A list of tropes related to Fighting Games.
Character types:
- Assist Character: A character the player can summon to temporarily assist them during a fight.
- Bonus Boss
- Ceiling Smash
- Climax Boss
- Close-Range Combatant
- Fighting Clown
- Guest Fighter: The fighting game features a playable character originating from a different intellectual property.
- Joke Character: A playable character who is deliberately designed to be terrible to play as.
- Lethal Joke Character: A playable character that looks useless on the surface, but can actually be quite effective and powerful.
- Long-Range Fighter
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter
- Moveset Clone
- Puppet Fighter
- Secret Character
- Shotoclone
- SNK Boss: A fighting game boss that is ridiculously difficult to defeat.
Matches:
- Battle Intro
- Mirror Match: You fight the same character you are playing as.
- Tag Team
- Three Round Deathmatch
- Versus Character Splash
- Victory Quote: A quote the character says upon winning a match.
Moves/Mechanics:
- Cherry Tapping
- Combo Breaker
- Combos
- Comeback Mechanic
- Counter Attack
- Criss-Cross Attack
- Enhanced Punch
- EX Special Attack
- Finishing Move
- Grapple Move
- Hurricane Kick
- Kamehame Hadoken
- Knockback Evasion
- Lag Cancel
- Launcher Move
- Limit Break
- Practical Taunt
- Recovery Attack
- Shoryuken
- Some Dexterity Required
- Special Attack
- Stage Fatality
- Stance System
- Super Move Portrait Attack
- Taunt Button
- Videogame Dashing
Other tropes:
- Ambidextrous Sprite
- Ass-Kicking Pose
- Backstory: The characters usually have information on their pasts, and sometimes it's the only kind of story the game has.
- Character Roster Global Warming
- Death Cry Echo
- Defeat Means Playable: Once a character is defeated, it becomes possible to play as them.
- Dream Match Game
- Fake Balance
- Fixed Floor Fighting
- Free Floor Fighting
- Hitbox Dissonance
- Hit Stop: To help players confirm into combos, most 2D fighting games actually have varying amounts of hitstop in all their attacks. For most non-special attacks though, the amount is so small (measured in 60ths of a second) that they're hard to notice visually.
- Idiosyncratic Combo Levels
- Idle Animation: The fighting stances of characters often include little nuances (such as Ibuki from Street Fighter III making hand seals while standing still).
- Immune to Flinching (also called Super Armor)
- Impending Clash Shot: A common promotional or cover art shot.
- Intimidation Demonstration
- Life Meter
- Mana Meter
- Multiplayer Difficulty Spike: In general, as players research and exploit things the computer can't.
- Nintendo Hard: If the SNK Bosses don't get you, tournament-level players will.
- Not Just a Tournament
- Power Creep, Power Seep
- Ring Out
- Serious Business (both in-universe and sometimes in Real Life)
- Sword and Fist
- Tournament Arc: Quite a lot of these games have the premise of the characters fighting one another as part of some competition.
- Training Stage
- Unsportsmanlike Gloating
- Victory Pose
- Would Hit a Girl: Unless the playable cast is one-gendered, this is unavoidable by default.
