last Servant ever summoned.
  • Fate/Samurai Remnant: Announced on December 31, 2022 as a game developed by Koei Tecmo's Omega Force. It takes place in historical Japan where the Holy Grail War serves as the Waxing Moon Ritual. This is the first Type-Moon game to be announced for a global release for PC via Steam, PS4, PS5, and Nintendo Switch.

DDD aka Decoration Disorder Disconnection (Our Demons Are Different)

  • A series of novels that are not directly connected, but explore another new aspect of The 'Verse: demons (not oni and oni hybrids like in Tsukihime; true demons).

Carnival Phantasm (...Different)

  • An official Type-Moon crossover manga adapted into anime in the summer of 2011. It's a crossover between Fate/stay night and Tsukihime, focusing more on random and hyper crossover madness rather than a serious crossover between the series.
  • Fate/Grand Carnival: An official sequel to Carnival Phantasm, although due to Tsukihime's long absence from the public eye, it's basically the cast of Fate/Grand Order running around doing similar hijinks.

All Around Type-Moon

  • The second official Type-Moon crossover manga by artist B-suke, where all of the Type-Moon characters, including those from different continuities, meet at the Ahnenerbe Cafe.

Chibichuki

  • The third official crossover manga with a Super-Deformed artsyle by Tsubomi Hanabana, pretty much everyone from all corners of the Nasuverse is forcibly teleported into a high school by fiat of Nasu's Author Avatar stand-in. They decide to enjoy school life while stuck there.

Mahou Tsukai no Hako

  • An odd branch as it not only is more of a multimedia mix with manga, drama CDs, and novels, it focuses on Hibiki Hibino and Chikagi Katsuragi (most likely only known in the West for their appearance in Carnival Phantasm), the official representatives of Type-Moon's (now defunct) mobile-only site, and their work at Ahnenerbe, the café that pops up in other Type-Moon works.

Tsuki No Sango

  • A short story by Nasu written for Maaya Sakamoto's Full Moon Recital and later adapted in a manga by Sasaki Shonen, of the Tsukihime manga fame. It follows a girl whose grandmother claims to come from the Moon. It is passed in a world where people started colonies in the Moon, but soon lost interest, resulting in them giving up on living.

The Room of the April Witch

  • A short story written by Meteo Hoshizora and illustrated by Chihiro Aikura, about a witch named April, who only opens her house's door on April 1st once in a year. Though originally released for Type-Moon's April Fools' Day joke on 2011, there are no comedic elements in this story. Later had a booklet and Drama CD released, with the latter being narrated by Maaya Sakamoto.

The Nasuverse is mostly unified in its rules on Functional Magic and related topics (like non-human species). Though crossovers are rare, they do happen, even if in incredibly roundabout ways.

Then again, as already stated, it isn't internally consistent because large portions of the source material are mutually exclusive, and some parts of it are obviously not canon to begin with (self-parodies, etc.); the canon universe is more about characters and the interaction between them, and less about the actual plot(s) taking place. Doujinshi authors take full advantage of this, and the amount of fan material available is staggering. Many works might not even be truly set in the same 'verse.

Due to the sheer amount of rules and terminologies involved within the Nasuverse, there is now an analysis page as a guide to wade through them, also serving as a dissection of the setting through tropes. Please feel free to contribute. Also now has a memes page.

Tropes that apply to the Nasuverse in general:

    open/close all folders 

    A - M 
  • Advanced Ancient Humans: Humans long ago established many civilizations thanks to gods ruling over them, particularly that of Atlantis, the progenitor of Greek civilization and the domain of the Twelve Olympians/Pillars/Machine Gods. All these civilizations came to an end when the alien Velber came to harvest civilizations and their data, which entailed deploying the White Titan Sefar on Earth to slaughter everything in its path. Humanity has long since forgotten about this time period, with their records only dating back to the dawn of modern civilization in Mesopotamia.
  • Affably Evil: Characters with the "Evil" alignment can be despicably malevolent, but the label is also associated with powerful egotism rather than outright wickedness, denoting an individual who puts their own values and goals above those of others. An "Evil" person can still be perfectible personable, but they can be dangerous and capable of shortsighted selfishness. For example, True Assassin, also known as the Hassan of the Cursed Arm, is polite, professional, and valorous to a point. He also murders easily and ruthlessly, and he became an "Old Man of the Mountain" by abandoning his wife and child to fend for themselves in pursuit of glory and power with the Hashshashin.
  • Akashic Records: It is also called the Root, and the source of all things in existence. Everything is born from there, and everything will return there after death. The only exception to this are the beings known as the "Outer Gods". note  Every mage's goal is to reach Akasha and obtain the mysteries within, though this is an extremely difficult task. The very few who manage to reach it and come back can wield True Magic. Shiki Ryougi and Manaka Sajyou on the other hand have been connected to it since birth, and show that it isn't a good thing to be connected to the source of all existence as they have... issues.
  • All Deaths Final: One rule shared across virtually all of the settings is that there is no true reviving the dead. At best a person can find ways to cheat death, but those are artificial ways of keeping yourself alive. All living beings will die, and nothing can change that. Only once has this been defied in the entire setting; and in that case, the person (Mash), was revived in a place outside the normal laws of time, and by Cath Palug (aka Primate Murder) at the cost of its intelligence.
  • All There in the Manual: If a detail isn't explicitly described in the work itself, it's probably explained in one of the several dozen material books which contain profiles of characters and explanations on how mechanics and concepts work in this universe. Furthermore, Nasu has his own blog which he occasionally posts on to clarify any confusing details.
  • Alternate Continuity:
    • While the Fate/EXTRA series purports to be merely an Alternate History (in which The Magic Goes Away about thirty years before the events of Fate/stay night, while Extra itself takes place about thirty years after), there are certain irreconcilable differences in the cosmos of each game, particularly the nature of the moon itself.
    • Tsukihime worlds are ones where "Gaia Manifests", the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors who represent "Anti-Humanity" exist, the Human Order is weak, Crimson Moon is active, and Arcueid Brunestud is the strongest being. Fate worlds are "tamed by Alaya", Servants who represent "Humanity" can be summoned because the Human Order is strong, Crimson Moon is not active, and someone replaces Arcueid as the strongest being.
  • Alternate Timeline: The franchise notably places a strong emphasis to differentiate this trope from Alternate Universe entirely.
    • On Earth, there exists a certain number of fluctuative parallel worlds formed out of possibilities, each of which is an Alternate Timeline. This set of parallel worlds is called “Great Tree Known as Time”, and it is being maintained by Gaia, will of the planet, and Alayashiki, a collective instinct to survive which humanity developed at some point in ancient history as they became independent and “cancerous” existences toward the planet. These parallel worlds require enormous amount of energy to maintain, as such at certain intervals the World (that is to say, Gaia and Alaya) predict the continued survival and progress of both the planet and humanity for the next 100 years, in order to “prune” them — an event known as Quantum Timelock, in which all the different timelines converge together. This ensures the events deemed essential to the progress of the planet and humanity during said Timelock happened across all timelines (and any ‘younger’ timelines created from time travel will also undergo through said events as they progress), and any timeline in which the Timelocked events cannot happen would be deleted from existence.
    • This has a strange effect on causality. Gaia and Alaya technically exist beyond any timeline they manage, but they require the planet and humanity's survival in order to both continue existing and intervene in a timeline. If the planet is killed or humanity is wiped out in a single timeline, Gaia or Alaya will delete said timeline to prevent its events from becoming immutable facts across all timelines. But if the planet's death or humanity's extinction were to happen on a timeline which they cannot delete for any reason (mainly the weakening of the World systems ensuring the stability of the timelines, which can be caused by extremely powerful beings such as Ultimate Ones or Beasts of Calamity), then Gaia or Alaya would die when the events of said timeline become immutable facts. Nasu's earlier work Notes is a possible future (not an alternate timeline) in which Gaia died and humanity remains on the now dead planet.
    • Additionally, it is implied whenever the World interacts with a foreign element from outside the planet and humanity, said element will be present across all possible timelines as a direct result. This is supposedly why vampirism (which originates from the foreign entity Crimson Moon) exists in both Fate and Tsukihime branch of worldlines (albeit at different scales), and why alien invasions like that of Sefar is noted to happen in every timeline.
    • It is later revealed in the material book which comes with Tsukihime Remake that the concept of timelines was either discovered or outright created by the World after the discovery of the Second Magic by Zelretch.
  • Antagonist Title: "Type-Moon" is the title of Crimson Moon, progenitor of all vampires and the Ultimate One of the moon. While Crimson Moon himself has never appeared in person (save for a couple visions in Kagetsu Tohya where Shiki learns about Arcueid's real role as his vessel - and even then he's just manifesting through her), he is a very important Greater-Scope Villain because of how his vampires shape the Nasuverse's works (especially those in the Tsukihime family).
  • Ancient Astronauts: Aliens have visited the Earth frequently in the past and played a major role in the shaping of Earth's mythologies. In particular, Fate/Grand Order reveals the Mesoamerican pantheon to be extraterrestrial bacteria who arrived via the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, while the Twelve Olympians were massive robots from another universe entirely before settling on Earth.
  • April Fools' Day: A time-honored tradition which the company has been following for several years now, usually involving their main website changing to feature the joke.
    • 2005: Neco-ARC: the Movie, a film starring everybody's favorite Joke Character from Melty Blood.
    • 2006: Hazakura Romantic, a seemingly original BL novel concept (co-opted with nitro+).
    • 2007: Strange Energy Corona Rivive, a Magical Girl series with the Kaleidosticks and Kohaku as supporting characters.
    • 2008: Type-Moon as a girl's wrestling federation!
    • 2009: moon.cinemas.jp, a site imitating a typical movie theater chain front page, where all the movies were parodies of well known films (up to including a parody of Densha Otoko starring Waver Velvet and Fate/Zero Rider that was revived as an April Fools joke for ufotable in 2012). One of the "movies" announced, one based on the (then book only) epilogue for the movie series of The Garden of Sinners, was eventually done and released for real.
    • 2010: Rather than fully changing the site, Twitter- sorry, TMitter feeds were added to the site, featuring tweets from their most popular characters.
    • 2011: Instead of a typical joke, they released a serious short story about the very concept of April Fools written by Meteo Hoshizawa, titled "The Room of the April Witch". Their mobile site did have several parodic images and accompanying text with each reload.
    • 2012: Koha-ACE, a poster for a movie parodying Mobile Suit Gundam AGE.
    • 2013: An episodic series, Back Alley Satsuki - Chapter Heroine Sanctuary, a parody of Saint Seiya: Sanctuary Chapter, with new episodes being released as the day progressed. Satsuki Yumizuka, with the help from other Tsukihime heroines and the totally completely Mysterious Heroine X, race to defeat Type-Moon's Twelve Gold Heroines to rescue Shiki Tohno.
    • 2014: The return of the TMitter! Also, TM-channel, a series of Nico Nico Douga-like "streams" for several characters, some of them done in a vlog style.
    • 2015: An error in the Kaleidoscope has caused a Time Crash, hijinks ensue with alternate versions of everyone (various girls become J-Pop idols, Arthur Pendragon is a Pok-, er, Capsule Servant champion, Spartacus is an idol producer, Shirou Emiya is a lawyer, Rin Tohsaka is actually technologically competent, etc) and it's all once again recorded on TMitter. It has a fairly serious ending, giving the adult Waver Velvet some closure with Kayneth.
    • 2016: Most of the art in Fate/Grand Order and the Type-Moon website is changed to the Super-Deformed artstyle of the Learning with Manga! FGO.
    • 2017: A joke app parodying Pokémon GO, Fate/Grand Order Gutentag Omen, only available for that day, was released, allowing players to "catch" Servants using Quartz. Its conclusion is more serious than other years as the dead Dr. Roman (who unlike everyone else cannot be caught) waves good-bye to the players.
    • 2018: A rerun of Fate/Grand Order Gutentag Omen with gameplay changed to be more like Space Harrier. There was also the Kinoko Nasu Art Gallery, featuring several artists' take on Nasu's mushroom Author Avatar.
    • 2019: FGO QUEST, a Retraux RPG as a send-up to Dragon Quest.
  • Artistic License: Largely averted. Nasuverse as a whole goes to great lengths to make sure all historical characters are accurate to their real life counterpoints, only taking liberties with Mythological characters and/or historical characters with little known information about them. And in said cases, the only given liberties are a gender change that are immediately explained. Moreover, the foundation of the setting (E.g. the Root, Textures, True Magic etc.), are based off of a deep understanding of real-life cosmological theories and mathematical principles.
  • As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The franchise is notorious for this. Any non-Japanese and non-Heroic Spirit character would end up with strange names ranging from simply two English words put together to something ridiculous.
  • Atlantis: Atlantis was the location of a technologically advanced society established by the Twelve Olympians, though their true capital Olympus was actually located underneath the ocean. Atlantis and Olympus were destroyed during Sefar's rampage, and their ruins were buried underwater where they became the subject of myth as they were impossible to find. The remnants of Atlantean civilization eventually drifted to Greece and established a new civilization there.
  • Avalon: The sacred scabbard of King Arthur. It is also a location found within the Reverse Side of the World and is the home of the fairies after the end of the Age of Gods. It is the location where King Arthur will go to after death and rest until the time of his return. In one timeline, a Magus named Shirou Emiya managed to end up in Avalon after that timeline's version of King Arthur, a female version, gave up her contract to the planet.
  • Background Magic Field: A substance called Ether, or ambient mana, permeates the atmosphere in the Age of Man. While Ether is not very high quality, it still provides more mana than modern mages are capable of generating from their body alone. In the Age of Gods, the ambient mana was called True Ether and far more dense than Ether. A modern mage traveling to the Age of Gods would not be able to survive True Ether without a special Mystic Code that allows them to adapt to it.
  • Beast of the Apocalypse: There exists a collection of them dubbed the Seven Evils of Humanity. Each one loves humanity but represents some manner of a sin committed by mankind that is grave enough to warrant the appearance of them. Their goal is to end the world however possible, and are among the most dangerous beings in the entire setting.
  • Being Evil Sucks: True villains in this setting are marked by massive antisocial egotism that nets them frequent, short-term bouts of visceral satisfaction, but unless they change their ways, they're often doomed to lonely, desperate existences and deaths.
  • Being Good Sucks: Being a genuine benevolent hero requires a character to gibe up many of their personal desires apart from the ones that have them serve the common good. This can even come at the cost of the happiness of their loved ones, and the people they protect can very well turn on them in a moment of weakness.
  • Beyond the Impossible: In-Universe, this is what the Five Magics are. The comparison made that shows how it differs from Magecraft is that while Magecraft can let a Magus produce fire with Mana, anyone can produce fire by doing something as simple as lighting a matchstick, hence it is something that is still "possible". The Magics, on the other hand, are capable of doing "impossible" things that cannot be reproduced, no matter how much time or resources one puts into it, for example; The ressurection of the dead, time travel and traversing the dimensional border. The Five Magics are as follows:
    • The First Magic: The Materialization Of Nothingness. While its exact nature has yet to be revealed, the fact that the First Magician was born "On the night before B.C became A.D" seems to imply it is the ability to perform miracles. It is also closely related to Witches, most particularly the Yumina name, as well as the creation of the Fifth Imaginary Element, Ether, that allowed the continuation of Magecraft into the Common Era and contributed to the founding of the Mage's Association.
    • The Second Magic: The Operation of Parallel Worlds, also known as Kaleidoscope. Basically, the ability to access and freely travel between Alternate Timelines and dimensions. The Second Magician is Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, the resident Cool Old Guy vampire mage who had already mastered Kaleidoscope by the third century AD, as he used it to defeat Crimson Moon Brunestud in 300 AD, and is still alive to this day.
    • The Third Magic: Materialization of The Soul, also known as Heaven's Feel, The Cup of Heaven, or the Holy Grail. Its function is to make Your Heart's Desire into reality and skipping all the steps that desire would otherwise require... if you have enough mana for it. It was realized by a Magician sometime before 1AD, after which they disappeared (though are thought to still be alive), and their disciples would go on to create the Einzbern homunculi in hopes that these would one day succeed in recreating it, which they succeeded in almost 1800 years later with the advent of Servant summoning to supply the necessary mana.
    • The Fourth Magic: Completely unknown, but it is known to exist with certainty by the other Magicians, even though the Fourth Magician's identity alludes them.
    • The Fifth Magic: Magic Blue. Its exact nature and full scope is unknown, but it utilizes Time Travel and makes the laws of conservation of mass "shoulder the debts of a past without future". Its user is Aoko Aozaki, whose grandfather somehow found the path to the Fifth Magic, but left it open to Aoko through their family's Magic Crest.
  • Born in the Wrong Century: The entire magical society is this, as they insist on researching the past in attempts to recreate its miracles, while the rest of the world moves forward with science and technology ever progressing.
  • Character Overlap: Because of the shared universe, several characters frequently show up in other works than the one they debuted in.
    • Touko Aozaki is a major character in The Garden of Sinners and Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, shows up in the second volume of Lord El-Melloi II Case Files, and make several minor cameos in Fate works. She's investigating SE.RA.PH in EXTRA, mentioned to be hired by Kayneth after being crippled by Kiritsugu's Origin Bullet in Zero, one of her puppets is acquired in the Heaven's Feel route of stay night, and Miyamoto Musashi mentions having met her in Grand Order.
    • Aoko Aozaki headlines Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, appears as a minor character with huge impact in Tsukihime, and is also trapped in SE.RA.PH in Fate/Extra.
    • Caubac Alcatraz is merely mentioned in passing in Tsukihime as he's trapped in his own labyrinth but is later revealed to be using the magical cellphone Zelretch gave him as seen in Carnival Phantasm and Mahou Tsukai no Hako to communicate with the outside world. He also converses with Zelretch in Fate/strange fake.
    • Lord El-Melloi II/Waver Velvet due to his Breakout Character status of Fate/Zero is seen in Fate/Apocrypha as part of the group trying to manage the Great Holy Grail War, in Fate/strange fake in relation to his student Flatt Escardos, in Fate/Grand Order as a Pseudo-Servant, in Fate/Labyrinth to rescue Norma, and of course as the protagonist of his own novel series.
  • The Church: The Holy Church exists as an organization that also deals with the supernatural despite condemning magic as heretical (Supernatural Sacraments are still OK, though, and the existence of the Burial Agency implies they're willing to go back on even that stipulation in a pinch). The Holy Church does not get along with the Mage's Association and has warred with them in the past by burning down their centers of learning. They also make it a business to hunt down Dead Apostles by fielding Executors who specially trained to fight both mages and vampires alike with Supernatural Martial Arts and holy weaponry, making them deadly foes.
  • Civilization Destroyer: This is the alien Velber's purpose, to harvest all civilizations and data it comes across, and why it sent Sefar to kill all the gods and destroy the civilizations they established.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Belief and worship are what gives magic and gods their power in the setting - the more people who believe in a subject, the more powerful it becomes. For example, Servants summoned in their home country where they are celebrated as folk heroes will receive a substantial power boost. Understanding is the antithesis of belief; the more people who understand how a magic system works, the less power it holds. This is why magic is declining as time moves forward, as mankind keeps discovering and deciphering natural laws of the world.
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: This applies to magic and Magecraft. All Magecraft draws power from Mystery to fuel it, so the more people use it, the weaker the rituals get. This is one reason why mages jealously guard their research from all outsiders, so they can preserve the strength of their secrets. This weakness can be offset if more users believe in it though, as the Holy Church is not shy about spreading their teachings.
  • The Constant: The series actually justifies this with the Quantum Time-Lock system put in place by The World. As a limited amount of "water" exists to sustain so many worlds without the universe effectively overloading on the sheer weight of possibilities, Quantum Time-Locks happen every once a hundred years or so to ensure that Constants exist present in all other timelines (e.g. Camelot falling). Any other timelines that have anything different happen are purged altogether in a process known as 'pruning'. However, while there exists several Quantum Time-Locks across human history, the median of which these timelines happen (termed as 'Proper Human History') can be extraordinarily variant to a variety of possibilities; it's just that the Quantum Time-Locks are a means of ensuring the most prosperous timelines for humanity survive, and any that have grown past the point of being able to be changed are as a result pruned.
  • Cosmic Motifs: As per the company title, the moon permeates the setting through Crimson Moon as the progenitor of rampant vampirism and the Moon Cell as both the ultimate wish granter and savior of humanity. Its appearance only at night helps emphasize the hidden world under which most works operate.
  • Cryptic Background Reference: Each work is littered with references to mysterious happenings going on elsewhere or in the past, with the manuals usually just throwing more fuel onto that fire by referring to even more mysterious and vague elements of this universe.
  • Dark World: There exists another half of the planet itself called the "Reverse Side of the World". It is filled with divine spirits and creatures that left after the Age of Gods ended in order to maintain their existence. The unique nature of it means that mortals can not precieve it due to it being essentially a "layer" on top of the already existing one.
  • Divine Ranks: There are broad categories, albeit very flexible. At the very top are the Ultimate Ones, the embodiment of the celestial bodies themselves. Below them are the agents of the planet born from it, the True Ancestors. Further down are gods and Divine Spirits, with heads of pantheons called demiurges being much stronger than the average god.
  • Death of the Old Gods: This happened in the aftermath of Sefar's attack. With many gods dead and weakened, plus humanity losing faith in them, the gods, Magic, and Mystery began declining throughout the world. Eventually, the gods degraded into weaker, bodiless Divine Spirits. Despite their best attempts, humanity resisted their attempts to keep control and separated themselves to move forward. Eventually, the Age of Gods completely ended and all remaining Divine Spirits retreated to a higher plane where they can no longer directly influence humanity.
  • Enchanted Forest: It is heavily implied in a few works such as Tsukihime and certain events in Fate Grand Order that the world before Man came into power was this, complete with Giant trees so ridiculously large their roots are as big skyscrapers.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Mixed with His Name Really Is "Barkeep". The vessels that Servants are summoned into are literally named after their Class (Saber, Archer, etc.). This distinction is accurate since (most) Servants are not really the contracted Heroic Spirits, but rather copies generated by the Throne of Heroes. This also has the added advantage of hiding their True Name, and with it any strengths and weaknesses that they retain from their mythology, from those who would take advantage of it.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Your average mage is amoral and cares for nothing except for their own research (in theory). The lives of others is an acceptable sacrifice to them as long as it doesn't disturb the secrecy of Magecraft.
  • Excalibur: As expected, it's one of the most powerful swords in the entire franchise when fully unsealed, though it's still powerful enough to blow up an entire fortress in its current sealed state. The sword was actually forged long ago by the planet itself as a crystallization of mankind's wishes, and one of its ultimate defenses against extraterrestrial threats. It's only been used at full power once in the entire series, in 12000 BC when an unnamed human wielded it to do what all the gods on Earth could not; defeat the alien invader Sefar.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: A multiverse of magic defined as reality-warping, vampiric monsters, eldritch abominations including personifications of planets, alien invaders, All Myths Are True, magical girls, and so on. Yeah.
  • Fish out of Temporal Water: Averted. Servants have information for the current era implanted in them at the time of summoning. Any culture shock or lack of tact for that time period is entirely their own fault.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: The Nasuverse uses the Gaia hypothesis, a theory that planet Earth itself is a giant single living entity. The Nasuverse also expands this to the other planets in the Solar System as well as the Moon (all known as Type-[name], Ultimate Ones, and Aristoteles, with their own personal names; Earth is known as Type-Earth and Gaia, for example) and humanity itself (or, by its other name, Alaya). Gaia loves humanity as its children but also hates their abuse of nature, leading to the creation of the True Ancestors by Type-Moon to "regulate" humans (the backstory to Tsukihime, and to a lesser extent, The Garden of Sinners) and an eventual apocalypse brought upon by the Ultimate Ones called by Gaia after getting scared of her children outliving her and living on her corpse (the story and setting of Angel Notes).
  • Generational Magic Decline: This has happened to humanity as a whole when it comes to magic, with modern Magi only a shadow of what they used to be in The Time of Myths, which explains part of why the Servant characters capable of using magic in the Fate series are so much stronger than the modern humans. The goal of Magi in general is to try and recapture the True Magic that their ancestors had a much easier time accessing. The individual games also have specific examples of this:
    • The Matou/Makiri family from Fate/stay night was once one of the preeminent families in the Mage's Association and one of the three families who started the Holy Grail War, but ever since leaving their homeland of Russia and settling in Fuyuki they've been growing gradually weaker until their latest heir, Shinji, has no magic circuits at all. No one's entirely sure why this has happened but the Matous claim it has something to do with Fuyuki's energy being incompatible with theirs. There's a vague implication it might be related to family patriarch Zouken and his methods of staying alive.
    • The Nanaya family in Tsukihime used inbreeding to try and prevent this due to their power as an "anything killer" and served the Demon Hunting Organization for generations until they were slaughtered prior to the start of the story.
    • The Asakami Clan of the Demon Hunters Organization was a clan of powerful telekinetics, but had been undergoing this as a result of too much interbreeding, with the main house eventually dying out and only minor branches remaining. Fujino Asagami was the strongest member in generations but had her powers sealed as a child, only to have them come roaring back at an inopportune time.
    • The Aozaki clan was undergoing this prior to the birth of Touko, who was born with an astounding number of magic circuits considering her parents had none. Later on her sister Aoko proved to be a prodigy capable of using the True Magic even though her number of circuits was average at best. When Aoko was chosen to be the family head over her sister the fallout was enormous.
    • The Escardos Clan, one of the oldest magus lineages, had been on the decline for a few centuries, desperately trying to improve their dwindling magic circuits. The current heir, Flat, was an anomaly, being born with incredible potential and magic circuits. Though as he grew up, it became clear that he was a Cloudcuckoolander lacking the proper attitude to become a successful mage, to the point where his parents disowned him.
  • Genius Loci: Every celestial body is alive and possesses its own will, which is embodied as its Ultimate One. Earth's will is called Gaia, and it plays an important part of the setting because humans destroy the planet as they continue to develop. While Gaia has its agents to protect itself and attack humans, it does not have an Ultimate One, while the collective will of humanity called Alaya fights back against the planet's attempts to extinguish them. The balance of power between the two forms the Counter Force, which is dedicated to keeping the status quo and everyone alive but not necessarily happy.
  • God Is Good: There's an entity that greatly resembles the Judea-Christian interpretation of God which is powerful and largely benevolent, but those that attempt to fully comprehend or devote themselves to its eldritch grandeur tend to become a little mad.
  • God Needs Prayer Badly: Divine Spirits are dependent on the faith of their followers to power them.
  • Good is Not Nice: Just because a character is of the "Good" alignment, that doesn't guarantee they're friendly paragons of virtue. They are invariably determined and moral (though their codes of ethics may differ), typically acting in the interest of what they perceive to be the greater good. However, they can act rather extreme in their pursuits, resulting in massive collateral damage or tragic personal cost. Gilgamesh justified wanting to wipe away the modern world as he found the humanity of the era to be overpopulated, wasteful, and wretched. The dragon slayer Siegfried focused a majority of his time and energy helping as many people as he could rather than actively seek any happiness for himself, leading him to be exploited by a treacherous friend and to alienate his wife Kriemhild (indirectly resulting in her infamous Roaring Rampage of Revenge in the Nibelungenlied).
  • Götterdämmerung:
    • This is the key reason for why the Age of Gods ended. In 12,000 BC, gods existed as physical beings ruling over mankind, establishing many civilizations. Then the alien Velber approached Earth, and deployed the White Titan Sefar to slaughter the gods. Many pantheons were wiped out and civilization scattered as Sefar rampaged across earth. Eventually, Sefar was defeated not by a god, but by a human. The many deaths and the weakening of humanity's faith in the gods began the decline of the Age of Gods and Magic in general.
    • The actual Ragnarök was established to take place in 1000 BC, ending with Surtr burning away the local Texture of the Age of Gods in Scandinavia.
  • H-Game: It's easy to forget with the massive popularity explosion that their respective series have had, but the original Tsukihime and Fate/stay night VNs were Eroges. While Type-Moon has long since rebranded from this, Sex Magic remains canonical in the Nasuverse whether it's done for Fanservice or not, and the sanitized original stories and their myriad spin-offs don't shy away from this fact. Buyer beware!
  • I Know Your True Name: Heroic Spirits are a slave to their legend. To know the legend of a Heroic Spirit is to know their strengths and weaknesses; replicating what aided them in myth will empower them, and replicating what ended their myth will slay them. This is why most Servants who aren't looking for a challenge or are blatantly obvious go to great pains to hide their true identity.
  • Immortality: No one is quite immortal, despite many mages seeking it. The highest level of immortality is not quite that so much as it is lacking mortality. Thankfully the only ones possessing this trait are both incredibly powerful and incredibly rare, such as the primordial goddess Tiamat who loses this under certain circumstances, or the Ultimate Ones. Even then, it's still possible to destroy these immortal creatures either with an immense amount of brute force and energy (good luck with that though), or by shooting them with the Black Barrel which imposes mortality.
  • Kudzu Plot: Generally speaking, the works, by themselves, aren't that difficult to follow, considering how self-contained they are. However, the Nasuverse makes all of these stories interconnected through its strict rules of magic and death, reccurring characters and concepts, and even Call Backs to other works within the setting can make someone who has no exposure to the 'Verse an absolute nightmare, especially considering which work to read first.
  • Layered World: The planet itself is nothing but a blank rock, and what we see is Gaia turning it into something more. In general, the World currently consists of several layers that are called Textures with humanity and its scientific laws as the sheet on top. All of these are pinned together by pillars like Artoria's holy lance, Rhongonmyniad.
    • There exists the Reverse Side of The World, a realm that exists above and below the physical world and the home of Phantasmal Beasts after the decline of Age of Gods. It is devoid of humans although one can reach it after death with very small odds. It is also where the realm of Avalon is located. Several lines indicate there are other layers of existence beneath even the Reverse Side.
    • Reality Marbles work on the conceit of temporarily being able to project one's mental landscape on top of the normal layer of reality.
  • Ley Line: Ley lines are places in the world where mana converges in great amounts. This makes them a great spot for magical rituals such as holding a Holy Grail War or summoning a Servant.
  • Living Forever Is Awesome:
  • Loophole Abuse: The laws of magic in the Nasuverse are strict and as uniform across the series as humanly possible, but if one of those laws has irked a magus, chances are they will find a way around it to varying degrees of success. High-ranking mages thrive on this trope.
  • Macguffin: The Holy Grail tends to be the most prominent one in Fate timelines, especially in a Holy Grail War. While it is not the same Grail Christ drank from, it is still a magical item possessing an immense amount of magical energy one can use to accomplish an impossible task like granting a wish.
  • Mage Killer: The Black Barrel, one of the seven Superweapons of the Atlas Institute is the ultimate example of this, as a Conceptual Weapon that represents finite lifespan and mortality. The more magic energy the target possesses, the more damage the gun will do against it as well as the shorter the lifespan it imposes on the target. This means it will kill even gods and Ultimate Ones with just one bullet from the gun. However, there's two catches. One: the bullets need to be composed of either True Ether which is incredibly dense mana, or something infused with lots of mana. And two: the anti-magic property extends to the gun itself, so only a Muggle can use the gun safely. This becomes a real problem in Angel Notes when the gun is finally excavated for use, since there's literally only one regular human left while everyone else has been modified to run on the ambient mana in the atmosphere.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: One of the cornerstones of why these works are so beloved. Nasu, and his trusted circle of writers, take great pains to make sure that the supernatural elements are consistent between works at least 99% of the time. This means that, if you're paying attention, it's often a bit possible to guess what might happen next, simply because that's the logical way for things to progress given previous experience from other works. New concepts are introduced from time to time, but it's all still consistent with what appeared previously and it can lead to some amazing reveals that make a ton of sense in hindsight.
  • Magical Eye: They're called Mystic Eyes, and there are many kinds of eyes that do one specific thing each. For example, Medusa has the Mystic Eyes of Petrification, giving her the famous ability to turn anything she looks at into stone.
    • The most vaunted set of them all are the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception. They are so rare that they are regarded as myth by even the True Ancestors, and a reason why Tsukihime and The Garden of Sinners are different timelines as there can't be two users in the same world. The eyes see the death of all things and visualizes them as lines and points on the target. If someone possesses immortality on a higher level than the eyes, then the user won't see the lines and points until they strengthen it. It's pure Power at a Price though, as the human brain which processes this information isn't equipped to perceive such concepts. Shiki Tohno's brain is slowly breaking under the pressure of his eyes, and one day he will die when they become too strong for him to handle. Shiki Ryougi doesn't have to deal with this problem since she was born with them and connected directly to the Root which does the work for her, so she's a much higher level user as a result.
  • Magically-Binding Contract: Command Seals. When a Master summons a Servant, they receive three Command Seals from the Holy Grail to be emblazoned onto their body (usually on the back of the right hand, but not always). A seal can be used to cast magecraft, empower their Servant, issue them an Irrevocable Order, or all of the above, and as long as they have at least one the Servant must carry out their will (unless they have a skill like Independent Action, in which case the Master must consume a seal to order them). The only way a Command Seal can be negated is if the Master either rescinds it or is killed. Seals can be replenished from the adjudicator presiding over the current Holy Grail War, stolen from another Master, or simply given by another Master (who can also transfer the contract this way) — but should a Master run out of seals, their Servant can do whatever they want after fulfilling the last one, which doesn't change much if they like their Master... and usually means a swift reprisal if they don't.
  • The Magic Goes Away: A major point across all works as it is explicitly stated that the Age of Gods has ended to make way for the Age of Man as humanity and science expands across the globe with science slowly removing magic implicitly associated in concepts like the human body as medical science has definitively proven that there is nothing inherently magical about the body, resulting in much frustration for magi as they have to result to increasingly scarcer resources to accomplish their goal of reaching the Root and fervently hiding their methods to ensure that it doesn't lose whatever mystery it holds.
    • There are actually technically three Ages of Gods, all of which eventually declined and contributed to humanity's rising power; the first ended in 12000 BC when an alien entity known as Sefar landed upon the planet and proceeded to curb stomp the gods which began their overall fading into irrelevance, the second ended in 2600 BC when Gilgamesh rebelled against the Mesopotamian pantheon to free humanity from their control, banishing them to a more passive existence along with King Solomon's death accelerating the decline of Mystery, and an unknown event in 700 BC ending the gods for good. However the Age of Man really starts with 0 CE as that marks when humanity asserted dominion over Earth, and Mystery and magic are replaced with science and technology.
    • It literally all goes away in the Fate/Extra sub-series as a ritual in the 1970s causes all mana in the world to disappear.
      • At the same time though, Mysteries that gets propagated such as the teachings of the Church will lose its power but also become more stable and anchored to the world. The strength of these mysteries can be greatly influenced by the Faith and collective unconscious of the people.
  • Magic Must Defeat Magic: Beings of Mystery — immortals, Servants, or otherwise magical in nature — that somehow end up in the modern day can only be harmed by (or something empowered by) things similarly magical and/or mysterious. Modern weapons like guns, explosives, or even recently-made swords will either end up inflicting Scratch Damage, be easily dodged, or even simply bounce off, as there is no "Mystery" in how they function. This is a prime point of frustration for any Muggles that get caught up in a supernatural incident; a modern human could be the most skilled fighter in the world, and they'd do jack squat to a magical being without having access to magic themselves.
  • Magic Versus Science: The primary reason for The Magic Goes Away stated above: as science elucidates more and more of the natural world and its laws, the less power magic actually has, the implication being that as humanity puts less and less stock into the supernatural, the less it can be used to influence the world. Supplemental materials reveal that when the Age of Gods completely ended, the laws of the world literally changed from one based on magic and Mystery to physics-based.
  • Masquerade Paradox: Supernatural beings have a number of reasons to maintain secrecy. The biggest is that The Magic Goes Away, so they've reached an era where Muggles Do It Better. Individual systems of Magecraft also have limited amounts of power to draw from, meaning that the more followers a system has, the less powerful each user's magic becomes — this is why mages not only keep their magic secret, but centuries-old mage families keep a Single Line of Descent. The undead, meanwhile are keeping a Masquerade not from humans, but from other supernatural forces, like the Church Militant mages dedicated to killing them.
  • The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: There exist many characters in the Nasuverse whose true age doesn't match their physical one, whether they've undergone a Fountain of Youth, Rapid Aging, or are simply The Ageless, and many of them will be beset by instincts and behaviors typical of that age. A rule of thumb is if the character in question wasn't originally Wise Beyond Their Years or a Manchild at their current physical age, they will not be now, whether they like it or not.
  • The Multiverse:
    • Has actually been a feature of the setting almost from the start - the Second Magic is based around travel to, and manipulation of, parallel worlds - and was mentioned as early as background material for Tsukihime and was plot-relevant as early as the original Fate/stay night (wherein Rin, with Shirou's help, creates a replica of Zeltrech's Second Magic-powered Gem Sword and uses it to match the power of her plugged-into-infinite-mana rampaging sister), but with Grand Order especially, it's become a somewhat important concept. The Throne of Heroes technically sits outside of the "time axis", so even though some of the Fate continuities are different, it's still possible for the GO protagonist to summon pretty much all previous Servants. Moreover, GO's singularities are basically pocket timelines themselves, that if unrepaired could do serious damage to reality. Part of the thrust of the Shinjuku singularity is using the meta-physics of this in a creative application of villainy.
    • For the curious, the current multiversal breakdown is as follows:
      • First, it must be understood that Fate worlds (the Fate series) and Tsukihime worlds (Tsukihime and its expansions) are diametrically opposed to each other in a sense, mostly because the mechanics that make the summoning of Heroic Spirits, which affirm human history and humanity, possible, can't exist in worlds where Dead Apostles, the antithesis and killers of humanity, proliferate. Another difference is that the organization dubbed the Twenty-Seven Dead Apostle Ancestors by the Holy Church doesn't exist in Fate worlds; some individual members like Primate Murder, Zeltrech, and ORT might still exist (and be weaker in Primate Murder's case), but others can be long dead like Roa and Gransurg Blackmore. However, there are worlds that "aren't really either" type of world that do have elements of both for currently unknown reasons.note 
      • Mahou Tsukai no Yoru and Tsukihime exist in the same parallel world, although in some ways this is rather academic, because outside of Aoko showing up in Tsukihime's prologue, the casts of both stories don't interact and the plots aren't linked. However there is the contradiction of Alice Kuonji's mansion which resides on the exact same plot of land as the Tohno mansion. Clock Tower 2015 is connected to both and establishes the divergence of Lev Flauros committing suicide instead of going to work with Chaldea as depicted in Grand Order.
      • The Garden of Sinners was the first proper alternate continuity work, because it was written before Nasu and Takeuchi considered that Type-Moon could be a going concern, and thus wasn't constructed to necessarily fit easily into the primary Nasuverse. It actually wouldn't have that much trouble doing so, in retrospect, and, indeed, KnK and Tsukihime were originally considered both to be happening in a single world. Afterward, due to slight differences in the ages of certain people and differences in the makeup of certain families, they could be thought of as subtly parallel worlds so it officially is treated as an AU, but lately the novels of Lord El-Melloi II confirms Kara no Kyoukai is part of Fate worlds.
      • Fate/stay night (along with hollow ataraxia) and Fate/Zero are thought to be in continuity with each other, but, as implied in the preface of the first volume of Zero and confirmed in the magazine Type-Moon Ace Vol. 10, they are slightly parallel worlds, where something like the events of Zero happened in stay night, but perhaps not precisely as described (though the broad details match up easily enough). It is worth noting that this continuity can branch a little bit, depending on player choices in F/SN; the animated adaptations of F/SN showcase each of the major routes, and the Zero animated adaptation is much more obviously in direct continuity with the Unlimited Blade Works and Heaven's Feel adaptations (all being from the same studio).
      • Fate/Grand Order is an interesting example in that, while it was conceived as another minor spinoff continuity (the spinoff point being who won the Fuyuki Grail War of 2004 and some of the details about how and why it was fought), the fact that it's the most successful thing Type-Moon's ever made by literally multiple orders of magnitude means that it has taken an extremely prominent place in the wider zeitgeist and public eye, and can in many ways be considered the "main" continuity at this point. Elements from many of the other continuities are being integrated into it for greater exposure.
      • Fate/EXTRA and its sequels are another continuity, taking place within the datascape of the Moon Cell (a supercomputer of mysterious origin on the moon) in the year 2030. Something's happened in this continuity to drain the world of all its prana, leaving magi only able to work their arts in datascapes like the Moon Cell.
      • Fate/Apocrypha is a branch off of stay night, diverging during the Third Grail War in the 1930s. Instead of the Grail War as recorded, the Greater Grail is instead taken from Fuyuki, and instead of Avenger Angra Mainyu, the Extra-type Servant the Einzberns summoned to try and cheat the system was Ruler Shirou Tokisada Amakusa.
      • Fate/Prototype is a separate continuity from all of the above, having been originally conceived before even The Garden of Sinners; its Grail War works significantly differently from the one in stay night. Various elements of it, however, have slowly been introduced into the main continuities.
      • Prisma Illya is another branch off of Fate, specifically diverging before and during the Fourth Grail War - Illya was born later, and both Kerry and Iri discover earlier what's going on with the Fuyuki Grail, and work together to destroy it, freeing Illya from her destiny as a Grail vessel. Or so they hope.
      • Fate/strange fake is another branch off of stay night, but a weird example in that not only is it a future possibility occurring shortly after the Fifth Holy Grail War, it also inexplicably has the characteristics of both Fate Worlds and Tsukihime Worlds at the same time. It's also a bit notable on a meta level for having begun life as an April Fool's gag before Nasu decided to greenlight it into being a real thing.
      • The El-Melloi II Case Files are interesting in that they seem designed to be able to slot into several of the above continuities without too much trouble, though are most obviously angled toward the original Fate continuity with the slow buildup to 2004 and the events of F/SN taking place.
      • Notes and Tsuki no Sango are possible Bad Futures to all of the above, with the only certainty about them being that Tsuki no Sango cannot be the future of either Tsukihime (the events of which have never taken place) or EXTRA (magecraft still "lingers").
      • As noted above, DDD and Fire Girl could possibly be within the "main" Tsukihime or Fate continuities, but it isn't too clear and it's generally irrelevant for their purposes and narratives anyway.

    N - Z 
  • Nature Spirit: There are many creatures and beings which exist as extensions of Gaia itself, including the True Ancestors at the highest ranking and then gods plus Divine Spirits below them. Since they are part of the planet, they can exist freely without being crushed by the World.
  • Nested Ownership: Double Subverted. Spirits cannot link spirits to the world, and thus Servants cannot summon Servants of their own... under normal circumstances at least. They each have their own niggles, but exceptions do exist:
    • The Servant has summoning as a natural skill. Though this limits their options to beings tied to their legend.
    • The Servant somehow makes their own Command Seals. This results in the newly-summoned Servant being very weak, however.
    • The Servant has somehow "incarnated" into a real body. The now flesh-and-blood Servant can acquire real Command Seals, but this kind of resurrection is incredibly difficult and the non-Servant body is weaker. There are exceptions though, Servants that lived during the Age of Gods or descended from the Gods are stronger while they are alive.
  • Nice Day, Deadly Night: A recurring theme as in general, most of the action happens at night, for different reasons: in The Garden of Sinners and Witch on the Holy Night because the antagonists are dangerous spirits or magicians seeking to uphold the Masquerade, in Tsukihime because it's vampires, and in Fate/stay night along with its adaptations because of the nature of the Holy Grail War as waged in secret from the public.
  • No Ontological Inertia: In general, if a magic object does not exist physically and wasn't summoned by the Counter Force, the World will do its best to crush its existence and restore the natural order.
    • Reality Marbles require an incredible willpower and amount of mana to maintain for anything more than a few minutes, if even that. Someone lucky enough to possess one needs to be careful not to plunge themselves into a Heroic RRoD.
    • Servants require not only a consistent source of mana to maintain their existence, but an "anchor" that gives them a reason to exist in the current time period (usually their Master's contract, occasionally a Soul Jar). "Stray Servants" that somehow persist while invalidating their anchor will still vanish without mana, and those that happen upon a generous source of mana will still vanish without an anchor. This system is actually very good at kicking Stray Servants out of an era where they don't belong; even among the kudzu-weave of timelines that the Nasuverse is, true autonomy as a Servant is unfathomably rare and usually accidental.
  • Not of This Earth: Aliens do exist in this setting, and are usually powerful beyond compare because of the immense amount of energy required to traverse between stars. Most notable among them are the Ultimate Ones, Velber and Sefar, and the Foreign God.
  • One World Order: Humanity was united for the first and last time in Mesopotamia under the rule of Gilgamesh in 2600 BC. All of the world's treasures belonged to him, and were spread after his death.
  • Our Gods Are Different: Gods are an extremely broad category, not to be confused with Divine Spirits. All that's needed to become a god is to be worshipped as one, regardless of their existence beforehand. For example, the Twelve Olympians were mere machines before humanity's worship changed them into gods, giving them their own sense of selves. The only common factor between gods is they are absolutely massive.
  • Perpetual-Motion Monster: The body of a Servant might look human, but it's composed of ether. This means they can perform feats impossible for a normal human, cannot become exhausted, and can operate in spite of grievous injury. Barring an abnormal body or a magic-deficient Master, all a Servant needs is a contract and a source of mana, and they will toil and fight through anything that isn't explicitly fatal.
  • Physical God: There once was a time when gods existed as physical beings walking the Earth. It's possible for a god to die and still exist as a Divine Spirit, or basically a super-powerful ghost but still weaker than the real deal. Following the end of the Age of Gods, all remaining gods were forcibly reduced to Divine Spirits, which caused them to retreat from the surface world and end what little influence they had left on mankind.
  • Powers That Be: They exist as the Counter Force that protects the world from threats. They take the form of Gaia, the will of the planet that ensures its survival by way of natural disasters, and Alaya, the will of humanity that ensures their survival by way of Counter Guardians. They're both quite good at their job, but far from perfect (otherwise many plots in the franchise wouldn't happen); humanity and their planet don't always get along, and a magus of sufficient skill and madness can subvert their power for their own ends.
  • Primordial Tongue: The appropriately named Unified Language was used at the dawn of modern civilization in Mesopotamia when all of humanity was united under the rule of Gilgamesh. By the modern day, only Satsuki Kurogiri is capable of speaking it.
  • Puny Earthlings: An ironclad rule across all Nasuverse works is that regular humans cannot put up a straight fight against the supernatural. They are simply too weak to handle beings that are Immune to Bullets and in some cases don't ascribe to the same laws of existence that they do. If a Muggle gets into a supernatural situation and survives, it's either because they have the favor of a supernatural being or they themselves are supernatural and don't know it. It takes a truly exceptional human to buck the rules, and these miracles run the risk of provoking the Powers That Be.
    • Heroic Spirits are the embodiment of this rule. A true Heroic Spirit is a Perpetual-Motion Monster made possible by one of the Powers That Be to handle threats to the world, and as such in a situation where they're involved, they are constructed precisely so that meddling/ignorant humans on the scene can't interfere with their work and will be swatted away like a flies for trying.
    • Servants, the lesser form of Heroic Spirits, are meant to be summoned and commanded by humans. Despite this they are still essentially living weapons that the human is controlling, and that control is limited. Extremely weak Servants can be beaten by a seasoned fighter, but Word of God has stated that Ciel fighting very defensively is as far as mortal humans can go towards any hope of winning against an average Servant; challenging anything beyond that as a regular human is futile.
    • One example of a human who went beyond human limits is Scáthach, a warrior woman so strong and skilled that she became known as a living legend. Despite the use of magical runes, Scáthach was 100% human and wished to remain so because No Challenge Equals No Satisfaction. But because she broke the limits meant for a human, the Counter Force decided that she could not and should not be human, and thus gave her immortality to divorce her from humanity. She isn't happy with her "reward".
  • Ret-Canon: The wish-granting Holy Grail of Fuyuki is a heavily-corrupted Artifact of Doom housing a Sealed Evil in a Can that grants wishes in the most destructive way possible in the original Fate/stay night. All Alternate Timeline Grails either derived from or involving the Fuyuki Holy Grail don't have this quirk so their plots can go in different directions.
  • Running Gag: Church Executors being addicted to spicy food. Ciel has a comedic obsession with curry of all kinds, Kirei Kotomine has a fondness for Sichuan mapo tofu which ties into his character's obsession with suffering, Hansa Cervantes likes hot peppers to the point of just eating them raw, and Sunao Sugata carries tabasco sauce with her everywhere to put on food.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: Heroic Spirits reside within the "Throne of Heroes", an aspect of the Counter Force, that serves as the "can" in question. The true nature of Servants is that they are (usually) not an actual Heroic Spirit, but rather a less powerful copy of a Heroic Spirit generated by the Throne and stuffed into a "container" known as a Class (Saber, Archer, etc.). True Heroic Spirits can't usually be called up unless there's a threat to humanity or the planet that warrants it.
  • Series Mascot: Saber is Type-Moon's most famous character and also stands as its most marketable. Shiki Ryougi, Arceuid Brunestud, and (to a much lesser extent) Aoko Aozaki serve as Type-Moon's other mascots, due to their status as the heroines of their own respective works. Rin Tohsaka from Fate/stay night has also enjoyed this status, especially after the success of the Unlimited Blade Works anime.
  • Sex Magic: Bodily fluids can be used as a medium for Mana transfer, with sex being the most efficient method. This is often, but not always, used as an excuse to add sex scenes. The all-ages editions of these media tend to downplay this for obvious reasons.
    • In Tsukihime, the twins Kohaku and Hisui are "Synchronizers" who carry large amounts of Mana that can be transferred to others, which has the side effect of suppressing the "inversion impulse" in those with demon ancestors. For most of the story they use this ability by allowing others to drink their blood, but if Shiki becomes close enough to one of the twins he can have sex with them for this purpose. In the Back Story, this transfer was carried out against their will.
    • In Fate/stay night, Shirou must have sex in order to transfer some of his Magic Circuits to Saber (in the Fate route) or to receive part of Rin's Magic Crest (in the Unlimited Blade Works route). Most other Masters don't need to do the sex, Shirou's just not so adept at giving energy. Tamer and Chaster adaptations replaced these with the infamously bizarre "mana dragon" and "mana dolphin" scenes respectively. In the True End of Heaven's Feel Shirou's mind is placed in an artificial body which requires regular mana infusions from Sakura to sustain itself — though, Rin's comments aside, in this case they don't really find it that much of a burden.
    • Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA☆ILLYA uses a Bowdlerised version of this Played for Laughs, with Kuro draining Mana from others through French kisses. When Illya asks if Kuro has any other means of transferring mana, we don't hear Kuro's response, but Illya's extreme reaction leaves little doubt that the "proper" method still exists.
  • Social Darwinist: As Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star established, the universe runs on this principle by using the Quantum Time Lock system. Only the worlds with the most potential for advancement are allowed, called Proper Human History. The losers where timelines diverged too much and reached their conclusion are pruned from existence. It doesn't matter if the timeline results in a Crapsack World or a Utopia, what's important is humanity can no longer improve and therefore culled.
  • The Stations of the Canon: Yes, they exist In-Universe as the Quantum Time Lock System which keeps the tree of timelines from branching out too much and sucking out enough energy to the point they all collapse from "malnutrition." To keep human history from diverging into all sorts of What Ifs, the World declares certain events to be "canon" of sorts and immutable when it comes to the broad details. For example, the fall of Camelot is recorded as a Time Lock. Should one somehow prevent Mordred from rebelling to ensure the kingdom survives past what happened in recorded history, the World will work to make sure it still falls by another method, such as a rampant plague. The smaller details don't matter, what is truly important is that history follows the preferred path to ensure humanity has as much room to progress as possible. The branch timelines that don't follow this path get pruned out of existence, along with branches that are too similar and therefore redundant. The amount of energy to invalidate one Time Lock is immense, roughly on par with that of a Holy Grail, and to completely rewrite history would require so much energy that nothing on Earth exists that could provide it. A huge part of the point of Grand Order is the emergence of several entities with the power to actually accomplish this, several of them being able to do so thanks to being wholly alien to the World, and is the story of the absolute mayhem that then results from their efforts and history suddenly getting "squishy".
  • Status Quo Is God: In-Universe. In Fate, whenever a magical being or occurrence is summoned to the modern day, circumstances conspire to remove it. In some cases it may even be Invoked by the Powers That Be, as the world's natural order is not meant to include magic. It doesn't matter where it falls in the spectrum of good or evil, or how deserved, tragic or pointless it's removal is: if it's magical and has no apparent tether to the world, it goes away by story's end or is otherwise doomed in the afterstory, no exceptions. It's telling that across all the canon Fate stories and the thousands of Servants that have existed, only two have ever defied thisnote  due to not ascribing to the world's laws.
  • Stronger with Age:
    • In contrast to Generational Magic Decline, the children of an older magus family will generally be better than someone from a newer family. This is present in the knowledge they receive from what their forebears uncovered and, more importantly, the family Magic Crest that they inherit. This is why Waver is looked down upon by others (his family is only a couple generations old) and why Rin calls Shirou's father a failure as a magus for not passing on his crest or teaching Shirou.
    • Heroic spirits from older time periods and older legends are always stronger than newer ones. This is why Gilgamesh is so overwhelming; being the oldest hero, both his power and abilities are above those that come after him. Frankenstein, by contrast, is newer and thus weaker. However, its important to note that sometimes this is not always the case; if a Heroic Spirit did something so incredibly important that it played a role in altering something about the world, they often times are boosted in power. For example, Nikola Tesla, despite being one of the most recent Heroic Spirits timeline wise, is fairly strong because his accomplishment of turning electricity from something divine to a power source was so massive that it played a role in developing mankind.
    • The older an individual or a species as a whole gets the stronger they become. This is especially true for demonic beasts who can become as strong as the gods themselves and even gain immunity to all human influence.
  • Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Magecraft looks like magic from an ordinary perspective, but make no mistake it's a science at heart with the Clock Tower holding classes about teaching and analyzing it. So long as you have Magic Circuits, anyone can learn any field of Magecraft provided they have have the education for it like following a cookbook. True Magic cannot be taught and while you can describe its effects, it's impossible to understand how it actually works.
  • The Time of Myths: The Age of Gods is this, a time when gods walked the Earth and magic was omnipresent. Going further back is the Age of Genesis, when primordial deities such as Tiamat were born. Reality during the Age of Genesis is so unstable that humanity cannot observe this time period, and memories of it were genetically encoded in every living being and drawn upon to create the concept of hell.
  • Ultimate Life Form: The Aristoteles, also called the Types or the Ultimate Ones. They are the most powerful beings from each celestial body, and the embodiment of that body's will. They are among the most powerful beings in the franchise setting, and are so alien that many concepts of reality simply don't apply to them, including death. Earth is notable for not having its own Ultimate One; the closest it has is Archetype: Earth, or Arcueid at her strongest. The only reason the Types do not factor into much of the wider series is due to being asleep, or not being called yet to take action, and only do so very late into the history of events. The one time an Ultimate One does wake up early, it was in a pruned timeline of Proper Human History where it woke up early due to outside intervention, and even in a weakened state it quickly showed why they are worthy of the title of Ultimate Life Form.
  • Uniqueness Decay: It's an actual In-Universe mechanic. The strength of magic in the Nasuverse is determined by its "Mystery", the measure of how common it is in the world. Well-known magecraft is weak and menial, whereas lesser-known magecraft is powerful. Magus families are typically built on having a personal magecraft with a lot of Mystery, and enforcing its secrecy keeps that magecraft (and thus their family) strong; the primary reason the world of magic is so volatile is because rival families fight tooth and nail to claim or preserve their secrets.
  • Our Vampires Are Different:
    • Vampires were created by Gaia in 2000 BC when Crimson Moon Brunestud arrived on Earth. Strictly speaking there are two kinds of vampires. The first kind are the True Ancestors, or high-tier spirits of nature employed by Gaia to protect it from humans. They are clones of Crimson Moon Brunestud in a body that is allowed by the planet, and serve as potential backup bodies for it in case of physical death. Then there are the Dead Apostles, or humans who have been turned either by a True Ancestor sucking their blood or some kind of magical research. As blood-sucking creatures who feed on their former species, Dead Apostles are natural enemies of humans and deny the Human Order. In Fate timelines where the Human Order is strong, Dead Apostles are fewer in number and the strongest of their kind never band together as an organization. In Tsukihime timelines where the Human Order is weak, Dead Apostles are greater in number and the strongest loosely band together as the Dead Apostle Ancestors.
    • Though there are other creatures that exhibit vampiric traits or examples of vampires from different cultures mentioned in material books like Chinese vampiric flying heads, those are not considered "proper" vampires like the True Ancestors or Dead Apostles and are not targeted by the Church.
  • Void Between the Worlds: The Imaginary Number Space, first mentioned in Fate/Extra CCC is a dimension that lies outside time and space. The Far Side of The Moon and the Grand Time Temple both lie here. The "between the worlds" part is emphasized in Fate/Grand Order as it is only the way to get in and out of Lostbelts which are otherwise not possible due to the impassable Cloud Wall. It's possible for mages to access this dimension freely provided they are born with the Elemental Affinity called Imaginary Numbers a.k.a. Hollow. However, this Affinity is extremely rare and only three mages bearing it (Sakura Matou, Lev Lainur Flauros, and Trisha Fellows) have appeared in the entire franchise to date.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: A recurring theme as Nasu really wants to hammer home the point that immortality isn't something to be taken for granted.
    • In Tsukihime, both Roa and Nrnvqsr have had their minds degraded over time because of the methods used to sustain their immortality.
    • In Fate/Extra Last Encore, there are only small remnants of humanity left as civilization reaches its impending end and several characters are shown to have resorted to horrific methods to cling on to life.
    • In Fate/stay Night, Archer is stuck in a miserable loop of being retrieved from the Throne of Heroes for both the fifth Holy Grail War and his Counter Guardian duties, wishing to end it all by killing his past self and creating a paradox to cancel out his existence. That said, it's not the immortality itself that he hates, but the fact that he spends it killing people instead of saving them like he originally wanted.
    • Zouken Matou from the same work has descended into villainy because of his futile attempts to hold onto life for the sake of an ideal he had already long forgotten by the time of Fate/Zero, now only caring about becoming immortal for the sake of it rather than merely a means to achieve that goal.
    • In Fate/Grand Order, Scathach is incredibly bored with existence because she can't find anything strong enough to fight her and wants to be able to feel the thrill of fighting something again without the guarantee of her immortality saving her from death, though whether she's weary of her long life itself is up for debate. In addition, the Big Bad's scheme of incinerating humanity to remold them into immortal beings is repudiated at several points by Mash because her fleeting life is what makes it worthwhile, simply living on forever wouldn't give her the satisfactory experiences she's had.
  • Wizards Live Longer: Mages tend to use unnatural means to extend their life if they have no heirs or interest in procuring one, but this usually runs into the issue of either the soul simply being unable to withstand that level of long life or turning into vampires along the way.
  • The World Is Always Doomed: One common thread among all Fate continuities is that it's not a question of if a simple contest to Make a Wish for Your Heart's Desire will spiral into a world-threatening event, but when. This has lead to something of a fandom in-joke that the Powers That Be are actually terrible at preventing disasters, but the Counter Force is actually quite good at its job even when infighting — we're just seeing the more interesting tales where it misses the mark.

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