RWBY / Tropes A to B

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RWBY provides examples of the following tropes:

Tropes A

• Accidental Murder: During the Tournament, the villains engage in activities that cause some student fights to become much more lethal than they're supposed to be. Cinder fixes the fights to ensure Penny and Pyrrha fight while Emerald controls what Pyrrha sees. Pyrrha accidentally destroys Penny on global television, generating such a negative backlash that the Grimm are empowered to start an all-out assault on the City of Vale — exactly as the villains planned.
• Accomplice by Inaction: In Volume 5, Ilia explains that the reason she views the White Fang's violent terrorism against humanity as Necessarily Evil. As far as she's concerned, no humans are good or innocent - they either actively hate the Faunus or just stand back and let the hate happen. Ilia's words serve as a Call-Back to Volume 1 when Velvet, a rabbit Faunus, was being harassed by Cardin Winchester; although both Teams RWBY and JNPR all expressed disgust with Team CRDL's behavior and sympathy for Velvet's plight, they, including Blake, just stood back and watched it happen, doing nothing to intervene on her behalf.
• Achievements in Ignorance: According to Pyrrha, the friendships she has made in Beacon are this for Jaune. He approached her knowing nothing of her Famed In-Story status and combat prowess, completely sidestepping one of the main reasons of her Lonely at the Top woes. In turn, her interactions with the Butt-Monkey made Pyrrha look more approachable to other people, which helped to partially subvert her Attractiveness Isolation.
• Actor Allusion:
  • During a Traintop Battle, Oobleck yells out to decouple the caboose to prevent certain death. Oobleck's voice actor, Joel Heyman, also voiced the character Caboose in another Rooster Teeth production, Red vs. Blue, where there was a Running Gag about the amount of teammate kills he was responsible for.
  • Scarlet David is on the receiving end of a Groin Attack like his actor, Gavin Free, frequently is in other Rooster Teeth productions (and real life), and he's dressed like a pirate as nod to Free playing as "the Dandy" in past Assassin's Creed games on Achievement Hunter.
  • At the end of Volume 4, Qrow refers to Oscar as a "pipsqueak". This is a deliberate reference to Fullmetal Alchemist, where Vic Mignogna (Qrow) and Aaron Dismuke (Oscar) voiced Edward and Alphonse Elric, respectively.
• Advice Backfire: In the Volume 5 episode "Known by its Song", when Raven warns Yang not to trust Ozpin, she advises her daughter to question everything she's told. When they confront each other again at the end of "Haven's Fate," however, Yang throws this advice back in Raven's face and calls out the latter on both her hypocritical cowardice as well as her perception of strength. A distraught Raven can only whisper a tearful apology before she flees out of regret.
  Yang: I'm starting to ask questions, like you said.
• Adventure-Friendly World: It's called Remnant, and it's filled with monsters, with only the rare beacons of civilization (the kingdoms of Vale, Vacuo, Mistral, and Atlas) and Dust holding them back. Civilization is protected, and able to exist at all, through the efforts of Huntsmen whose careers are either mission-based, going on adventures to fight the Grimm, or academy-based, teaching the next generation to fight the Grimm and control the missions the other Huntsmen go on.
• Aerith and Bob: Remnant is an eclectic mixture of people with names from various different cultures or words in various languages, and some from none at all. Most are based on colors. This includes characters with traditional names – such as Ruby, Blake, and Nora – and characters with names based on recognizable languages, cultures, and mythologies – such as Weiss (German for 'white'), Jaune (French for 'yellow'), Pyrrha (a name borrowed by Achilles), and Yatsuhashi (a Japanese treat). However, the Beacon headmaster's name is Ozpin, a made-up name reflecting the character's inspiration from the the Wizard of Oz^note whose name is Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs (O.Z.P.I.N.H.E.A.D.), and his colleague Glynda's name is inspired by Glinda from the same work. The In-Universe justification for the variety of names is that the world experienced a terrible global war from which freedom of expression has become one of the planet's most cherished gifts, including the ability to choose the colors of their hair and clothing... something Ozpin's name mysteriously does not conform to.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Adam Taurus is a Fantastic Terrorist who wants to enslave humanity to the Faunus. However, he becomes increasingly obsessed with destroying Blake for leaving him, permanently maiming her team-mate Yang and trying to assassinate her parents. The final confrontation between him, Blake and Yang stops being a Catharsis Factor when he reveals that his mask was hiding a Schnee Dust Company brand across his left eye. Although it doesn't excuse his abuse and terrorism, it does reveal that humans had subjected him to terrible abuse, setting him on the road to becoming a monster. The creators confirmed they did want the audience to feel some pathos for him at the end.
  • Ironwood descends into villainy in his single-minded drive to save Atlas, the Relics and the Winter Maiden from Salem; it leaves him broken, isolated and utterly abandoned. He fails to save either Atlas or the Relics, and he is abandoned by the heroes, Winter Maiden, and even Winter, who manage to save thousands of lives without him. Injured and defeated, he watches from the ground as Salem collects the Relics from Cinder and departs without ever acknowledging his existence; even the normally boastful Cinder simply declares "And that's checkmate." before leaving him to his fate on a crashing Atlas.
  • One of the two major antagonists of Volume 9 gets a degree of pathos at the end. After the Curious Cat is beaten down, their last exchange with Ruby highlights their ruined mental state, heavily implying they know on some level that they're as broken as they claim humans are but they can't do anything about it. Moments later, the Cat is devoured by Neo's Jabberwalker clones while screaming in terror, a swift but brutal affair which Team RWBY react to with horror. Post-mortem, the Blacksmith expresses sorrow for the Cat's turn for the worse and the fact they couldn't be fixed by the Tree, and the flashback of the Cat's beginnings which highlights their original character hammers home the tragedy of their "unfortunate change" due to circumstances that were beyond their ability to change.
• Alice Allusion: In-universe, Remnant's famous fairy tale, "The Girl Who Fell Through The World" is about a girl that falls while trying to escape her mistakes and responsibilities, and ends up in a strange new world. It's clearly intended to allude to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; the girl's name is even Alyx, which is a variant of "Alice". By the end of the eighth volume, Team RWBY, Jaune Arc and Neopolitan fall into the Ever After, the very same world featured in the story. They eventually come to terms with the realm's strange nature so they can return to Remnant even as Neo continues her quest to destroy Ruby.
• All for Nothing:
  • Raven spends the fifth volume concocting a plan to oppose Salem by obtaining the Relic of Knowledge for herself. This plan eventually becomes a lost cause. Qrow renounces Raven as his sister; Vernal, her lieutenant, dies because she's a decoy; and she exposes herself as the Spring Maiden to the enemy, something that would effectively put herself on Salem's hit list. Then, once she finally tries obtaining the Relic, Yang tells her Salem will pursue her for the rest of her life if she took it, something she knows terrifies Raven. In the end, she allows Yang to take the Relic, and tearfully apologises before leaving.
  • Ironwood spends the entire Atlas Arc attempting to save the city of Atlas from Salem and tried to stop her from getting the Relics in his possession. Unfortunately, this all ends in vain. Ironwood begins using extreme measures such as declaring martial law and abandoning the people of Mantle to die when Salem is on her way and orders Winter to kill the Winter Maiden. Team RWBY and the rest of the heroes turn against him because of it, Penny obtains the Winter Maiden's powers instead and goes with them and Salem eventually finds a way to get through Atlas' defenses and launches a Grimm attack on the city. After Salem is temporarily taken out, Ironwood decides to threaten the heroes with bombing Mantle himself in order to get what he wants and leads to his remaining allies in the military abandoning him as a result. Even when he planned on Winter becoming the next Winter Maiden, she turned against him by the point it happened as he is left to die on the falling city of Atlas with everyone else in the Kingdom being evacuated and Cinder and Salem claiming the two relics as he gives up when attempting to shoot them.
• Alliterative Family: The three Schnee siblings, Winter, Weiss, and Whitley, all have names that begin with the letter 'W' and which are designed to evoke the color white. ^note Winter is self-explanatory, Weiss is German for "white" and Whitley is Anglo-Saxon for "white glade". The mother, Willow, also conforms to this. The father, Jacques, does not, a hint towards the fact that he married into the name.
• Alliterative Name: One of the locations surrounding Beacon Academy is called the Forest of Forever Fall.
• Alliterative Title: Some season one episodes and every episode of Volume 9:
  • "The Badge and the Burden"
  • "Forever Fall"
  • "A Place of Particular Concern"
  • "Altercation at the Auspicious Auction"
  • "Rude, Red, and Royal"
  • "A Cat Most Curious"
  • "The Parfait Predicament"
  • "Confessions Within Cumulonimbus Clouds"
  • "The Perils of Paper Houses"
  • "Tea Amidst Terrible Trouble"
  • "A Tale Involving a Tree"
  • "Of Solitude and Self"
• All There in the Manual: Volume 2 introduces an information series called "World Of Remnant", providing additional information about how the setting works. Monty Oum also disseminated and clarified certain meta-knowledge via Twitter, Facebook and interviews.
• All There in the Script: Several characters' last names are only revealed in the credits.
• Alphabet News Network: There have been a few news outlets introduced in the show that are typicalled initialled, such as VNN (Vale News Network) and ABN (Atlas Broadcast Network).
• Amazon Brigade: Team RWBY is comprised of four talented female fighters who are fast-tracked in Volume 7 to graduated, licenced Huntresses because Ironwood feels they've been fighting as professionals since Beacon. They are mentored by Atlas's elite Ace-Ops squad, whom they eventually defeat in battle. While Volume 8 clarifies the Ace-Ops' obsession with professionalism sabotages their team-work, Team RWBY's achievement is still regarded as unprecedented enough to cement their reputation as an elite team of female warriors.
• Ambiguous Situation: The Volume 2 Stinger scene between Raven and Yang doesn't fit into the rest of the volume. Team RWBY's final act is to go to bed, with Yang stating that she's looking forward to sleeping. The scene starts with Yang walking down the promenade from the entrance to Beacon towards its central statue. There she finds Raven, who takes off her mask and declares they need to talk. The entire scene has an eerie, dreamlike quality that creates an air of unreality, which helps to emphasise that Yang was last seen stating she wanted to sleep. It cuts away before anything is revealed, and closes the volume on a surreal note.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The American artwork◊ for volume 3 shows Ruby and her team anticipating the Vytal tournament. In contrast, a poster for a Japanese limited edition release of the volume shows Ruby angrily crying Berserker Tears while Cinder smugly smiles above the two women she slays.
• An Adventurer Is You: Oum says Team RWBY is based on a standard RPG group. Yang is the Fighter/Tank, Weiss is the Mage, Blake is the Thief, and Ruby herself is possibly the Archer. While Ruby appears to be the special character of the show, the set-up ensures she's not the only useful character in the show. Others have skills and necessary roles, too.
• Anti-Climax: The final battle of Volume 5 is cut out in favor of Yang giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech towards Raven and another character's death scene. By the time the scene cuts back to the battle, it's already over.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • At the end of Volume 3, Adam vows to Blake that he will destroy everything she cares about. When he sees her horrified reaction upon realising that Yang is trying to find her, Adam decides to start with Yang, cutting off her arm when she rushes in to save Blake. Blake is so guilt-ridden that she goes on the run. In Volume 4, Yang struggles to come to terms with the loss of her arm and suffers PTSD in the form of nightmares and flashbacks to Adam maiming her. When Ironwood, without prompting, commissions a state-of-the-art cybernetic replacement for Yang, Oobleck tells her that there are a lot of people who want her back to "normal", but does not elaborate on who or why. Yang only reluctantly accepts the arm and begins to wear it when she realises that the reason Taiyang isn't searching for Ruby, who has left to hunt the villains with only Jaune's team for company, is because he cannot look after Yang and search for Ruby at the same time.
  • After Ruby injures Cinder at the end of Volume 3, Cinder spends the whole of Volume 4 recovering with Salem's help while her left arm is entirely covered by a long sleeve. Salem's "treatments" consists of her teaching Cinder how to control the Grimm limb that has replaced her severed left arm. During the Battle of Haven, Ruby's brief use of her anti-Grimm power causes Cinder to collapse to her knees in pain, clutching her Grimm arm. When she tries to extend the Grimm arm to steal the dying Winter Maiden's power, Winter severs the limb from Cinder's body. Cinder screams in agony from the injury and keeps screaming as the limb painfully regenerates; she then retaliates against Winter so viciously that Winter is almost killed from the onslaught and Cinder loses her opportunity to steal the Winter Maiden's power.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: In "Alone Together," Ilia angrily confesses that she had always wanted Blake to look at her like she'd looked at Adam, while holding her whip to Blake's throat.
• Animal Motifs:
  • White Fang's emblem is a wolf, and they share their name with the book White Fang, which is about a wolf-dog and his relationship with both the wilds of nature and with humans.
  • Team CRDL as well with their names references to birds (and their team name is pronounced 'Cardinal').
• Animation Bump:
  • The fight scenes in Volume 1 would get one in comparison to the rest of the season.
  • Volume 2 has better, more fluid animation, and more nuanced facial expressions and colour palettes as they learned more about their software. It also helps that each episode is much longer compared to the first volume.
  • Volume 3 has far more detailed and natural-looking backgrounds, more 2D animation mixed in to alleviate the technical shortcomings that the 3D animation still has, and minor touches such as realistic tears.
  • Volume 4 is the show's first volume with new animation software (Maya instead of Poser), and the style shifts more towards Cel Shading with focus on lighting and such.
  • Volume 5 showcased massive advancements as the CRWBY was getting used to using Maya software. Even as early as the first character short, there were vast improvements in particle and special effects.
  • Volume six featured more fluid animation than ever, as well as more expressive facial models. The real glory goes into environments, as some locations and water effects were almost photorealistic.
• Animesque: The animation and character design resemble anime in general. Certain visual and artistic conventions that apply to anime are therefore reproduced for this show as well. The director researched several anime while designing the series. When Crunchyroll began streaming the series, certain people began demanding the show in the "original" Japanese instead of English "dub". It has gained both Japanese and Chinese fan followings as a result, and Fanfiction Dot Net classifies it as an anime.
• Animal Jingoism: Referenced when Zwei is sent to Ruby and Yang; everyone warms up quickly to the idea of having a Precious Puppy staying with them... except Blake, who trees herself to get as far away from Zwei as possible.
• Anime Theme Song: All Volumes thus far come with OPs that wouldn't look out of place on anything coming out of Japan. The Volume 1-8 OPs are all composed by Jeff Williams and performed by Casey Lee Williams; Volume 9's is composed by Casey Lee Williams and Martin Gonzalez. The openings are as follows:
  • Volume 1: This Will Be the Day
  • Volume 2: Time To Say Goodbye
  • Volume 3: When It Falls
  • Volume 4: Let's Just Live
  • Volume 5: Triumph
  • Volume 6: Rising
  • Volume 7: Trust Love
  • Volume 8: For Every Life
  • Volume 9: Inside
• Answer Cut: "Never Miss a Beat" ends with Ozpin describing the girl that he believes will be a strong maiden candidate, as we see Pyrrha entering the elevator of the Cross Continental Transmit tower.
• Anti-Interference Lock Up: In Volume 8, the plan to rescue the Atlesians first requires getting the leadership out of the way before it can be enacted. Phase 1 consists of capture and lock-up before moving on to Phase 2. Ironwood is defeated and locked up so the heroes can evacuate the citizens to safety. Although Watts jailbreaks Ironwood, it's too late to stop the plan. At this point, Ironwood tries killing Winter for her betrayal.
• Apocalypse How:
  • In Volume 6, an Origins Episode reveals that Remnant experienced a species-extinction event when the God of Darkness wiped out an entire race thousands of years ago. He wiped out the original iteration of humanity for rising up against the Gods, leaving the instigator alone on an empty planet. Although humanity returned, the God of Light tasked one man to redeem humanity; if Oz fails, the gods will destroy the planet itself when they return.
  • At the conclusion of Volume 8, the heroes are unable to stop a regional destruction event from occurring. Atlas crashes into Mantle, destroying both cities and causing the waves of a nearby inland sea to flood them. With the Kingdom of Atlas-Mantle destroyed, the population is evacuated to the Kingdom of Vacuo, creating a massive refugee crisis.
• Appeal to Familial Wisdom: When Jaune and Ruby are both brand-new to Beacon Academy, they're both nervous and team up together to trying and navigate their new surroundings. Regarding the fact they don't know anyone at this school yet, Jaune tries to cheer them both up by quoting his mother's advice about handling new situations.
  Jaune: My mom always says "strangers are just friends you haven't met yet".
• Applied Phlebotinum: Dust is a crystal that can be triggered by Aura to cause various effects depending on the type of dust used. It is commonly formed into charges which are mechanically ignited (Huntsman ammunition), but can also be manually triggered, woven into clothing, or even embedded directly into a person's body.
• Arc Number: Four is an important recurring number. There are four Kingdoms, each with a four-year academy. Academy teams consist of four people, each based on four colors. There are four basic types of Dust, four Maidens representing the four seasons, and four gifts to mankind and their subsequent artifacts. Not to mention the fact that the story starts right before the 40th Vytal Festival. Character-wise, the past four generations of Jaune's family were heroes, and Pyrrha is a four time champion of the Mistral regional tournament. The opening credits for Volume 6 feature four of Ozpin's past incarnations. When a five-man team is finally introduced, it acts as foreshadowing that one member of the team will eventually die, reducing the team number to four.
• Arc Villain: Throughout the series, each Volume has a particular villain that the heroes have to overcome. Even with the overarching villains popping in and out to give the heroes hell, there's at least one villain who is only an active threat for one arc before they go away.
  • Cinder Fall is the leader of the villains who are active in Vale for the first three volumes. Roman Torchwick is the Starter Villain, who is the villain the heroes know about, and through which get sucked into the main plot. However, Cinder is in charge of him, and is herself carrying out the orders of the Big Bad, who is introduced at the end of the third volume once Cinder completes the mission.
  • The Nuckelavee Grimm is the overarching antagonist of the RNJR part of Volume 4, with its presence foreshadowed throughout the volume in destroyed villages across Anima, and its mere existence and memory of its attack deeply affecting Lie Ren and Nora Valkyrie. The volume's last quarter features the monster itself quite prominently, and it serves as the final antagonist in the last episode of the volume.
  • Volume 5 has two main arcs that intersect at the climax of the volume. Adam Taurus is the focus of the Menagerie storyline, and the reason why the Faunus intervene to help save Haven Academy. Hazel Rainart is Adam's overseer for the Big Bad to coordinate Adam's plans with Salem's. The main thrust of Salem's plan is led by Cinder, whose job it is to obtain the Relic of Knowledge. Character flaws in all three of these villains ensures that the heroes emerge victorious from a conflict they otherwise could not have won.
  • Though Volume 6 doesn't have an overarching villain, it has two mini-arc villains for the last few episodes of the volume. The heroes are unable to get to Atlas, since their route's blocked by Special Operative Caroline Cordovin; the conflict between her and the heroes is affected by the conclusion of Adam's story as an Arc Villain and personal nemesis of both Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long. However, the volume's final threat is neither Cordovin nor Adam, and ultimately requires the heroes and Cordovin to work together to defeat.
  • Volume 7 focusses on Arthur Watts and Tyrian Callows carrying out Salem's plan to turn Atlas and Mantle against each other, while the heroes struggle to counter them and resolve Weiss Schnee's personal storyline involving Jacques's own villainy. Just as the heroes think they're getting on top of everything and have captured the pair, Cinder reveals her presence by pressing the Trauma Button of James Ironwood, who has already been pushed to breaking point by the other villains and learning the Awful Truth about Salem. This transforms him into a villain by the volume's end, and the next volume sees him become the Arc Villain when Oscar Pine temporarily indisposes Salem.
  • Volume 9 focuses it's main conflict on Team RWBY and Jaune Arc dealing with the aftermath of what happened in the previous volume and resolving their own personal issues in the Ever After as Ruby struggles to deal with her own while Neopolitan uses the Jabberwalker to hunt down Ruby in revenge for Roman's death. While Neopolitan actually succeeds and causes Ruby to be Driven to Suicide, she begins to realize that Vengeance Feels Empty and that she didn't have anything else left to live for. At that point, The Curious Cat also reveals that they are Evil All Along and have been trying to break Ruby in order to possess her; they feel it's the only way to escape to Remnant and learn why their creators abandoned the Ever After. When Ruby "ascends", however, they possess Neopolitan, whose Empty Shell state makes her an even better vessel than Ruby was.
• Arc Words:
  • There is a lot of use in both the show and songs of words that bring to mind the idea of light, especially light against darkness. There are Academy names like "Beacon" and "Signal", descriptions of humanity as a light against the darkness, and references to "sparks" or "burn" regarding the fire of humanity to fight for survival. By contrast, the main threat to humanity's existence (the Creatures of Grimm) are described in terms of darkness and shadow, and the villains take on these aspects as well. The only reference to light and darkness that is turned on its head is Vacuo's academy, Shade. Based in a desert, Shade is the symbol of hope and life against the unrelenting, destructive desert sun.
  • Volume 3 focuses on the concept of "fall". The intro song is called "When It Falls", The Heavy's name is Cinder Fall, the Volume itself takes place during the fall season, the song "I May Fall" plays during a battle, and the episode in which the villains really get the upper hand and the plot takes a noticeable turn towards darkness is called "Fall". Pyrrha is selected to become the next Fall Maiden and the volume ends with the fall of both Beacon and Pyrrha, at the hands of Cinder.
  • Volume 7 focuses on the two concepts of "trust" and "fear". The intro song is called "Trust Love" and the massive conflict for most of the volume revolves around characters struggling to know who they should trust and being afraid of making the wrong decisions; Ruby distrusts Ironwood because she fears how badly he'd react to the truth while Ruby's friends fear their decision to hide the truth from Ironwood is the wrong one and makes them like Ozpin, whose secrets they criticised in Volume 6. Ironwood and Ace-Ops place a lot of trust in Team RWBY and Oscar's potential as Ozpin's heir while also arguing with them over the concepts of loyalty. Meanwhile, everyone's afraid of how best to handle Mantle's situation, repeatedly questioning their own and others' decisions out fear that the wrong choices are being made. The final episode is called "The Enemy of Trust", closing off a volume where fear finally overwhelms the trust and alliances between the heroes, driving them to make choices that turn them against each other. The volume's closing song is called "Fear", with lyrics based on a speech Oscar remembers Ozpin once making about how people underestimate the power of fear and how much it can change a person who is acting under its influence.
  • Volume 8's arc word is "risk", beginning with the opening song focusing on the concept. Throughout the Volume, various heroes and villains struggle with the riskiness of their actions, with some becoming paralysed with fear of taking risks and others recklessly taking on too much risk. Ultimately, the heroes learn the lesson of both Volumes 7 and 8 to conclude "trust is a risk", whereupon they're able to use risk as a method of balancing trust and fear to find a solution to a seemingly impossible problem.
  • Volume 9 continuously asks the question, "What are you?" The fantastical residents of the Ever After define themselves by the roles and duties they play in life, to the point that they do not have names until they find their purpose. They always ask what Team RWBY are, forcing the girls to examine their lives up to that point and what they've achieved. Who and what are they at the end of the day? Ruby struggles with this answer the most, as the weight of her failures in volume 8 dog her every step.
• Arm Cannon: The right arm of the Colossus is a massive cannon featuring a revolving carousel of huge Dust cartridges that allow it to fire massive energy blasts that produce different types of elemental attacks. Also integrated in the cannon is a chamber of missiles that can pop out and launch up to sixteen missiles.
• Armies Are Evil: Invoked. General James Ironwood brings a portion of the Atlas Military with him as security for the Vytal Festival in Beacon Academy. Since the actions of the series Big Bad are becoming noticeable, he feels that this is a sign of protection that will deter aggressors. Big Good Ozpin states that a guardian is a symbol of protection, while an army is a symbol of conflict. The masses will be on edge, wonder what threat a force so large is meant to fight, and their negativity will in turn attract the Grimm. At the end of Volume 7 when Ironwood and the entire Atlas Military turn against the heroes, the military itself actually Subvert the trope due to being portrayed more sympathetically than Ironwood who becomes an Arc Villain since they are Just Following Orders. Near the end of Volume 8, the military is shown to fear Ironwood at that point, especially when he plans to bomb Mantle just to get Penny back and inadvertently causes even Ironwood's most loyal followers like Marrow and Winter to turn against him.
• Armor Is Useless: Played With. Since Aura protects their users from damage and cures minor wounds most huntsmen and huntresses tend to wear outfits that wouldn't be too practical otherwise and it works out well for them. Still, some combatants - notably Jaune and Pyrrha - choose to wear armor into battle and no one considers it weird or impractical, even if it slows them down a little. Apparently using armor is seen as an acceptable, but not a necessary tradeoff, making it something of a Downplayed Trope.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • After the new students' first class, when Weiss expresses frustration about Ruby being named team leader instead of her to Port, he asks her, "So the outcome did not fall in your favor. Do you really believe that acting in such a manner would cause those in power to reconsider their decision?"
  • During their first field exercise, Oobleck interrogates three out of four of the girls over why they've chosen to become Huntresses. For every answer given, he immediately exposes the flaw in their reasoning with a very simple question. For example, when Blake claims she wants to fight corruption, he asks "How?", leaving her speechless. The trio are left very troubled both by the answers they've given to Oobleck and by the fact Oobleck has not asked Ruby the question at all.
  • In "It's Brawl in the Family", Ozpin says this to Ironwood after he tries to justify his bringing a whole fleet to the Vytal Festival.
    "A guardian is a symbol of comfort. But an army is a symbol of conflict. There's an energy in the air now. The question in the back of everyone's minds: if this is the size of our defenses, what are they expecting to fight?"
• Art Evolution:
  • Ruby's rig was updated from the trailer to the show itself. Compare the 3D model of her in the premiere trailer and the series.
  • Beowolves◊ also changed◊.^note Later handwaved to say that the trailer Beowolves were very young and weak.
  • Volume 2, in comparison to Volume 1. Darker, more holographic parts, more detailed extras (bystanders are not just black silhouettes anymore), and smoothed-out animation.
  • Volume 3 as well, in comparison to Volume 2. The animation is now a mixture of 3D models and 2D backgrounds, which look a LOT prettier than the old 3D ones.
  • The graphical improvements across the board for Volume 4 add a lot of detail and expressiveness to the series, if the Character Short is anything to go by. Grimm radiate smoke and their eyes have a trailing glow; Ruby has a more detailed and expressive model, such as having actual modeled lips. Blake's ears are notably more expressive, too.
  • Raven's model has also changed somewhat between Volume 2 and 4 to differentiate her more from Yang. In her first (unmasked) appearance she had exactly the same hairstyle and face as her daughter.
  • Volume 7, along with the outfit changes, gives the characters mode defined fingers with visible fingernails. Something lacking from the earlier models, and all the more noticeable when those old models are side by side with the models made for the new volume.
  • A few minor flaws in the Volume 7 character models were upgraded for Volume 8. Weiss's braid was untextured and unrealistically bulky while Blake's hair was immobile and her clothing was too skintight across her breasts. Also, ever since Blake's ears became more functional from Volume 4 onwards, they've always folded incorrectly whenever she was distressed; instead turning sideways or backwards, they'd fold over like a dog with floppy ears. This has been fixed for Volume 8, allowing her ears to move and fold in a manner that's much more realistic.
• Artifact Title: Averted in the show proper but a few tie-in media don't focus on the titular team. RWBY: After the Fall features Team CFVY and RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant is about tales told by Ozpin.
• Artistic License – Physics: Present in a number of fights. Most noticeable in the Volume 2 opener food fight, thanks to the seemingly-indestructible food items used as bludgeons - and the cans of soda that behave more like grenades. It is likely justifiable by way of how Aura works.
• Artificial Limbs:
  • Mercury's legs are prosthetic in nature, as revealed in the battle against Amber (this presumably has something to do with his father). Ironwood is also revealed to have this (the right side of his torso seems to be mechanical).
  • After Yang loses an arm a metal prosthetic is made, which she uses reluctantly.
• Art Shift:
  • A news report shown in the first episode is done in hand-drawn animation.
  • Comedy moments will involve cutesy artwork: Ruby turns into a chibi as she gushes over student weapons, Ruby and Yang's catfight is shown as a Big Ball of Violence and Ruby's thoughts while running through the forest being stylized as comic characters (Rooster Teeth Animated Adventures style, to be precise).
  • Flashbacks tend to get a 2D anime-style animation, ranging from Blake's White Fang idealism as a child to the dark, gritting forest nightmare that almost got Yang and Ruby killed as very young children.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Various fandom ships gained names based on which pair was being shipped and the creators decided to bring a couple of them into the show as team attack strategies. In the Volume 2 episode "Painting the Town...", Team RWBY uses "Bumblebee" for a Blake/Yang combination attack and "Ladybug" for a Ruby/Blake combination attack. In "New Challengers", Jaune unsuccessfully attempts to do the same thing with his team, referencing "Flower Power" for a Nora/Ren combination attack and "Arkos" for a Jaune/Pyrrha attack.
  • When Ruby teams up with Jaune, Ren and Nora at the end of Volume 3, the fandom spent the hiatus arguing about whether they should be called Team JNRR ("Junior") or Team RNJR ("Ranger"). In the first episode of Volume 4, the writers bring the fandom's argument into the show by having Ren and Nora arguing over their team name using the same arguments the fandom used. The team eventually settles on RNJR.
  • After the Volume 7 episode "As Above, So Below" aired, YouTube reactor MurderofBirds released a 30 minute video of him and his friends abandoning a review of the episode to instead mocking Jacques Schnee for wearing a clip-on tie, after one of them spotted that the character model doesn't show any sign of a tie going underneath the collar the way other character models, such as General Ironwood, do. Writer Eddy Rivas saw the video and decided to make it canon that Jacques Schnee wears clip-on ties.
• Ash Face: The Volume 1 episode "The Shining Beacon" has Ruby launching a Dust-powered sneeze that covers Weiss in ash. She's not happy.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Defied Trope. The Great War only came to an end after ten bloody years when the Warrior-King of Vale was forced to take to the battlefield on Vacuo. Legend claims that his actions were single-handedly so apocalyptic for everyone that the leaders of the other three kingdoms immediately surrendered and offered him their kingdoms. He was able to use the situation to broker a peace treaty at Vytal, force the kingdoms to all revisit and redesign the structure of kingdoms and how they're run, and create the four Huntsmen Academies. However, he refused control of the offered kingdoms and ended the Vale kingship, becoming a teacher at Vale's new academy.
• Ass-Kicking Pose: Team RWBY frequently assemble in chromatic order before attacking together.
• Atlantis: The city of Atlas was a floating island that was lifted off the land that eventually became the city of Mantle. In volume 8, the people of both cities are forced to evacuate to escape Salem and her Grimm army. The island of Atlas collapses onto Mantle due to the Relic of Creation no longer being used to levitate it, and the resulting earthquake is powerful enough to cause water from a nearby mountain lake to flood both cities. It's also worth noting that within the setting, the Kingdom of Atlas was the youngest and most technologically advanced of the four kingdoms of Remnant.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Even after taking out its shields, the thick armor of the Colossus makes it difficult for Ruby and the others to actually damage it. Oscar notices that the missile launcher and the rotating Dust cylinder share the same chamber, suggesting that a sniper shot would be able to blow up the arm cannon. When Cordovin spots what Ruby is trying to do, she protects the missile launcher by closing it back inside the arm cannon. Ruby unexpectedly decides to charge inside the cannon itself, and Jaune immediately figures out what she's doing: because of what Oscar said, the missiles and Dust will be stored together inside the arm cannon, making them extremely vulnerable to a well-placed shot — but only if the shot is taken from inside the cannon itself. This time, the plan works and the arm cannon is rendered inoperable; the extra weight caused by the damage it sustains makes it impossible for Cordovin to move the robot without first severing the arm.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: Volume 2 reveals that Team RWBY has developed paired tactical maneuvers, where two people combine their powers and fighting styles to achieve specific outcomes. Ruby calling out the attack name is what triggers each pair into action. In Volume 3, this is parodied when Jaune fails to convince his team to do the same thing during the tournament; they hadn't listened to him when he first came up with the idea, and stop the match to debate the idea until the booing crowd forces Jaune to drop the idea.
  • "Freezer Burn": Weiss and Yang use ice and fire to obscure the battlefield in dense steam and a slippery surface.
  • "Checkmate": Weiss's glyphs and Blake's weapon range are combined to increase the speed and effectiveness of Blake's whip attacks.
  • "Ladybug": Ruby and Blake combine speed and range to bombard the enemy with a series of hit-and-run strikes they can't react to.
  • "Bumblebee": Blake's weapon range is used to whip Yang around the battlefield to add velocity to Yang's great strength.
  • "Ice Flower": Ruby's firepower is enhanced by Weiss's ice attacks to freeze the enemy solid with ice that loosely forms the shape of a flower.
• Author Appeal: Left-handedness is common because of Monty's left-handedness, and Weiss is a fencer because he had studied fencing. The show is also full of strong female warriors because Monty liked those kinds of characters.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Huntsmen and other warriors that live long enough to become tutors or truly old are extremely dangerous people by virtue of having a survived a dangerous job with a very high death toll. This can cause its own problems as Discussed in-universe. There is a conflict between General Ironwood and the Beacon staff because Ironwood believes in closely associating authority with the amount of ass-kicking that authority is capable of. It's why he insists on bringing an army to Vale for the Vytal Tournament. By contrast, Ozpin, Qrow and Glynda fear such displays will backfire rather than be helpful. The lesson the Beacon teachers seem to teach their students is that authority requires leadership ability rather than combat skill, something that Ozpin makes a point of telling Ruby to make her take responsibility for her position as team leader; this is a lesson that Ruby then passes on to Jaune, for the same reason. When the heroes, led by Ruby end up in conflict with Ironwood in Volume 8, they ultimate succeed over Ironwood not through asskicking, but through thinking outside the box.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Most major fight scenes are accompanied by vocal rock songs:
  • The fight against the Giant Nevermore in "Players and Pieces" has "Red Like Roses part 2".
  • The Food Fight in "Best Day Ever" gets an instrumental metal track with a choir of "ooh"s to highlight the Mundane Made Awesome nature of the scene.
  • In "Painting the Town", "Die" starts to play when Yang's Semblance activates to power her up from the damage she has taken.
  • "Caffeine" starts to play in "Breach" during team CFVY's fight scene.
• Avengers Assemble:
  • Team RWBY understandably does this numerously and sometimes winds up together out of sheer coincidence.
  • Taken to an extreme in "Battle of Beacon", with not just Team RWBY, but Teams JNPR, SSSN, CFVY, ABRN, and FNKI.

Tropes B

• Baby Talk: Weiss is reduced to this in "Field Trip" when trying to insult Ruby and Yang's corgi Zwei to his face, only to be won over by its impenetrable cuteness. Afterwards, she always talks to Zwei in this manner.
  Weiss: Are you telling me that this mangy...drooling...mutt is going to wiv wif us foweva? Oh, yes he is, oh yes he is! Oh, isn't he adorable!
• Back Blocking:
  • In the second episode, Jaune wonders where he'll find a quirky girl to talk to. Then he walks off-camera, revealing Pyrrha in front of the group of silhouette characters.
  • The Volume 2 opening appears to show Ruby standing by herself a la Volume 1, but then pans to show Weiss, Blake and Yang standing alongside her.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • All of Team RWBY in the Volume 1 opening — they stand in a loose circle facing outward, baring weapons against the many monsters surrounding them. Actually, it appears they are searching for the enemy, who turns out to be floating above the center of the circle.
  • It's also how they begin Volume 2, Chapter 12 facing off against a lot of Grimm.
  • Done twice in "Battle of Beacon" with Oobleck and Port, and Weiss and Blake; both pairs are fending off Grimm.
• Badass Boast: "I May Fall" is one long badass boast. Its message is that one day, the singer will be facing their Darkest Hour, alone and hopeless; on that day, even if they are defeated, they're going to go down fighting.
• Badass Adorable: All of team RWBY and half of team JNPR are cute girls who kick serious ass. Most notable examples are Ruby and Nora who are perky cheerful girls with Super-Speed and Super-Strength respectively. Velvet from team CFVY is a cute, shy girl, who can unload everybody's signature move in a row.
• Badass Crew: When Team RWBY hesitates to fight a Petra Gigas that has merged with volatile Dust in Volume 7, the Ace Ops immediately demonstrate how capable they are in terms of skill and teamwork. Since they have more experience compared to the heroes, the Ace Ops quickly defeat the Grimm without triggering any dust.
• Badass Family:
  • Ruby and Yang are sisters, and either one of them can ruin your day if you get on their respective bad sides. In Volume 1, Chapter 1, Ruby also mentions an uncle who taught her how to fight, just cementing this further. In season 2, it's further explained in Yang's flashback that their parents were Huntsmen too. It's worth noting that both of their mothers were Huntresses who were previously on the same team as their eventual husband and Qrow. Yang's mother, Raven, is so powerful, that the seemingly invincible Neo freaks out and runs from her. Even the family dog has been show to be able to slay Grimm on his own.
  • Downplayed in Jaune's case. At least three generations of his family were warriors and heroes (possibly including his sisters). Jaune himself? Not so much.
  • The Belladonna family are this as well. The White Fang attempts to assassinate them in force and kidnap Blake in season 5, but the Belladonnas all fight back. Ghira only gets a stab in the shoulder that slows him down at most. Plus Kali taking out an assassin with a tea tray.
• Badass Normal: The Huntsman Academies train elite fighters by teaching them how to use both Aura and Semblance in battle. However, there are a few characters who can fight on a par with Huntsman-level fighters despite having no Semblance.
  • Roman Torchwick was never able to unlock his Semblance, but he's a powerful enough fighter to be able to fight elite Huntsman students like Team RWBY. Even when Blake and Sun try to double-team him, he can fight them off.
  • Mercury can fight without a Semblance and even win Vytal Festival tournament fights without one. He has no trouble fighting Yang despite this. His Semblance was stolen from him by his own father and was never restored to him when his father died.
  • Watts made a choice to not try and unlock his own Semblance as he felt it would take time away from the computer skills he wished to master instead. Despite this, he is one of Salem's top subordinates, making him capable of fighting Huntsman opponents when necessary. In Volume 7, he goes toe-to-toe with General Ironwood and very nearly wins; he is defeated only by Ironwood's intense resolve to win no matter what injuries he has to suffer in the process.
• Bad Guy Bar: The club that Yang enters in her trailer appears to be a gathering place for criminals, as the owner Junior sells his services (such as hired muscle) to known criminal Roman Torchwick.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: In Volume 5's climax, the heroes and fight villains over the Relic of Knowledge, but the heroes aren't yet as skilled as the villains. They succeed due to a third-party antagonist taking on the strongest villain. Raven sides with the villains only to gain access to the Relic, which she intends to take for her own reasons. She fights Cinder, successfully defeats the Fall Maiden's powers, and leaves her for dead. However, Yang confronts her with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech just as she's about to take the relic, resulting in her abandoning it to the heroes and ensuring their victory.
• Bag of Holding: The tiny cylindrical package that Yang and Ruby receive from their father in episode 8 of Season 2. At first a tiny corgi dog pops out of it. Yang then reads a note that he also packed a lot of food for the dog, and many cans of dog food pour out when she flips the container downward.
• Baguette Beatdown: During the food fight in the first episode of Volume 2, both Pyrrha and Blake use baguettes as weapons by swinging them like swords and throwing them as projectiles.
• Bait-and-Switch Credits: The Volume 2 and 3 Credits gives the four main characters action-packed fight scenes against the four main villains of each volume, pairing each protagonist and a villain. Blake is paired with Roman in Volume 2 and Adam in Volume 3, reflecting her conflicts in the two volumes. Ruby and Cinder are paired together in both as symbolism of the leaders of the two groups while Yang is paired together with Mercury, which sets up their Volume 3 storyline. That leaves Weiss and Emerald; they end up having no direct conflict with each other in either volume, but are the left-over characters from both groups in the opening credit sequences.
• Barrier Maiden: The only thing standing between Remnant and annihilation are four divine Relics, which have the power to summon the gods for The Day of Reckoning, who will decide whether the world should be destroyed on the basis of whether they think humanity is redeemable. The Big Bad wants the world destroyed, so the Big Good hides the Relics inside mystical vaults that are guarded by elite combat schools, whose doors can only be opened by a specific Maiden of the Season: the Spring Maiden for the Relic of Knowledge (Haven Academy); the Summer Maiden for the Relic of Destruction (Shade Academy); the Fall Maiden for the Relic of Choice (Beacon Academy); and the Winter Maiden for the Relic of Creation (Atlas Academy).
• Bash Brothers:
  • Jaune and Pyrrha show an early indication of this during the fight with the Deathstalker in Episode 8, using their similar equipment (swords and shields) in a very smoothly compatible manner. Incidentally, it foreshadows their relationship in their team.
  • Professors Oobleck and Port are almost always paired up when a big enough battle to warrant the teachers' involvement develops, often paired with Back-to-Back Badasses and friendly banter.
  • Pretty much any pair of characters on the same side will fall into this at some point. Any two of team RWBY, Blake and Sun, or any two of team JNPR are Bash Brothers, as are Sun and Neptune. Tellingly, team CRDL fails at this in their fight with Pyrrha, allowing her take them more or less one-on-one, and when they do try and fight her in pairs or more they get in each other's way more than help.
• Batman Gambit:
  • General Ironwood's paranoia and insistence of keeping order during the Vytal Festival causes him to bring a large section of the Atlesian robotic army and airship fleet with him as security. Cinder anticipates this, and forms a part of her plans to focus on hijacking control of the army by inserting a virus into the flagship Amity's computers. How does she pull this off? By letting Ironwood capture Torchwick (knowing he'd want to keep the known criminal mastermind close to his tightest security) and having Neo slip in as part of the guard rotation.
  • During Volume 7, Ironwood uses his opponents' natures against them to obtain the outcome he wants. He publicly reveals the Amity Communications Project to the population while sending Robyn Hill to an openly stated location to help with Mantle's evacuation. Amity is used to tempt Watts out of hiding because he cannot resist investigating and sabotaging any technological project that his rival, Ironwood, is involved in; Salem also cannot afford to have the Kingdoms reunite after destroying global communications in the first place. Robyn is used to lure out Tyrian, a serial killer who cannot resist causing chaos and mayhem, and who has been murdering Mantle rights activists to and framing Ironwood — Robyn is the most important Mantle defender of all. The gambit works and both Watts and Tyrian are captured.
  • Cinder takes advantage of her Volume 3 success to manipulate Ironwood again in Volume 7. By leaving a black queen chess piece in Ironwood's office, Ironwood gives in to his paranoia and self-doubt, instantly questioning every decision he's made and whether it's played right into Salem's hands. Concluding that it has, he sends Winter to claim the powers of the Winter Maiden, thereby revealing the Maiden's secret location to Cinder; this is exactly what Cinder wants, as she's in Atlas to steal the Maiden's power.
• Battle Aura: Every living being possesses a soul and therefore manifests their soul as Life Energy called Aura. When trained, Aura can block attacks and heal injuries. This is why most human/Faunus characters and certain special animals like Zwei are so tough—they're using their Auras to protect against injury and achieve super-human feats. In battle, Aura that is overused or over-stressed will break. The visual effects for stressed or breaking Aura are first seen during the Volume 3 tournament face-off between Yang and Mercury as a colour-coded water-like ripple effect across the person's body. From Volume 4's battle between Blake, Sun and Ilia, the ripple effect is clarified a stress-sign and breaks involve a shattering effect around the body, like breaking glass. This breaking effect only becomes consistently used on-screen from Volume 6, due to the creators previously hiding Aura breaks off-screen for drama.
• Bears Are Bad News: The Ursa variant of Grimm are 10 to 15-foot-tall, spiky-armored bears.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Weiss is known to have an amazing singing voice. She is introduced in the White Trailer singing before a huge audience, during which she has a flashback to how she obtained the scar on her face. While in Beacon, Jaune cites her amazing singing voice as one of the reasons for why he's so attracted to her. During Volume 4, Weiss's father, Jacques, takes advantage of her talent to host a benefit in aid of Vale where she is the star performer, the purpose of which is to improve his company's PR in light of the global Dust embargo.
• Benevolent Conspiracy: A circle of Ozpin's most trusted senior teachers from the big four combat academies all take part in a conspiracy to hide the true history of Remnant and the secrets behind the Grimm to prevent the inevitable panic (should the secret ever get out) from creating hordes of Grimm who would be attracted to the negative emotions and overrun the last remaining bastions of human civilization, all while attempting to quietly deal with the associated threats to society. This gets deconstructed as the series goes on, however, as the problems of secrecy, lack of institutionalized power, and of having essentially unelected officials holding power with no real means of checking them start to pile up. In Volume 8, after Salem has already abandoned secrecy herself, Ruby realizes that they've gone past the point of no return and decides to send a worldwide broadcast, exposing her and ending the conspiracy.
• Bequeathed Power: When a Maiden dies, her power will pass to the person who is last in their thoughts, as long as that target is a young women below the age of 30. If their final thoughts are of someone who isn't eligible, the power will seek out a random young woman. This means that a Maiden can choose her successor if she can control her final thoughts. This also means that it's possible for young, female assassins to steal Maiden power if they can force a Maiden to think of her attacker as she's being slain. Cinder Fall becomes the Fall Maiden in Volume 3 via assassination whereas Winter Schnee becomes the Winter Maiden in Volume 8 via her predecessor's dying choice.
• Big Bad: Volume 1 makes Torchwick appear to be the main villain, but eventually reveals he's subordinate to the true Big Bad, Cinder Fall, and is merely carrying out Phase One of her plans. And then the Volume 3 finale introduces Salem, and reveals that Cinder is merely her subordinate.
• Big Badass Battle Sequence:
  • Volume 3 ends with the Battle/Fall of Beacon with students from the four major Huntsmen academies, Beacon staff and the Atlesian military defending the city of Vale from a combined assault of Grimm, White Fang and hacked Atlesian combat mechs. By the end of the Volume, contact between Kingdoms has been cut off, Headmaster Ozpin is killed by Cinder Fall, Beacon Academy has been overrun by the Grimm, the rest of the world believes the Atlas Military was behind the chaos and the heroes are scattered as a result.
  • During the middle of Volume 8, Salem's forces are able to take out the defensive Hard-Light Dust shields protecting the city of Atlas as she orders her Grimm to attack. General James Ironwood has his Atlesian Military forces defend the city while also drafting Atlas Academy Students into the army such as Team FNKI to help deal with the Grimm. In the end, Ironwood planned to bomb the Grimm creating the smaller footsoldiers until it was instead killed by Oscar releasing most of the energy in his cane. Because of this, Salem is taken out of commission for the rest of the Volume with only a few of her Grimm surviving the blast.
• Big Ball of Violence: Ruby and Yang enter one in Volume 1 Chapter 3 while play-fighting.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • In her first fight at Beacon Academy, Ruby's cape gets caught when a Giant Nevermore pins it with a barrage of feathers. Yang tries to reach her before a giant Deathstalker kills her but is stopped by another bombardment of feathers. The Deathstalker is just about to kill Ruby when Weiss streaks into view; having used her Glyphs to race to Ruby's rescue at super-speed, she is able to freeze the Deathstalker just inches from Ruby's face.
  • When the team attempts to stop Roman from breaching the city's walls with a runaway train, Yang fights Neo but is easily defeated by her and knocked unconscious. As Neo unsheathes her blade to stab Yang to death, a portal unexpectedly opens in the ceiling and a masked woman with a huge sword drops out of it to the floor. Clearly recognising the woman, Neo backs off in obvious terror and flees. The woman then departs without a word to the now semi-conscious Yang. It's later confirmed that the masked woman is Yang's Missing Mom, Raven.
  • During the Battle of Beacon, Cardin finds himself surrounded by some Atlesian robot soldiers that have been hacked by the villains. Just as he's about to be killed, the soldiers' heads are blown off... by their general. Ironwood, who has just survived the hacked soldiers crashing the airship he was on, walks into view, gun first. Cardin stares in open-mouthed awe as Ironwood single-handedly destroys every single soldier present. His clothes are in rags from the plane crash, revealing that the right side of his body has been replaced by cybernetic body parts.
• The Big Damn Kiss:
  • Pyrrha has liked Jaune from the moment she first met him because he treated her like an ordinary person when everyone else treated her like a superstar who was out of their league. However, Jaune initially was only interested in Weiss and oblivious to how Pyrrha felt about him. In Volume 2, she finally tells him that she wishes she had attended the school dance with him. After that, they begin growing closer but the nature of their relationship remains nebulous until the Volume 3 finale when, in the middle of the chaos of battle, she pulls him in for a big kiss. She kisses him because she's about to go into a fight with Cinder that she knows she'll never survive.
  • Nora and Ren have been exceptionally close since the beginning of the show, to the point where people in-universe have assumed they're a couple. Nora has feelings for Ren but Ren's feelings for her are harder to read. In Volume 4, they're forced to confront the Grimm that destroyed Ren's home and family, and end up snuggling afterwards on the airship ride to Mistral. Their relationship remains ambiguous until they break out into an argument about the status of their relationship in Volume 7. Nora wins the argument by hauling Ren into a kiss to which he responds positively.
  • In volume 9, Yang and Blake are stuck on opposite sides of broken bridges, in the middle of a storm. They discover that the bridges are repairing themselves when they tell each other things they never shared with each other, starting with small but heartfelt compliments, and slowly turning their exchanges into a full-blown Love Confession. Ultimately, while a tender and sweet song begins to play in the background, they both realize that the one thing they haven't said to each other yet is the key to end their predicament. Yang is a little hesitant, not quite ready to say outloud what she feels deep down, but Blake nudges her in the right direction with a comforting smile and a few words. As they finally confess their love for eachother, they are instantly reunited and share their First Kiss, while the scenery around them changes, the storm dissipating and leaving in its place a sea of clouds colored after Yang and Blake's associated colors (rose/purple and yellow), with white flowers blooming at their feet.
• Big Entrance: During the fight to repel the Grimm invasion in the Volume 2 finale, Sun and Neptune step in with their newly acquired badges and loudly announce their intent to kick ass... before being drowned out by the even more dramatic arrival of the Atlas military, which catches nearly everyone's attention.
• Big "NO!":
  • This trope is Played for Laughs in the volume 2 premiere "Best Day Ever". During the food fight, Weiss is thrown into a pillar before Ruby can catch her. Ruby then cradles Weiss in her arms while melodramatically screaming "No!".
  • In the Battle of Beacon, Ironwood tries piloting his airship when he realises the group of Atlesian battle androids he's carrying have turned their guns on him. He shouts "No!" just as they shoot his ship down.
  • When the Battle of Haven begins, Ruby yells "No!" when she sees Jaune and Cinder charge each other, she suffers a flashback to Cinder killing Pyrrha, which triggers the power of her silver eyes, forcing Cinder to halt before she can kill another friend. Moments later, Jaune can only do the same thing when Cinder decides to punish him for daring to strike her by impaling Weiss with her spear.
  • At the beginning of Volume 6, a huge argument among the heroes leads to Ruby being subjected to a huge "No!" from an unexpected source. The normally calm and collected Ozpin completely falls apart when Ruby asks the Relic of Knowledge what he's hiding from them.
  • Blake and Yang's final confrontation with Adam leads to him screaming "No!" in a panic. When Yang sacrifices her Aura to capture Adam's sword and break his Aura in return, she tosses the weapon off the cliff they're fighting on. As Adam channels his Semblance through his sword, he screams as she does it.
  • At the conclusion of her battle with the heroes, Cordovin screams a few when she realizes what Ruby's plan is. Ruby enters the giant mecha's arm cannon to detonate it from the inside, damaging it and pinning the mecha down. This act causes problems for the heroes as well as Cordovin when a giant Grimm takes advantage of their fight to attack Argus. Cordovin is forced to sever the mecha's arm in order to help save the city from destruction.
• Big "SHUT UP!":
  • In the second half of "The Badge and the Burden" Weiss snaps at Ruby for distracting her during her fight with a Boarbatusk.
  • In the volume 4 episode "Tipping Point", after telling a man who had been bothering her to leave, an already irked Weiss overhears a woman from Atlas unapologetically insulting Vale, saying that it deserved what happened to it. This makes her reach her tipping point, causing her to scream "Shut up!" and attract everyone's attention.
  • In the Volume 4 episode "Punished", Oscar gives one of these to the voice of Ozpin that he's hearing when it keeps pestering him.
  • In the Volume 7 episode "As Above, So Below", Winter gives one to her father Jacques after he keeps claiming that he had nothing to do with the slaughter orchestrated by Tyrian and Watts despite giving Watts the means to hack the security network in return for having the election rigged in his favour. Winter silences his attempt to save his own skin so that she can demand he focus on trying to save the lives of all the people who are freezing to death due to Watts' security hack of the heating grid.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Weiss in "Search and Destroy" after Oobleck says that they've been spotted by Grimm.
  • Cinder in the Volume 3 finale "End of the Beginning" when she sees Ruby revealing unforeseen power, enveloping everything around her in white.
  • Blake and Sun in the volume 4 episode "Menagerie" after Blake's mom reveals that Blake's dad has been dealing with the White Fang.
  • Weiss in the Volume 4 episode "Punished" when Jacques has her stay in Atlas pending a consensus on her future.
  • Arthur Watts in "Gravity" when he sees that General Ironwood pulled himself free of the holographic shield that Watts had trapped the general’s flesh and bone arm in, which he sacrificed the skin on that arm to do.
• Bilingual Bonus: "Schnee" is German for snow and "Weiss" is the German word for white (weiß) pronounced okay but the W would make a V more like "Veiss" (vice).
• Bizarre Beverage Use: In the Volume 2 premiere, soda cans are used as grenades during the famous Food Fight scene.
• Black-Hole Belly: Pretty much everyone, including tiny characters like Weiss, can eat mountains of food without any change in appearance afterwards.
• Blackmail:
  • In Volume 1, Chapter 12, Jaune reveals to Pyrrha that he forged his application to Beacon, hence why he's so underwhelming compared to everyone else at that school. Unfortunately for him, Cardin's room was just below, and he happens to overhear this. He blackmails Jaune into doing his homework and chores for him for the next two chapters, until Jaune finally stands up to him and saves him from a rampaging Grimm.
  • In Volume 8, after being shown no respect or any sign of Cinder holding up her end of their alliance, Neo forces Cinder to give Neo what she wants. After Oscar destroys the Monstra and Salem both(temporarily in Salem's case), Neo steals the Lamp of Knowledge in the aftermath. Neo texts Cinder a picture of herself with the Lamp and a reminder that Salem will kill Cinder for losing the Relic once she reforms. In exchange for the Relic and the password to use it, Neo wants Cinder to finally deliver on her promise and help her kill Ruby Rose.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In:
  • The knight's blade lands at a near 90 degree angle when Weiss disarms it in the White trailer, though it does fall over after a brief time.
  • Pyrrha's spear lands at a similar angle in Volume 2, Chapter 5 when Mercury briefly disarms her.
  • Sage's sword does this when he's knocked out of the match in Volume 3, Chapter 2.
  • In Volume 3, Chapter 9, all of Penny's swords fall flat, but one blade slams into the ground, point-first to pin some fabric to the ground, symbolically signifying the end of the battle.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: First seen in the Black Trailer, Atlesian Knights are humanoid robots with the ability to transform their hands into either blades or guns.

• Blank White Eyes:
  • Ruby in Volume 1, Chapter 4, when Ozpin drops the bomb on how the team matchmaking works.
  • Ruby again in Volume 1, Chapter 8, as she is falling from the sky. She then gets intercepted by Jaune who was tossed by a Death Stalker, and then develops Circling Birdies (actually, circling wolves) shortly afterwards. Happens to her again later as her reunion with her sister is suddenly interrupted by Nora.
  • Weiss, Blake and Yang do this in Volume 1, Chapter 15, when Ruby agrees to Penny's notion that she's her friend (her teammates vehemently deny this and mime to Ruby to reject it); they collapse to the ground afterward.
  • Weiss again in Chapter 8 of Volume 2 when the girls find out the huntsman they'll be shadowing is Professor Oobleck, who doesn't seem like the typical badass Huntsman they envisioned—initially.
• Blank White Void: In Volume 6, Jinn reveals that there is a place between realms that is an endless white void, and uses this place a blank canvas on which to illustrate the story she tells of Remnant's secret history. It is in this place that the God of Light originally gave Ozpin his mission to save humanity and which Ozpin subsequently uses to protect the four Relics from Salem. By creating a Pocket Dimension within the void that is accessible through a Vault underneath each Huntsman Academy, Ozpin can protect the Relics by ensuring only a Headmaster can grant access to the Vaults, and only a Maiden can then grant access to the dimensional chambers where each Relic is stored.
• Blessed with Suck: Everyone's got a Semblance, a special power that only they can do. However, it's later established that not all Semblances are cool and useful; your Semblance can be, for instance, to cause misfortune to the people around you...poor Qrow.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Used liberally, characters use their Aura to avoid any actual damage when they block attacks so the use is justified. Often the characters augment their blocking using dust and their Semblances to deflect attacks that would be to strong for their Aura alone.
• Bloodless Carnage: The Grimm don't bleed, they disintegrate when they've been defeated. As a result, slaughtering Grimm does not cause blood to flow. When people fight each other, Aura protects the body from serious injury, also ensuring there is limited to no blood flow. As a result, blood is used to indicate that a person has received a life-threatening injury, usually when Aura has broken and usually happening on an individual level rather than through carnage examples: for example, Cinder impaling Weiss at Haven, causing blood to soak through Weiss's clothes. Sometimes it's to represent a life-changing injury such as flashbacks revealing bloody bandages on Mercury's legs that sets up the reveal that he's a double-amputee or bloody bandages cover Yang's arm after her arm is severed. The exception is Adam, who tends to shed a lot of blood when he slaughters humans, showing both his threat level and his descent into villainy.
• Blown Across the Room:
  • Inverted, guns are powerful enough to throw the shooter across the room and is used as a form of locomotion, while no one that gets shot is thrown around thanks to their Aura.
  • Ruby does get knocked backward by a rocket shot from Torchwick's cane in "Black and White". She's fine though.
  • Happens repeatedly during the super-powered Food Fight in Volume 2, Chapter 1.

• Book Ends:
  • The song "From Shadows" is a powerful song with hard rock and metal elements as the singer speaks of revolution — of the down-trodden rising up from darkness to take back what's rightfully theirs. However, the introduction and close bookends a song of revolution with a slow and lonely piano solo.
  • In "Lessons Learned", the first and last shot of the scene of Winter tutoring Weiss is of a caterpillar, which acts to identify the progress Weiss is making in developing her Semblance. The scene starts with Weiss's lack of faith in her Summoning ability while the caterpillar crawls alone in view of the camera. The scene ends with the caterpillar being stopped by a tiny summoned sword as Weiss and Winter depart, unaware that Weiss has started to manifest her ability.
  • The "beginning" of the opening act in the machinations of the villains' occurs in the pilot episode. The show opens to a narration by a mysterious woman that ends with a male narrator refuting her darkness by expressing faith in a "smaller, more honest, soul". The same episode quickly reveals the male narrator to be Professor Ozpin, headmaster of Beacon Academy. The next three volumes consists of Ruby and her team trying to develop their skills at Beacon Academy while also trying to figure out what the villains are up to. Volume 3 closes with the same mysterious woman narrating a response to Ozpin's pilot episode objection; as she announces the close of the first stage of her plan and her intention to begin "the end" of Ozpin.
  • Volume 7 starts with the protagonists approaching the floating city of Atlas in a stolen Manta-class airship. It ends with the protagonists flying away from the floating city of Atlas in another stolen Manta-class airship. The same number of people are on board the airship on both occasions. Together, the two scenes open and close the volume's over-arching themes. At the beginning of the volume, the passengers include Qrow and Oscar and the group doesn't know who else they can trust. In the finale, the passengers include Pietro and Penny instead of Qrow and Oscar, and they're back to not knowing who else they can trust.
  • Neo's first introduction to the heroes consists of her grinning with a curtsy as she mockingly rescues Roman by vanishing and reappearing elsewhere as she flees the scene. Volume 9 sees her repeat the gesture. At the end of the volume, after she's been freed from Demonic Possession, she forever says goodbye to Roman before giving the heroes a respectful curtsy and smile before vanishing into the Tree for Ascension. Her character arc thus completes its cycle from her being introduced as an antagonist to departing in a way that gives her closure from that life.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In a world where Phlebotinum, guns, and blades intersect, Jaune uses... a plain old sword and a collapsible shield/scabbard. Ruby lampshades this, saying that it's good to have a healthy respect for the classics. He eventually upgrades it in Volume 4, so the shield folds into the sword and turns it into a BFS.
  • General Ironwood's weapon of choice? A simple revolver. It's a damn big one, but there's nothing else really notable or crazy about it. It really should tell you everything you need to know about the world of Remnant when a Hand Cannon is considered boring and mundane. It seems to have two barrels and two triggers, but that is still far more normal than most weapons in the setting... and it still kicks ass.
  • Have your fancy weapon knocked out of your hands? Just bash the enemy on the nose. Qrow does this in his fight with Tyrian in Volume 4. A volume later, Ozpin teaches Ruby a lesson about the art of headbutting an opponent, which she puts into practice during the battle of Haven when Mercury knocks her weapon out of her hands.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The chainsaw-wielding White Fang lieutenant Weiss takes on in "No Brakes". Despite his relatively unassuming appearance, he proceeds to tank dozens of hits from Weiss before knocking her out practically as an afterthought. Later in the same episode, after seeing what he's done to Weiss, Blake decides to run away rather than even make an attempt at taking him on.

• Both Sides Have a Point: In Volume 8, disagreement between Ruby and Yang on what to do splits the group as each side tries to argue their plan is more important than the other. Ruby and Nora want to focus on warning the rest of Remnant about Salem while Yang and Ren want to evacuate the people of Mantle, who need help immediately. Jaune and Oscar don't take either side and instead solve the issue by suggesting that they complete both missions, splitting into two teams to achieve both the separate goals and the shared common goal of trying to save as many lives as possible.
• Bottomless Magazines: Countless characters have weapons that also double as guns, many of which also have gatling-like firing rates. There are occasions when Ruby and Weiss have been shown switching their weapon ammo from one Dust type to another, and one or two occasions where Yang has been shown reloading her ammo in a dramatic way to indicate she's about to get serious. However, for the most part, Huntsmen are almost never shown running out of ammo or needing to reload, even in those weapons that seem to hold very few rounds, such as Blake, Ren and Nora's. This is occasionally used as a plot point; in Volume 2, Weiss gives Blake a Dust cartridge which enables Blake to start using Dust effects with her cloning Semblance during her battle with Roman, and Volume 9 establishes that Dust reserves are low, forcing Weiss and Blake to limit how much Dust they use in battle until the volume's climax, where use of Dust becomes unrestricted.
• Brand X:
  • Shi-nee brand toothpaste (assumed name).
  • Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes (cereal).
  • Udder Satisfaction (on a carton of milk at the start of the food-fight scene).
  • People Like Grapes & Dr. Pipper Soda
  • Gentleman's Best Friend (canned dog food)
  • Samurai Shampoo
• Breaking the Fellowship: The Beacon headmaster creates Team RWBY, who must learn to work together both academically and in combat in order to graduate. They are forced to separate after the villains invade Vale in the Beacon arc and don't reunite until the Anima arc. Yang loses her arm and recovers at home; Weiss is forcibly taken to Atlas by her father Jacques; and Blake goes on the run to her Menagerie home after her Psycho Ex-Boyfriend Adam helped the villains destroy Beacon and maim Yang. As for Ruby, she joins the remains of Team JNPR to seek out the villains.
• Breakout Character:
  • Torchwick was supposed to have been a one-off character for the first episode only. They liked how he came out and his voice actor's skills so much so that they made him a major part of the Volume finale, as well as a major player in the group of villains in the second volume.
  • Velvet was meant to be a one-off character demonstrating the challenges of being a Faunus. However the fandom response was so strong, she was turned into a recurring character with her own team.
• Break the Badass:
  • Yang enjoys fighting and wants to become a Huntress for the thrill of adventure. In Volume 3, she undergoes a series of traumatic events that leave her reeling and broken by the end of the volume. During the tournament, she is tricked by Emerald into seemingly breaking Mercury's legs in front a live global audience, who believe she ruthlessly attacked an innocent man; she's disqualified, with her reputation destroyed. When Beacon is invaded, Yang's attempt to save Blake from Adam results in him severing her arm with a single stroke. She ends the volume, broken and bedridden. It takes her the whole of Volume 4 for her to get back to her feet and back in the game... along with a state-of-the-art Atlesian cyberarm.
  • Pyrrha Nikos is a world-famous student who has won the Mistral Tournament a record-breaking four times. In Volume 3, she is given an offer that threatens to break her spirit if she accepts it. She is asked by Ozpin's inner circle to replace the comatose Amber as Fall Maiden, a girl with magical power the world believes is just a fairy tale. While it may stop the villains from stealing unimaginable power for their own use, the catch is that the artificial process to transfer the power may destroy her identity. While she istressed by the weight of the choice, the villains fix her match to fight Penny; with her magnetism power and Emerald's trickery, she accidentally kills the Robot Girl in front of a live audience, triggering such negativity that the Grimm begin invading Vale. She decides to become the Fall Maiden, but is prevented by Cinder, who obtains the power instead. Believing that only she can try to stop Cinder until help arrives, she fights The Heavy alone and dies seconds before help arrives.
  • In Volume 6, Maria Calavera reveals she used to be The Grimm Reaper, a legendary Huntress whom Qrow so idolised he designed his weapon after hers. However, she disappeared in mysterious circumstances, never to be heard from again. Maria reveals that her final fight left her blinded, and too terrified to ever fight again. She believes she failed her calling and betrayed what it means to be a Huntress. The Big Bad sent assassins after her because she was a Silver-Eyed Warrior. They only succeeded in blinding her, and she killed them all, but she was so terrified more would come to finish the job that she went into hiding for the rest of her life. She decides to mentor Ruby's developing silver eyes power as a way of atoning for her failures.
• Break Them by Talking:
  • In the Volume 5 episode "Haven's Fate", Yang makes Raven aware that she's not as strong as she thinks she is, saying that she's trying to bolt to save her own skin. She also points out that taking the Relic of Knowledge will make Raven a target on Salem's hit list. Faced with the prospect of allowing Yang to take the Relic, a distraught Raven can only watch as her daughter enters the vault and they apologise to each other.
  • In the Volume 7 episode "Gravity", Salem appears before the heroes through a mirage to declare her impending victory and offer them one last chance to submit to her. When Ruby declares her resolve to fight Salem despite knowing that she is immortal, Salem reduces the girl to a sobbing wreck in two short sentences.
• Breaking Old Trends: Most volumes had scenes depicting characters outside the core team and their Arc Villain as a way to establish lore and the goings on in the world of Remnant as a whole. Volume 9 confined itself solely with the Team, Neopolitan and Jaune in the Ever After, leaving the fate of the rest of the world outside a mystery until the last episode where they left.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Volume 1, Chapter 4, Nora thinks she and Ren should have a secret signal, such as a sloth call. Ren tells her he doesn't think sloths make any noise, leaving her thinking it's ideal because Ren's quiet, too. In Volume 1, Chapter 7, when Ren defeats the King Taijitu, he hears a weird sound from the trees which turns out to be Nora. He tells her that he still doesn't think that's what a sloth sounds like.
  • In Volume 1, Chapter 11, Nora suggested to her team (and team RWBY) that they should break Cardin's legs for being such an ass which is dismissed as a not-serious suggestion. In Chapter 12, Pyrrha attempts to cheer up Jaune by letting him know that she'd be willing to break Cardin's legs for real.
  • Weiss gets called "Ice Queen" by several people, much to her irritation. This is used for humor again, several episodes later, when Roman, who has never met her before, says "Ladies, Ice Queen, always a pleasure". Weiss is not amused. In Volume 3, Qrow references "Ice Queen" himself, much to Weiss's indignation, only for her to discover that Qrow is actually addressing Winter, not Weiss.
  • Jaune instead calls Weiss "Snow Angel" per his attempts to woo her. When she first meets Neptune, he calls her that and she's flattered. Jaune can't believe it, especially since she's been dismissive of his attempts so far.
  • In Volume 2, Chapter 5, Jaune tells Pyrrha that if she can't get a date to the prom, he'll go in a dress. In Chapter 7, during the dance itself, he finds out Pyrrha didn't get a date... guess what he proceeds to do.
• Bright Is Not Good: The Schnee family is entirely white-themed. Their surname means "snow" and those born into the family have names that evoke whiteness. The red-themed founder of the Schnee Dust Company, Nicholas, is a good man who uses his wealth to lift the people of Mantle out of poverty. However, the family head, Jacques Schnee, marries into the family and takes on the family's name and symbols after taking over the business from Nicholas. Under his leadership, the SDC loses the beacon of quality and philanthropy; as a stately, white-haired, white-suited man, he looks the part and engages in good PR, but is a greedy businessman who not only maximizes profit by cutting corners on quality, suppressing wages and workers rights, but who also terrorizes his own family and seeks to control every aspect of their lives.
• Brutal Honesty: Most of the teachers at Beacon use this at least once:
  • Glynda Goodwitch's first two acts are to save Ruby when she picks a fight with Torchwick, and then to call her out for being so reckless.
  • Ozpin welcomes the new students to his school with a Dare to Be Badass speech which begins as a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Peter Port gives Weiss a blunt "that's absurd" when she suggests that Ozpin made a mistake in making Ruby the team leader, then points out a few of her worst traits before giving her some sound advice.
  • Bartholomew Oobleck calls out Jaune and Cardin for not paying attention in class and telling them being accepted into Beacon means they're being held to a higher standard (with a hint of Oblivious Guilt Slinging since Jaune got in with fake credentials). He also makes Weiss, Blake, and Yang re-evaluate their reasons for wanting to be Huntresses.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes:
  • Pyrrha and Jaune in Volume 1, Chapter 7 after Jaune's torch goes out when he trips and falls into a puddle.
  • At the end of "Menagerie", Tyrian asks the Higanbana tavern waitress for help in finding someone, and as he devolves into a fit of his trademark diabolical laughter, everything fades to black except for his yellow eyes.

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