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Kingdom Hearts / Tropes E to H

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    E 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The manga adaptation of the first game is notable for reading left-to-right like a Western book, despite being originally in Japanese. This is dropped for all the following manga, which read right-to-left like any other Japanese book.
    • It was said in Kingdom Hearts that only the Keyblade of Heart could unlock or remove a person's heart. This was retconned away in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: not only does Maleficent mind control Terra into removing Princess Aurora's heart using a standard keyblade, the climax of Terra's storyline involves Xehanort unlocking his own heart using his own keyblade just so that he could steal Terra's body. It has since been clarified that this is simply a Keyblade Master-level skill, which still doesn't really explain the situation in Kingdom Hearts I.
    • I and II are the only games in the series that literally ends at the "The End" screen. Later games let you save your game, and then return to the game, though chronologically, you have not progressed past the final door. With these two, you cannot do anything once you reach the "The End" screen, and have to restart your PS2. Subverted with Final Mix versions and the HD re-releases, since they do allow you to leave the screen without restarting your PS2.
    • Difficulty levels across the franchise were fairly inconsistent before being largely codified in II and its Final Mix re-release. Kingdom Hearts I's original Japanese release and the GBA version of Chain of Memories lacked any kind of difficulty setting. The international release of I allowed the player to pick between Normal and Expert, and its Final Mix version had the interestingly named Final Mix: Beginner*, Final Mix* and Final Mix: Proud*. II took these same levels but renamed them to simply Beginner, Standard and Proud, and every game since has followed suit. II Final Mix also added Critical*, whose presence and unlock criteria varies depending on title and version, but has never been retroactively added to any game prior to II.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes three full games for everyone to reunite and return to their home safely. And even then, Sora's job isn't done. After II, it takes a further five games of strife, sacrifice, and loss for a Bittersweet Ending at best. Notably, II is the only full instance of this in the entire series.
  • Effortless Achievement: The Kingdom Hearts HD I.5 ReMIX film version of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days has 6 trophies that are rewarded just from watching the movie and reading Roxas's Diary and the Secret Reports. The Kingdom Hearts HD II.5 ReMIX film version of Kingdom Hearts coded also has trophies simply by watching the cutscenes and reading the character entries. However, these only apply to the PlayStation 3 version; the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions don't have the trophies. The "A New Journey" achievement in III in particular takes the cake, as it's obtained just by letting the first cutscene play.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Although there are many weird creatures in the series, the Nobodies are the closest. Even by the cosmology of the series, it's stated that their existence simply doesn't make sense. It doesn't help that most of them look and move like animated clothing or that their movements look like a video playing in reverse.
  • Eldritch Location: The series is known to have its fair share of these, typically in the form of a final level:
    • The Realm of Darkness is its own twisted version of the realm of light. As the name suggests, it's pretty dark, much of it seemingly made up of gray rocks with cracks out of which ghostly blue light faintly shines. There is no sky, no horizon, just pure blackness. Seemingly no living things other than the Heartless (if they count as such). But the most disturbing thing about it is that time doesn't flow in the Realm of Darkness. Characters who are trapped there do not age and do not sleep, and have no way of marking the passage of time. Aqua is surprised to hear that she's been trapped in there for over ten years from the perspective of everyone else. And the worlds that fall to darkness? They get trapped in the Realm as well, transformed into twisted caricatures of themselves floating in a void that only barely obey the laws of physics.
    • Scala ad Caelum, the final world in Kingdom Hearts III at first looks beautiful beyond words: Consisting of endless mountain towns suspended over a serene ocean and illuminated by a permanently sunny sky. Even the towns themselves are a sight, consisting of white and gold gleaming buildings, multitudes of windmills, and gorgeous citadels at the peak of each town. Then you notice for a paradise, it's completely abandoned... Then you go underwater and quickly take note of the ruins of Daybreak Town suspended upside-down, beneath each town. The Darkness genuinely did not hold back when it destroyed the world during the Age of Fairy Tales.
    • Quadratum, the large city that looks exactly like Shibuya, Tokyo, seems like the most normal, realistic lifelike city in the series — except that it's weird to the point where its existence outright doesn't make sense. It is a world that exists on the opposite side of reality itself: Call it unreality, fiction, the afterlife or just plain nothing, it is the location equivalent of an imaginary number, or imaginary space. When neither Ansem the Wise or The Master of Masters himself can't even begin to try and comprehend a world that cannot be quantified or thought of as anything more than a notion, you shouldn't either.
  • Elemental Personalities: The earth-wielding Lexaeus is the strong, silent type, while the fire wielder Axel/Lea is impulsive. Donald Duck with his famous Hair-Trigger Temper has literal Firework magic. Ventus is innocent and lighthearted and has Wind and Light as his specialty.
  • Elemental Powers: Organization XIII. Most of them. Their individual powers are accurately "attributes", or themes to their abilities. This gets corrupted into "elements" by fans. Some of them aren't quite what they're made out to be anyway. For example: Xemnas has "Nothing" and Luxord has "Time", but they turn out to be more like "Yin-Yang Bomb" and "Timed Mission" in practice.
  • The Empath: Sora has the ability to connect with the hearts of others and can occasionally feel the same things and experience the experiences of other hearts. Dark Road reveals that this isn't a unique power, as both Xehanort and Baldr can do this as well, although in their case it falls into Blessed with Suck since it results in them being corrupted by the darkness in other hearts.
  • Empathic Weapon: Keyblades are only possible to wield by a chosen few, and can't be stolen, among other strange quirks. At one point in the first game, Sora and Riku actually have a battle of wills over who gets to keep the Keyblade, constantly trying to summon it away from the other.
  • Enemy Scan: The recurring Scan ability shows the HP of any targeted enemy.
  • Enemy Within:
    • Ansem, Seeker of Darkness for Riku. In the first game, Riku's Moment of Weakness made him lose control of the Keyblade, allowed Ansem to possess Riku. The after-effects of this possession are felt for a while after the first game's conclusion.
    • In Birth by Sleep: Master Xehanort for Terra. Xehanort takes control of Terra's body, which was his plan for a while. However, Terra's Lingering Will hates Xehanort with such passion that his armor attacks Terranort, thus derailing Xehanort's plans.
  • Enemy Without: Vanitas is Ven's darkness forcibly removed from his heart and given form.
  • Essence Drop: There are several types of spheres, depending on the game:
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Xehanort to Sora. Sora lets others share his body and heart to extend their lives. Xehanort steals the bodies and hearts of others to extend his life. Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep goes even farther, revealing that the original Xehanort was not only a Keyblade Wielder but also from Destiny Islands. This also makes him Riku's Evil Counterpart, as they share very similar backgrounds of being dissatisfied with life on their tiny world and wanting to see the outside, even if it means delving into darkness. Dark Road goes one step further and reveals that Xehanort has the same power as Sora (the ability to connect hearts) and was thought by the Player Character of χ to be The Chosen One written in the Book of Prophecies.
    • This goes even further with Riku. Both use darkness as their main weapon. They also both invaded Sora's subconscious during the events of Dream Drop Distance, but for differing reasons.
    • In the endgame of III, Xemnas, "Ansem", and Young Xehanort take up this trope in regards to Sora, Riku, and Mickey, as they have been the primary enforcers of the darkness and light on behalf of their true leaders, Master Xehanort and Yen Sid, respectively. The final fight before the final boss is Sora, Riku, and Mickey facing off with the three chief Xehanort incarnations.
  • Evil Is Hammy: On top of the Disney classic villains, the original villains also tend to wax poetic about the cosmology of the setting, chewing scenery the whole time.
    Ansem, Seeker of Darkness: Kingdom HEARTS!
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Anyone too cavalier about the power of darkness learns this the hard way; they tend to turn into Heartless or power-mad husks of their former selves.
  • Evil Makeover: Organization XIII. Its members are all humanoid Nobodies, and have slightly altered appearances compared to their past selves (for instance, Axel's eye makeup), all wear the same black coat, and have more angular and intimidating versions of the weapons they used as humans.
  • Evil Wears Black:
    • Xehanort and Organization XIII all wear black. In-universe, their coats help protect them from the darkness within the corridors between worlds they use for travel.
    • Even though some of the good guys can wear some amount of black, those aren't their defining colors, so they don't undo this trope here.
  • Experience Penalty:
    • The EXP Zero ability first introduced in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix prevents experience from being gained for as long as it's active.
    • Using the Warp spell causes enemies to disappear without leaving any experience.
  • Expressive Health Bar: Every character winces in their character portrait when they take damage. Along with that, when on low health, a siren blares and the character in the portrait looks exhausted.

    F 
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: An obvious result being a crossover of Disney and Square Enix properties. Even on the original non Disney worlds you'll find wizards, magical creatures, robots, spaceships, talking animals, etc.
  • Fighting from the Inside:
    • Riku in the first game when he's possessed by Xehanort's Heartless. At one point he leaves his body as a spirit to physically block Riku-Xehanort's way.
    • At the end of their respective storylines in Birth by Sleep, Terra possesses his own empty armor to stop Xehanort from absconding in Terra's now-possessed body, while Ven's mind stays in his body while Vanitas possesses him, resulting in a literal battle inside Ven's mindscape.
  • First Town:
    • In KH1, Traverse Town, a strange world that naturally cobbled itself together from the remains of other worlds and serves as a base for the various refugees of those worlds. As the home of Sora's Final Fantasy-based friends, it serves as the hub.
    • In KH2, the Final Fantasy characters' actual home of Hollow Bastion takes on the role.
    • The World That Never Was serves as this for Days, as it is the home base of Roxas and Organization XIII.
    • Land of Departure is a downplayed example for Birth by Sleep, as it is only briefly playable in the game's first act, and since the game is in general much more nomadic in nature than previous games, you don't really have a hub world.
    • Traverse Town returns in an expanded form in Dream Drop Distance, though much like the Land of Departure, you are much more of a nomad in this game.
    • Twilight Town serves as the primary hub world of III, being host to a number of major plot developments prior to the final act, as well as Le Grand Bistro and Pooh's storybook.
  • Fisher Kingdom: Sora, Donald, and Goofy (and, later on, Riku) may magically transform into bodies more "appropriate" to the world they are visiting. Justified in Space Paranoids and The Grid, however, because it's well known from the films that digitizing people makes them neat and glowy. Technically averted in most cases, as the characters are transforming themselves to blend in. First through Donald's magic, and later with Sora's new clothes. Timeless River seems to play it straight for the heroes, though for some reason modern-day Pete is unaffected.
    • Confirmed worlds include:
      • Halloween Town: Sora becomes a Perky Goth with an orange Eyepatch of Power, looking somewhat similar to a vampire, Donald becomes a Mummy, and Goofy becomes a construct. In the GBA version of Chain of Memories, they keep their normal appearances, while in Re:Chain of Memories they regain their costumes from the first game. In Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix, Christmas Town has its own set, where Sora becomes a (still gothic) Badass Santa, Donald becomes a Snowlem, and Goofy has reindeer antennae. Also in Re:Chain of Memories, Riku and Mickey don't change attire, but their models are given a slight change in shading and texturing to better match the environment.
      • Atlantica: Sora becomes a dolphin-themed merman, Donald becomes half-duck, half cecaelia like Ursula (which is lampshaded in the manga adaptation), and Goofy becomes a sea turtle. In Chain of Memories, they keep their normal appearances; after all, that game's version of the world is a fake copy created within Castle Oblivion.
      • Timeless River: Sora reverts to his original attire, albeit in a style that pays homage to Osamu Tezuka, while Donald and Goofy revert to their original appearances in the 1930s cartoons.
      • The Pride Lands: Sora becomes a brown lion cub, Donald is a less-anthropomorphic bird who can actually fly, and Goofy becomes a yellow tortoise. Pete takes on the form of a lion in this world, as well.
      • Space Paranoids and The Grid: The trio and Riku wear armor in these worlds; Sora, Donald, and Goofy's armor in Space Paranoids is grey with cyan circuitry, while Sora and Riku's armor in the Grid is black with white circuitry.
      • Toy Box: Sora, Donald, and Goofy become toys based on Verum Rex action figures. Sora is based on Yozora, while Donald and Goofy are based on Yozora's sidekicks, Magia and Aegis.
      • Monstropolis: Sora takes on the appearance of a grey werecat. Donald and Goofy remain their species, but now become blue and green, respectively, and Donald ends up a Cyclops (which is lampshaded by Boo).
      • Port Royal/The Caribbean: In their first two visits in Kingdom Hearts II, Sora and company simply appear in their standard designs. In Kingdom Hearts III, they now don pirate attire, with Sora wearing captain's attire and Donald and Goofy in crewman's clothes; their character models also take on a more realistic design to match the world's live-action aesthetic.
      • San Fransokyo downplays this in that while the trio are unchanged, Sora wears a computer visor given to him by Hiro that even shows up on his HUD.
      • In Quadratum, Sora retains his usual looks and attire, but like the Caribbean, he looks more realistic.
  • Flanderization:
    • Now, while he was always a very positive kid, Sora was much more prone to negativity, anger, and doubt in the first game and Chain of Memories compared to the rest of the series. In fact, his situation even caused him some stress in the first game. By 3D, he's gotten to the point where not even failing his mastery exam makes him even the least bit discouraged, and he very rarely if ever stays mad or sad about anything. Remember back in the first game when he and Donald had an argument and Sora actually held a grudge about it for awhile? Lampshaded by Ansem the Wise in KHII, when he's amused by Roxas's anger and tells him that he should lend Sora some of his anger, as he (Sora) is "far too nice for his own good."
    • Also concerning Sora, his messiah status was greatly exaggerated over time. With how clearly it's been made lately that the entire universe rests on him and every single character is connected to him somehow, you'd almost forget that he's not even the universe's original Chosen One (he accidentally stole the job from Riku).
    • In the first game, Xehanort was portrayed as an unethical but ultimately not malevolent researcher who slowly became power-hungry as his experiments got steadily more dangerous. By III, he is (and has almost always been) a sadistic megalomaniac set on destroying the entire universe.
    • In the first game, Kairi is the Damsel in Distress only because she lost her heart in a sudden disaster that she could not have possibly anticipated or defended herself against. In III, despite having undergone combat training, she's captured and killed during a battle she specifically trained to take part in and makes no attempt to defend herself, securing her the uncontested title of "most pathetic character."
    • The entire Re Mind expansion for KH3 seeks to subvert this, by exploring a bit more of the consequences of Sora not fully understanding his power, Riku taking more of a leadership role, Xehanort being more methodical in his technique, Kairi being an Action Girl, and showing that Sora has become more mature and intelligent as he comes to terms with his imminent death.
  • Flashback with the Other Darrin: A natural consequence of several re-castings from KH1 and KH2 and the fact that KH2 features many flashbacks in its first chapter. This continues in 0.2, which features a return to the ending of Kingdom Hearts. Bret Iwan, who has voiced Mickey since Allwine's death, re-dubbed the lines from the original game.
  • Flight, Strength, Heart: The Keyblade can do a lot of things, one of which is to act like a key. Which turns out to be its strongest ability by far.
  • Foil: Already has its own page.
  • For Doom the Bell Tolls: "Showdown at Hollow Bastion", which plays in the suitably dramatic context of right before the 1000 Heartless battle in KH2, replaces the usual piano chords in the Organization's leitmotif with bell strikes.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • The very nature of the "Dive to the Heart" location as a dreamworld located within one's Heart, encountered many times throughout the series by the games' various protagonists as a tutorial location, retroactively becomes this when Roxas is able to unwittingly visit it within Kingdom Hearts II foreshadowing the fact that he had managed to develop a heart all on his own in spite of being a Nobody, a race of beings said to have no hearts.
      • For more foreshadowing of the above, Pinocchio (a wooden puppet), Tron (a computer program), and Data-Sora (likewise) are all noted to have developed their own hearts.
      • Another hint are the Heartless. They only attack beings with hearts, but almost never those without or they'd be too busy fighting amongst themselves. Since they attack Roxas and the other Organization members in Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, they prove they do have hearts.
    • The reveal in 3D that Xigbar/Braig and Saix/Isa are both Xehanort's vessels. All three of them have the same eye color and pointed ears, unlike the other top Organization members. Even more clear since Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, when we find out both Braig and Isa used to have a different eye colors. Braig's even changed during the game, after a confrontation with Xehanort, and a cutscene gives us a zoom-in to make sure we notice the new color.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • Ventus's fighting style centers around speed and agility, but he cannot take much punishment.
    • Larxene from the Organization, fitting her electric element, is incredibly quick but easily staggered.
    • Anti-Form is this. It moves around hyper fast, but has little defense and offense.
  • Free Rotating Camera: The game, as is typical, uses the right stick in a "rotate and tilt" style.
  • Freudian Trio: The series makes a theme of this trope, with most of the main cast belonging to at least one trio, and the sword/shield/staff analogies in each (even if the sword/shield/staff trinity don't always correspond to the ego/id/superego). The series even make character trios from Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days, Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, and etc.
    • General:
      • Id: Disney characters — who are fun-loving and have an indomitable will.
      • Superego: Square Enix and original characters — who are introspective and deal with personal issues.
      • Ego: Sora — In-between because is fun-loving, have an indomitable will, and deal with personal issues.
    • Main Heroes:
      • Id: Sora — Impulsive and Passionate
      • Superego: Donald Duck — High-strung and Skeptical
      • Ego: Goofy — Mediator between the two, often acts as the voice of reason
    • Destiny Island Trio:
      • Id: Sora — Well-meaning but impulsive.
      • Superego: Riku — Plans and calculates.
      • Ego: Kairi — The moral center.
    • Disney Castle Trio:
    • Clock Tower Trio:
      • Id: Roxas — Naive and Impulsive
      • Ego: Xion — Voice of reason
      • Superego: Axel — Cold and Calculative
    • Wayfinder Trio/Combo Trio:
      • Id + Superego: Terra — Goal-driven and calculated; but also anger-prone, has a hard time controlling his darkness.
      • Id + Ego: Ven — Impulsive and emotion-driven, but later caught in the middle of Aqua and Terra's conflict.
      • Ego + Superego: Aqua — The balance between the two, but sometimes her goals get in the way. Voice of reason and, as the story progresses, the moral compass of the trio. Follows Eraqus's orders to the letter.
    • Villain Trio:
      • Superego: Master Xehanort — Cold and calculating Chessmaster.
      • Id: Vanitas — Ax-Crazy, being of pure darkness.
      • Ego: Braig/Xigbar — Falls somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. He's an Affably Evil Jerkass who enjoys Trolling other characters, but he's also the one who ensures the success of Master Xehanort's Evil Plan after the latter loses his memories.
    • The three most prominent incarnations of Xehanort throughout the games:
  • Friendship Trinket:
    • Kairi makes a star-shaped charm out of Thalassa shells due to a legend that sailors who carry them will have a safe voyage. She gives it to Sora near the end of the game, and he carries it with him until they reunite at the end of Kingdom Hearts II, the charm acting as the Keychain for the Oathkeeper Keyblade that symbolizes their bond. The Stinger for Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep has her hand it back to him when he heads out on another adventure. The image of the Paopu Fruit acts as one as well, as its legend says that two people who share one are destined to forever have their lives entwined, and Kairi's charm is star-shaped like the fruit.
    • The symbolism is revisited in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, when Aqua makes Wayfinders for herself, Terra and Ven, based on the legend of the Paopu Fruit and coincidentally looking like Kairi's charm, with the belief that as long as the three of them carry them, their bonds will never be broken.
  • Funny Animal: A lot of them. Mickey, Donald and Goofy routinely interact with human characters, and no one seems to bat an eye at their presence. Travelling throughout the worlds gives Sora and his friends plenty of experience with people who aren't human, so they get used to it.
  • Fusion Dance: Drive, a mechanic from KH2, will fuse Sora with one or both party mates. The physical attack-oriented Valor Form fuses with Goofy and the magic-focused Wisdom Form uses Donald, while the more well-rounded options will fuse with both party members. (However, these party members will still appear in cutscenes.)

    G 
  • Gambit Pileup: This first really rears its head in Chain of Memories, which is about certain members of the Organization trying to brainwash Sora into a useful pawn against Xemnas, while one member of this movement decides to start working against them due to mistreatment and another member turns Sora against both of those factions. Then it's revealed during 358/2 Days that the Organization even being present at the setting of COM was a deliberate plot by Xemnas to root out traitors. Most of the games have ridiculous amounts of planning and counter-planning to this degree.
  • Gambit Roulette: Master Xehanort. He had been manipulating Terra and Ven for years to accomplish his goals. In the end, Terra, Aqua, and Ven used The Power of Friendship to stop him, but not before getting totally screwed over in the process. And he had some backup plans just in case the first one would fail. As revealed in Dream Drop Distance, it involves all of the previous plans going off exactly as they did so that a crazily convoluted plan involving time travel and dreams to finish what every single game previous has set up can go off according to plan.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration:
    • On the one hand, the developers put a lot of thought into making the gameplay reinforce the idea of teamwork and friendship. By and large, it's not too Anvilicious and almost universally regarded as fun. You also have a lot of little tidbits highlighting Sora's growth in skill.
    • Within Hollow Bastion from the first game, Belle conveniently goes missing from the Princesses of Heart even when they're rescued just to give Beast the reason to still be with Sora and the gang.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: It is said many times that The Heartless can only be defeated with the Keyblade... yet Donald and Goofy (and every Guest-Star Party Member) can mow down tons of Heartless by themselves. 358/2 Days clarifies things: Heartless can be defeated by any weapon, but they'll just come back some time afterward. The Keyblade is the only weapon that can purify the hearts that make up the Heartless upon defeating them, vanquishing them for good.
    • If you level grind enough it's possible for Sora to learn powerful magical skills such as Stun Impact and Ripple Drive on Destiny Island, even though at this point in the story there's no reason that Sora should be able to create explosions of magic with a stick.
  • Gangplank Galleon: Neverland and Port Royal fill the pirate-level niche of any game in which they appear.
  • Genre Blind: Increasingly so as the series has gone on, the heroes haven't yet clued in that listening to Xehanort is never a good idea. No matter what he says, truth or lie, he's only saying it to try and manipulate you, to screw with your head, to piss you off and drive you towards darkness, or all three. By the time of 3D and III, there's really no excuse for Sora and Riku letting Xehanort and his cohorts monologue to them all the time, when they ought to just pull out their Keyblades and start swinging.
    • Although by 'III' Sora seems to have at least somewhat adopted this mindset, as seen in Toybox where as soon as he sees Young Xehanort, he tries to attack. Unfortunately, Xehanort is fast enough to dodge all of his blows while still monologuing just as he was.
  • Gladiator Subquest: Olympus Coliseum is traditionally the site of tournament sidequests.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • Aqua in Birth By Sleep is a master mage, mastering every element and is incredibly agile and strong. But she cannot take a hit early on in the game, having the lowest HP and Defense of the three playable characters.
    • Sora's Anti-Form in KH2 maximizes his attack, but minimizes his defense and removes any way of recovering health.
    • Rage Form in III works much the same way as Anti-Form from II, but it does let the player recover health. However, its strongest abilities come from using the "Risktaker" power, which takes away a chunk of health to increase attack power. The strongest attack of Rage Form can only be used after draining Sora's health this way four times, making Rage Form Sora extremely powerful but very easy to take down.
    • Kairi. Simply put, she can’t take many hits and can’t move fast enough to qualify as a Fragile Speedster. What she can do is hit things very, very hard, with her moveset being a more balanced version of what Sora uses in Ultimate Form. Story-wise, her offensive power is so high that she can actually break Xemnas's Ethereal Blades, but she lacks the stamina to recover quickly from his draining field.
      • Even as a party member, she's this. She's extremely aggressive with her attacks, and attacks from far away or up close with very little downtime. However, she often runs out of HP in one or two hits, and takes her sweet time getting back up.
  • Go Back to the Source: III returns to the site of Eraqus and Xehanort's Keyblade training, a world named Scala ad Caelum.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Most bizarre in the original, where the Hades Cup is harmless. (Well, as harmless as a 50-round chain battle featuring lots of tough Heartless and a battle with Hades himself can be, anyway.)
  • Grand Theft Me:
    • Riku being possessed by "Ansem" is a key plot point late in KH1 and shapes much of Riku's character arc going forward.
    • One of the biggest reveals in Birth by Sleep is that Xehanort's possession of Riku wasn't even the first time he attempted this. Before he split himself into a Heartless and Nobody, Xehanort hijacked the body of a young man so he could live longer, because his old body was, well, old. Oh, that young man happened to be one of the protagonists, Terra.
    • Possession is, suffice to say, a big deal to Xehanort. As revealed in 3D, Master Xehanort's ultimate goal is to corrupt enough people with his heart so he can create a team of 13 selves to start the final war between darkness and light.
  • Grandfather Clause: Once the games started going multiplatform, the green glowing triangle that accompanies the Reaction Command/Situation Command prompt is still used even on consoles that don't have a Triangle button in the first place because of how iconic it is to the series. Even Melody of Memory, which is on both the Switch and Xbox One in addition to the PS4, still has triangle-themed prompts.
  • Gratuitous English:
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: In the Japanese version of 358/2 Days, Xaldin's weapons all have Chinese names.
  • Gratuitous French:
    • Xion's theme is called Musique pour la tristesse de Xion (music for the sadness of Xion).
    • All of Larxene's weapons have French names. Her default weapon is called Foudre (lightning).
    • Instead of simply Paris, the world for The Hunchback of Notre Dame is called La Cité des Cloches (the city of bells).
  • Gratuitous Italian: The series likes their Italian background music.
    • Destati, the main theme of Dive into the Heart, means "awaken". The lyrics are also in Italian.
    • The battle theme for Radiant Garden/Hollow Bastion is called Scherzo di notte (scherzo at night).
    • Themes associated with Master Xehanort and his incarnations mostly have Italian names, such as L'Impeto Oscuro (the dark impetus) and Forze dell'Oscurita (forces of darkness).
  • Gratuitous Latin:
  • Gravity Is Purple: The Gravity and Anti-Gravity spells are depicted as purple with black sometimes mixed in.
  • Greater-Scope Villain:
    • We don't actually see Master Xehanort until Birth by Sleep, the sixth game in the series. Before that, the heroes face his incarnations or underlings, but never him.
    • The Master of Masters, whose insistence for everything to follow according to fate as dictated by him in the Book of Prophecies leads to everything else that happens in the series.
    • On a lesser scale, Luxu, who handed his Keyblade, No Name, to Xehanort some time ago. He intended for Xehanort to become a scapegoat for the ensuing conflict against the Guardians of Light, keeping them preoccupied while he watches from the sidelines as Braig/Xigbar. Once the conflict ends, he unearths the Black Box and summons the Foretellers to begin the next phase of his plan.
    • On a more major scale, the Darkness serves as this for the entire franchise, as their existence is the reason why the Master of Masters to create his plan of the dandelions and the Book of Prophecies.
  • Grim Reaper:
    • KH1 features a Superboss, the Phantom, a spectre in a black cloak who will cast Doom on party members whenever a nearby clock tower strikes 12.
    • Kingdom Hearts II features an Aztec-themed Heartless version in Port Royal who steals the cursed coins that keep the Black Pearl's crew undead.
    • While he doesn't look like it, Chirithy from III basically acts like the series' version of the Grim Reaper, appearing as the Exposition Fairy for those who enter The Final World.
  • Guest-Star Party Member:
    • In the numbered titles, specific characters from Disney worlds can become party members, but only in the worlds they are featured in. Since I and II place an arbitrary limit to the party to contain three people tops, you have to replace either Donald or Goofy with the guest star. This is no longer an issue in III and there are even worlds where there are two guest members, making for a five-man party.
    • Other Organization XIII members occasionally assist Roxas for his missions in Days.
    • Birth by Sleep limits the usage of guest party members on specific battles, making them true guests in that once they leave, they will never join you again. The sole exception is when you play multiplayer in Mirage Arena, as the other two protagonists may appear as assists.
    • III has both the world-specific party members and those who join you for certain battles only ala Birth by Sleep. During the Keyblade Graveyard sequence, special party members take turn assisting Sora for his fights against the Organization XIII members.

    H 
  • Halloween Town: "Halloween Town", a world based upon The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's named after the main area of the world which happens to be a town that houses the physical manifestation of Hallowen.
  • Hammerspace:
    • Where else do you think the Keyblade goes when Sora's not carrying it?
    • The intelligent Nobodies can also call forth spiritual weapons at will, or at least most of them can.
    • Birth by Sleep shows Donald and Goofy pull their weapons out thin air, complete with pretty lights. Sure, Donald's a magician, but Goofy...
    • Ventus actually pulls a huge wooden keyblade from somewhere behind him during a cutscene in Neverland.
    • Averted in the manga, where Sora carries the Keyblade on his person.
  • Harder Than Hard: The first game wasn't the easiest alone, especially once the player starts tackling the post-game battles, and Proud Mode is usually a hefty boost for enemy stats to amp it up. But starting with the Final Mix versions of Kingdom Hearts II and beyond (and unlockable by beating the game once in Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] and Kingdom Hearts 0.2: Birth by Sleep -A fragmentary passage-), Critical Mode gives the player additional benefits at the cost of turning even basic battles into entirely lethal ones for reckless players. Once you get to end game or post-game fights, almost every boss fight is probably able to kill you in a single combo.
  • Healing Boss:
    • Kingdom Hearts: In Oogie Boogie's boss fight, the values of the dice he rolls dictates what actions he takes. If he rolls sixes, he walks over to a machine that heals a portion of his health.
    • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep:
      • Terra-Xehanort can cast Cure Magic on himself, which makes sense since he's stolen your body.
      • Vanitas Remnant is a super boss with only one bar of health. However, he is infamous for the fact that will heal back up to full HP whenever you use Cure Magic. You can get around this by using potions. However, using this exploit means you're denied the precious invincibility frames afforded by Leaf Bracer.
    • Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]:
      • The Anti-Black Coat Nightmare can drain your health bar down to one HP to refill its own. It can do this as many times as it wants.
      • Young Xehanort, upon reaching his last health bar, will reverse time to restore some of his health bars. Fortunately, you can stop this, but if you don't... Have fun.
  • Heal It with Nature: Implied by how the Cure line of spells features leaves, vines, and flowers that circle the characters and rain down healing magic.
  • Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The Life Meter and healing spells are green, and when the character's health drops under 25%, their profile icon will flash red.
  • The Heartless: The creatures from which the trope is named. Heartless are created from the darkness within hearts, and technically don't have physical bodies—they can be "destroyed", but their darkness will simply coalesce into a new Heartless somewhere else. They can only actually die from the Keyblade.
  • The Heart:
    • Kairi fits the bill. Aside from the personality, she is a Princess of Heart with ties to the heart of all worlds, Kingdom Hearts, and spends much of the first game as a heart, inside of Sora's heart. Yeah, this trope is taken quite literally here.
    • Ventus in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep as well. Unlike Aqua and Eraqus, he's willing to give Terra the benefit of a doubt with regards to him potentially falling into darkness. And like Kairi, he has no darkness in his heart (since it was forcibly extracted to make Vanitas). Further, by the end of the game, he also ends up as a heart, inside of Sora's heart. There's more than a few reasons to think that Ven's role more closely resembles Kairi's than Sora's.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power:
    • It's right there in the title. At one point in the first game, six Disney Princesses and Kairi are kidnapped because their pure hearts are the key to unlocking Kingdom Hearts. To an even more basic extent, the strength of one's heart decides if the person is able to bear a Keyblade, a giant magical key that can cause a world of hurt on any creature it hits.
    • It's hinted that despite saving the universe multiple times over with his entire self taught Keyblade powers (including intuiting how to use Master level powers by the time of III), Sora's true power is his amazingly strong heart. His heart can forge nigh unbreakable bonds with others, hear hearts in pain and instinctively reach out to them, keep the hearts of several others inside his among other things. It's even hinted that his heart is able to house, heal and revive people who technically never existed. Heart may just be the key to saving the universe this time around.
    • Keyblades can lock or unlock anything. This means that, among other things, it's difficult to contain their wielders within conventional prison cells as their keyblade allows them to unlock the jail door without the need to steal the warden's keys. It's also possible for them to unlock every chest they come across, unseal anything that is sealed with a sort of lock, etc. As revealed in Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, the locks don't even have to look like a keyhole in order to work - if it's a lock-in one sense or another, the keyblade can work on it. In fact, the lock doesn't even have to be physical. For example, keyblades can be used to seal or unseal the hearts inside of others, open gateways to other worlds, etc.
  • Heart of the Matter: The villains seek the eponymous "Kingdom Hearts", a source of ultimate power, but they don't know what it actually is. It turns out to be the heart of all worlds.
  • Heart Trauma: Although this trope is different from The Heartless, the Nobodies are still a good example of this trope. They are the shell left behind when a Heartless steals a person's heart. Apparently, losing your heart gives you superpowers and a taste for black robes. They claim to not feel emotion, or at the very least, empathy.
    • To be even more specific: When one becomes a Nobody, their body changes. The human Nobodies in the Organization are the cream of the crop, people who had such a strong will to live when they lost their heart that their "shell" barely changed appearance, so they look pretty similar to their old selves. Everyone else with a weaker heart deforms into a monstrous, lesser Nobody that resembles an animated coat.
    • It's revealed in 3D that unlike most examples, Nobodies can regain their hearts, or at least develop new ones to fill the void through interaction with other people. Xemnas kept this part secret in order to manipulate the rest of the Organization in a Grand Theft Me's a Crowd scheme.
  • Helpful Mook: The mushroom Heartless (with the exception of the Black Fungus) are the only Heartless that aren't inherently evil, rewarding Sora if they've been hit with the right spell, but running away if attacked a few times. Even Mushroom XIII, the Elite Mook variation of them, aren't evil - they just want to play combat-based minigames with Sora. They even reward Sora with an extra Keyblade and a token of appreciation in a form of a crown saying thanks should you complete all 13 of their minigames.
    • III also has the Flantastic Seven, seven flan-based Heartless who simply want to play minigames with Sora, even if some of then will try to eat Sora in the process.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • In the first game, Sora stabs himself with a special Keyblade that can unlock the true essence of a heart in order to release Kairi's heart from his body, releasing his own heart as well. (He gets better.)
    • Axel detonates himself in the second game to hold off several Nobodies. (He gets better too.)
    • Ansem the Wise tries to use a machine to destroy Kingdom Hearts, but the machine explodes. (He gets thrown into the realm of darkness.)
  • Hijacked by Ganon: In any given game, you can be sure that if some incarnation of Xehanort isn't behind everything, one of his subordinates is. So far, the only games where he isn't the cause of conflict is coded and χ, though the former's plot is caused by the repercussions of his actions.
  • Hit Stop: A stylistic staple of the series; in general, whenever a major boss is dealt the finishing blow, the action will slow down as bright light emanates from the defeated boss, before the screen fades to white. Something similar also occurs once the player character's health reaches zero, with their body dramatically flying backwards or forwards mid-air in slow motion, and the screen fading to white before they can hit the ground.
  • Honorary Princess: The seven "princesses of heart" turn out to be the six (then) Disney princesses, except Ariel: the sixth is Alice, and the seventh is Sora's friend Kairi. Both are not royalty by birth or marriage; it turns out that "princess of heart" title is used to name the only people in the universe with hearts made of pure light, without any shadow of evil in it.
    • Ventus can be considered an honorary Princess of Heart by virtue of having a heart of pure light, after Xehanort extracted the darkness from his heart 4 years before Birth by Sleep.
  • Hopeless with Tech: Anything related to computers goes directly over Sora's head, implying that the technology of his home world never progressed that far. Riku keeps his questions about computer stuff vague enough that he might or might not be completely lost as well. Donald and Goofy at least have prior experience with computers, as there are some at Disney Castle, but aren't much better with them than Sora is. And of course Maleficent, being from a 14th century fairy tale world, is completely lost when computer jargon is thrown around, though she takes it in stride. Ironically, Jiminy Cricket of all people, despite coming from a world based on 1880s Italy and having the general sensibilities of the early 1940s in which his film was released, has no trouble understanding computers at all.
  • HP to One: Because of the Once More and Second Chance abilities, the developers have deigned it necessary to practically require the use of them in order to survive, especially on harder difficulties and with the later/bonus bosses. Thus, rather than having bosses with HP to One-type attacks, they simply have massive attack power which will always reduce you to within an inch of your life, regardless of your defense stat. Perhaps a form of Fake Difficulty, some bosses degenerate into the pattern: attack —> get hit by one attack (hanging on with 1 HP) —> heal —> get hit by another attack —> dodge like crazy waiting for your magic to regenerate so you can heal again —> repeat.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Nobodies. While the stronger ones look human, they're only the leftover body and soul of a human turned Heartless. They lack true emotion and gain strange powers over darkness and other elements. Weaker Nobodies, meanwhile, are made of the same parts, but for some reason have become extremely flexible and move in unsettling ways.
  • Humans Are White:
    • Most of the cast are pale-skinned with Mukokuseki features. Sora is just a tiny bit more tanned than most. The main villain, Master Xehanort, is noticeably more tanned than everyone else and this is not because of the effects of the darkness; as Dream Drop Distance and later Union χ shows, he has been dark-skinned since birth. Since his incarnations also make up the villain cast, to western audiences, this creates the unfortunate impression that the only non-white characters are all villains, but keep in mind that the creators probably see all of the characters as Asian.
    • As the majority of NPCs in the game are Disney characters, and most Disney films are based on stories of European origin, most of the humans encountered throughout the worlds are actually white. Obvious exceptions include the entire casts of the Aladdin and Mulan worlds, plus occasional outliers such as Bo'sun and Esmeralda. The Big Hero 6 world is an aversion as well.
    • Generic NPCs, most of them designed in the same vein as the Final Fantasy cast, seem just as likely to be brown as pale. Ambiguously Brown Final Fantasy characters such as Wakka and Raijin also make appearances.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Corridors of Darkness can be used to travel between worlds, but unless travelers wear special protection they risk being consumed by the darkness.

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