Video Game / Devil May Cry 5

Spoilers for Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 2, Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Devil May Cry 4, and Devil May Cry: The Animated Series may be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned

The devil you know returns.

I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I watered it in fears, night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, and with soft deceitful wiles.
And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright; And my foe beheld it shine, and he knew that it was mine.
And into my garden stole, when the night had veil'd the pole; In the morning glad I see... my foe outstretched beneath the tree.

—A Poison Tree, by William Blake

Devil May Cry 5 is an Urban Fantasy Stylish Action Hack and Slash game developed by Capcom. The game is the fourth Numbered Sequel in the Devil May Cry series after 2008's Devil May Cry 4, and the first non-Updated Re-release since 2013's DmC: Devil May Cry. Hideaki Itsuno, director of the main games since 2, returns as the director. It released worldwide on March 8, 2019, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Six years after DMC4, Nero, who's started his own demon hunting gig as a branch of Devil May Cry, finds his happy life with his girlfriend Kyrie shattered when a mysterious hooded figure comes looking for the quarter-demon demon slayer, beating Nero with ease and taking Nero's demonic right arm, the "Devil Bringer", for himself. In response, Nero makes a deal with a Gadgeteer Genius named Nico to have his arm replaced with a cybernetic one she dubs the "Devil Breaker", and follows previous series protagonist Dante and the enigmatic third Playable Character known as "V" into the metropolis of Red Grave City to stop a demonic infestation by an evil World Tree that V claims the hooded man has caused with the help of Nero's stolen arm.

Gameplay mostly serves as a refinement of the systems present in 4, with both Nero and Dante playing similarly to their incarnations in that game. New to the series is Nero's Devil Breaker system, wherein he's equipped with an arsenal of disposable cybernetic arms that each pack different effects, such as granting highly mobile aerial attacks, brief time stoppage, or a launchable Rocket Punch, while most of Dante's innovations stem from his new weapons, such as the Cavaliere, a motorcycle that splits into two circular saw-like weapons, and Dr. Faust, a demonic cowboy hat that expends currency as ammunition. New character V, who uniquely fights through the use of summoning demonic familiars, also joins the fray, leading to the story swapping between the three playable characters. Multiplayer is officially added for the first time in the series (besides the small Easter Egg co-op with Vergil and Doppelganger in 3) with the Cameo system, letting players share ghost data or team up for co-op in several levels. Levels have less of the Resident Evil-esque puzzles than previous games, leading to much greater focus on pure combat.

A prequel Light Novel, Before the Nightmare, was released on March 1, 2019, and has multiple vignettes detailing what the various characters were up to before and during the prologue of the game, like how Nico and Nero met. There's also a manga spin-off, Visions of V, which focuses on the origin story of the enigmatic V and began running in April 2019. It is illustrated by Tomio Ogata and can be read on the Japanese manga hosting website, LINE MANGA.

A Special Edition for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X was announced on September 16, 2020 as a launch title for both consoles. It adds Vergil as a playable character, a "Legendary Dark Knight" mode that significantly increases the enemy numbers, "Turbo" mode that increases the entire game's speed by 20%, and various graphical upgrades. The Special Edition released digitally on November 10, 2020 for the Xbox Series and November 12, 2020 for the PS5, with a physical release on December 1, 2020. Vergil is also available in a separate DLC for those who already own the original release for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Preview trailers: E3 2018 World Premiere (PlayStation Europe's E3 mirror); Gamescom 2018 trailer (GameSpot's Gamescom mirror); TGS 2018 trailer (PlayStation Europe's TGS mirror); the Game Awards 2018 trailer (GameSpot's GA mirror and PlayStation Europe's mirror with subtitles), the Final Trailer (Japanese voices version), Special Edition Trailer.

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Tropes for the game and its spin-offs include:

#-C

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Nero unlocks his own Devil Trigger form while racing to intervene between Dante and Vergil killing each other during the penultimate mission. You then get to put this new power to the test in the final mission as Vergil challenges Nero, helped by a self-regenerating Devil Trigger meter and the return of the Devil Bringer and its "Buster" grab. On repeat playthroughs, Nero not only gets to keep his Devil Trigger and Devil Bringer abilities (meaning he has access to all the tools he lost from 4) but you still get to use all the Devil Breaker features as well (via the ability to dissipate his new human-looking arm back into energy, letting him reattach Devil Breakers to his stump), giving Nero a huge upgrade to his gameplay for New Game Plus.
• A Cappella: The final battle between Dante and Vergil during Vergil's campaign in the Special Edition kicks off with an A Cappella rendition of the final chorus of Vergil's theme, "Bury the Light" It sets the tone quite nicely for the final battle.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Nero's Devil Breakers decay with use, so he needs to have replacements for them each time they expire. Luckily, random Devil Breakers are placed across the levels as pickups, even in places Nico couldn't possibly have access to.
• Actionized Sequel: If that even makes sense for a Stylish Action game. The level design in 5 has been significantly streamlined; backtracking has been significantly reduced to the point where it's bearable or almost non-existent (the abundance of backtracked and recycled stages is a big complaint in 4) and you won't encounter any of the "blue wall" rooms that require you to solve a small puzzle to move on (you'll only see the "red wall" type that demand you to defeat all the enemies before you progress). Compared to 4, Nero and Dante have more weapons and abilities in this game, along with gameplay buffs that enhanced some of their old movesets.
• Action Prologue: The game opens with Nero attempting to aid Dante, who is in the midst of struggling against Urizen inside the Qliphoth. However at this point, Nero is crippled by the loss of his Devil Bringer arm and doesn't have any Devil Breaker to replace it yet, so the fight goes as poorly for him as it does for Dante, and he is forced to retreat with V since Trish and Lady are taken prisoners and Dante is left to his fate.
• Actor Allusion: In Special Edition, one of Vergil's taunts is a Toku-esque martial arts pose, one that the Quantum Ranger often struck. This only makes sense for the English language dub, as Dan Southworth voiced both characters.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts:
  • An In-Universe or story-justified example; before Nero can get his hand on his new cybernetic arm, Nico tells him to pay up first. Obviously, her Devil Breaker project costs a lot of money to develop. The game then brings this trope to its head with Nico's shop, who runs under the motto of "In God We Trust, Everyone Else Pays Full Price." Sure enough, you're gonna be paying out of pocket in order to get the Devil Breakers you need, and depending on the type of playstyle you might have, you're gonna be doing this a lot. There's an option to buy Devil Breakers in bulk, but don't expect some kind of bundle discount, as the price for bulk buying is just the totaled amount of the current Devil Breakers purchasable. Once you start throwing in the extra Devil Breakers unlocked through the story and DLC, the price for bulk buying begins to shoot up.
  • If your vitality runs out, you can revive yourself and restore portions of your health bar on the spot by paying up Red Orbs, with each consecutive revive attempt costing more than the previous one (although the game would reset those costs to their base prices if you reload from a checkpoint instead). Unfortunately, the amount of Red Orbs needed to heal up after being defeated are greatly increased when you're playing on harder difficulties.
• Adaptation Expansion: The Visions of V prequel manga references and expands some plot points and backstories from DMC1 and DMC3 that have a significance to Vergil, such as the aftermath of his battle with Mundus at The Stinger of 3, his torture at the hands of Mundus and subsequent corruption into Nelo Angelo, glimpses of Nelo Angelo's time in 1, and the day Mundus sent demons to attack the Sparda household.
• Airborne Mook:
  • Green Empusa are support-type demons that hover above and heal other enemies.
  • Pyrobats are lesser demons that resemble bats and usually arrive in swarms.
  • Hellbats are larger demonic bats that can detonate themselves when near-death.
• Aliens in Cardiff: Or rather, "Demons in Britain with a bit of Italy". Details around Red Grave City show that it appears to be somewhere in the UK, with big red buses, black cabs, yellow ambulances, even classic old red telephone boxes, motorway signs and roadwork equipment all resembling those used in the UK in reality. In Mission 2, Nero starts out in a shopping mall that looks to be based off of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, Italy's oldest shopping mall in Milan.
• All for Nothing: Dante initially points out to Urizen/Vergil that a longtime quest for power basically amounted to nothing as the latter still lost against him even after consuming the Qliphoth fruit. Dante also takes his time to mock Vergil again for the same topic; having cut off his son Nero's arm to achieve more power was not enough for him to beat Dante. This is further compounded by Vergil being beaten again shortly after by Nero, who has awakened his own true Devil Trigger, even though Dante did most of the work by tiring Vergil out for Nero to beat him, and Vergil very much implies he can still beat Nero at his full strength.
• Alliterative Title: The manga spin-off titled Visions of V
• All There in the Manual:
  • The prequel novel Devil May Cry 5: Before the Nightmare fills in various details leading up to but not covered in the main game, including: what Nero and Kyrie have been up to since 4; how Nico and Nero met; how Dante got his Balrog Devil Arm gauntlets and greaves; how the "ART WARKS" spelling mistake on Dante's Ebony & Ivory handguns finally got fixed; what Lucia from 2 has been up to; and how V got in contact with Morrison.
  • The prequel manga Devil May Cry 5: -Visions of V- covers V's backstory in greater detail, such as how he and his summons came together after Vergil stabbed himself with Yamato, the reason for V having to be the one to land the killing blow, and how V got his cane.
  • King Cerberus's role as the Gate Guardian of the innermost chamber is explained in detail by the Devil May Cry 5 Official Artworks – Urizen placed King Cerberus just before the chamber where the Qliphoth's fruit grows so that his absolute zero ice would cool down the extreme heat produced by the tree's "blood vessels", which would stimulate the fruit's growth, and for Urizen to pluck it sooner. These justify why King Cerberus is the last obstacle before the fruit, and why the area near him is initially covered in ice even before Dante arrived.
  • When V found him, Dante is somehow sitting in a throne-like structure even if he's comatose for a month. Nico's in-game report on his "Awakened Dante" section also states that for some reason, the Qliphoth was pumping Dante with power even while he's comatose, which hastened his recovery and caused his hair/beard to grow faster. The Devil May Cry 5 Official Artworks justifies both of these - the Qliphoth actually mistook Dante as Vergil (whose demon half, Urizen, fills the role of a demon king at that time), hence it formed a throne around the unconscious Dante.
  • "DMC Motorhome" is the official name of Nero and Nico's trailer van, the mobile Devil May Cry branch, as mentioned in the official promo site and some captions for the van's concept art such as one found in the Devil May Cry 5 Official Artworks.
• Anachronic Order: Mission 6 starts before mission 5 (by about 2 minutes), with the two missions happening at the same time, while mission 10 takes place before any other (including prologue). Thankfully, the game shows where the mission is on the timeline.
• Anti-Climax:
  • The secret ending. If you beat Urizen in the prologue, the game just ends there. No revelations, no more crazy action fights, no anything. The game will even tease you about it.
    Card: Indeed, this was the perfect conclusion all had hoped for.
  • If you do the aforementioned secret ending in Vergil Mode, there's another version of it.
    Card: Usurper slain, an empty throne the crown lies covered in blood. Power is its own reward and we have just begun. So grab your blade, the time has come we only have each other.
• And the Adventure Continues: Nero, Nico, Lady, and Trish continue Devil May Cry's business (with Lady and Trish off to a new job from Morrison the last time we see them) while Dante and Vergil are in the Demon World, alternately fighting demons and each other, though on a more friendly basis.
• Antepiece:
  • In Mission 2, the first Nidhogg Hatchling is found right next to the Qliphoth growth that it is supposed to destroy so that you can move forward to the main path. This simply serves as a tutorial section for letting you know the purpose of these hatchlings. In later areas and missions, the hatchlings are placed far away from the Qliphoth growths, often with battles and backtracking along the way, or the Qliphoth growths themselves are deemed optional barriers to side areas instead.
  • Mission 3 starts off with a simple tutorial and platforming sections letting you familiarize yourself with Nero's ability to hook himself towards the floating Grim Grips. A spot then requires you to shoot a Grim Grip and grapple at least two of them consecutively. All of these are put to the test as the boss fight at the end of that mission, Artemis, encourages you to shoot and grapple on the Grim Grips that it summons.
  • Missions 1, 3 and 5 contain sections where enemies spawn right next to red explosive tanks which deal heavy damage when attacked or shot. The latter two missions provide antepieces that are nearly impossible to miss because those tanks are placed conspicuously on the main path, so the game expects you to blow them up and see what happens. During the boss fight in Mission 6, Gilgamesh can walk over several explosive tanks, which topples and stuns the giant if you shoot those right under its legs.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Nero's Devil Breaker arms are quite fragile and will break often, limiting his moveset. Fortunately, Breakers can be found throughout the game, and Nero can simply purchase some from Nico by calling her from telephones. And even if Nero has no Devil Breakers, he will still be able to perform the Wire Snatch move which allows him to easily close the distance between himself and his enemies.
  • For those who found juggling all six of Dante's weapons in 4 to be too overwhelming, he can now be limited to carrying as little as one melee weapon and one gun — which is a good thing too, because he has a total of eight unique weapon movesets in this game, and can carry up to thirteen weapons after Irregular Full Custom is unlocked.
  • If you die, you have the option of paying a certain amount of Red Orbs to resurrect yourself, with the amount of life you get back depending on how much you're willing to spend. This is helpful if you get stuck in a tough battle and don't have any Gold Orbs with you, or if you die when the boss is on their last legs and you don't want to use up a precious Gold Orb just to finish the job.
  • Taking a cue from Bayonetta, it's now possible to unassign moves purchased from shops. Useful if accidental inputs keep interrupting moves, or for a Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • You can map each character's control layouts separate from each other. This is handy since each character plays differently, and by default, Nero's Devil Trigger starts on Dpad instead of L1 like Dante and V's, so there is no issue swapping Nero's Devil Breaker break action and DT in regards to the other two.
  • Green Empusas never heal themselves or other Green Empusas on the field. This ensures that you can still focus on killing them first no matter their number, so that they won't turn into a persistent nuisance in a fight.
  • This game's version of Bloody Palace introduced several quality-of-life features:
    • You can "suspend" your current progress if you want to take a break and would prefer to continue at another time. Even though this feature is available only after the floor has been cleared from enemies, it's still a nice way to greatly reduce the Marathon Level aspect of the mode.
    • Presumably because they would get grating if they were present for every single floor, the slow-motion kill camera effects that normally play upon finishing enemy encounters only happen during the more-difficult milestone fights in every ten floors.
    • Devil Trigger is automatically disengaged if the last enemy on a floor is defeated while it's activated, preventing the DT gauge from being accidentally wasted.
    • When playing as Nero, he gets "Rest Areas" every ten floors where he can stock up on Devil Breakers, rather than awkwardly having them scattered in the middle of fights or leaving him with only the ones he starts with for all 101 floors.
    • When playing as V, the timer will freeze while you're finishing the last enemy on the floor.
    • Defeating the boss on every 20th Stage fully restores your Vitality Gauge.
    • During the Artemis boss fight, Dante and V can destroy the Grim Grips to receive Green Orbs. This is to compensate for their lack of a counterpart to Nero's Hell Bound mechanic which takes advantage of the Grim Grips as grappling points.
    • The boss fight on Stage 98 is derived from the Hopeless Boss Fights where Urizen is still sitting on his throne and you are required to break his floating crystal. But unlike the main story fights where you can still keep on fighting Urizen himself even after breaking the crystal, this stage only requires you to break the crystal, thus saving a lot of time and effort.
  • The Void training room has an option that allows Nero to have "unlimited" Devil Breakers; though the robotic arms will still break if you use Break Away and Break Age, this option endlessly cycles through the Devil Breaker arms that you equipped in the Magazine slots.
  • There are achievements for getting S Ranks in missions or in an entire difficulty mode. Fortunately (and taking a cue from DmC), the Difficulty Mode and Mission Select menus already display every completed mission's ranking as a vertical list, thus saving time from navigating menus whenever you want to check and replay missions that still have low ranks. It's an improvement over the first four DMC games where there are separate screens/menus for replaying missions and for viewing a list of your missions' rankings.
  • Just like in DmC, Secret Missions can be accessed directly from the Main Menu even after you just discover them. This allows you to replay Secret Missions at your own leisure but without having to replay the actual level where they are found.
• Anti-Hoarding: Nero can hold a maximum of eight Devil Breakers, and they are cheap and easily found as pickups. Switching Breakers requires Nero to destroy his current one (either by using Break Age/Break Away, or by getting hit whilst using them), however.
• Anything but That!: The sheer prospect of being forced to go to Patty's eighteenth birthday is enough for Dante to accept V's job right then and there. Before the Nightmare gives context to Dante's fear; he dreads being around and forced to socialize with so many "normal people" because he considers himself a freak, and he was still planning to celebrate Patty's birthday with her afterwards, just not around her friends.
• Arc Words: The word "Nightmare" pops up a lot and is mostly thematically used around Vergil and his two halves, V and Urizen.
  • The title of the prequel light novel is Before the Nightmare.
  • V's Golem familiar is named Nightmare, with abilities derived from the original Nightmare demon from DMC1.
  • It's in a part of Urizen's boast before Nero fights him for the second time.
    Urizen: I will show you... your worst nightmares! I will give you... despair and death!
  • The aftermath of Mission 18's boss fight reveals V's familiars being the manifestations of Vergil's thoughts when he was Nelo Angelo. As Griffon puts it, their deaths mark "the end of Vergil's nightmares".
  • In the Special Edition, a lyric from Vergil's "Bury the Light" leitmotif reads "Inherit the nightmare, Surrounded by fate, Can't run away".
• An Arm and a Leg: Nero gets his right arm, the Devil Bringer, yanked off by the mysterious hooded antagonist; his own father, no less.
• Arm Cannon:
  • Gerbera's Break Age while on the ground has Nero fire off a massive laser.
  • The Deluxe Edition lets Nero equip a Mega Buster as a Devil Breaker.
• Armed Legs:
  • Dante has Balrog as one of his starting weapons, a Devil Arm that covers both his arms and legs with armor and enhances his punches and kicks with flames. Its "Kick" mode allows him to perform sweeping Capoeira-style kicks.
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil uses the gauntlet-and-greave weapon Beowulf just like how he did back in the third and fourth games. Gameplay-wise, it functions similarly to its DMC4 iteration.
• Art-Shifted Sequel:
  • Thanks to the RE Engine, the game moves away from the previous four classic titles' Gothic anime art style to a more photo-realistic look, although plenty of Gothic aspects remain in the city's architecture. The MT Framework engine of DMC4 also used vibrantly colored visual effects for several attack animations, but the RE Engine for 5 narrowed down the color palette of these returning attack animations for its consistency in the photorealism aspect.
  • The title logo itself is vastly different from the older title logos. The ones from previous classic DMC installments have a red-and-black color scheme with a silhouetted figure on the right side with some additional colors — Trish in 1, Dante in 2, 3, and the anime, and Nero in 4. The one for 5 is more elaborate and colorful with a red-and-light-blue angelic "V" symbol behind the title. This is actually foreshadowing the moment where Nero gains his Devil Trigger, and his wings form a V shape resembling the logo.
• Artificial Brilliance:
  • Green Empusa prioritize healing the most powerful enemy type present in the fight.
  • Proto Angelos are mostly defensive in combat and are programmed to use their blocking stance and/or powerful Counter-Attack when they receive too many hits from the player. This behavior tries to discourage the player from relying on Button Mashing or being too aggressive against a Proto who's still moving freely.
  • From Vergil's mode in the Special Edition, the Final Boss Dante can switch his Styles in real-time as a response to how you're fighting. For example, he will switch to Royalguard whenever he notices you spamming Judgement Cuts, and after a few moments, he will unleash a Royal Release to break your combo and deal heavy damage to you in return.
• Artificial Limbs: Nero now has robotic arms called "Devil Breakers" in place of his Devil Bringer from 4, performing many of the same old functions (such as Snatch and Buster) but also with new features (such as being able to detach from his arm as a rocket that he can then surf on, similar to Dante surfing on Lady's rocket in 3). However, the Devil Breakers will break if Nero is either hit while using them or if he uses a Break Age or Break Away, so he has to replace them and restock from Nico. Fortunately, they can also be found around the levels as pick-ups.
• Ascended Glitch: Vergil's ability to Lag Cancel all of Yamato's moves with a Just Frame Judgement Cut was originally a glitch in 4:SE which originally involved frame-perfect cancels into his Trick teleport. In 5:SE, the Trick part is removed, simplifying the process to holding the melee button during a Yamato move and releasing it as soon as Vergil sheathes it.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The picture unlocked for finishing Mission 18 with an S-Rank in New Game Plus depicts Dante inside Nico's van, sadly eating a strawberry sundae - it's a direct recreation of a memetic frame from Episode 5 of the anime.
  • The taunt V gets for beating Bloody Palace makes his cane glow, leave afterimages and produce the same swinging sound effects like a lightsaber would, poking a little fun at how the fandom jokes about V having an uncanny resemblance to Kylo Ren.
  • Doubling as a Continuity Nod to Devil May Cry 4, the pose that Dante makes in the ending still for the Special Edition has him do his "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" pose from that game, all while Vergil and Nero are casually taking in the scenery!
• As You Know: Late in the game, Nero makes a speech to Kyrie about his feelings about not having a family growing up, and monologues his guilt about not being able to save Credo in the previous game. These traits have not even been referenced previously, yet are brought up to justify his decision to save Vergil, which unlocks Nero's actual Devil Trigger.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Nero gives a giant "Fuck you" to his father Vergil during their fight in the final chapter when he first activates his newly-acquired Devil Trigger, complete with an atomic middle finger with a giant ray of light shooting upward.
• Award-Bait Song: "Legacy", the song that plays at the beginning of Mission 20 and in the end credits.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The taunts gained from the EX Provocation skill are elaborate, well-choreographed sequences that give an instant SS rank. That said, they only give the rank if done fully; they're extremely long, leave you vulnerable, and they're the most expensive upgrades in the shop. V is the only character who could possibly use it in proper combat, since his demon pets can still attack while he dances. Vergil can also get away with doing his, given the right combo and under the assumption his target isn't Immune to Flinching.
• Awful Truth: Nero is bent on taking revenge against the mysterious demon who ripped his arm. He's briefly out of words when that "demon" is actually his father Vergil. After revealing this, Dante specifically points out that he wanted to keep it a secret so that Nero won't have to kill his old man. It turns out even Trish and Lady knew it as well, and the latter also tries to convince Nero that killing your father isn't something you can recover from. Fortunately, Nero thinks of an alternative option; stop the fight between Dante and Vergil so that nobody dies among them.
• Ax-Crazy: Hell Antenoras are Hell Cainas tortured into madness and are given hatchets for weapons. They are unstable on the battlefield, becoming berserk after being knocked back, which may cause them to attack not just you, but even their fellow demon kin.
• Backtracking: There are some backtracking segments in the stages, which usually consist of discovering paths blocked by the Qliphoth's roots, finding something that destroys those roots (either by obtaining a Nidhogg Hatchling or destroying a Qliphoth Blood Clot), and returning to the now-unlocked paths. But when compared to the previous DMC games, the backtracking segments in 5 are mostly short, streamlined, or self-contained within the same mission.
• Back-to-Back Badasses:
  • Nero, Dante, and V's paths all converge at various points. Two or all three of them can be fighting demons together with the player controlling one while the other two are controlled by the computer, or if you have an online connection, sometimes by other players. The clearest example of this is Mission 13, which unlike most other levels, has all three characters charging through the same area, fighting the same monsters.
  • The final shot of the secret post-credits ending (and indeed the game itself) is of Dante and Vergil back to back fighting off the demons who interrupted their sparring match.
• "Back to Camera" Pose:
  • The first cover art features the three protagonists Dante, Nero and V with their backs turned to the camera as they walk towards several demons and the Qliphoth in the distance.
  • Some promotional art and trailer thumbnails for the Special Edition feature the Wham Shot from Mission 17 wherein Vergil has his back turned to the camera (but looks to the side) as he's surrounded by shattered glass and blue light.
• Badass Boast: As usual, Vergil will mock you with various snarky lines as you're fighting, like "How boring", "Try and keep up", "Too slow", and so on.
• Badass Crew: The original members (Dante, Trish and Lady) of the Devil May Cry demon-hunting agency return. By the events of this game, Nero and Nico also tag along with them, but the two have their own mobile version of the Devil May Cry business.
• Badass in Distress:
  • Much to Morrison and Nero's surprise, Dante, Trish and Lady are actually defeated by Urizen in the prologue, with both girls getting captured by Urizen via the Qliphoth's roots, and Dante being MIA and assumed dead by most characters until he was found by V, albeit in a coma.
  • Nero is almost captured after being beaten by Urizen during their second encounter. Luckily, Dante arrives just in time to free him and have Griffon carry him somewhere safe.
  • More than halfway through the story, V is cornered by Malphas before he is rescued by Nero.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • Nero losing his Devil Bringer, which held both Yamato and the majority of his demonic powers, means he has to relearn most of his abilities.
  • While Dante is shown to have Rebellion on the game's cover and press release renders, his default sword is the Devil Sword Sparda after waking up from a month-long coma, as Rebellion gets shattered during a confrontation with Urizen in the prologue, and you only get to use it in Mission 10. Later on, Dante acquires a new weapon, Devil Sword Dante, which serves as his stronger default sword, but is obtained at the expense of both Rebellion and the Devil Sword Sparda. This trope or plot point is also revealed in pre-release materials such as trailers and TGS gameplay videos showing him with the Sparda after Rebellion gets shattered.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: In Vergil Mode, the cutscene at the end of Mission 19 plays just as it did in the main game, which would set the expectation that Nero is about to jump in. But when Vergil and Dante charge each other in their Sin Devil Triggers, Nero doesn't show up. This results in a second round with Dante for Mission 20 who, unlike in Mission 19, starts making use of his entire arsenal and his Sin Devil Trigger.
• Balance Buff:
  • Dante's Gunslinger Style receives a pretty solid buff in this game. Previous iterations of the style have been lacking in comparison to the other styles; Swordmaster gives access to numerous powerful and high-damaging moves, Trickster provides extremely safe mobility, and Royal Guard is an effective blocking tool. Meanwhile, Gunslinger just offers extended gun functions and crowd control. While this isn't necessarily bad, guns deal weak damage and don't tend to rack up a lot of style points, making it sub-optimal compared to the other styles' more overt uses. This was even worse in 3, since using Gunslinger forced you to give up the three other styles. 5 gives Gunslinger several high-damage skills and reworks many of Dante's guns to become more specialized. For example, Ebony & Ivory now automatically charge up if equipped while in Gunslinger Style and Coyote-A's "Gun Stinger" now allows multiple follow-up shots to duck and weave through foes while piling on the damage. Special note goes to the moves exclusive to Double Kalina Ann and Dr. Faust; the former can punch a hole through even the toughest Elite Mooks, and the latter can one shot bosses. As a result, players may now find themselves using Gunslinger to actually increase their damage potential rather than just extend their combos.
  • Compared to 4, Nero's EX-Act and MAX-Act Exceed mechanics are much easier to execute in this game because the timing requirements are less strict. Some of his old moves for the Red Queen were improved as well, such as Red Queen Combo B having a faster attack animation that ties in to how fast you can Button Mash.
  • The health regeneration provided by Devil Trigger has been improved. Unlike in 4 where there's a noticeable delay before the healing effect kicks in and the recovery is quite slow, the health regeneration in 5 starts as soon as you transform and it recovers your health faster than before.
• The Battle Didn't Count:
  • In Mission 12, Dante takes on Urizen (again), and while he's much more successful than anyone had been to that point, Urizen still isn't defeated. He ominously declares that "It has begun" before pulling a Villain: Exit, Stage Left once you deplete his health.
  • Downplayed in Mission 19. Even if a player were to obliterate Vergil without taking a single hit of damage, Vergil still gets in one last shot and the ensuing cutscene acts like they've been fighting tooth and nail.
• The Berserker: Hell Antenora, Empusa Queen and Behemoth can go on a rampage and attack not only you but their other fellow demons as well, albeit with varying methods. If at least two of these demon types spawn on the same fight, chaos ensues as they can end up attacking each other.
  • A Hell Antenora enters a berserk state if it's knocked back. When it stands up, it becomes Immune to Flinching while aggressively cleaving anything that gets in its way. This is indicated by the sounds of its roar and its hatchets sliding fast on the ground, and its body turning purple.
  • An Empusa Queen literally Turns Red after feeding enough blood, whether by grabbing and biting your playable character, by scything away its fellow demons (usually the lesser Empusa variants), or by drinking blood from certain environmental objects. In this state, it becomes more aggressive and almost Immune to Flinching.
  • A Behemoth goes berserk around the entire battlefield if the wooden restraint on its tail is destroyed, allowing its mouth to break free from its chains and attack anyone on its path.
• BFG: Lady's Kalina Ann rocket launcher returns as a hidden weapon in one of the levels. If Dante finds it by the climax of the game (where Nico gives him a replica of the weapon), he gains the "Double Kalina Ann", which is him dual-wielding two rocket launchers that come with the ability to join together to fire off a massive laser.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The primary, standard Cannon Fodder demon enemies in this game are the "Empusa", who work like demonic ants that deliver all the stolen blood back to the hive which serves as the center of the Qliphoth.
• Bitch Slap: Nero does this to Dante during the final confrontation with his father Vergil, using one of the spectral wings of his true Devil Trigger. The blow is enough to make Dante, who has already taken a beating as it is from his brother, have to sit the battle out. Dante also promptly lampshades what happened and name-drops the trope:
  That bitch slap nearly killed me.
• Bittersweet Ending: Vergil is back to his Anti-Villain/Anti-Hero self again and Nero, thanks to fully awakening to his Sparda blood, regrows a new, now fully human-looking arm and gains his own unique Devil Trigger. Sadly, Red Grave City is in ruins and God knows how many people are dead, meaning there's a very slim chance the city will ever recover. And to clean up the mess Urizen caused, Vergil and Dante both embark on a potentially One-Way Trip into the Underworld, leaving the protection of the human world in Nero, Nico, Trish and Lady's hands. In doing so, Nero has gone from discovering he has a living father and uncle to quite possibly being separated from them forever in the span of two and a half hours. The Sons of Sparda continue dueling in other in the Underworld, but thanks to Nero's intervention, their rivalry is on much friendlier terms, and they're last seen working together to carve through another horde of demons.
• Bizarrchitecture: Apart from being a World Tree gigantic enough to function as a supernatural structure that can reach the skies, the Qliphoth operates on the laws of the Underworld and grows in a completely different way than the human world's trees and plants. Put simply, it's basically an "upside-down" tree. According to an in-game document file, the Qliphoth grows from the surface to the deep underground, so its fruit can be reached by heading straight downward. This is also referenced in a dialogue line; In Mission 13, Dante assumes the "top of the Qliphoth" is located above (he looks up the ceiling), but Trish corrects him by saying "It's the other way around".
• Black Box: Cavaliere is one. Nico's report mentions that she can't figure out how it works, and Dante has no idea how he put it together.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: One of V's finishing animations against the Death Scissors demons makes him flip the scissors up and allow it to land point-end on the demon's head, killing it.
• Blade Run: Shadow's Skewer ability creates a long needle which V can jump and stand onto. He can then run across this needle for as long as it's active, which is useful if there's an enemy impaled at the endpoint. When Shadow is fought as a boss in Mission 18, the playable character can similarly run across the needle when it's used against you. It's a reference to a mechanic in DMC1 wherein Dante can optionally stand on top of a Shadow demon's spike attack, and then shoot at its exposed core.
• Blamed for Being Railroaded: Played for Laughs when in the Monster Compendium she wrote, Gadgeteer Genius Nico chews out Nero for destroying the Devil Arm Artemis even though he needed to do so in order to save Lady.
  Nico: A priceless relic, one of the last remaining artifacts of Machiavelli's genius. ...Until somebody came along and smashed it the hell up. Just... just don't talk to me for a while.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While the series itself doesn't shy away from violence and gore, it is stepped up to extremely high levels in 5, largely due to the implementation of RE Engine used in Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil 2 (Remake). The demon invasion in Red Grave City attacks the civilians and soldiers in bloody and violent fashion with one poor soul getting impaled by a giant root, there are blood geysers in front of the demonic tree, and there is a glimpse of Nero getting his Devil Bringer arm amputated by a hooded assailant. In actual gameplay, the playable characters can be covered in blood if they destroy a Qliphoth Blood Clot or if they take too much damage. The latter is more noticeable if the game transitions into a cutscene and/or the camera focuses on their face.
• Blood Magic: The Qliphoth tree's roots absorb human blood. When enough blood is absorbed, the tree then produces a fruit that grants massive power to any demon that eats it. Mundus became the ruler of the demons by eating a Qliphoth fruit in the past, according to Trish. Urizen's goal is to do the same. An in-game document file also states human blood as the source of demonic power.
• Bloody Murder: Dr. Faust gives Dante some control over Red Orbs, AKA crystallized demon blood, which he can use to both deal damage to enemies by throwing the orbs at demons, or make enemies he attacks drop more orbs when hit. Red Orbs are also used to buy new abilities and items in the shop, which makes it double as Abnormal Ammo and Money Mauling.
• Blown Across the Room:
  • The Tomboy Devil Breaker allows Nero to charge up Blue Rose to such a degree that the fired shots send the smaller demons flying backwards several feet.
  • In the last two missions, the Final Boss Vergil is scripted to be knocked back by force after taking a certain amount of hits from your combo, complete with a Hit Stop effect for a dramatic finish. This can apply to any attack, so the player can deliberately invoke the trope by hitting the boss with any other attack for a while, then with proper timing, send the boss flying back by finishing the combo with a gunshot.
• Body-Count Competition: The second playable credits has Dante and Vergil fighting off the demons that interrupted their fight in the Demon World. As the scene comes to a close, a dialogue line plays depending on how much the player (as Dante) has defeated in contrast to Vergil, which reveals that even up until this point, they have been competing on who gets the most kills. The game has a hidden counter for this scene, and if you kill more enemies than Vergil, you unlock an alternate outfit for V.
• Body Motifs: Wings. From the title screen, the "V" that appears in the title logo looks like a pair of wings layered on Nero, which actually foreshadow his Devil Trigger sporting wings that can be used as appendages. Likewise, Dante and Vergil gain wings in their Sin Devil Trigger forms.
• Book Ends:
  • Like in the chronological first game in the series, the Final Boss fight is a duel against Vergil. Both of these fights take place at the very top of massive demonic structures, the first being at the top of Temen-ni-gru and the final time happening at the top of the Qliphoth. Isn't it a wonder why his Boss Subtitles are called The Alpha and The Omega?
  • Dante's first adventure in 3 begins when a mysterious man enters his office while reading a book that said character carries throughout the entire game. His adventure in 5 also begins with a mysterious man walking into his office while reading a book that he carries with him the entire game. Though this guy at least doesn't summon a bunch of demons to attack Dante.
  • An in-game example is Dante calling Nero "dead weight" as he is holding Urizen back in the prologue. Nero responds in kind by calling Dante "dead weight" right before he fights Vergil in the last mission.
  • In 4, Dante said "Adios, kid!" to Nero after their first meeting and battle before he left. In 5, the last thing Dante said to Nero before he left to close the Hell Gate was "Adios," complete with the same salute gesture.
  • The first event in the series from a chronological standpoint is Dante smacking his broken jukebox to get it to work. One of the final cutscenes has Nico smack her broken jukebox to get it to work.
  • At the end of both 3 and 5, Dante and Nero are told by Lady and Nico respectively that it's okay to cry about losing someone important to them (Dante's brother in 3, Nero's father and uncle in 5). Dante does actually cry for a bit about his loss, but Nero gets annoyed and tells Nico he isn't about to cry, and Nico bugs him about it. Helps that Dante honestly thought he may have lost Vergil forever, but Nero can assume that Dante and Vergil will probably find a way out of the Demon World, as strong as they are.
  • In 3, the first major demon Dante fought was a Cerberus, guarding the entrance to Temen-ni-gru. In 5, one of the last major demons Dante fights is the King Cerberus, guarding the bottom of the Qliphoth. You get the same ice nunchuks from both bosses, although the King version also incorporates a fire bo staff and a lightning sansetsukon staff.
  • At the beginning of the game, Nero asks Nico how she feels about rescuing the guy that killed her father. At the end of the game, Nico asks Nero how he feels about saving the guy who killed his father. Dante was the one who killed Nico's father Agnus in 4.
  • Also at the beginning of the game, Nero says "I can still fight!" after getting his ass handed to him by Urizen (which leads to Dante calling him dead weight, but he also ends up getting his ass handed to him by Urizen). At the end of the game, Vergil says "I can still fight!" after getting his ass handed to him by Nero.
  • In 3, Lady is the first major character who witnesses the conflict between the Sons of Sparda, with Dante emerging victorious at the end. In 5, Nero is the last major character who witnesses the clash between his father and uncle, and the only one able to stop them killing each other and make them reconcile at the end.
  • In 3, the final battle starts with Vergil demanding Dante give him his amulet. In 5, Dante walks up to Vergil as their duel starts by demanding he give him the Yamato.
  • The stylized title art of Devil May Cry 5 appears in both the opening and closing sequences; the first doubles as a Visual Title Drop transitioning from the "Devil May Cry" neon sign and the "5" sticker on Nico's van, while the ending has the title art appear during the epilogue in between Nero's final line and the credits sequence.
  • Dante has the subtitle of "The Legendary Devil Hunter" when he appears for the first time in this game's prologue. In the Special Edition, Dante becomes the Final Boss of Vergil's campaign, complete with the same phrase serving as his own Boss Subtitles.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Dr. Faust is one of the more useful ranged weapons by default (in a game with a akimbo rocket launchers, among other things) because it helps you farm lots of Red Orbs (although can you really dislike smacking around enemies with a magic cowboy hat?).
  • Gerbera is easily one of the more useful Devil Breakers, since it provides Nero with significant boost of mobility in the air. Of course, its aerial Break Age takes out the Boring part while leaving all the Practical (the ground version of its Break Age is more Awesome, but Impractical).
  • While spending Devil Trigger on powering up Griffon and Shadow as V is not as awesome as summoning Nightmare, it sure is practical, as it puts the powered up familiar on auto-pilot, allowing the player to focus on attacking with the other.
• Boss-Altering Consequence:
  • There's a very brief moment in Mission 6 where the giant demon Gilgamesh runs over some objects in the shipyard and causes several red explosive barrels to roll under its feet. Should Nero shoot these barrels at the opportune time, the explosion is guaranteed to knock Gilgamesh down to the ground, easily exposing its weak spot.
  • A Scripted Event in Mission 14 strips away V's three familiars, forcing you to re-acquire them one-by-one in the upcoming boss fights against the weaker "mirage" versions of Goliath, Artemis, and Cavaliere Angelo. The player can freely determine the order of choosing which familiar to bring, and which boss to fight. If Nightmare returns to V before the player fights Mirage Goliath, V's Finishing Move will be the lengthy cinematic Combination Attack where he impales Goliath's heart. If Nightmare is absent otherwise, V would just perform his most basic finishing move, saving the player several seconds in their mission time.
  • As you explore the stage of Mission 18, you can optionally destroy Qliphoth Blood Clots that are off the required path, causing parts of the last arena to fall off, and reducing Nightmare's chances to heal itself in the middle of the fight.
• Boss Banter: In the previous classic continuity games, some bosses would say one or two simple lines at best if they talked at all beyond battle cries and attack cues. In 5, many bosses will taunt you mid-battle and the player characters will smack-talk them back right away. And just like in DmC, the in-game boss banters are also displayed in the subtitles.
• Boss-Only Level: There's Mission 6, which only has Nero fighting Gilgamesh, Mission 17, where Dante faces Urizen for the final time, and Missions 19 and 20, which consist of Dante and a superpowered Nero respectively fighting Vergil.
• Boss Remix:
  • "Devil Trigger" gets a chopped-and-screwed synthwave/dubstep remix for the finale, with the lyrics progressing as the boss' health bar drops further.
  • In Vergil's story in the Special Edition, "Bury The Light" gets a dramatic a cappella intro for the Final Boss fight against the Legendary Devil Hunter, Dante.
• Boss Rush:
  • The closest you get in the main story campaign is a toned down version where V has to fight Goliath, Artemis and Cavaliere Angelo. The twist is that Shadow, Griffon, and Nightmare have been sealed away, and you can only unlock one before each boss, forcing you to fight the first boss of your choice with only one familiar and the second boss with two familiars. To compensate for your diminished abilities, the bosses are weaker than when they were fought properly by Nero and Dante.
  • Another downplayed variant happens in the Bloody Palace mode. Stages 98-101 are back-to-back boss fights against Urizen's three forms and Vergil. The game doesn't even allow you to pause or suspend the mode in between these fights' transitions, but it still fortunately applies the Anti-Frustration Feature of refilling your entire Vitality Gauge after you defeat Urizen on Stage 100.
• Boss Subtitles: The bosses naturally have them, but now, new enemies get them as well in an intro cutscene when they first show up in their Mook Debut Cutscene. For example, the Hell Caina have "Cleaving Vanguard" as theirs.
• Botanical Abomination: The Qliphoth is a massive, very tall demonic tree that sustains itself in both human and demonic blood through its roots. Once in a thousand years, the tree can bear fruit; any demon who eats it would gain enough power to rule the demon world. The Big Bad, Urizen, attempts to grow this tree through Red Grave City, causing it to kill many people via impaling them with its roots or letting the Empusa demons harvest blood for it. He also partially merges himself with it to sustain himself with the tree's power, waiting for it to bear its fruit.
• Bottomless Magazines: Played straight with the normal shots of both Dante and Nero's firearms as they never run out of bullets, but subverted only for Nero's Color Up skill. This time around, Nero actually has to reload the Blue Rose with special bullets (and the process will be slower if he's out of Devil Breakers), while one of his taunts allows him to quickly reload the Color Up shots. He can only fire up to three Color Up shots before reloading again, yet he never runs out of them as the skill can be used over and over again.
• Bow Chicka Wow Wow: Nico can be heard doing the "Bow Chicka Wow Wow" porn music riff after Nero saves a naked Lady.
  Nico: Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Each character has a special "EX Provocation" taunt that you can buy for 3,000,000 red orbs. It raises the Style gauge more than the regular taunt, but really, was it money well spent?
  • Completing the "Must Die" difficulty unlocks a "Super Costume" for the related character(s). It grants unlimited and regenerating meters for Devil Trigger and other mechanics like Nero's Exceed.
• Breakable Weapons: Nero's Devil Breakers can break if he's hit while using them, or if he uses a "Break Age" (charged attack) or a "Break Away" (special dodge). However, the base Devil Breaker stump on his arm's joint is indestructible, allowing him to use its Wire Snatch function even if he doesn't have an arm equipped.
• Breaking Old Trends:
  • DMC1 has 23 missions in total, but it became an Early-Installment Weirdness because the sequels from DMC2 to DmC consistently have no more than 20 missions each. DMC5 plays with that number a bit. While there are missions numbered from 1 to 20, the game actually has 21 missions in total because the Prologue chapter is counted separately from Mission 1.
  • In the classic continuity, Dante's gauntlet-based Devil Arms (Ifrit, Beowulf and Gilgamesh) consistently had similar movesets derived from Ifrit; the next weapon expands the older one's moves but doesn't radically change them. All three also have the straightforward "hold button to deal more damage" variant of Charged Attacks as their main gimmick. In this game, Dante's new gauntlet-and-greave Devil Arm, Balrog, retains only a few of the recurring classic moves. And instead of reusing the same charged attack variant shared by the three aforementioned Devil Arms, Balrog's combos have an entirely different mechanic for powering up. Balrog's attacks also differ depending on Dante's stance, in contrast to those weapons not having any stance system.
  • This game now zigzags the Rewarding Vandalism trope (i.e. not every destructible object in the environment drops Red Orbs anymore) instead of playing it straight just like how the older games did.
  • Dante and Vergil no longer share the same face models, unlike in the previous games (especially DMC3) which did so to remind that they're Always Identical Twins.
• Broke Episode: Dante begins the game having run out of money, to the point his water was shut off, forcing him to accept a job from V.
• Buffy Speak: Nico describes Griffon as a "chatty bird-thing" in her Character Report for him.
• The Bus Came Back: Multiple characters and weapons from previous games and spin-offs return after being dropped in subsequent sequels.
  • DMC1:
    • A version of the Sin Scissors named Death Scissors appears and it also shows up in the library like its predecessor's introduction via a painting. The dreaded Nobodies also make a comeback.
    • Proto Angelo is an Elite Mook version of the dark knight Nelo Angelo, who was a recurring boss. The boss Cavaliere Angelo and the Scudo Angelo Mooks are also new variants of Nelo Angelo.
    • The Devil Sword Sparda returns as a usable weapon for Dante for the first time since the original game.
    • V's familiars are shadowy versions of two bosses and one enemy encountered in 1: Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare. They even fight with many of the same moves as those demons did in 1. There's a reason they look like the enemies from the first game; according to Griffon, they manifested in these appearances because they're Vergil's unconscious thoughts from when he was Nelo Angelo. However, Nico's reports make it sound ambiguous if they're the originals or if they're their own thing. When Dante fights Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare on the way to confront Vergil, the background music even plays battle themes from the original game.
    • Vergil, who timeline-wise last appeared in the first game as Nelo Angelo, also returns after being absent from the events of subsequent games in the story.
  • DMC2:
    • The Pyrobat enemies are somewhat similar to Flambats (although they fight more like Bat Form Plasmas from the first game).
  • DMC3:
    • A version of the Hell Pride fodder Mooks are called Hell Caina.
    • A version of the Devil Arm triple-nunchaku Cerberus returns as "King Cerberus" with its ice properties, but also now including fire and electrical attacks in different forms.
    • The Kalina Ann can be found in one of the stages as a hidden weapon. Later on, Dante receives the Kalina Ann II, a replica of the original. If he has both versions, he can dual-wield them.
    • Artemis, the Devil Arm gun from 3, returns as a boss with its own body after being fused to a human Lady.
  • DMC: The Animated Series:
    • After not being mentioned for more than a decade, Morrison makes his first appearance as a secondary character, although he looks totally different, while Patty gets a cameo via a phone call.
• Calling the Old Man Out: The Final Boss battle has Nero calling out Vergil and Dante for prioritizing their never-ending Sibling Rivalry over fixing the issue with the Qliphoth. He also calls out his father Vergil for the latter's dismissive attitude towards him, refusing to fully acknowledge him in several ways.
  Vergil: This has nothing to do with you. Stand down.
  Nero: Nothing to do with me?! It has EVERYTHING to do with me!
  Vergil: Nero...
  Nero: FUCK YOU! [activates Devil Trigger]
  ...
  Nero: Takin' me seriously now?! Feeling accepting yet?
  Vergil: Of your existence? Or your strength?
  Nero: Both, you fuckin' asshole!
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • Nero will sometimes call out the names of his moves while performing them, like with Double Down. He'll also call out the name of the Devil Breakers he equips (other than the DLC ones, which just get a generic "Devil Breaker!" line instead).
  • Whenever Dante switches styles, he'll call out the name of the style he just switched to, like in Devil May Cry 4.
• Cap: You can only have up to a maximum of 99999999 Red Orbs at once.
• Car Fu:
  • Nico rams demons with the van she and Nero are riding on during the prologue. She also rams her van against an Empusa that was about to attack the unnamed soldier whom Nero nicknames "Crew cut".
  • Goliath hurls an ambulance at Nero before they fight.
  • Cavaliere Angelo hurls a motorcycle at Dante to get his attention. Said motorcycle later becomes the Cavaliere devil arm below.
  • The Caveliere is a motorcycle/dual-wield chainsaw hybrid devil arm, complete with Bike-Fu when used by Dante.
• Cast as a Mask: V and Vergil have different voice actors to disguise that they are the same person. Vergil's demon half, Urizen is also portrayed by a different actor, though only in Japanese; the English version opts to modify Dan Southworth's voice to the point where it's almost unrecognizable (not that it stopped suspicious fans from managing to catch the trick before the game released; speeding up Urizen's voice lines in the early trailers make him sound like Vergil).
• Cast from Money: Most of Dante's attacks with Dr. Faust work like this, consuming Red Orbs to fire moderately powerful shots at foes. This can culminate in a giant meteorite-like projectile that uses a ton of orbs to deal a ton of damage. Of course, you can easily recoup your losses and then some by putting the hat on enemies, which makes them literally bleed Red Orbs as they're attacked with other weapons.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Checkpoints and Autosave are non-existent in the "Heaven or Hell" and "Hell and Hell" modes, so if you die after losing all the extra Gold Orbs or if the game crashed, replaying the mission will take you back to its opening cutscene.
• Cherry Tapping: Dante's taunts where he tosses a rose, besides knocking them into the air, do a ridiculously low amount of damage if they connect with an enemy.
• Chickification: Trish and Lady are established badasses worthy of having playable bonus campaigns earlier in the series, but they get cruelly shafted to near damsels in this installment, though Lady's character perhaps suffers worse on the way down. Given only part of a chapter to act as backup to Dante as they move in on the Qliphoth, both are shown getting easily dispatched by Urizen prior to Dante's arrival on scene and then afterward get dragged helplessly offscreen by tentacles to fates unknown, but no doubt gross. Their bodies are forced to pay host to the demons Artemis and Cavaliere Angelo. A nude Trish gets rescued later from Angelo's body by Dante, but she's at least allowed to summon her clothes back and has enough remaining dignity after everything to browbeat a downcast V for his role in the plot, spurring him to continue on. Lady has no such graces and, after getting similarly exorcised from Artemis, her role in the story is reduced to occasionally showing up on Nico's van while her not having a change of clothes to put on and the embarrassment thereof is treated as a weak gag to excuse continued fan service shots of her. Both reappear in the epilogue briefly to mourn, then get into petty bickering with Morrison over who gets ownership of the Devil May Cry now that Dante is gone. After the events of the game, Lady can still be seen in menus in the back of Nico's Van, inexplicably unclothed and sheepishly peeking in on events going on.
• Cigarette Burns: The opening has Nico putting out her smoke on the face of a demon trying to get into her van, just before she dislodges it by means of a road sign.
• Color Wash: King Cerberus changes the theme of his battle arena to fit which among of his heads' Fire, Ice, Lightning powers is currently dominant. Apart from the demon itself changing colors or the presence of temporary structures (from his ice powers), the color palette of the arena itself may temporarily shift to red (fire), light blue (ice), or purple (lightning).
• Colour-Coded Timestop: The Elder Geryon Knight's timestop and the Ragtime Devil Breaker's Break Age move color the screen in a purple-gray tint. It also comes in a smaller scale via the time-stopping spheres produced by the Elder Geryon Knight, the Ragtime, and Urizen; anything inside the spheres will be tinted, while those outside will have normal colors.
• Combo Breaker: Activating Devil Trigger negates hitstun from grabs or grab-like attacks, like the Queen Empusa's attempts to munch on the player. Nero's Break Age goes a step further, knocking back all enemies around him for some breathing room, even when he's getting hit, at the expense of his currently equipped Devil Breaker.
• Combo Rifle: The Double Kalina Ann allows Dante to combine both the Kalina Ann and the Kalina Ann II together for even more devastating attacks.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • If your Vitality Gauge runs out, picking the most expensive Red Orb revival choice also deals significant damage to the enemies aside from refilling your entire health bar. It's a huge step-up over the standard revival methods of the previous games.
  • When playing as V, summoning Nightmare also fully restores Griffon and Shadow even when they're in stalemate, making it a great comeback for V if both of his two other familiars are down.
• Competitive Balance:
  • Dante being able to use his ultimate form at will in DMC5 has put some little limitations to how it previously worked in DMC2, Sin Devil Trigger is ridiculously powerful but the Majin Form still boasts characteristics that the former doesn't have, such as two special attacks that will instantly kill any enemy and bosses that can get hit by it (the majority of them in DMC2), the normal attack damage output data for the Majin Form remains slightly higher than the Sin Devil Trigger as well, and Majin Form is absolutely untouchable and can not be pushed back in any way, as in it doesn't even react to incoming attacks or stage hazards; if Sin Devil Trigger remained as broken as Majin Form while still being easily accessible, it would just void DMC5 of any semblance of difficulty.
  • As noted under Gameplay and Story Segregation, Nero's Devil Bringer has a vastly weaker Buster attack compared to the Buster Arm. This is likely a tradeoff for having access to Buster at all times, as well as the other abilities that come with it that the Buster Arm doesn't have.
• Connected All Along: In addition to V and Urizen turning out to be two halves of Vergil, Vergil is revealed to be Nero's father (which also makes Dante Nero's uncle).
• Continuity Porn: There's a lot of references to the previous installments of the main continuity, to the point where a separate page is needed to even list most of the game's Continuity Nods.
• Contrived Coincidence: How Dante obtained the Cavaliere. It just so happens that a chunk of Cavaliere Angelo's demonic armor got flung into and merged with a bifrucated motorcycle in the background. Dante notices that strange interaction so he proceeds to whack the demon even further until the motorcycle is fully transformed.
• Cool Bike: Dante's new Devil Arm bike Cavaliere isn't just made out of metal, but also demon body parts that's been fused to a motorcycle. For extra cool factor, the bike can split into two buzz saw BFSs to shred enemies.
• Crack in the Sky: In Mission 17, the scenery is an illusion of Dante's childhood home, complete with cracked sky, whose bits of it occasionally fall down as the boss fight progresses. The illusion completely shatters when V and Urizen fuse back into Vergil.
• Creative Closing Credits: Just like DMC3 and DMC4, this game features two sections of playable credits with Nero and Dante. If you kill enough enemies with Nero and kill more than Vergil with Dante, you unlock an extra taunt for Nero that heals a bit of health, and an alternate color for V. Accomplishing this feat on Son of Sparda difficulty or higher also unlocks an alternate color for Vergil.
• Creator Thumbprint: Unsurprisingly, given one of the game's character designers, Tatsuya Yoshikawa, was also the character designer on the Breath of Fire franchise, the various Devil Trigger forms feature lots of draconic elements.
• Critical Annoyance: The background music is muffled if you only have one vitality bar or a fraction of it remaining.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: As it has become a series tradition since 3, the things the heroes do in cutscenes are even more insane than what you can do in combat, such as jumping in and out of flipping cars, shaving a beard using an enemy's attack, cutting an armored enemy you did no visible damage to after dozens of hits in the actual Boss Fight into a hundred pieces with a single Blade Spam attack, and so on.

D-L

• Damage Reduction: Chaos demons take reduced damage while they are spinning with their spike-covered spines. Standard firearms are impractical to use against them during this state, encouraging the player to use stronger attacks instead.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In 4, Split (Nero's version of Dante's Helm Breaker) was R1+Forward+Triangle/Y, but in 5, it's changed to R1+Back+Triangle/Y. Likewise, when you get Devil Sword Dante, Helm Breaker adopts this input as well (as the sword's moves integrate several of Rebellion/Sparda's Swordmaster techniques into its non-style move list, so Aerial Rave ends up getting the "jump, neutral Y/Triangle" input) so you'll have to get used to that suddenly.
  • Ebony & Ivory have very noticeable changes in how the guns are used in Gunslinger style compared to two previous games. Most notably Twosome Time and Honeycomb Fire are divorced from one another, with Twosome Time becoming press Square/X then mash Circle/B (or vice versa), while Honeycomb Fire changes from mashing Circle/B to R1+Back-to-Forward+mash Circle/B.
  • For the PC version, this game's default combat controls are similar to that of DmC (wherein melee and shoot are mapped to the left and right mouse buttons respectively), unlike the PC port of 4 which mapped the combat controls to the keyboard instead. Those who played DmC before this game might also be confused on the evasion controls - Because 5 retains the lock-on function from the classic games (which DmC lacked), evasion requires you to press both the lock-on and jump buttons, unlike DmC which has separate buttons for jump and evade.
  • Devil Trigger is set to the left shoulder button for Dante, with V's equivalent of summoning Nightmare there too. With Nero however, this just destroys his current Devil Breaker with Break Away, which may come up when switching back to him after playing the others. This only gets worse when he reacquires his own Devil Trigger. In the mission where this is obtained, it is usable through both the d-pad and the left shoulder button, as he no longer uses the Devil Breakers having regenerated his arm. In subsequent playthroughs, the ability is always unlocked, so the left shoulder button is once again Break Away and even if no Devil Breakers remain, Devil Trigger is only activated through the d-pad. Thankfully, every character has their own controller configuration, so you can mitigate this post-game by going into the options and switching the Devil Trigger and Break Away commands.
  • Devil Sword Dante has a slightly different moveset than either Rebellion or Sparda. To sum it up, all of the Swordmaster abilities are now variants on Summoned Swords; moves such as Aerial Rave, Prop, and Shredder have been integrated into Dante's combos on the normal attack button, with Helm Breaker moving to Lock-on+Back+Attack in midair to accommodate Aerial Rave. The only Swordmaster move from both Rebellion and Sparda that Devil Sword Dante retains is Dance Macabre (obtained by maxing the Swordmaster style), and even then, the command used is now a back-to-forward rather than just forward in 4 (or in 3, backward). This can mess up someone who's played DMC for years, as those moves have been staple parts of Dante's Swordmaster moveset for over a decade.
  • More minor, but several of Dante's previous gauntlet weapons, such as Ifrit and Beowulf had a launcher as their Lock-on+Back+Attack move. Here, that switches between punching and kicking techniques.
  • In 4 Special Edition, Vergil's Overdrive and Kick 13 abilities were mapped to Triangle+Circle/Y+B. 5 has that command be used for the newly introduced Deep Stinger and Hell On Earth abilities, so Overdrive and Kick 13 had their inputs be changed to R1+Back-to-Forward+Triangle/Y.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Although the previous games already mentioned the attack on the Sparda family household leading to the death of Eva, Devil May Cry 5 and its supplementary material had this incident discussed briefly and revisited in a flashback; Eva died before she could find Vergil, which caused the latter to believe that he was abandoned. On the other hand, Dante believed that his brother died, and he took on an alias to start a new life.
• Darkest Hour: The game begins with the darkest moment for any Devil May Cry game thus far: Dante, Trish, Lady, and Nero all get defeated by the main villain, with only Nero escaping and the rest presumed dead. The Qliphoth then begins consuming the city at large with innocent civilians being killed right and left. This being Devil May Cry, however, the mood is still upbeat and Nero is still itching for a fight despite believing he's the only hope remaining.
• Dartboard of Hate: A variant: one bonus image has Dante throwing darts at a demon corpse pinned to the wall.◊
• Death from Above:
  • Dr. Faust can be charged up to drop giant explosive Red Orbs from the sky if you have a high amount of Red Orbs.
  • V can summon Nightmare as a flaming meteor from the sky when he activates his Devil Trigger.
• Death or Glory Attack: Several high-risk/high-reward abilities return from the previous games:
  • Dante's Real Impact, or Nero's Showdown are very powerful moves, but they have long animations and also require the initial hit to connect with an enemy. Otherwise, the character will be left defenseless for a few moments.
  • The Royal Release makes its return from 3 and 4. With the proper timing, Dante can unleash a powerful punch. Mistime it otherwise, and it will just be a regular Release. Missing this attack completely can also make him briefly vulnerable to whiff punishes.
  • Just like in 4, Nero can counter some of the bosses' attacks by meeting them with his Buster instead of dodging. However, this feat requires some precise timing.
• Delayed Reaction: During their fight, Dante taunts Vergil about his abusive parenting and how the latter tore Nero's arm off. Vergil's response was "My son ... means nothing to me!" which was very cold-hearted, even for Vergil. But the following cutscene after finishing the fight, is Vergil asking in disbelief, "... Nero is my son?", implying that they were so caught up in their determination to kill Dante that they reflexively countered Dante's insult without realizing what it means, and it was only afterwards that they caught on to the revelation.
• Dem Bones: Hell Cainas and Hell Judeccas are scythe-wielding demons with a skeletal appearance underneath their hoods and/or robes.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: Multiple factions of demons show up in Red Grave City because whoever gains the fruit of the demonic Qliphoth tree will be able to rule over the Underworld following their previous ruler's defeat.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: Both Morrison and Nero are surprised when Dante, Lady, and Trish actually get defeated by Urizen during the prologue, as they both previously considered Dante to be invincible.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The fights against Urizen in the Prologue and Mission 8 are meant to be Hopeless Boss Fights. Should the player somehow manage to win anyway, they'll be greeted with a rather humorous text-only ending where Everybody Lives, and the achievement/trophy "Well, I'll Be Damned" while unlocking "Son of Sparda" difficulty. Doing it again on that difficulty will further unlock "Dante Must Die", and so on.
  • Similarly, the Mission 10 fight against Urizen, which normally ends roughly a minute into the fight, will end instantly if the player manages to break Urizen's barrier and damage Urizen himself.
  • Speaking of the Mission 10 fight against Urizen, it's actually possible to find and pick up Kalina Ann by looking around the left edge of the arena. Typically, the player will find said rocket launcher on a secret path of Mission 11 instead. It's a very subtle attention to detail and doubles as a Gameplay and Story Integration.
  • It's possible to skip the Hell Antenora encounter in Mission 2 by jumping over the pit it takes place in.
  • Using Dante's unlockable Bloody Palace taunt while having his DmC palette swap equipped shows that the roots of his hair are still white when he slicks it back, implying that he simply dyed his hair black. This is unnoticeable with his normal hairstyle even in close-ups, making for some nice attention to detail.
  • The combat system's mechanical complexities mean that it's possible to stress-test the game with particular attacks and see how they respond (for instance, players have found numerous ways as Nero to counter Vergil's aerial assault, with one user managing to use Nero's drop-kick taunt to knock him out of Sin Devil Trigger before he could take off.
  • There is a lot of contextual detail put into Nero's Devil Breakers.
    • If Nero has no Breaker equipped and is just using the mechanized stump, he can still fire out Wire Snatch. This is because, if you look closely, the Breakers actually open up to fire the wire out from Nero's palm — so without a Breaker, they just fire out normally. Also, Rawhide actually increases the range of Wire Snatch since its main gimmick is a powerful whip.
    • If Nero activates Tomboy, then hits a Hell Caina with Buster, Blue Rose's shots fired during the attack will be significantly more powerful.
    • Nero's Breakers come in two types: "hand" and "claw" types. Nero had different animations for actions involving two hands depending on which of the two he has equipped. For example, if Nero has Overture equipped, he'll use it to help reload Blue Rose for the Color Up move. If he has Helter Skelter equipped, he has to stow Blue Rose under his arm to reload since Helter Skelter's drill bit can't hold the massive magnum.
    • Nero's S-rank taunt where he claps his hands together while pepping himself up will never trigger if Nero has no Devil Breakers on first playthrough. On New Game Plus it has a different sound effect, since he now has two natural arms — instead of the metallic smacking of his flesh hand hitting his cyborg one, it's just the sound of natural clapping.
  • Much like the above point, Dante will never do the taunt involving him teleporting Devil Sword Dante until the player gets it.
  • There are situational dialogue lines that can be triggered if you go off the main path to find some secrets and collectibles, such as Dante lampshading the Qliphoth's shortcuts in Mission 10, or Griffon chiding V (and the player) to stop wasting time if you proceed further into the alternate path of Mission 4.
  • There are also situational dialogue lines in the playable credits sequence between Dante and Vergil's Body-Count Competition depending on your score as Dante. This includes a line that only plays if the scores happen to be tied.
    Dante: Look at that, a tie. Are we ever gonna settle this?
  • Dante's Royal Block skill has more animations in this game unlike the previous iterations. In 3 and 4, he would automatically face the enemy that he's guarding against, but in 5, he can block attacks even if his back is turned against the enemy.
  • Activating Devil Trigger makes the character's voice sound demonic. While this is a recurring trend in the series, the previous classic DMC games only had this audio effect limited to grunts, battle cries and taunts. With DMC5, this now includes any Dialog During Gameplay and Boss Banter. The game would also reflect the change in real-time, which means that you can toggle the demonic voice effect even if the character is speaking mid-sentence.
  • Vergil's taunt from the Special Edition of 4 where he spins a Summoned Sword on his right pointer finger makes a return in the Special Edition of this game, and it still has a hitbox to juggle opponents with.
• Dialog During Gameplay: In previous entries, Dante, Nero, and others were mostly silent during the gameplay, only their battle cries and catch phrases could be heard. Now, there's some occasional exposition dialogue with the given character commenting a little bit about their current situation in the given mission, and some back-and-forth Boss Banter during boss fights.
• Didn't See That Coming: At the climax of the story, when Nero, in his newly awakened Devil Trigger form, throws himself between Dante and Vergil to stop their fight, after a brief pause, the most Vergil can initially find to say in reaction is "This is...curious."
• Die, Chair, Die!: While destructible objects have been a staple in the games, V can also summon Nightmare in certain places where it can break through walls, creating new pathways.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • Instant Revving with Nero (EX-Act and later MAX-Act). Revving up the Red Queen allows you to dish more damage and change the properties of some of your attacks. You can stand still and rev up the sword by tapping the Rev button a couple of times (up to a maximum of three levels) that charge up the next attack you do. But with the EX-Act upgrade, you can rev your sword as you slash it by pressing the Rev button as your sword makes contact with an enemy. This adds a single Exceed level instantly and can be done with every sword attack Nero has, provided you have the timing down. Later on, you can purchase the MAX-Act upgrade, which requires even more precise timing, but doing so will instantly grant you all three Exceed levels in a single go. When compared to 4 however, the mechanic is easier to execute in this game because the timing is less strict. But even then, it still requires practice to get the hang of it.
  • The Tomboy Devil Breaker soups-up Nero's Red Queen and Blue Rose for more damage output, but most of its attacks, consisting of wild button mash-controlled swings and having to manually aim Blue Rose rather than its usual lock on, are difficult to control. Nico's report on it mentions she "Might've overdone it this time", but also notes "What guy doesn't like a piece that's a little hard to handle?".
  • If you're looking for a more challenging mechanic to compensate for the easier timing on Nero's instant revving, beat the game once then purchase the Bringer Knuckle ability. To use this, you need to hit the Buster button right after an attack connects. This causes one of Nero's spectral Devil Bringer arms to appear and punch the enemy. While this sounds mundane what this actually does is resets knockback, meaning any attack that would have pushed the enemy away will now keep them right in front of you, allowing you to reset your combo (kind of like a ground-based version of a Jump Cancel). Do it too late and you'll just perform a regular Buster attack. Like the EX-ACT, this can be done on every strike, meaning Nero will be able to keep his enemy close at all times (which is handy, given how many of his moves tend to push enemies away).
  • Dante can change styles mid-combo. It requires a bit of dexterity (going from analog stick to D-Pad) but when pulled off right, you can extend combos, compensate for holes present in using a single style, and close the distance if the enemy happens to be knocked back.
  • Dante's Royal Guard allows him to completely nullify damage by blocking at the right instant just as an attack hits. This also boosts Style rating, Devil Trigger energy, and lets you save power for your monstrous counter-attacks, but you'll have to memorise enemy attack cues and patterns to get the timing right.
  • Dante's "Cascade" and "Mega Cascade" moves for the Double Kalina Ann are extremely powerful. However, they have long starting and recovery animations, which means that he can be interrupted by enemy attacks. And even if the former is easier to do, Dante cannot re-adjust his aim after the rocket launchers have been combined, which means that faster enemies can just move out of the laser beam's way. Making the most out of them requires distance and/or proper anticipation of the target's moves.
  • The "Quadruple S" upgrade for Dante. If you activate Sin Devil Trigger when at rank SSS, you get a five-second grace period where your gauge doesn't deplete and you can manually deactivate the Super Mode. The kicker is that, if you're skilled enough, you can reach rank SSS, activate Sin Devil Trigger, hit your enemy once or twice to keep your SSS rank, turn Sin DT off, and immediately turn it back on to repeat the sequence.
  • V's gameplay is slower, more methodical, and much more complex than either Nero or Dante's. He requires far more judicious management of the Devil Trigger gauge on top of Shadow and Griffon's health bars, and the disjoint attacks he makes need to be followed up by V's own Cane attacks. The tradeoff is that V is fun in a very different way than Nero or Dante, and he can pull off some pretty stylish moves by himself. For example, he's the only person in the entire series who can taunt and attack at the same time via his familiars.
  • As in 4:SE, Vergil has the Concentration gauge that requires he not make any unnecessary or directionless movement in order to maximize his fighting style. To properly play Vergil, you need to think as he does — collected and precise where you approach each encounter without haste. Running around wildly, whiffing attacks, and taking damage all lower Vergil's focus and rob you of his true potential.
• Discontinuity Nod: In this game, Nico is the granddaughter of a woman named Nell Goldstein, who she identifies as the gunsmith who crafted Ebony and Ivory. This refers back to the non-canon prequel novel for 1, where Nell is the gunsmith who customized Ebony and Ivory for Dante while he was still going as Tony.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Dante and Vergil, being twins, were on the verge of Always Identical Twins territory in the third game, despite having different combat styles. By the time 5 came around, the two siblings are more individualistic in their appearances, in addition to being portrayed by different facial models.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Vergil's fight with Nero in the finale has him telling Nero to stand down. He's also generally not taking his son's attempts to make him stop fighting Dante and deal with the Qliphoth seriously instead... until Nero beat him enough into submission.
• Door to Before: One of the level design's ways to minimize backtracking. When you're exploring a crossroad or an alternate path to discover some Secret Missions and collectibles, there might be a shortcut or tunnel somewhere near the end which lets you return to the main path without retracing all your previous steps. In Mission 10, Dante will even lampshade this trope after you go to the spot where Secret Mission 7 is located and jump off the ledge, pointing out that he returned to a familiar spot, and that the Qliphoth has bizarre paths.
• Double Entendre:
  • In Nico's report on Trish, she notes how Trish said that Nero was "so inexperienced" when he first met her, and she wonders what Trish means by that. It's clear that Trish means that Nero was an unseasoned member of the Order when she met him (as Gloria), but the wording can also make it sound like she popped his cherry.
  • The Sweet Surrender arm intentionally contains innuendos. Its Break Age move is named "Sweet Release", and said move's description also mentions the instruction to "Jerk" Sweet Surrender, and the phrase "blowing the whole load at once".
    Jerk Sweet Surrender off your arm for an explosion of healing energy. Restores vitality in an instant, but blowing the whole load at once destroys the arm.
• Downer Beginning: The prologue opens with all the heroes completely losing to Urizen, with only Nero and V escaping while Trish and Lady get captured and Dante is left behind, their fates unknown and the new Demon King still on the loose and the city being taken over by demons.
• Down the Drain: Mission 3 has you go through a sewer area after jumping across the rooftops of the flooded buildings. Qliphoth Roots have infested this area as well, and you end up in a library afterwards.
• Dress Hits Floor: Lady is found naked inside Artemis, and brought back to the DMC van by Nero and Nico, where Nico covers her in a Modesty Bedsheet. Soon after though, Nico needs her help clearing a path for the van, so Lady dramatically stands up and lets the bedsheet hit the floor and shows all of Lady's "smokin' bod"... minus what's covered by a convenient lens flare, of course.
• Drives Like Crazy:
  • Nico in the Devil May Cry van. A Running Gag in the game is her almost running over, or needing help not to crash from both V and Nero when they call her over on the phone.
  • Lady drives like crazy as well. At one point, Nero is nearly crushed by Nico's van making a Dynamic Entry. Nero is quick to point fingers at Nico for doing so, only for Nico to reveal Lady was the one behind the wheel this time around; cue Lady peeking out the window with a smile and playful wave.
• Dub-Induced Plot Hole: Players with access to the original Japanese script have reported that a few translations for certain scenes have thrown off, obscured, or even changed their original intents.
  • The scene in which Dante tells Nero to "get out of [his] way" while he charges the freshly-resurrected Vergil, despite Nero standing nowhere near him, was reportedly written more akin to "STAY out of my way" or "don't interfere".
  • During the Mission 19 boss fight, in which Dante quips "You cut off your own son's arm for this?" and Vergil retorts that "[his] son means nothing to [him]" despite him asking shortly after if Nero is his son, was supposed to have Vergil asking Dante what he's talking about instead during his first line.
  • After the last boss fight, as Dante and Vergil head off to the underworld to sever and seal the Qliphoth, Nero says "Hang on, if you do that you can't come back!" Apparently, he was supposed to say something closer to "I'm coming with you".
• Dueling Player Characters:
  • There is a variation where late in the game, Dante has to fight V's familiars, who have all the moves that you've unlocked for them.
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil's Final Boss fight is against Dante.
• Duel to the Death: Dante and Vergil unsurprisingly get into another fight after the latter's return, with Nero eventually stopping them as he's decided no more deaths and because dealing with The End of the World as We Know It Urizen caused is more important.
• Easter Egg:
  • If you're playing as Vergil in the final missions of the Special Edition and use his EX Provocation Taunt at SSS Rank against Dante, the latter would also pause and dance to Mozart's Dies Irae. There's a video clip demonstrating this interaction.
  • As discovered by players who looked through the game's texture files, V's poetry book contains other William Blake poems such as "Holy Thursday", "The Tyger", "Infant Sorrow", "Ah Sunflower", and "The Lilly".
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Bringing the Buster Arm Devil Breaker into the prologue fight against Urizen will let you interrupt his shield regeneration twice with its Grapple Move once he's vulnerable, allowing you to reduce his health by considerably more than what you can normally do.
  • Secret Mission 9 requires you to stay in the air for at least 15 seconds. The game tries to give you a hint via an image of Dante using the Cavaliere (as it can make him float briefly for every held attack in mid-air). However, you can just simply buy the Enemy Step ability and repeatedly jump off the Hell Antenora's head, even without relying on a weapon.
  • In Mission 15, there's a late-game Blue Orb Fragment that is set up at the end of a course that you're intended to fly over while riding Punch Line, which requires a tricky balance between maintaining enough speed to make it to the end and using air tricks on enemies to rack up enough style to stay on the arm long enough. However, it's also possible to approach the end of the course, jump over to the "track", and use Gerbera to propel yourself up the hill to the orb fragment. Or for an even easier trick, you can just use a Level 3 EX High Roller to rocket up to the orb fragment.
• Eldritch Abomination: Majority of enemies and bosses in this game look less like traditional demons and monsters and more like Lovecraftian beings and creatures, akin to games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne.
  • The different variants of Empusas are all insectoid demons with a screaming human face in the middle of their insectoid face, but with two extra faces growing out of the sides. The Empusa Queen especially looks more Lovecraftian-esque as its physical appearance is more monstrous, its head is a skull, and its ability to feast on blood to power up and transform also gives off that impression.
  • Chaos, one of the lizard enemies, doesn't have eyes, but has six nostrils on its head. It has four needle-like fangs that protrude upwards and has spikes on its back that it can use to turn into a spinning buzzsaw. It looks far more Lovecraftian than Riot or Fury.
  • Lusachia is a stronger version of the Baphomet. It has ten mouths on its body that constantly chant spells. Nico's report on this demon states it evolved to have many mouths so that it could constantly conjure spells.
  • Behemoth is a large hippo-like demon with a gaping deformed mouth that is chained up by its fellow demons due to its gluttonous nature to devour everything in sight. When its shackles are broken, its mouth opens, revealing two black tongues.
  • Nobody is a four-legged Humanoid Abomination with three explosive eyes on its torso and a large red hand for attacking, which gets bigger the more demonic power it drains. It also wears a mask to hide its eyeless face.
  • Goliath is a large beast-like demon with multiple eyes on its stomach and face, as well as a large gaping mouth on its stomach, which it can open up and swallow debris to create fireballs with or create a vortex that sucks everything up.
  • Nidhogg is a serpent-like parasite having a humanoid upper body wrapped with red muscle-like skin, and he also has blades for arms. He also controls three serpent heads that look like carnivorous plants.
  • Gilgamesh is a Mechanical Abomination with organic metal around its body that can change shape, protrude spikes and create spinning blades, turrets and other weapons. The beast is a walking machine and weapon.
  • Malphas herself is a three-headed oracle-like demon with three arms, but her mount is a disgusting and grotesque giant chick with sickly flesh, with hundreds of arms coming out of its wings, and beady eyes surrounded by layers of flesh. To make things scarier and worse, Nico's report on Malphas notes that the chick hasn't reached maturity yet and could become an even more horrifying monster if Nero didn't kill it.
  • King Cerberus is a three-headed demonic dog that can control fire, lightning and ice. It's so powerful that it can change the environment around it based on it's active element.
  • Urizen, the demonic half of Vergil, is a tall and titanic four-eyed Humanoid Abomination with layers of flesh and tentacles covering his body and attached to the Qliphoth to feed off its supply of blood. Even if he's just sitting on his throne, Urizen already has Physical God levels of power, capable of overpowering Dante (who's already in Devil Trigger form alongside the Devil Sword Sparda) and even shattering Rebellion from a previous attack. He uses a red crystal which contains the Yamato within it to create powerful barriers and mimic other demons' attacks in battle. When standing up from his throne, he can use Combat Tentacles and physical attacks, but they're weaker due to not constantly feeding on blood. It takes Dante combining Rebellion and Sparda together and achieving Sin Devil Trigger to actually stand a chance of defeating him. Urizen becomes even more of a Humanoid Abomination after he eats the Qliphoth's fruit, gaining Reality Warper abilities. As Nico's report states, his power in this form shook the foundations of the world itself. His appearance is more monstrous but slimmer, has three extra mouths (one on each shoulder and one on his crotch) and has 38 eyes on his body alone. He uses stronger versions of his attacks and can actually match Dante's Sin Devil Trigger for a little bit until Dante gets the upper hand and defeats him, forcing Urizen to merge back with V to become Vergil to even stand a chance.
  • V's familiars are heroic examples. Griffon is a demonic bird that can conjure and control lightning and is strong enough to lift humans, Shadow is a Living Shadow that can shapeshift and transform into various weapons like blades, spikes and tentacles. Then there's Nightmare, a Blob Monster that forms into a musclebound giant, can fire powerful lasers and teleport across the map. This trope becomes more apparent when it's revealed that they are manifestations of Vergil's nightmares and his memories as Nelo Angelo. They are dream-based entities that have physical presence but cannot truly kill demons, only harm them, therefore relying on V to finish off their enemies.
• Eldritch Location: The Qliphoth, while not the Demon World itself, acts as a bridge between the two realities, and its interior is a mixture of roots made of bone, vines made of veins, sacs of harvested blood, an unnecessary amount of Spikes of Villainy, fleshy structures, and the power to create illusions (the latter of which can then look like a Crack in the Sky and shatter like glass).
• Enemy Civil War: The various bosses are all competing with each other to get the fruit of the demonic Qliphoth tree, which will apparently give them the power to rule the underworld.
• Enemy Summoner: If left unchecked for a while, a Hell Judecca will carve the ground with its scythes to summon new Hell Cainas and/or Hell Antenoras on the field. The first Hell Judecca encountered even demonstrates this during its Mook Debut Cutscene.
• Epic Rocking: "Bury the Light", Vergil's theme song from the Special Edition, lasts for 9 minutes and 42 seconds. There are multiple parts where it transitions or changes gears; apart from the vocals done by Victor Borba, it has plenty of instrumental segments, including a guitar solo near the end.
• Epigraph: The prologue cutscene starts with an excerpt of William Blake's "A Poison Tree":
  "And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright."
• Everybody Lives:
  • The secret ending obtained by beating Urizen in the Prologue runs on this plot point. Well... except for God knows how many residents of Red Grave City who died to the demon outbreak.
  • Invoked during the final mission; Nero breaks up the Duel to the Death between Vergil and Dante because he doesn't want to lose any more of his family.
• Evolving Title Screen: Initially, the title screen just shows Nero. But as the player progresses through the game, the title screen is updated to include V and Dante as well.
• Exactly What I Aimed At: Nero shoots a traffic sign flying upward in the intro while he jumped out of the van, in spite of how it wasn't flying in a direction that would hit him and an Empulsa is about to jump onto him. Twenty slow-motion seconds later, the sign embeds into another Empulsa's head.
• EX Special Attack:
  • Nero's Exceed mechanic returns from the previous game, allowing him to ignite the next attack of his Red Queen sword.
  • V can expend some of his Devil Trigger meter to power up Griffon or Shadow's next attacks. It also allows them to attack automatically instead of being manually controlled by the player.
• Extra Eyes: The demon bosses and the Big Bad all have multiple sets of eyes all over their bodies.
• Extra-Strength Masquerade: According to Morrison, most people consider demons and the supernatural as nothing but legends and he himself didn't believe in the occult at first. This is despite the fact that, in this universe, several cities have come under siege by demonic entities. A radio broadcast also has survivors traumatically screaming that the invaders in Red Grave City are demons, with disbelief.
• Extremely Short Timespan: With the exception of the Prologue and Mission 10 taking place a month before, the main portion of the game takes place over the course of a single day, the 15th of June, for about 11 hours from 5AM to 4PM (helpfully illustrated by the Title In present at the start of every mission). Mission 1 begins just before dawn, and the sun appears to be setting during the credits sequence.
• Fake Arm Disarm: Whenever you use Nero's Devil Breaker when hit by an enemy's attack, it breaks. The player can also invoke this trope and manually destroy the currently-equipped Devil Breaker using Break Away to let Nero break free from the enemy's grapple or crowd-control attacks. In the finale, Nero destroys it himself with his manifesting Devil Trigger powers regrowing his lost arm as he rushes to stop Dante and Vergil's battle. In the epilogue, Nico gives him a newly-modified Devil Breaker system that fits over his regrown arm.
• Fanservice: After being captured by Urizen, both Lady and Trish are trapped inside bosses and when they're rescued, they're completely naked, with only strategic arms and Scenery Censor to conceal their nudity before they're both given a Modesty Bedsheet. At one point, Lady lets the Modesty Bedsheet she's wrapped in slide off her body, giving the camera a shot of her Toplessness from the Back with some Sideboob and only a friendly bit of Lens Flare Censor covers her butt just enough to preserve a little modesty.
• Fantasy Metals: "Gilgamesh" is actually a kind of demonic metal that fuses with demon flesh to turn it into an armor harder than steel. The giant quadrupedal demon fought by Nero in Mission 6 turns out to be a mass of large Qliphoth Roots fused with said metal. It's also a reference to the similarly-named Gilgamesh Devil Arm which served as Dante's metallic gauntlets and greaves in DMC4.
• Final Boss:
  • Nero versus Vergil, over whether Vergil's going to do another pointless Duel to the Death with Dante or going to make things right with his son and fix all the crap his demon half pulled over the game.
  • In the Special Edition, in Vergil's version of the mission, for the first time in the series, Dante is the Final Boss.
• Flashback Nightmare: Just before Dante fully woke up from a month-long coma, we get treated to a first-person flashback of the day when demons attacked their home and Eva made him hide in a closet.
• Flash Step:
  • Dante and Nero retain their teleporation techniques ("Air Trick" and Table Hopper" respectively) from their previous iterations. The Final Boss Vergil can do it as well since he also retains his signature "Trick" techniques. When fighting him as Dante, Vergil will always teleport to immediately attack you after his health is depleted, triggering the mission's ending cutscene.
  • V's dodge has him move in this manner rather than rolling like other characters, but only when Shadow is available. He can also do one as a part of a finisher.
• Flawed Prototype: Nico's Reports hint that the Proto Angelos are prototype versions of the original Nelo Angelo in DMC1, hence their striking resemblance and similar weaponry with the latter. However, they're like Elite Mooks in comparison to Nelo Angelo (who served as a major recurring threat to Dante in Mallet Island, in part due to being a brainwashed Vergil). It's also evident in their gameplay; Nelo Angelo could teleport and conjure spectral swords, but the Proto Angelo could not.
• Flechette Storm:
  • When Nero unlocks and activates his Devil Trigger, his charged shots with the Blue Rose are supplemented by up to six Summoned Swords that spawn simultaneously, then rapidly fling themselves towards the locked-on enemy.
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil can bring out Summoned Swords and make them fire even faster than usual, as a move called "Blistering Edge".
• Flying Weapon:
  • Once Dante gains the Devil Sword Dante, he gains his own version of Summoned Swords, though unlike Vergil's ways of using them, Dante's floating swords mostly act as modifiers for his Styles or melee attacks.
  • Vergil has his Mirage Blades, which he throws magically as his ranged attack as both a boss and a playable character. He has a wide variety of uses and attacks with his floating swords (e.g. Storm of Blades, Flechette Storm, Reverse Shrapnel), but he never has to move his hands nor physically hold those Mirage Blades while performing these attacks.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The title screen itself when you start up the game, showing the backside of Nero overlapped with the wing-shaped "V" of the title logo. It hints at Nero finally gaining his own Devil Trigger towards the end, with his form manifesting spectral wings.
  • In the opening cutscene to Mission 9, we see a flashback to when V and Dante first met. V informs Dante that a strong demon is about to resurrect and that he needs Dante's help to put him down. When Dante inquires the demon's name, the screen slowly fades out as V is about to pronounce it. If you notice V's mouth, it does not look like he's pronouncing "Urizen"; it's pursed out, not making an "O" shape like he would need in order to pronounce the "oo" in "oo-ri-zen". Instead, he's actually pronouncing "Ver", as in "Vergil".
  • The name "Urizen" is not from the usual Religious and Mythological Theme Naming or Shout-Out Theme Naming sources of the series like The Divine Comedy, the Ars Goetia or Classical Mythology. Instead, the name comes from the personal mythology of William Blake. Now who among the cast constantly references Blake's works? V. This is another hint that the two characters are connected.
  • When Urizen punches and breaks Rebellion, knocking Dante out of Devil Trigger and sending him flying back, the camera zooms in close to Dante's right eye and Urizen's image is reflected there. In 3, after their first boss fight, Dante gets knocked back by Vergil and the camera zooms in close to Dante's right eye with Vergil's image being reflected just before he stabs Dante with Rebellion. A similar close-up shot also happens when V nearly stabs Dante to wake him up, though this time his reflection is shown on Dante's left eye.
  • Some of V's moves and abilities reference his true identity as an element of Vergil. His teleport move is extremely similar to Vergil's Trick (impaling an enemy with a thrown weapon, and then warping to the weapon) and some of his in-game quotes make mention of needing "power" or "more strength", just as Vergil always talked about power in 3). The way V swings his cane to initiate a finishing move also looks like a right-handed version of the first hit in Vergil's basic combo strings with the Yamato.
  • V is visibly furious the first time he encounters a squadron of "Angelo" demons. In 1, the first Angelo, "Nelo Angelo", was Vergil, hinting at V's connection to the Angelos as well as Vergil.
  • During Dante's flashback to the opening of the game, he makes it to Urizen's chamber just in time to see him finish Lady and Trish. He, in his usual jovial tone, expresses how impressed he is at Urizen defeating the ladies, calling them two of the most badass women in the world. And then in a notably more serious tone, Dante says that he knows only one other guy who can beat them.
  • When Dante confronts Cavaliere Angelo, it appears out of nowhere, hurls a motorcycle at him and spends most of the fight throwing lightning at him, with Dante snarking about the Angelo's fashion taste. The first part is exactly how he and Trish first met, while the second part contrasts with his more cordial reaction after seeing Gloria, a.k.a. Trish in disguise, and sure enough, she's being held prisoner inside Cavaliere Angelo being used like a battery.
  • If you listen closely during the battles with Urizen, a certain Recurring Riff plays in his boss themes. It's an excerpt from "Devil Sunday", Sparda's theme from the very first Devil May Cry, hinting at Urizen's connections to the Sons of Sparda. Sure enough, Urizen is actually Vergil.
  • Griffon immediately recognizes a horse demon resembling Geryon, and makes a note of how Dante killed it years ago. He would only know this fact if someone who was there told him about it, as Dante fought Geryon alone. The only people who were anywhere near that battle were Arkham, who is dead, Lady, who was confirmed to be elsewhere at the time... and Vergil, who was shown in-game to bypass a lot of the traps and Threshold Guardians Dante had to face.
  • Nico's Weapon Report on the Kalina Ann II mentions a secret feature that would only be used when the original Kalina Ann is around, hinting that Dante can still find Lady's original rocket launcher somewhere even when it was presumed lost.
  • In her Weapon Report for the Rebellion, Nico wonders if the sword has some crazy powers of its own, especially when compared to the Yamato that can separate man from demon. Dante ponders the same question right before he stabs himself with the Rebellion and discovers that it indeed has unique powers; fusing with the Sparda to unlock his Sin Devil Trigger and his personal Devil Sword.
• Four Is Death: Mission 19, the final Duel to the Death confrontation between Dante and Vergil, takes place at 4:04 p.m, and the flashback of Eva hiding a child Dante inside a closet while their home is attacked takes place at 4:44 a.m. The former is Subverted thanks to Nero invoking the Everybody Lives trope, but the latter incident plays this trope straight as the final moments heard during the flashback had Eva screaming offscreen, while a newspaper excerpt confirmed Eva's corpse was charred when it was found.
• Finger Gun:
  • Fury's introduction has Dante scare off the demon by pointing his fingers on its nose.
  • Dr. Faust's default attack is Dante shooting Red Orbs out of his fingers while doing this.
  • Unlocking Irregular Full Custom and using it to unequip all guns causes Dante to point finger guns at locked-on enemies.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • King Cerberus has lightning and fire attacks in addition to its ice attributes inherited from the original Cerberus from 3.
  • Dante also has this theme going with the Devil Arms he acquires. Balrog is the fire, Cavaliere is the lightning, and while the aforementioned King Cerberus does have the other two elements, its basic attacks are still ice-themed.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Nero doesn't have Red Queen with him when he and V escape from Urizen in the prologue. Instead, Griffon is carrying the sword using his talons as he quickly flies in the background.
  • Using Photo Mode, fans have noticed that Blue Rose has armor piercing and hollow point bullets, matching the early description of how Blue Rose fires two shots where the first bullet breaks the demon's armor and the second bullet causes extra damage.
  • In the secret ending of Dante and Vergil in the Demon World, the bullets leaving Ebony and Ivory are armor piercing and hollow point, respectively, matching their weapon flavor text of Ebony being used for long distance and heavy power, while Ivory is used for rapid fire.
  • In the opening cutscene, one of the stickers on Nico's van says "IF YOU CAN READ THIS MY RIFLE WILL KILL YOU BEFORE YOU HEAR ITS SOUND".
  • In the cutscene where Dante receives Dr. Faust from Nico, the Devil May Cry neon sign on her van blinks in time with the background music's beat. The camera does have multiple shots of the neon sign though, even if it's just for a few seconds each.
  • When Nero separates Dante and Vergil from clashing in the cutscene of Mission 20, his spectral wings' talons are also holding up their swords. He really didn't want them to kill each other.
• Funny Background Event:
  • During the slow-motion shoot-out sequence from the opening cutscene (which is replayed in Mission 1), an awesome and funny moment happens in the background; when Nero's bullets hit a sign in front of an Empusa, the bullets are seemingly wasted as they bounce off while the sign's trajectory is altered, yet the sign somehow manages to hit another Empusa's head in the background.
  • In the beginning of Mission 1's playable segment, Nico and the "Crew Cut" soldier are watching Nero fight the Empusas, although you have to wait for a while and adjust the camera to see the hilarious part. Nico helps Crew Cut stand, then pushes him toward the nearby concrete barrier, causing him to trip awkwardly.
• Funny Bruce Lee Noises: Exaggerated. In Devil May Cry 3, Dante only did this when using Cerberus' Satellite attack; now, he does it for almost every King Cerberus attack.
• Fusion Dissonance: Inverted through Literal Split Personality. Using the Yamato, Vergil splits himself into his human and demonic halves as V and Urizen respectively, neither of whom resembles his human or Devil Trigger forms enough for their origins to be easily deduced.
• Game Mod: DMC5 has an active modding scene which is mainly focused on cosmetic stuff, though more gameplay-focused modders emerged over the years. But apart from that, modders were also able to tweak some leftover code that makes Vergil playable in the vanilla game, and he even uses some techniques that he doesn't use in his boss fight. Although the first attempt came with some limitations, a later mod attempted to make this a more complete experience with better hit boxes and fewer oddities. With the Special Edition elevating Vergil to fully playable, what was left behind were actually remnants of a system used to test Vergil's moveset in his boss version.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In the previous games, Dante's Ebony & Ivory handguns share the same firepower and damage output, even if their item descriptions long established that Ivory is the faster gun that provides the high rate of fire and Ebony is the slower gun that's more accurate and deals higher damage. In DMC5, Dante's handguns are reworked so that their Gunslinger Style gameplay mechanics match these item descriptions; Ivory now fires in bursts and Ebony becomes a Punch-Packing Pistol that fires slow but powerful individual shots. The catch for this lore-accurate gameplay is a revamped control scheme; there are separate buttons for firing each individual gun, which also affected the input of some Gunslinger Style skills.
  • The lore and description of Nero's Blue Rose state that it fires two bullets per shot. This is reflected in-game and can be verified via The Void training room; every time you press the shoot button, two separate instances of damage are applied in quick succession.
  • Although this only happens on the first playthrough, starting Mission 20 for the first time won't give you the chance to customize Nero's Devil Breaker loadout. This is evident when you immediately start Mission 20 as soon as you finish Mission 19, as Mission 20's title is displayed in the corner of the opening cutscene itself instead of having its own "preparation" menu. It's a part of the immersion; Nero won't be able to use his Devil Breakers for this mission because he regains his Devil Trigger/Devil Bringer abilities, while his normal arm regenerates completely at the cost of his cybernetic arm shattering. The final cutscene also neatly justifies Nero's New Game Plus benefits; Nico built him a prototype Devil Breaker that allows him to use his previous cybernetic arms alongside the newly-regenerated arm.
  • Doubling as a Developer's Foresight due to how subtle it is, Dante can pick up the Kalina Ann during the flashback boss fight against Urizen in Mission 10, which makes sense because it's Lady's personal weapon, and she carried it around on the way to Urizen's arena.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Downplayed. Given the sheer ridiculousness of Nero and Dante's physical abilities, there were bound to be some things you'll see them do in cutscenes that you can't do during gameplay, such as some of the more spectacular mid-air evasion moves. However, many of their other over-the-top moves can be replicated in-game, including jumping off walls, sliding across the ground, and even mowing down demons while riding a motorcycle.
  • A more prominent example can be found in Mission 10. The timing given for the mission implies that Dante fought Urizen for over 24 hours before he was beaten in the prologue, when Nero arrives. But in-game, the player can only fight him for around a minute before the mission is forcefully ended.
  • Nico made the Buster Arm Devil Breaker to help bring back some of Nero's power after having his demonic arm stolen from him. Nero gets his Devil Bringer back permanently at the end of the game, but for balancing purposes, it pales in comparison to the Buster Arm's damage output, doing half as much at best. Either Nero recovered less of his power than he thought, or Nico's just that damn good.
  • At least according to Nico's Weapon Report, the Ragtime Devil Breaker's material (i.e. the body part of Geryon brought by V) took some fancy handiwork out of her, she "can't make a bunch of it", and so she urges Nero to use it wisely. In gameplay though, you can purchase as many Ragtime Devil Breakers as you want just like any other arm.
  • V grows increasingly sickly and reliant on his cane as the game goes on, but when played, he can leap and sprint around as easily as Dante or Nero, and his flashy finishing moves stay as showy as ever. Aside from a Scripted Event in Mission 14, you never get to feel him getting weaker in most of the missions even if the story keeps on saying that his body is slowly crumbling.
  • Finishing the Son of Sparda difficulty unlocks the "Irregular Full Custom" skill for Dante which allows him to equip all of his weapons. He can freely switch between the Rebellion, the Devil Sword Sparda, and the Devil Sword Dante, which wouldn't make sense in the story because the former two swords are merged to create the third.
• Giant Mook: Empusa Queens and Behemoths are the largest mooks in the game, though the former are the more straightforward examples by being taller than the latter and can lift a playable character several feet above the ground just to emphasize some difference in height. Fittingly, the Queens are also the strongest among their Empusa kin.
• Give Me a Sword: In Mission 10, Trish throws Dante the Devil Sword Sparda when Rebellion is shattered.
• Genre Throwback: DMC5 plays very similarly to the previous over-a-decade old installments of the series, rather than taking cues (such as RPG Elements and semi-open worlds) from more modern melee action games like God of War (PS4) or NieR: Automata. It makes DMC5 feel like, as Eurogamer described it in their review, "an outrageously pretty PS2 game".
• Glass Cannon: Nero's Devil Breaker arms, while powerful, are also very fragile. The arms will break if Nero takes damage while using one, and when he uses their more powerful Break Age attacks.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: The playable characters' eyes permanently glow red if their Super Costumes are equipped.
• Goal-Oriented Evolution: According to Nico's reports, demons evolve based on their deepest desires—usually in regards to power. For example, Fury is a demon born from a creature that wanted to kill as fast as possible until it developed Super-Speed and teleportation, and Lusachia is a spell-caster demon that developed Too Many Mouths so that it could cast more powerful incantations. It's also implied that Nero's Devil Trigger form sports two extra arms because of Nero's connection to (and loss of) his right arm.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Being a Human-Demon Hybrid, Vergil thought separating out his human-half from his demon-half would make him powerful enough to survive The Corruption and years of damage that was killing him. It failed miserably, as both halves were still dying. Unfortunately, he got even more than he bargained for, with his demon-half turning into The Unfettered, and killing thousands of humans to save himself. Vergil's remaining human-half is horrified by this.
• The Goomba: The ant-type Empusas which can be easily picked off one-by-one. Their Green Empusa variants also appear a lot in battles, but only heal other demon types.
• Grand Finale: The game was billed as the end of the Sons of Sparda storyline in press releases, and delivers by wrapping up the story to this point to its logical conclusions. Dante claims the Sparda for his own, reforging it into the Devil Sword Dante, truly at last surpassing Sparda as his worthy successor. Vergil's lust for power reaches its apex as he eats the fruit of the Qliphoth just like what Mundus did in the past, becoming Mundus' true successor in the greatest betrayal towards their father. Finally, Nero, the perfect midpoint of the two bearing Vergil's power and inclinations with Dante's style and values, forces the two to reconcile and defeats his father, taking the mantle of the series's lead in the Human World as the Sons of Sparda step down into the background together and dive down the Underworld to finish the Qliphoth.
• Grapple Move: Nero can still use Buster Arm to grab enemies and then toss them around in various brutal ways, while the Rawhide Breaker gives him more moves to swing his enemies about. After beating the game, he regains the Devil Bringer and can use it like he did in 4.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Dante later says "Take care Nero, Adiós" at the end.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Nero's various Buster Grapple Moves often involve picking up an enemy and flinging/slamming it around, damaging other nearby enemies upon contact with the grabbed target. The Break Age move of his Rawhide Devil Breaker arm also lets him grab an enemy then spin/smash it around with the whip arm, potentially hitting other enemies around him.
• Ground Punch:
  • Dante's "Cruiser Dive" attack with Balrog (one of the several offshoots of the Ifrit's Inferno ability from the first game), where he smashes the ground with his fist to create a wave of lava.
  • Vergil's "Hell on Earth" attack with Beowulf, where he charges up then slams his fist into the ground to create a massive area-of-effect explosion around himself.
  • In Mission 17, Urizen would often punch the ground when he's near the playable character.
• Guns Akimbo: Dante dual-wields Ebony and Ivory, as usual, with a change to Gunslinger style enabling him to fire each gun individually (Ebony fires slower but stronger bullets while Ivory shoots more rapidly). There's also a slightly-hidden option available to him late in the game: if you find the original Kalina Ann, you can wield it and Kalina Ann II together at the same time in a single weapon slot.
• Hand Wave:
  • The "mirage" versions of Goliath, Artemis, and Cavaliere Angelo are given little backstory or justification in the lore, even Nico admits she doesn't exactly know how they're created. She then brushes any further supernatural details away by mentioning that she's just an engineer.
    Nico: I got an inklin' that these are yanked out of the target's memory and manifested to go on the attack. The ol' "nightmares made real" deal. But heck, I'm an engineer, not a wicked witch. What do I know about magic?
  • The only in-game text that explains how Vergil acquired his Sin Devil Trigger form is mentioned in Nico's Reports, yet she says it very briefly.
    Nico: Guess this is the payoff for his time bein' Urizen.
• Hat of Power: Dr. Faust, a magical demonic cowboy hat that materializes a Scarf of Asskicking for Dante and uses Red Orbs to attack enemies.
• He's Back!: After spending the entire game mostly on the backfoot in comparison to Dante, V, and many other enemies the heroes face, Nero's resolve, born of the revelation that he has a blood family and the desire to keep it, finally unleashes his true demonic power in the moments leading up to Mission 20. In doing so, he regains his Devil Trigger, Devil Bringer, and a new flesh and blood right arm in the process.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose:
  • Subverted with the prologue fight with Urizen, where if you beat him ^note either with the Nero you start with, or if you take an upgraded version of Nero back to this fight in New Game Plus playthroughs he'll actually be defeated for good, with the game stating that this was the best possible outcome and that everyone lived happily ever after. The same thing happens if you beat him in Mission 8, though it is much more difficult.
  • Played straight in the fights in Missions 10 and 19. The fight in 19 even ends with Vergil performing a flash step soon as his health drops to zero and slashing Dante before it transitions into the cutscene.
• Healing Shiv: The Sweet Surrender Devil Breaker, which doesn't have any offensive abilities, but can heal Nero.
• Hell on Earth: The entirety of Red Grave City has been encroached on by the Demon World, with monsters of all types running amok throughout it and a giant demonic tree that reaches into the heavens growing in the city's center.
  Nico: Soldier Boy said city's goin' to Hell and back, taken over by the Underworld. Not just here - but everywhere.
• Helpful Mook:
  • The series' Goomba Springboard mechanic lets you use the Mooks as makeshift platforms. Secret Mission 9 even partially encourages this, as you can repeatedly jump off the Hell Antenora's head in order to stay afloat.
  • Hell Antenora, Empusa Queen and Behemoth are demons prone to going berserk, being able to hurt and outright kill other demons if they go on a rampage. Some of the other enemies' attacks (such as a Hell Judecca's ground spikes) can also "accidentally" damage their fellow kin in a crossfire.
  • In the Bloody Palace mode, the Qliphoth Roots are guaranteed to drop Green Orbs that restore the player character's vitality. The Green Empusa also do so even outside of the Bloody Palace mode, but only when they're killed early on without having exhausted their healing substance yet.
• Hijacked by Ganon: After Dante beats Urizen, V merges with him back into Vergil, the Final Boss of 3, leading to a final Duel to the Death between Vergil and Dante. Nero then steps in between the both of them to make the two brothers focus on closing the Hell Gate instead.
• Hint System: Random gameplay tips for the current playable character are displayed on the side of a loading screen. Some of these are already covered by the tutorial sections, while others provide more advanced tricks and gimmicks. You can cycle through them by pressing left or right as the game loads.
• Hit Stop:
  • Taking cues from DmC, the camera dramatically zooms in on the last attack that kills the last enemy of a wave; the action is briefly set in slow-mo to emphasize this. And when you're playing on a New Game Plus playthrough, the first mook that you kill out of the various demon types will have its death photographed by a camera, briefly taking a page out of Bayonetta's own Hit Stop effect (wherein killing the last enemy in a Verse will freeze the action in a "camera shot" style).
  • Parrying an enemy's attacks or breaking their armor or weapon briefly and dramatically slows down the action to emphasize that you have an upper-hand while they are left vulnerable.
  • The action briefly slows down if Nero's Devil Breaker arm breaks as a result of taking damage from an enemy's attack.
  • Getting hit by the Final Boss Vergil's special "dive" attack results in a dramatic slow-mo as you receive massive damage from it.
• Hollywood Healing: While this trope is mostly present in the previous DMC games, it becomes averted here thanks to the higher graphical quality. As the game progresses, you can actually see the visible damage sustained in the characters.
• Homing Projectile: Nero's Punch Line Breaker can be set up to keep circling around and punching the crap out enemies over and over again until Nero recalls it.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Happens multiple times:
  • Urizen fight in the prologue. He's far more aggressive than any enemy you fought before, his attacks start dealing a lot of damage after a while, he has a shield protecting him which takes forever to break and your move pool is very limited at this point. While it is technically possible to beat him which unlocks the secret joke ending (and immediately unlocks the next difficulty mode if you do it on the first playthrough), you're expected to lose this fight.
  • The second phase of Urizen fight in Mission 8 is largely the same deal. Just as in the prologue, beating Urizen here gets you the secret joke ending.
  • Urizen fight in Mission 10 is impossible to win even with right skills as it abruptly ends after only a minute. Same thing will happen if you actually manage to break his shield in that short time.
• Humanoid Abomination: Several heroic and villainous examples.
  • In the villainous corner:
    • Nobody is a four-legged humanoid being with a large arm coming out of its back. It dances to absorb demonic energy from the air and other sources, and has eyes on its body that it latches off to have them explode. It also switches masks on its face to work as a defensive technique.
    • Malphas, not counting her demon chick steed, is a three-armed, three-headed woman who appears to have some black rock formation around her body which looks like a robe, and she has breasts without nipples. She is a powerful demon sorceress and knows much about the Underworld.
    • Urizen is a tall gigantic humanoid demon with layers of flesh and tentacles wrapped around his body. He uses this shell and tentacles to feed off the Qliphoth's power, can mimic the powers of other demons and uses a red crystal that generates a barrier. The Humanoid Abomination part becomes more apparent when he eats the fruit and sheds off his tentacles and flesh, revealing his true form as a blue multi-eyed demon with various mouths and eyes on his body. His power also reaches Physical God levels and is stated to make the foundations of the world itself shake in his presence.
    • In his Sin Devil Trigger form, Vergil is a silver draconic demon with blue energy emanating from his body and has a dragon-like tail and horns that protrude energy out of them like thrusters, and he also has energy blades on his elbows. While Urizen's form after eating the fruit couldn't even match Dante, Vergil's Sin Devil Trigger form equally matches Dante's newfound powers, to the point where Vergil can shrug off most of his brother's attacks. What's more, according to the game's character files, this is Vergil's true form.
  • In the heroic corner:
    • Nightmare, V's familiar, is technically more of a Blob Monster with a mechanical spine and eye, but when it's summoned, Nightmare becomes a towering muscular demon that has the strength to kill most enemies in only a few blows when V is riding him. Nightmare can also fire lasers that trigger explosions, or charge up a large energy beam. Despite its huge size, it can warp and teleport to other locations.
    • V himself. His body begins to decay and his skin peels off like ashes because he is actually the human half of Vergil; when he separated V from himself, he left him with his damaged and withered body that's on the brink of death. He can use small amounts of demonic power but only enough to maintain his body and summon his familiars.
    • In his Sin Devil Trigger form, Dante is a large, ash-black demon with large horns, four demonic wings and flame-like demonic energy emanating from his body. He doesn't even speak in this form; instead, he just gives off distorted and demonic growls and screeches to show how inhuman he has become. The form is also powerful enough to defeat Urizen after he ate the fruit of the Qliphoth and shrugs off all pain and damage while still taking it. To boot, this is apparently Dante's true form, according to the game's character files.
    • Nero's Devil Trigger form gives him the appearance of a Japanese Oni combined with some of the Sparda siblngs' demonic traits; having long white hair, curved horns and red-and-green skin. He also has blue spectral wing-arms on his back that fold onto his shoulder. Even if he just achieved it a few moments ago, he is strong enough to block and push back attacks from BOTH Dante and Vergil in their Sin Devil Trigger forms, who are already Physical Gods in terms of power (Though they were technically exhausted from fighting, it's still impressive that Nero was even able to do such a feat given how strong the two sons of Sparda had become).
• Human Shield: The "Hold" ability from DMC4 returns in the endgame and New Game Plus playthroughs of this game when Nero acquires his physical Devil Trigger transformation and regrows his arm, along with many of his old Devil Bringer abilities. It's more like a "monster shield" variant where Nero can use a demon as a shield. Although since demon mooks are mindless, they don't care about the "hostage" being from their own kin and still attempt to attack him. The demon shield takes the damage instead.
• Idiosyncratic Combo Levels: Per usual, this is a recurring trope for the DMC series. But in this game, the Style Ranks are "Dismal", "Crazy", "Badass", "Apocalyptic", "Savage!", "Sick Skills!", and "Smokin' Sexy Style!".
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Again, per the usual tradition in the series, the difficulty levels in DMC5 range from Human, Devil Hunter, Son of Sparda, Dante Must Die, Heaven or Hell, and Hell and Hell. These difficulty levels are taken wholesale from DMC4. Special Edition also adds Legendary Dark Knight, also from DMC4.
• Idle Animation:
  • Dante and Vergil retain their idle animations from 4; Dante looks around with his hands on his hips, while Vergil still has his Badass Armfold.
  • Nero has a new idle animation wherein he squats until the player moves him.
  • V simply adjusts his hair.
• Image Song: L'arc-en-Ciel's lead vocalist and songwriter Hyde did a collaboration on an image song for the game titled "MAD QUALIA".
• Injured Vulnerability: Bosses are staggered after receiving a certain amount of damage. In this brief state, they can't fight back and are left defenseless from Nero's Buster.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Several helpless civilians are impaled by the Qliphoth's giant roots during the prologue cutscene.
  • The series' Running Gag of Dante getting impaled reaches its zenith in this game where he stabs himself with the remains of Rebellion, causing him to merge with it and the Devil Sword Sparda to turn it into the Devil Sword Dante and for him to acquire his Sin Devil Trigger. And in gameplay, the latter is activated by him getting impaled by the Devil Sword Dante.
  • One of Urizen's moves has him using the giant pointed roots of the Qliphoth to stab straight through your body.
  • Vergil finally gets to have his turn at being impaled in this game. He separated his human and demon halves by impaling himself with the Yamato. During the final boss fight in Mission 20, he can impale Nero first if the player executes a Buster at the right time, which immediately prompts Nero to yank out Yamato and impale Vergil in return. It also turns out in Visions of V that he was impaled by a demon who attacked his home when he was a child, which in turn summoned Yamato in front of him.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Blue Rose and Red Queen return, while Dante has Cavaliere (a chainsaw-motorcycle hybrid) and Dr. Faust (A Hat of Power that absorbs Red orbs and can unleash attacks such as meteorites).
• Improbable Weapon User: After a guitar that can also transform into a scythe and a suitcase with multiple forms, Dante now has:
  • Cavaliere, an entire motorcycle Devil Arm that can ram enemies and split in half to serve as two giant Chainsaw BFS.
  • Dr. Faust, a cowboy hat that can use crystallized demon blood as various types of projectiles.
• Improvised Weapon: Done by Nero in the intro's slow-motion fusillade from him jumping out of the van - in typical Devil May Cry fashion, he does it by shooting the edge of a traffic sign flying upward instead of the Empulsa that's a foot next to it and Nero himself (Nero shoots that one with his next shot) and the scene reveals twenty slow-motion seconds later that his shot on the sign was to cause it to embed into another Empulsa's head.
• In Medias Res: The story begins right with Dante, Nero, and new guy V confronting Urizen in the Qliphoth, without much context. It's only later on that we get a few flashbacks explaining how Nero lost his arm, how V was introduced to Dante and Nero, and how Dante got roped up into everything in the first place.
• In Spite of a Nail: Unlike the original campaign, the final mission of Vergil's campaign in the Special Edition has him and Dante continue their fight to the death without Nero interrupting. Despite this, Nero's interference still happens, albeit offscreen, and Dante and Vergil still head off to deal with the Qliphoth tree.
• In the Hood:
  • The mysterious figure who took Nero's Devil Bringer in the flashback wears a dark hooded cloak to conceal his identity, although his face is still partly visible underneath.
  • Taunt when Nero's style meter is high enough and he'll throw on the hood of his jacket, which he'll wear until he gets hit.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • The game deliberately tries to avert this thanks to a setting in the options menu. Due to the limited online co-op, players can turn off costumes and other aspects of the game that would spoil what happens in the story if one player happens to be further along than another. However, this trope is played straight from a certain perspective; the menu text warns you that this setting will NOT help with weapons that have been acquired. So for example, if one player has the Devil Sword Dante, the other co-op player who hasn't heard of it will still have that info spoiled for them.
  • This is mostly averted with Nero in regards to his Devil Trigger and Devil Bringer. In the story, Nero lost both after his demonic arm was torn off, and the buttons that used to control them have either been reassigned or replaced by another function, which is evident when you compare his control layout to the other playable characters. For better or for worse, this hides the fact that Nero gets both back at the end of the game. However, this trope is played straight if you look at a specific menu; opening Nero's button configuration would reveal that two actions in the list are suspiciously labeled as "(UNUSED)". Once he has re-acquired his lost demonic powers, they will be properly labeled in the button configuration. The player can then reassign the two new actions as there is no longer any purpose in keeping the old button assignments.
  • Once you gain access to the Mission Menu when playing as Dante, the Equipment section on the lower-right corner of the screen already has empty slots in the weapon loadout, hinting that Dante will acquire at least 4 melee weapons and 4 ranged weapons by the end of the story.
  • The DLC store allows you to pay two bucks to unlock Vergil's EX color instantly, spoiling their appearance in the game. After the Special Edition was released, the main menu would also display the "Unleash Vergil" option for those who haven't purchased the DLC that makes said character playable.
• Ironic Echo:
  • Dante calling Nero "dead weight" after the disastrous first battle with Urizen serves as Nero's biggest motivator throughout the game, desperate to prove himself due to lingering guilt over failing to save his adoptive brother Credo in the previous game. In the finale, after awakening to his Devil Trigger and intervening in Dante and Vergil's Duel to the Death, he cuts off Dante's chewing him out with the same insult (since aforementioned duel was Dante's only solution to the Vergil problem) paired with an Offhand Backhand, then proceeds to kick Vergil's ass to defuse their fatalistic blood feud, resolved that he will NOT lose any more family.
    Nero: You listen, dead weight.
  • At the start of the game, Nero asks Nico "How's it feel to be rescuing the guy that killed your father?" At the end of the game, Nico returns the question as Nero rescued Dante from Vergil.
• Ironic Name: Even if an in-game Library file explains the Meaningful Name of certain weapons, one meaning of the term "Yamato" is "great harmony", yet Vergil uses his similarly-named Yamato katana to separate his human and demon sides. Likewise, Dante uses Rebellion to merge himself with it and the Devil Sword Sparda, awakening the full extent of his demonic powers.
• It Runs in the Family:
  • Nero had already shown signs of being similar to his uncle Dante in 4, with his own battle taunts and cutscene quips, but showed less later on as Nero became more focused on rescuing Kyrie. Come 5, Nero has all the sass that his portrayal in 4 hinted at. Appearance-wise, he now more closely resembles his father. At one point, he also paraphrases Vergil's mantra of "Without strength, you can't protect anything".
  • Nero dislikes smoking, just like Dante. V hints at this too by fanning away Nico's cigarette smoke.
  • Nico herself inherited various traits from Agnus, not only having a similar skin tone but also his scientific capabilities and a tendency towards stuttering when excited.
• It's Okay to Cry: After Nero sees both his uncle and father go to the Demon Realm, perhaps forever, after he just learned that he had a real family, his friend Nico has this to say:
  Nico: It's okay to cry if you want, Nero, over a loss. It doesn't make you a crybaby. ... does make you a little bitch, though.
• It's Personal:
  • Nero justifiably wants to take out the mysterious antagonist that came into his and Kyrie's home and cut off his Devil Bringer arm.
    Nero: I've got a score to settle with that son of a bitch!
  • Incidentally, once the real identity of the Big Bad is revealed, Nero ends up having a completely different but still-personal reason to take him on.
• Jack of All Trades: Gerbera is an all-rounder Devil Breaker. It can be used defensively (by sending out a small shockwave when Nero is standing still), offensively (both of its Break Age moves in the ground or mid-air are versatile and destructive), and for movement (its Recoil Boost propels Nero on any direction). Nico summarizes it best on the arm's Weapon Report file.
  Nico: And that shockwave ain't no one- trick pony, lemme tell ya. Attack, defense, even movement—this baby can do it all!
• Jerkass Has a Point: As dickish as it might be and as furious as Nero got when Dante calls him dead weight, the unfortunate truth is that Dante is right. With his Devil Bringer stolen, the bulk of his demonic power gone and Yamato gone with it, Nero has no chance to defeat Urizen. V even admits that bringing in Nero was completely useless and that getting the Devil Sword Sparda to him was humanity's only shot if Dante was truly dead. To really drive it home, Urizen completely thrashes Nero a second time even with the Devil Breakers meant to bring him back up to fighting strength. Dead weight indeed...
• Katanas Are Just Better: Just like in DMC4, the Yamato is a major plot device in this game as Vergil returns to seek his favored weapon by ripping it from Nero (as it was absorbed by the latter's Devil Bringer in the previous game), split himself in two, gain power, and restore his crumbling body to normal. Near the final boss battle, Dante even tries to convince Vergil to hand over the Yamato and stop his "portal-opening days", but he refuses.
• Kill Streak: Per series tradition, the Stylish Rank system rewards you more Stylish Points for killing multiple enemies without taking any damage at all in between your kills. However, the need for kill streaks is encouraged, acknowledged, or enforced in other scenarios. For example, "The Quick and the Dead" achievement requires you to kill 5 enemies within 1 second. The "Extra Bonus" system also rewards you additional Red Orbs for accomplishing various optional feats, some of which include killing two, three, or five enemies at the same time.
• King Mook: The Empusa Queen is the most powerful variant of the Empusa-type demons. Though unlike the smaller, weaker variants that resemble ants, the Queen variant is huge, durable, aggressive, and resembles a praying mantis. Despite the size difference, a Queen's basic attacks are stronger versions of the lesser Empusa demons' attacks. A Queen also has a high tendency of spawning alongside its lesser kin.
• Lag Cancel:
  • Much like DMC3 and DMC4, cancelling short hops and rolls into the guarding animation of the Royal Guard style is a very effective defensive tactic.
  • Dante's "Cascade" and "Mega Cascade" moves for the Double Kalina Ann have long recovery animations wherein he decouples the rocket launchers. Fortunately, the last frames of these recovery animations can be cancelled by performing other moves such as jumping or Air Trick.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The trailers for the Special Edition don't bother to hide any of the big plot twists or spoilers from the story, most notably the revelation that Vergil finally returns in a fully canon capacity, but also stuff like V being part of Vergil, Dante's Sin Devil Trigger, and biggest late-game spoiler of all; Nero is Vergil's son and he unlocks his own true Devil Trigger at the end of the story when Dante and Vergil are fighting.
• Layman's Terms: Nico knows a lot about demon anatomy and mechanical engineering so she says very technical terms in her Enemy and Weapon Reports... and then summarizes what she just said succinctly. For example:
  • When describing the Punch Line Devil Breaker:
    Nico: The propellant injection device is based on the combustion mechanism in that numbskull's demon tummy... It's basically a rocket-powered punch.
  • It's used as her introduction for the Elder Geryon Knight:
    Nico: Geryon are listed as "equus daemonicus" in some of the oldest demonology texts. That's "horse demon" to the uneducated. You keeping up okay, sugar?
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • Dante jokes that it's "Been awhile since I've had to use my brain this much" at the end of the exploration puzzle that makes up the majority of Mission 12. This is pretty much the only extended puzzle in DMC5, whereas previous games, especially DMC1, had plenty more. Chronologically-speaking, it's really been a long time since Dante had to do some puzzle-solving, and the last time a room presented him with a Dice Game, he chose not to participate by cutting the die in half.
  • Just before the fight with Vergil, we get this exchange between him and Dante, referencing their several battles in the previous DMC games. Their Sibling Rivalry was mostly presented as duels when they grew up, so it's like acknowledging how the games didn't cover much of their childhood in detail.
    Vergil: How many times have we fought?
    Dante: Hard to say. It's the only memory I have of us since we were kids.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • Not taking the job of defeating Urizen seriously at first, Lady and Trish rush ahead of Dante. They've both been defeated by the time he catches up.
  • As Dante wakes up from a coma, V and Griffon remind him to return to Urizen's chamber because they know that Nero would head straight there again by himself and lose as expected.
• Legacy Boss Battle: The battle between Dante and Vergil has Vergil primarily sticking to his Devil May Cry 3 tactics, employing familiar techniques like Judgement Cut, Rapid Slash (along with the "Rising Star" extension from 4:SE), and his various Summoned Sword moves (Sword Storm and Blistering Swords). He has both the Yamato combo from 3 (two hits from the sheath then one slash) and the new one he gained in 4:SE (two sheath hits, two slashes, then a bigger slash). He also kept the "Judgement Cut End" super move from 4:SE (complete with the ability to put you into a slow-motion bubble to lock you down before he goes ham). In keeping with the direction his character went in with 4:SE, he also possesses some send-ups to his counterpart from DmC such as having a Helm Breaker downward slash with with the Yamato from mid-air (something he could only do with the Force Edge otherwise) an aerial variation of Judgement Cut that resembles the Flush attack, and the ability to summon a doppelganger when in Sin DT mode.
• Leitmotif
  • Each of the playable characters is given a unique theme music which usually serves as the battle track when playing as them, and can be heard in specific scenes featuring them. Nero has "Devil Trigger", Dante has "Subhuman", V has "Crimson Cloud", and Vergil has "Bury the Light".
  • "Legacy" serves as this game's main theme. Its instrumental versions are heard on the scenes when Dante recalls the flashback memory with his mother Eva, or when Dante acquires his own Devil Sword and Sin Devil Trigger form. It's prominently used in Mission 20 and the ending credits where it's also played in full, complete with the vocals.
  • "The World is Screaming" serves as Urizen's recurring theme while he's still in his Qliphoth throne (whether in-game or in cutscenes), and it's also bootstrapped as the background music for some Qliphoth areas. The violin instrumentals always play just as the current scene takes place inside or near his room.
• Lethal Joke Item: Dr. Faust, the hat Nico fashions for Dante, is a "gun"-type Devil Arm that at first glance, doesn't appear all that useful or highly-damaging compared to his other armaments. That is, until you unlock all four levels of its upgrade, which dramatically increases the number of Red Orbs that are lost and gained from its use. Dr. Faust also deals damage based on the number of Red Orbs being gambled, and this turns it into one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Its cheapest ability, Hat Trick, causes a massive explosion that deals massive damage, breaks enemies' armor, sends them flying toward Dante for followup damage, and gives Dante thousands of Red Orbs per use. One of its abilities in Gunslinger Style summons a meteor made of Red Orbs that can even one-shot some bosses.
• Limit Break:
  • And we do mean "break", literally in Nero's case. Holding down the Devil Breaker button will charge the current Breaker and unleash a super-powered attack of some sort. But once you've done it, that Devil Breaker is lost, so you'll rotate in the next one or need to find another.
  • Nightmare acts as V's Devil Trigger, but it functions more like a powerful move that's only available when V has enough DT gauge.
  • Dante gets some of these in the form of Sin Devil Trigger. Unlike regular Devil Trigger, he has to accumulate DT energy to a special red gauge, and it can only be used when the gauge is full. Once he enters this mode, he gains entirely new, destructive attacks, including a wide-ranging attack called "Judgement" that deals massive damage to a lot of enemies at once, but consumes the remaining of the gauge (akin to Vergil's Judgment Cut End in the fourth game).
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil retains his "Judgement Cut End" with the Yamato from the fourth game. He also gains more finishing moves; "World of V" makes Vergil stab himself with the Yamato, briefly turning himself into V, who unleashes an attack that utilizes all of his familiars. "Hell on Earth" has him charge Beowulf's left fist, and punch the ground with it, unleashing a massive explosion of white light. "Deep Stinger" has him perform a drilling lunge attack with Yamato and Mirage Edge in each hand.
• Lip Lock: Surprisingly for a Capcom game, especially one that's released while Street Fighter V was still making the rounds, the cutscenes in this game are animated for the English dub, making the Japanese voice actors the ones to get lip locked this time around.
• Literal Metaphor:
  • In her Weapon Report, Nico makes a metaphor wordplay out of the Overture and its electric functions:
    Nico: Still, if they knew about the electric generator I jammed inside that puppy, they'd be shocked—maybe literally!
  • A double meaning of the word "sucker" is mentioned in Nico's Report for the Empusa demons that literally suck blood.
    Nico: Seems you'll be running into a lot of these ugly suckers-and I mean "suckers" literally! The good folks of Red Grave have had their blood sucked dry by these lil' worker ants.
  • The Pyrobats resemble the ordinary bats of the human world in terms of shape and size, but because they are from the Demon World, they have otherworldly abilities and body parts upon closer inspection. Nico's Report on them begins by mentioning the closest metaphor she can think of and identifying them as its literal examples.
    Nico: Ever heard the phrase "like a bat outta Hell?" Well, this is it.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: There's a loading screen for almost every transition, even if you're just switching between most menus. For example, booting up the game already triggers a loading screen before the actual title screen, and then another loading screen comes when you resume your mission progress or access the main menu. This becomes more obvious when you start the next mission after completing the previous one; there's a loading screen between a mission's opening cutscene and its preparation menu, and then another loading screen between the preparation menu and the actual gameplay.
• Lodged Blade Removal: During the final boss fight, Nero can be impaled by Vergil's sword, Yamato, upon which he pulls the sword out of his body and impales Vergil with the same sword, who will also pull the blade out of their own body after a moment.
• Logical Weakness:
  • The Qliphoth Roots in Mission 1 are just demonic plant roots bundled together to form one giant barricade, so the protagonists easily figure out that it is vulnerable to fire, which can be produced by the Exceed function of Nero's sword. Nico even points this out just as the fight starts.
    Nico: Incinerate 'em! That sword makes it easy, right?
  • Just like its roots, the Qliphoth's Blood Clots are also plant-based, making them vulnerable to fire as stated in a loading screen tip.
• Loophole Abuse: The "Rearm and Repeat" achievement requires you to "Collect more than 100 Devil Breakers during missions". This sounds like it only counts the Devil Breakers found in Nero's missions of the main story, but there's actually a loophole in the description; it counts any Devil Breaker picked up on any mode, including the dozens of arms freely given out on the Rest Areas of Bloody Palace mode. Another related loophole is present in the Bloody Palace's Warm Up feature; with the ability to jump straight to any previously-visited Rest Area, the player can obtain this achievement faster than intended.
• Loot-Making Attack: The Dr. Faust hat given to Dante midway through the game creates Red Orbs with which the player can purchase and upgrade abilities. However, most of its attacks and abilities also cost Red Orbs (dealing more damage the more Red Orbs it uses), and Dante will also lose Red Orbs if he's hit while using it. Upgrading Dr. Faust to its maximum level greatly increases the amount of Orbs it uses and the damage it deals, while also increasing the amount Dante earns to such absurd degrees that a player can unlock every ability in a few hours.
• Ludicrous Gibs: It's only shown briefly at the end of the prologue mission's cutscene, but Urizen kills a number of humans by impaling them with the Qliphoth's giant roots, exploding them into showers of blood and viscera upon contact.

M-Z

• Macrogame: As it was with DMC4, the currencies (e.g. Red Orbs), consumable items (e.g. Gold Orbs), and Vitality/Devil Trigger Gauge upgrades are shared by the several playable characters and across all playthroughs, eliminating the need to start over from scratch when switching between them (albeit the purchasable skills are still character-specific).
• Macross Missile Massacre: Kalina Ann returns once more with its "Hysteric" move that fires a cluster of mini-missiles. Since Dante can now find another Kalina Ann and dual-wield them, there's also a "Hysteric Twins" move that lets him fire a larger barrage.
• Magitek: Most of the new weapons introduced in this game mix modern technology with supernatural magic, to varying degrees.
  • These are best demonstrated by Nero's Devil Breakers, courtesy of Nico who eagerly makes use of various demonic elements to create new weapons for her friends. For instance, Ragtime is a cybernetic arm that can stop time in an area, derived from the ability of the time-stopping demon horse, Elder Geryon.
  • Dante's Cavaliere weapon was made possible due to fragments of Cavaliere Angelo's armor fusing with an ordinary motorcycle, allowing it to shift forms between dual-wielded chainsaws and a motorcycle for him to ride on.
• Marathon Level: This game's iteration of the Bloody Palace mode is mostly similar to that of DMC4 and DmC in terms of their mechanics. There are 101 levels, but you fight through one level at a time, and with an extendable timer. Unlike all previous versions of the mode, DMC5 also eases on this trope by adding a "Suspend" feature that allows you to take a break from the mode and continue from where you left off at a later time.
• Matchstick Weapon: One of King Cerberus's forms is a flaming bo staff.
• Meaningful Name: Nico's Weapon Report on the Overture Devil Breaker explains that she named it that way because it's just a prelude to the next Devil Breaker arms she can develop. "Overture" is defined as an initiative or introduction to a piece of work.
• Mercy Mode: Getting a game over on easy difficulty will prompt the game to offer to turn on aim assist to help the player.
• Metal Scream: Devil May Cry 5 has one during the chorus of "Bury the Light", Vergil's battle theme.
  Born in flames, I have been blessed!
  My family crest is a DEMON OF DEATH!
• Metal Slime: The uncommon Red Empusas spill Red Orbs with every hit, move faster than the regular Empusas, hardly fight back at all (they have one infrequent swipe-attack), and drop a large amount if you manage to kill them, but they don't flinch from your attacks and will disappear by burrowing away if they're not attacked frequently or killed quickly enough.
• Mickey Mousing: The Style Rank gauge visibly pulses in time with the background music's drumbeat, providing visual aid to the Variable Mix gameplay.
• Militaries Are Useless: The Red Grave City soldiers try to fend off a demon invasion but to no avail, as expected. They're even having trouble with the weakest Mooks in the game. One soldier gets to watch Nero in action as Nico informs him about the devil hunter and his robotic arm.
• Modesty Bedsheet: When Lady and Trish are rescued from inside Artemis and Cavaliere Angelo respectively, they are both nude and the others wrap them in blankets. Once Trish recovers, she simply makes her outfit materialize with magic, while Badass Normal Lady is stuck asking Nico for new clothes.
• Money Is Experience Points: Red Orbs are almost exclusively used for upgrades due to the removal of most items aside from Devil Breakers and Gold Orbs. The only other thing they are used for is to revive the player if they die and that is only if they don't have any Gold Orbs.
• Monochrome Past: When the characters recall the flashback events (such as the hooded assailant arriving in Nero's garage on April and the battle against Urizen on May 15), the cutscene briefly uses a sepia tone filter to distinguish the past from the present.
• Monstrous Cannibalism:
  • A Behemoth is so gluttonous, it also cannibalizes its fellow demon kin. The other demons are afraid of being eaten, so they had to chain its mouth.
  • An Empusa Queen can willingly cannibalize its fellow lesser Empusa demons in order to feed on their blood and become stronger. The first Queen encountered does so in its Mook Debut Cutscene just to demonstrate its aggressive nature and special gimmick.
• Mood Dissonance: The contrast between the dire events of the story and the energetic mood in most scenes is played to an even more extreme degree than usual in a Devil May Cry game. To wit, after the Prologue, it's assumed that Dante, Trish and Lady have all been killed, millions of people are wiped out, and the Big Bad is on the cusp of ending the world as we know it. Yet, Nero and Nico are still as upbeat and having as much fun killing demons as ever. If anything, it only helps motivate the player to save the day.
• Mook Chivalry: An A.I. mechanic carried over from 4, the mooks become less aggressive and won't attack you if they're offscreen. Despite this, they will still attempt to approach you but would only resume attacking if they're on-screen again.
• Mook Commander: A Proto Angelo can lead the Scudo Angelos in the field to utilize some group formation before attacking you.
• Mook Debut Cutscene: While it's a recurring trend for enemies in the franchise to have their own special introductory cutscenes, DMC5 took a page out of DmC by showing the enemy's name after a pause. This time around though, minor enemies also have some sort of descriptive titles.
• Moonwalk Dance: Dante does this dance when he obtains the Dr. Faust hat weapon. In fact, the entire cutscene for it is a Michael Jackson reference.
• Motivational Lie: In the tie in manga Visions of V, Dante tells V that he gets a lot of people lying and exaggerating about how dangerous or important the job they're trying to get him to take up. Usually, he doesn't see it as a big deal and will take the job regardless. When V suggests that Vergil is back, he assumes that V is no different from such liars, but sees someone lying about his dead brother in order to convince him to take the job as crossing the line and gets so angry that he partially enters Devil Trigger. However, V is actually telling the truth and Dante quickly refocuses on the mission. As it turns out, V is actually Vergil himself, or at least the human part of Dante's brother, while the threat he hired Dante to kill was Vergil's demonic half. While he does want Urizen stopped, he also wants to rejoin with Urizen in order to return to the completed Vergil.
• Moveset Clone: The Devil Sword Sparda shares a moveset with Rebellion. To an extent, Devil Sword Dante does too, but it's downplayed since it integrates several of Dante's old Swordmaster moves onto the normal attack button and adds new Summoned Sword attacks to Swordmaster style.
• Mundane Utility:
  • When a Chaos demon got stuck on some debris, Dante uses its spinning blades to shave his scraggly beard.
  • Nico developed an entire Devil Breaker, Pasta Breaker, simply for Nero to have a fork to eat with.
• Multiple Endings: There are two: there's the normal one at the end of the game, and a joke ending posing as a Golden Ending if you manage to kill Urizen during the prologue or Mission 8.
• Musical Nod:
  • Elements of "Lilith's Club" from DmC are remixed for "Feel the Shock", the theme for the fight against the Proto Angelo and the Scudo Angelos in Mission 7.
  • The first few notes of Cerberus' boss theme from Devil May Cry 3 are remixed in the pre-fight cutscene with King Cerberus.
  • The background music in the boss fights of Mission 18 supplement it as a Nostalgia Level to the first Devil May Cry game, with each familiar getting a remix of their original counterparts' themes; Griffon gets "Grilled Tandoori Smoke" as a reference to "FLOCK OFF!", Shadow gets "Silent Siren" as a reference to "PSYCHO SIREN", and Nightmare gets "Psycho Machine" as a reference to "MENTAL MACHINE".
• Mythology Gag: The game references multiple other projects by Capcom and the production staff not set in the main Devil May Cry game continuity.
  • To DmC: Devil May Cry:
    • Nero's considerably shorter hair and reworked wardrobe evoke the appearance of the 2013 Ninja Theory version of Dante. Fittingly, Nero's behaviour evokes that version, who in turn evoked Nero more than Dante.
    • The game borrows several elements that were introduced to the franchise because of DmC, including dialogues during gameplay and battles, enemies' introductions showing their names and subtitles, the player's style rank is announced by a Metal Scream as it climbs, a Training Dummy segment to try out moves, and Slow Motion on the final strike.
    • Dante's DLC color scheme gives him the black hair, dirty white shirt and black jacket with red accents of his alternate DmC self.
    • V's hair turning white when he summons Nightmare via his DT is also akin to how DT worked in DmC, where Dante's hair turns white whenever he uses it.
    • Devil Triggered Vergil summons a Doppelganger for the final phase of his boss fight, just like his DmC counterpart. In the Special Edition, this is also carried over as a gameplay mechanic for playable Vergil's regular Devil Trigger, just like how it did with DmC Vergil's Devil Trigger during the "Vergil's Downfall" DLC campaign.
    • Immediately after Vergil summons a Doppelganger, Dante taunts that the boss, even with a numbers advantage, will never beat him - "Not in a million years", directly quoting an infamous line from his DmC counterpart.
    • When Dante goes to the ruins of his own childhood home, he stands in front of a portrait of his family, with his father's face damaged, and acquires a new power related to his demonic heritage. This scene is similar to how DmC Dante acquired his demonic axe, Arbiter.
    • Shadow's Launcher Move is named "Arbiter" and involves shapeshifting a part of its body into an axe. In DmC, Dante's axe weapon is also named "Arbiter".
    • In a New Game Plus playthrough, one of the photos received after completing Mission 5 features V drinking from a can colored like a can of Virility.
    • Vergil can open portals by literally cutting through thin air, just like his DmC counterpart did after the final battle.
    • Nero's giant "FUCK YOU" right before laying the smackdown on his dad, Vergil, sounds exactly like how Dante used it to taunt the Succubus in his continuity.
  • Inspecting Coyote-A in the model viewer shows its shells are labeled with "DEVIL MUST DIE".
• Nemesis Weapon: Dante's Rebellion and Vergil's Yamato. The contrast between the swords and their powers is elaborated further in this game. As best summarized by Nico in her enemy boss report for Dante; "Dante's sword's all about combining man and demon, while Vergil's all about keeping them apart. Feels like it's more than just two brothers playing around, it's like the swords themselves got something to settle."
• Nerf:
  • Dante's Devil Trigger mode isn't as powerful as it was in 4. Justified in that he was powerful enough in 4 to not have to take any of the conflict seriously on any level, but apparently this time, things are serious enough that even he can't take the whole thing as a joke. Of course that isn't counting the new "Sin" Devil Trigger that he gets during the game, which is insanely powerful.
  • Dante's Super Costume in 4 instantly refills his Royal Gauge back to max after a short delay, allowing you to easily spam Release. In this game, you have to put yourself into a fairly lengthy cooldown state for the Royal Gauge to slowly refill back to max, thereby slowing down the aforementioned Release spamming tactic.
• Nerf Arm: The Pasta Breaker, which is a Devil Breaker cobbled together from a left-over Helter Skelter and random dining utensils by Nico. While it's weak compared to other arms, it can be formidable in good hands, and its main feature is letting you change the order of equipping your next Devil Breaker. It also inflicts a lot of Hit Stop, making it easy to start up a combo or safely switch to another Devil Breaker.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight: Inverted in Mission 17 where Urizen mostly relies on using punches and kicks while fighting Dante, but the latter still had the upper hand and managed to impale him with his newly-acquired sword, the Devil Sword Dante.
• New Game Plus: Expanded on compared to previous games. While it contains the usual standard fare for the series - finishing the game once unlocks the hard difficulty Son of Sparda, finishing that unlocks Dante Must Die, then Heaven or Hell, and then Hell and Hell, with all upgrades, unlocks, and orbs carrying over across all playthroughs - there are also several other new features unlocked, such as the photos that can be added to Nico's enemy reports by killing enemies and S-ranking certain missions. Finishing Son of Sparda also unlocks the "Irregular Full Custom" skill for Dante, allowing him to equip all (or even none) of his weapons at once. The biggest addition is that since Nero unlocks his Devil Trigger and regains his Devil Bringer only at the final mission of the first playthrough, it encourages doing another run to experiment with the new tools present.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: It's only until this game where Vergil is shown to create portal shortcuts with the Yamato by slashing the fabric of space, just like how his Alternate Continuity counterpart did in the ending of DmC: Devil May Cry. Urizen also turns the Yamato into a multi-purpose crystal that he mostly uses to create a barrier for himself. The other plot-relevant ability of Yamato that only came about in DMC5 is its ability to separate Vergil's human and demon halves.
• Next Tier Power-Up: Dante gets a power-up of his own when he runs himself through on a broken piece of his sword, Rebellion. His subsequently absorbing the Devil Sword Sparda unlocks a new form of his Devil Trigger ability: Sin Devil Trigger, which completely changes his moveset and massively buffs his damage. At the same time, he also gains a new, more powerful sword: Devil Sword Dante. Similarly, Vergil gains his own Sin Devil Trigger after V and Urizen are re-merged to bring him back, though a written lore implies he obtained this form thanks to Urizen. As a gameplay mechanic, Dante and Vergil access these forms by sacrificing bars of the DT Gauge to fill the SDT Gauge. And while Nero doesn't gain a Sin Devil Trigger, his own Devil Trigger is fully unlocked in the game's final climax, allowing him to enter a physical demonic form of his own like Dante and Vergil's standard DT. This is an upgrade to his first Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry 4 which functioned more akin to a Fighting Spirit that mimicked and enhanced his attacks.
• No Cutscene Inventory Inertia: Averted. If you equip Dante with Balrog before a cutscene begins, its distinctive armor will appear on his feet, arms, and shoulders in the cutscene. Similarly, with Nero, whichever Devil Breaker you have equipped (or if you have none at all) will be the one on Nero's model in the following cutscene.
  • An exception to this is the opening cutscene of Mission 20, where Nero's Devil Breaker is always Overture, most likely to avoid creating several variations of said arm breaking apart as Nero activates his true Devil Trigger for the first time.
• No-Gear Level:
  • In order to get the "Who Needs Weapons Anyway?" achievement/trophy, you need to beat Mission 11 with nothing but Dante's bare hands. Hope you're good with Royalguard.
  • In his final playable mission, V is trapped in another dimension where his familiars are taken from him. He must fight a short Boss Rush and has to retrieve his familiars against one boss at a time.
• Non-Indicative Name: As stated in Nico's Reports, the "II" in the Kalina Ann II's name doesn't necessarily mean that it's an upgrade on the original; Nico just made a replica that doesn't stray too far from the original rocket launcher that Lady dropped in the battle against Urizen.
• No Plot? No Problem!: As it's the usual trend with the classic games in the franchise, Vergil Mode makes no attempts at justifying why Vergil is going through each level aside from an opening cutscene (which really doesn't explain much unless Vergil somehow went through everything Nero, V, and Dante did in the time between being reborn and meeting Dante at the top of the Qliphoth. However, the endgame breaks from the tradition, as he does get a new final boss and a proper ending of sorts (which turns out to be an extended version of Dante's epilogue in the Underworld).
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range:
  • "Gun Stinger" returns as a shotgun blast Dash Attack that invokes the trope of shooting the target at point-blank range. This game returned to the move's original roots and improved upon it unlike DMC4, as Dante now has three follow-up offshoot moves after firing "Gun Stinger".
  • Nero and Dante's standard firearms deal more damage the closer they are to the target, and Nero invokes this by grabbing and shooting a Hell Caina right at its temple in point-blank range during a Buster sequence.
• Nostalgia Level:
  • Mission 18 is one to the first game, given that Dante fights V's familiars, who are based on DMC1 demons, complete with remixes of their original themes.
    Dante: It's like I'm back on Mallet Island!
  • Just like DMC1, there's a Secret Mission where you must expose a Death Scissors' weak point and kill it with one shot. The Death Scissors demons are basically this game's version of the Sin Scissors demons from the first game. The resemblance is more obvious in the vanilla DMC5 as said Secret Mission is played using Dante.
• Notice This: Aside from the recurring series-wide examples such as collectibles glowing and the camera focusing on the next destination, this game also features several visual cues that help you in combat.
  • Enemies that have had their health depleted and are ready for V to finish off turn stark white, looking as if they're frozen over. Additionally, if you're locked on to them, their lock-on icon takes the form of a wavy orange circle instead of a straight blue one.
  • After you successfully parry a Death Scissors demon's attack, its mask gets briefly shrouded by a red mist, hinting that your next attack against it becomes a One-Hit Kill.
  • In the cutscene preceding the Gilgamesh boss fight, the camera zooms in and focuses on its weak point for a few seconds.
• "Not So Different" Remark: V gives one to Urizen. Despite being a physically frail human and an imposing demon lord respectively, V states both of them share the same desire for power, which is likely how V convinces Urizen to fuse with him and reform Vergil. Downplayed in that Urizen is driven solely by a mindless lust for power, to the point where there seems to be no reason for it beyond simply wanting it, while V is a frail and dying human who will decay into dust when what little demonic power he has runs out, if he isn't murdered by demons first.
  V: We are one and the same, you and I. But you've lost me, and I've lost you. Yet we are connected by that one feeling.
• Obligatory Swearing: The mainline series mostly kept itself with only mild cuss words over the years, ranging from "damn", "shit" to "asshole" at most. Strong cussing was implemented in the attempted reboot in DmC with "fucks" a plenty. 5 however marks the point where the mainline series also brings the "fucks" home, courtesy of Nero later in the game during a very personal and emotional fight, he who already did most of the previous mild swearing in 4 anyway. To top it off, there's Griffon, who unlike Nero, doesn't need to be under emotional impulse to spew the strong words, yet the bird has plenty of "fucks" to give during gameplay; for his attacks and during some in-game dialogue.
• Offhand Backhand:
  • When the Fury is first introduced, it tries to perform a sneak attack on Dante, only to be pushed back by his finger.
  • In the scene leading up to the final battle, Nero does this to Dante with one of his Devil Bringer wings/arms to stop him and Vergil from trying to kill each other.
  • Dante and Vergil deliver a simultaneous one to Nero when they leave for the Demon World to cut off the Qliphoth's roots and Nero tries to stop them towards the end.
• Oh, Crap!: When Dante, having moments before he allowed V to climb onto and speak with the defeated Urizen, realizes that the two are about to recombine and resurrect Vergil, he charges the two in an ultimately futile attempt to stop V.
• Once an Episode: This game continues two grand DMC traditions, but steps it up and has them both happen multiple times through the game:
  • Dante is impaled upon his own sword — first to merge Rebellion and Sparda into the Devil Sword Dante and obtain his Sin Devil Trigger, and then again every time he activates Sin Devil Trigger.
  • "Jackpot!" is said not once, not twice, but three times, each time possibly referencing how it was used in previous entries: Dante says it upon meeting Urizen and realizing that he is indeed an aspect of Vergil ^note like how Dante used it when slaying Mundus, the "jackpot" responsible for everything that Dante had been searching for, in 1; Nero can say it to Vergil in the final battle if he finishes him off with a Buster ^note the same way he did it to Sanctus Diabolica in the final battle of 4; and Dante will say it in the final post-credits cutscene when he and Vergil start kicking demon ass together, with Vergil even admonishing him "Don't you dare say it--!". ^note Similar to the last time Dante and Vergil teamed up, to kill Arkham near the end of 3.
• One-Hit Kill: Death Scissors, a variant of the Sin Scissors demons from DMC1, appear in this game and they can be one-hit killed by parrying their attack with a melee weapon first, then using another attack to finish them off. Secret Mission 7 requires you to do this with one of them.
• One-Hit Polykill: The shots from Nero's Blue Rose revolver and Dante's Ebony & Ivory handguns can penetrate other demons that happen to be aligned with the primary locked-on target. This trope becomes literal and more noticeable in the "Heaven or Hell" mode where everything dies in one hit; a single gunshot can simultaneously kill the target and another one behind it. These are justified in the lore and item descriptions of both guns, as they are stated to fire armor piercing rounds.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Nero's Red Queen sword is already unique for being an engine-powered flaming sword that's revved like a motorcycle, but Nico calls it a "standard issue" when compared to Dante's Cavaliere, a bike that turns into swords.
• Palette Swap:
  • The "mirage" versions of Goliath, Artemis, and Cavaliere Angelo are completely recolored in a ghostly pale white to differentiate them from their original counterparts.
  • Alternate "EX" costumes don't modify much detail apart from changing the color palette, although there are subtle exceptions. Most of these costumes are just palette swaps of pre-existing color themes from the previous games; EX Dante has DmC Dante's colors, EX Nero has Credo's colors from DMC4, EX Trish has Gloria's colors when she was disguised in DMC4, EX Lady simply references Trish's default colors, and EX Vergil references his color palette from DMC3.
• Parental Abandonment: A core theme of the plot.
  • Nico explicitly talks about how her father abandoned her and her mother to dabble in demonic research for Fortuna's order. They never actually say his name, but as long as you've played 4, it's fairly obvious she's Agnus's daughter, and she's not too broken up over Dante killing him, having written him off a long time ago.
  • As the fans figured out years ago but spelled out explicitly for the first time in this game, Vergil is Nero's father. After having been an orphan his whole life with only Kyrie and Credo to depend on, finding out he actually has living blood relations who could possibly love him pivots his motivation from wanting revenge to wanting to stop his last remaining family from killing each other out of spite.
  • It's also revealed that Vergil himself believes that his mother, Eva, abandoned him in the demonic attack that destroyed their home to save Dante over him, and only seems to have learned the truth (that she did try to save him and died doing so) when Dante tells Urizen, who brushes it off since Vergil's demonic half couldn't care less about, and doesn't even remember, his human connections. When recompleted though, Vergil wonders what his life would have been like if she had saved him first.
• Percent Damage Attack: If your Vitality Gauge is depleted, picking the third Red Orb revival choice (which is usually the most expensive) also creates a flash that takes away 50% of the enemies' current health, but without killing them even if they have a sliver of health left.
• Percussive Maintenance: In one of the ending cutscenes, Nico kicks her jukebox in order to make it work while Nero is busy fighting the demons on the road.
• Physical, Mystical, Technological: Dante, V, and Nero. Dante fights with a variety of melee weapons, firearms, and has access to a Devil Trigger mode from the get-go; V, by controlling familiars; and Nero, with cybernetic arms, a customized flaming sword, and a revolver.
• Pillar of Light: At the end of Mission 17, V impaling a weakened Urizen causes a blue pillar of light to shoot up from where they are. It shatters the illusory background like glass, and when it dissipates, a reformed Vergil is standing in place of V and Urizen.
• Pinball Projectile: Petal Ray, Gerbera's aerial Break Age, shoots several recoil lasers that bounce off surfaces to hit enemies multiple times, perfect for enclosed spaces.
• Play Every Day: You can get an item the first time you start the game each day, which includes Gold Orbs.
• Player Data Sharing: Similar to Story Intersections from Resident Evil 6, the Cameo System allows the game to use ghost data or let you fight alongside other players when you encounter another playable character in gameplay.
• Playing with Fire:
  • The Buster Arm Devil Breaker reproduces the high intensity blue flame abilities of Nero's now lost Devil Bringer.
  • Balrog, Dante's new gauntlets and greaves, are fire elemental. The catch is Balrog can actually lose its flames, so Dante has to reignite them with punches in Blow Mode or holding Triangle/Y in Kick mode.
  • King Cerberus's staff mode deals fire damage.
• Pocket Dimension: The official website describes The Void as a "special pocket dimension" where you can polish your demon-slaying skills. It looks like a crimson-themed empty floor with red skies and a dark weird moon in the background.
• Post-Final Boss: The real final boss fight is arguably Dante vs. Vergil in Mission 19, to the point that this fight, rather than the one in Mission 20, is the final encounter in the Bloody Palace for all four characters. The boss fight in Mission 20, while far from a cakewalk, is markedly easier and quicker due to Vergil presumably being as tired from the previous battle as Dante is, and Nero just unlocking his own Devil Trigger and being at full strength, and was likely intended as more of a victory lap and catharsis for Nero than a true final test for the player. It's more pronounced on the first playthrough, where Nero has a constantly regenerating Devil Trigger, but even on later playthroughs on higher difficulties it's still a significantly easier fight than the one in Mission 19. Completely averted in Vergil's campaign, as the Mission 20 fight against Dante is much, much harder than the one in the previous mission.
• Power Gives You Wings: Nero fully awakening to his demonic heritage coincides with him gaining prehensile spectral wings that he can control the claws of when they're not resting on his shoulders (as seen by him cracking their knuckles).
• Power Glows: Used as a universal sign that charge attacks are ready to be unleashed: Nero's sword flashes when Hard Way is charged, his Devil Breaker will glow with bright light when its most powerful attack is ready, Dante's King Cerberus weapon will crackle with electricity, etc.
• The Power of Family: In the last stretches of the game, Nero learns that Vergil is his father and thus Dante is his uncle by default, right before Dante and Vergil leave to have a climactic Duel to the Death. Having never had a family before, Nero rejects everyone's insistence that Dante and Vergil must kill each other, and his resolve to not lose the family he just gained prompts a new Devil Trigger with which he breaks up the fight and beats Vergil himself to make his father stand down.
• Powers Do the Fighting:
  • Urizen spends his fights literally lounging in his throne, only bothering to raise a single hand to direct his magical assaults. Until Nero manages to break through his shield, enraging Urizen into standing up and actively crushing the poor guy. Urizen fights actively in all further boss fights.
  • V's familiars do most of the heavy lifting, with him only stepping in to deliver the killing blow.
• Power-Up Magnet: The character-specific "Get More Orbs" skill returns here from 4. It still greatly expands your acquisition range, allowing you to collect orbs faster than usual.
• Practical Taunt: Besides the usual taunting to keep the style meter from falling, some taunts have other bonuses with them:
  • One of Nero's high rank taunts has him perform a flashy reload with the Blue Rose, which actually fills up his ammo meter.
  • Another high rank taunt, returning from 4, has Nero rev Red Queen while it is planted to the ground. In 4, the taunt only revved it a little (not even enough to raise the EX Gauge's bar, let alone add a level), but in 5, this taunt will add an entire level to the EX Gauge.
  • Nero's aerial taunt gives him a decent burst of air, allowing it to be used as an extra jump or a dodge against larger enemies. While Nero can't be controlled during the taunt animation, he retains his momentum. In addition, he can perform EX-Act or MAX-Act with it to fill the EX Gauge.
    Nero: Let's get airborne!
  • Clearing the credits sequence will unlock a special Nero taunt where he chews gum to restore some health, usable once per level.
  • Dante's aerial taunt, and one of his S-rank taunts, has him toss a rose, which serves as a juggle (and does an extremely low amount of damage) if it hits a foe.
  • The unlockable Bloody Palace taunts all have some beneficial side effect that's different for each Player Character to compensate for their difficulty in unlocking them:
    • Nero's taunt gives him Glowing Eyes of Doom as he puts his hood up. This gives him a small, but stacking damage buff for every enemy he defeats as long as he has the hood up - getting knocked back or running into scripted events that cause Nero to flinch will put the hood back down.
    • V's taunt wreathes his cane in a purple demonic aura as he swings it around for a five-hit melee combo. This animation has a hitbox the whole way through, and the last hit can even finish off dying enemies like his normal cane attacks. The aura also remains after the animation, giving him a slight damage buff to his cane attacks.
    • Dante's taunt has him slick his hair back and form a heart made out of his Summoned Swords behind him. He gets a damage buff that remains as long as his hair's slicked back, with similar mechanics to Nero's hoodie buff, although Dante's buff scales based on how full his Devil Trigger gauge is (and can actually become a penalty if his DT gauge is at zero).
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil gets several practical taunts.
    • His 4:SE taunt where he spins a Summoned Sword on his right pointer finger makes a return, and it still has a hitbox to juggle opponents with.
    • His air taunt is the first hit of his old Yamato air combo in 3, and it can be jump canceled indefinitely using Enemy Step.
    • His Bloody Palace taunt one-shots everything short of bosses at the expense of having a lengthy startup. It also does increased damage for every enemy Vergil hits with it, making it easier for him to perform One Hit Polykills with this taunt.
    • His EX Provocation has Vergil's doppelganger dance in circles around him until he runs out of patience and cuts it down, which does a bit of damage to enemies near the doppelganger and also sends them flying. If the whole animation plays, a decent chunk of Red Orbs rain from the sky, refunding some of the 3,000,000 Red Orbs required to buy the taunt.
    • One of his S~SSS rank taunts has Vergil perform a traditional sword dance with the Yamato, which takes several seconds. If he manages to complete it, his Devil Trigger gauge is instantly refilled.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Nero will once again spout lines right before destroying a demon.
  Nero: Happy birthday! Now make a WISH! *BOOM*
• Precision F-Strike: At the climax of the game, Nero's response to his father trying to get him to stand down is to scream "FUCK YOU" at the top of his lungs and transform into his Devil Trigger form. On your first playthrough, the camera will dramatically focus on this scene just to emphasize it. Logistically, this also extends to a gameplay mechanic. Occasionally when activating his Trigger, Nero screams "Don't fuck with me!"
• Pressure Plate: Standing on certain special platforms reveal or activate a nearby Grim Grip that you can grapple on.
• Previously on…: The game contains a "History of DMC" short video that does a quick recap of the relevant events of the animated series and previous 4 classic continuity games for players who are jumping into the franchise for the first time.
• Pun: Finishing Mission 11 on a New Game Plus playthrough rewards you with a photo captioned "War of A-Trish-ion", which is a reference to the boss of said mission, Cavaliere Angelo, using Trish as its Living Battery.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: The Tomboy Devil Breaker turns Blue Rose into a weapon of mass destruction by overcharging its shots. The drawback is that Nero is forced to stand still to handle the recoil and has to manually aim rather than rely on lock-on or auto-aim.
• Punny Name: Nero's EX Calibur and EX-Act abilities are carried over from 4, yet are still puns on the legendary sword Excalibur, and the exact timing to activate an Exceed attack, respectively. This game adds more punny names on his Devil Breakers and their abilities if you read them from certain perspectives; "Brake Age" is the general term for his new powered moves that cause breakage to the arm when used. "Break Away" allows Nero to break away from an enemy's attack at the cost of a Devil Breaker literally breaking, the "Punch Line" Devil Breaker deteches the arm to punch enemies and allows Nero to deliver a powerful uppercut as its Break Age, the Ragtime Devil Breaker slows down time, while the Monkey Business Devil Breaker has a banana motif.
• Put Their Heads Together: In the Final Battle, one of Nero's Buster moves is to grab Vergil and his Devil Trigger doppelganger and smash their heads together while Nero says this line:
  Nero: You dropped this!
• Randomized Title Screen: On an initial playthrough, the main menu is an exterior shot of Nico's van parked inside of Nero's garage. In a New Game Plus, the camera either moves inside or closer to the van where several of the game's characters are sitting or idling around, performing a randomized set of actions.
• Reconcile the Bitter Foes: Nero, refusing to lose anyone else close to him as he did Credo, plants himself right between Dante and Vergil and demands an end to their feud. When an indignant Dante storms up to him telling him to stand down, Nero backhands him so hard he goes flying and reaffirms that he won't let the two kill each other.
• Reconstruction: Of the Sibling Rivalry between Dante and Vergil. Once Vergil comes back from the dead, the two brothers instantly engage in battle against each other like they did many times in the past. However, they chose to focus on their rivalry just as the Qliphoth Tree is still a threat to the human world. Nero points this all out to the Sons of Sparda and intervenes to make them stop their squabble and focus on saving the world instead. The reconstruction comes when Dante and Vergil manage to keep their rivalry on friendlier terms, and to not let it stop them from holding off the hordes in the Demon World while Nero takes care of the Human World. As they defeat their enemies, they still make time to banter with and try to match each other's "score".
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Dante delivers a glorious one to Urizen during their final battle, explaining why he's still stronger than Urizen despite the latter's quest for power.
  Urizen: How... How are you so powerful?! You never lost anything!
  Dante: It's not about loss... Strength is a choice! Fighting like hell to protect what matters! You threw away everything you ever had! No wonder you have no true power!
• Recurring Riff:
  • "Devil Trigger" is not just Nero's Leitmotif that plays in segments where he's involved, it can also be heard in the background while you're viewing the Gallery unlockables or files. Likewise, "Silver Bullet" is essentially a remix of "Devil Trigger". In the Special Edition, Vergil's "Bury the Light" theme song also incorporates elements and notes from "Devil Trigger".
  • A portion of the game's main theme, "Legacy", can be heard in the instrumentals of Urizen's boss fight theme in Mission 17.
• Red Herring: For the first half of the game, Dante is assumed MIA and dead by the other protagonists, and V repeatedly mentions the possibility of Nero being the last hope that could defeat Urizen, so he seeks the Devil Sword Sparda hoping that it might be wielded by Nero as their trump card. These hints didn't come into fruition as Dante is revealed to be alive; he just spent a month in a coma, he's the one who wielded the Devil Sword Sparda and defeated Urizen.
• Reduced-Downtime Features: Compared to the previous DMC titles, this game doesn't focus on puzzles and the level designs are significantly streamlined to minimize backtracking. While there are a few "keys" that the player has to search for to progress through a level, the need for them is drastically reduced compared to the labyrinthine puzzle-solving that needed to be done in the previous entries. Also, the time-consuming Combat Adjudicators from DMC3 and DMC4 are no longer present here. These reduced features leave the game largely focused on action.
• Reestablishing Character Moment: The last time any of these characters were seen outside of spin-offs before the release of this game was Devil May Cry 4. Discounting the special edition re-release of the fourth game, there was a pretty big gap in-universe and out of universe between these entries, with the legacy characters getting some ways to re-establish their personalities after a long absence.
  • Nero, after being an angry, brash, cocky and emotional kid from the previous game, arrives in this game even more cocky and hot-headed than before, almost similar to Dante's DMC3 self. While the prologue would have shades of this, he is unceremoniously beaten by Urizen and forced to retreat. This is best seen after in the first chapter (which also takes place a month after the prologue), where he arrives in Red Grave City with Nico. Now equipped with the cybernetic Devil Breaker, he proceeds to kick all sorts of demon ass while taunting his enemies.
  • The game's true antagonist Vergil, after he had been gone for several years after his appearance as Mundus' servant, Nelo Angelo, in the first game, and made a brief appearance in DMC4's special edition as an extra character with some cutscenes to show where he was before the series started. His big return after V and Urizen fuse together has him effortlessly counter Dante's attacks, then tell him to heal his wounds so that he'll be strong enough to fight properly. He then leaves, thanks Nero for his help, and then climbs to the top of the Qliphoth tree and wait for Dante for their fated duel. This moment helps bring Vergil back to the forefront, show how his skill and rivalry over Dante hasn't changed a bit, but shows shades of his newfound humanity he experienced as V, thanking his son (that he didn't know at the time) for his help, when initially he was all about power that he covets for himself back in 3.
• Reforged Blade: After Dante jams the broken hilt of Rebellion into his chest, he absorbs it along with the Devil Sword Sparda. The two swords merge to create Dante's own personal Devil Arm, the Devil Sword Dante.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The game has allusions to mythologies regarding its World Tree concepts - The demonic world tree is named Qliphoth. ^note In Jewish mythology, the Qliphoth is a diagram of evil forces that oppose the Sephiroth; the qualities of God. The Qliphoth being a giant blood-devouring tree from Hell is a rather literal interpretation of it being the "Tree of Death" in opposition of the Sephiroth's "Tree of Life". Nero can also pick up an item called the "Nidhogg Hatchling" which allows him to destroy obstacles brought upon by the demonic tree. Nidhogg himself, a dim-witted and cowardly parasite, shows up later on as a boss. ^note In Norse mythology, Nidhogg is the dragon who chews the roots of the cosmic tree Yggdrasil.
• Replay Mode: The player can replay the cutscenes of completed levels via the "Story" sub-option of the Gallery menu.
• Retcon:
  • Both director Hideaki Itsuno and producer Matthew Walker have stated 5 takes place after 2, although later on it's changed to taking place after 4 which itself now takes place after 2. That said, Dante is more like he is in 1, 3, and 4 than his 2 self.
  • For a long time, Dante's Ebony & Ivory handguns have the phrase "FOR TONY REDGRAVE BY .45 ART WARKS" etched on their slides. Instead of fixing it immediately, the novel of the first game rendered it canon with a justification; Nell Goldstein, the gunsmith who crafted the handguns, makes this spelling goof frequently and Dante even calls her out for being a bad speller. It's only until this game and its Before the Nightmare novel when the spelling has been finally corrected to "WORKS", leading to another retcon which explains Nell's son, Rock Goldstein, was the one who made the "Art Warks" misspelling when he was still young, yet Nell kept it to honor him. Rock was newly-introduced in this game's novel, and at one point, Dante visited his shop to have his guns fine-tuned. Rock noticed the misspelled "WARKS" and corrected it.
• The Reveal:
  • Urizen and V were the demon half and human half of Vergil, Dante's brother and Nero's father. The dying Vergil had hoped by cutting out the human part of his being, his demonic side would grow powerful enough for his Healing Factor to save him. And it did. Unfortunately, the new "Urizen" turned out to be a complete Jumping Off the Slippery Slope Enemy Without, leading Vergil's new human half, "V", to decide Urizen had to be killed or sealed back within a complete Vergil, no matter the cost.
  • Dante revealing to Nero that Vergil is his father, and that Dante knew it the moment he saw how the Yamato, Vergil's blade, reacted to him back in the previous game. This one is also partially an Internal Reveal, as the identity of Nero's father was heavily implied in the official Devil May Cry 4 novelization in 2009.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Zigzagged. Ordinary background objects never have orbs in them so cutting them up results in no rewards (outside of the usual beating up on enemies, you only get orbs by breaking orb caches or just finding them lying around). However, there are several bonus rewards at the end of missions for destroying objects, including specific ones like the balloons in Mission 2, or coffins in Missions 9 and 15, which not only give these bonuses but also have red orbs in them.
• Right Makes Might: Even after he fully awakens to the blood of Sparda, Nero should be no match for the stronger and more skilled Vergil. That said, Nero still beats Vergil's ass in their duel at the end of the game. It can be somewhat justified given that Vergil had been fighting Dante moments prior, and thus was probably exhausted.
• Rival Final Boss: The endgame has Dante and a resurrected Vergil duke it out once again because by this point, that's just what they do. Nero finally gets fed up, backhands Dante, and personally beats Vergil just to make him submit and get them to stop fighting. In contrast to the vanilla version, playable Vergil's campaign mode changes the context of the Final Boss battle, where he and Dante proceed to fight without Nero's on-screen intervention.
• Rocket Punch: The Punch Line Devil Breaker can transform into a stinger missile and then fly fist first into enemies.
• Rocket Ride: After firing Punch Line, Nero can surf around on it. It even has its own moveset.
• Ruder and Cruder: Zig-zagged depending on which previous installment is this game compared to. DMC5 has more instances of profanity than DMC4 (the last game in the same continuity). In here, Nero calls a Death Scissors demon as an "asshole" and he swears to his father in the final mission, Dante says "shit" to Urizen, and Morrison calls Lady and Trish "bitches", etc... However, it is still tamer than the profanity of DmC (the last game before this, but on an alternate continuity) where the F-bombs are aplenty.
• Rule of Cool: While it's to be expected of the Devil May Cry series, the fact that one of Dante's weapons is a demonic cowboy hat and he doesn't seem to lose any coolness points for it, reaches a new height for the trope.
• Rule of Symbolism: Nero's regeneration of his arm is meant to be a manifestation of him activating the power of his bloodline. The Sparda family has previously attained power through the love they have for others - Sparda awakened to the concept of justice and thus became supremely powerful, while Dante awakened to the love of his mother and family and activated his Devil Trigger, beating out Vergil at the end of 3. Nero has outright declared his love for his uncle and father and as a result, has attained a power similar to them - and possibly if given enough time, exceeding them, since it's mentioned that those with demonic blood only grow stronger the more human emotions can temper their power.
• Running Gag:
  • Nico's van somehow able to reach exactly where Nero or V are after they call for her - each time including a cutscene of her navigating it to them in increasingly-absurd ways.
  • While entirely Played for Drama, Dante is once again impaled in this game. However, he at least voluntarily does it to himself this time. It can also happen to him in his final battle as a Call-Back to how it happened to him in 3. Dante's Sin Devil Trigger transformation also always starts with his sword flying out and impaling him again.
  • The "dead weight" remark (which is mostly attributed to Nero) is mentioned six times (or eight if you count two reused dialogue lines in a flashback). Though Dante first said it to Nero on May 16, it just goes to show how Nero is deeply affected by it because he keeps on bringing it up a month later. It becomes a Book Ends example in the end when Nero throws it right back at an exhausted Dante.
  • Several characters, and in completely independent moments from each other, compare Griffon to a chicken.
• Same Plot Sequel: Apart from the intentional call-backs and Continuity Nods, the story of DMC5 has several parallels to that of DMC3. A tall demonic structure suddenly appears in the middle of a city (Qliphoth and Temen-ni-gru), Dante is drawn to the action by a mysterious man who always carries a book (V and Arkham), Vergil ventures through said structure and seeks something that would grant him power (The Qliphoth's fruit and the Force Edge), although his demon half Urizen is responsible for it this time around. Dante's battles with Urizen in 5 also follow the pattern of his battles with Vergil in 3, namely; Dante loses the first fight, gains a new demonic power after being stabbed by Rebellion, their second fight technically ends in a draw, and Dante emerges victorious in the third. Vergil is the Final Boss again and he mostly fights just like how he did back in 3 (though Nero is the last person who defeats him this time). And just like the finale of 3, Vergil dives into the Underworld again, but Dante follows him this time instead of letting him go alone.
• Sarcastic Well Wishing: Nero's possible line for the "Exploder" move (where he jams his Overture mech hand into the enemy's body, then detaches it, and then it explodes seconds later) has him saying "Happy birthday! Now make a wish!"
• Save the Villain: This becomes the ultimate goal of Mission 20, as Nero interrupts Dante's duel with Vergil and defeats him so that no one (especially Vergil) will have to die.
• Scenery Censor: A convenient lens flare, demon goo or arm and leg placement is used to hide Lady and Trish's nude bodies from viewers.
• Scenery Gorn: Red Grave City is degrading and the demons are invading. Instead of the pristine Gothic architecture of past Devil May Cry games, battles are fought across burning wreckage of a modern city which is also infested by parts of the giant Qliphoth tree.
• Sequel Escalation:
  • Nero only had the Red Queen, Blue Rose, Devil Bringer, and Yamato at his disposal in 4. While he still retains the first two, the loss of his original Devil Bringer in this game allowed him to equip a variety of Devil Breaker arms in its place, and several more can be purchased as DLC. In New Game Plus, Nero recovers the abilities of his original Devil Bringer, and can also manifest a spectral copy of the Yamato for some of his moves.
  • Playable Vergil only had one Limit Break in the Special Edition of 4 - Judgement Cut End. Here, he has four super moves; one for each of his three weapons (including the aforementioned move from 4), and another which involves summoning V and his familiars.
  • Dante, Nero and Vergil all receive a Next Tier Power-Up in this game.
  • The Devil Sword Sparda was considered one of the strongest weapons in the previous games (it gave Dante an 11th-Hour Superpower in 1, and the Order of the Sword sought its power in 4). It turns out the sword has a direct upgrade - the Devil Sword Dante.
• Sequel Hook: Dialogue lines from the final mission imply the story is not yet completely over; before Dante and Vergil dive down the Underworld to sever the Qliphoth, Dante entrusts Nero with demon-related issues on the human world while they're away, then Vergil also gives Nero his poetry book, telling his son to hold onto it for the meantime, and says he won't lose when they fight again "next time".
• Serial Escalation: This game is the first one for Dante to be truly pushed to the limit since 3, since he has consistently been the most powerful being in every game he has been in. This time around, the new demon king Urizen pushes the upper limits of power levels in the series. Also whereas the events of every game so far has been isolated, the threat here has escalated to a global scale, where the demons are attacking human cities in broad daylight and the demonic tree Qliphoth is threatening to reach into outer space. In the prologue, J.D. Morrison also lampshades the gravity of this situation being unlike Dante's previous encounters.
  J.D. Morrison: We've known each other a long time... Ya never had this much trouble. You gonna make it through this, Dante?
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Scudo Angelos are this game's version of a sword-and-shield demon knight, capable of blocking some of your attacks as usual, but are also left defenseless when their shields are broken after repeated hits.
• Ship Sinking: Morrison's third letter states that Dante and Lady's relationship is less romantic and more that they just get what the other has been through. This is consistent with previous novels, supplemental materials and Word of God, which state that Lady finds it difficult to date Dante and that Dante eschews relationships that would get in the way of Devil-Hunting. Fans of the ship, however, feel that all of this still leaves a lot of room for interpretation of the pair's past and future.
• Shock and Awe:
  • One of Nero's new Devil Breakers, Overture, has electricity-based attacks, versus the Devil Bringer's flame-based ones.
  • As in the first game, this is Griffon's area of expertise.
  • Cavaliere, Dante's Devil Arm motorcycle, sends out purple electrical sparks when attacked with. Its respective demon, the Cavaliere Angelo, also uses lightning in his swordplay. This is made possible because the demon uses Trish as a "battery" or a vessel.
  • King Cerberus's three-section staff form sends out sparks and deals electrical damage as well.
• Shock Stick: King Cerberus can transform into an electrified three-section staff.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: In the early parts of the game, Nico and her van can be summoned for upgrades, with her arrival, dialogue lines, and store music providing a bit of levity before boss fights. But once the protagonists start diving into the Qliphoth seriously to stop it, Nico starts falling behind. By then, Divinity Statues start appearing, which, while relatively soothing, are still much more otherworldly and impersonal compared to the van.
• Shoot the Medic First: Green Empusa can heal the other demons, thus Nico specifically states in her report that they should be killed first.
  Nico: The green stuff in their butt ain't any kind of blood-it's a healing nectar that'll fix up other demons' wounds in no time at all. My recommendation: Kill these first, before they make themselves a nuisance.
• Shout-Out:
  • V directly quotes a lot of William Blake's poems (and Vergil does it at one point as well), while Urizen is named after the god of reason from William Blake's lore. The Game Over text, "The last judgment draweth nigh...", is an excerpt from Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" ("Kill not the moth nor butterfly. For the last judgment draweth nigh.") And as discovered by players who looked through the game's files, there are also other Blake poems found as Easter Eggs on the texture files of V's book.
  • One of the DLC Devil Breakers is the Gerbera GP01, which was inspired by Shoji Kawamori. This references the GP01 Gundam "Zephyranthes" from Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, which was designed by Kawamori. Additionally, Kawamori is the Devil Breakers' designer.
  • Dante's new fire-based Devil Arm, Balrog, refers to the Balrog from The Lord of the Rings.
  • After getting Dr. Faust, a hat Devil Arm from Nico, Dante promptly does a dance evocative of Michael Jackson, crotch-grabbing and all. The weapon's name is also a reference to Doctor Faustus, the first theatrical adaptation of the Faust legend of German folklore.
  • One of Dante's attacks with Dr. Faust is named "Mad Hatter".
  • The enemy photos for Hellbats, Chaos, and Empusa Queens say "Twisted firestarter", "Spin me right round", and "She's a killer...", respectively.
  • Completing the game on Heaven or Hell mode earns you the "Stairway to Heaven" achievement.
  • Completing the game on Hell and Hell mode earns you the "Highway to Hell" achievement.
  • Accumulating at least 60 minutes of time spent in mid-air earns you the "I Believe I Can Fly" achievement.
  • Killing at least five enemies in one second earns you the achievement "The Quick and the Dead".
  • A snippet of Dante's battle theme, "Subhuman", contains the lyrics "I will not falter, shout at the devil, as I bury them six feet underground."
  • Some taunts play classical music in the background. At S Style Rank and above, V can play Niccolò Paganini's Caprice No. 24 or Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, while his EX Provocation Taunt makes him dance to Singin' in the Rain. Vergil's EX Provocation Taunt makes his Doppelganger clone dance to Mozart's Dies Irae.
  • Griffon can scream "Ride the lightning!" as one of his battle quotes.
  • A few references to other Capcom franchises are made:
    • One of Nero's DLC Devil Breakers include the Mega Buster from Mega Man.
    • Dante's gauntlets and greaves, Balrog, refers to both Balrogs from Capcom's Street Fighter series: Blow Mode refers to the boxer Balrog (as he's known in the US), while Kick Mode refers to Vega (known as Balrog in Japan). Like Dante's previous gauntlet weapons, his fully powered up uppercut also recreates the Shin Shoryuken.
    • Contrasting how Dante has some of Ryu's moves, Vergil's Dragon Breaker move with Beowulf is Ken's Shoryureppa. When the move is charged to maximum, he even does the three-uppercut "level 3" version. Vergil can also extend Kick 13 into the launcher move Rising Sun, and the entire combo heavily resembles Ken's Shippu Jinraikyaku.
    • One of Nightmare's attacks is very similar to Zangief's Lariat move. In addition, one of V's taunts has a miniature Nightmare using the move on top of V's palm.
  • The lyrics of Vergil's theme song 'Bury the Light' include the following line: 'the truth revealed in eyes of ember'. 'Eyes of ember' is an expression that Dante Alighieri used in his Divine Comedy to talk about Charon, the soul ferryman.
• Sibling Team: The Stinger shows Dante and Vergil demolishing some demons together in the Underworld.
• Sidetrack Bonus: DMC5 is abundant with sidepaths, the game even has a button that can be held to show you the path to the main objective and differentiate them instead. Many of them (such as in Missions 4, 10, 15, and 16) are of the usual kind that rewards Blue Orb Fragments, Purple Orb Fragments, or Gold Orbs, though there are also unique cases where you can be rewarded more than these; you can find Lady's original Kalina Ann rocket launcher in an optional area of Mission 11, and you can pre-emptively make the Nightmare boss fight easier in Mission 18 by exploring the optional paths. In some of the missions mentioned above (such as 4 and 10), there are also situational dialogue lines that play only when you explore these optional paths.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • Overture is Nero's starting Devil Breaker which allows him to quickly damage enemies with an electric hand. It may sound simple at first, but its basic function actually has several variations depending on the target's state. Normally, Nero just pushes the enemy away, but he can also hit an airborne enemy near him, or strike down an enemy that's already lying on the ground. It has a fast starting animation and a serviceable recovery animation as well, which means that it can be easily chained with his Red Queen's combos. This is even discussed in-game; Nico admits that Overture has a very plain and simple design, before she describes its functions.
  • Dante's basic Balrog combo and the conjured blades of his Swordmaster Style in Devil Trigger are just short-ranged punches and supplementary sword slashes, respectively. However, these attacks come off fast, giving you more chances to parry an enemy's attacks with a small risk of mistiming even if you Button Mash. With some practice, using both techniques at once can help you consistently parry and stunlock even Proto Angelos or Cavaliere Angelo.
• Skewed Priorities: In the final three missions of the game, with Urizen defeated, Dante and Vergil decide to just go right back to their Cain and Abel relationship and try killing each other instead of working to fix the problems around the city. There is absolutely no reason to do so and nothing to gain, with Vergil in particular rather keen about finishing things one way or another. The ridiculousness of the situation is given a Lampshade Hanging, as Nero decides that rather than allow his family to fall apart again, he is going to stop their lethal rivalry for good, prompting the Final Boss fight.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: Nero dislikes Nico's smoking habit, though he'll light a cigarette for her. V shows he dislikes it too by fanning away the smoke. The game also has a message in the intro/Mission 1 cutscene stating that the game does not promote smoking. These are on top of Dante being a non-smoker, with Hideki Kamiya previously stating since DMC1 that Dante doesn't smoke because he is too cool for it, and is cooler because he doesn't smoke.
• Some Dexterity Required: Some new moves introduced in this game can be difficult to pull off. Two particularly spoiler-heavy examples stick out:
  • Devil Sword Dante's formation swords and new move set can seriously trip up a player the first time they use them, because they replace Dante's usual Swordmaster moves for Devil Sword Sparda and Rebellion. Using them in combos can dramatically increase both your flashiness and your damage, as they're far reaching swipes that can easily set up juggles at a distance. Couple this with Dante's already complex Style-switching mechanic and actually getting to that level becomes a serious challenge.
  • Nero's Knuckle Bringer resets the knockback of a foe when striking them and is heavily spammable, letting you basically juggle an enemy forever. Unfortunately, the timing is tight, and requires you to tap the Devil Bringer button at just the right moment ala Nero's EX-Act ability. While this can extend your combos to a truly insane degree, the move itself can be tricky to implement properly, and successfully incorporating it into your gameplay is a skill that could take hours to learn.
• Sparing Them the Dirty Work: Dante insists that Nero stay out of the final fight so he won't have to kill his father, Vergil. Nero says to hell with this and stops them both from killing each other with his newly awakened Devil Trigger.
• Spin-Offspring: Devil May Cry 5 has Vergil's son Nero as the main protagonist. This got carried on from DMC4, but this game now fully confirms who Nero's father is in an in-game dialogue.
• Split and Reunion: Due to the numerous times he lost in battle and his subsequent corruption into Nelo Angelo, Vergil is at death's door and had to split himself into two literal split personalities (V and Urizen) after impaling himself with the Yamato. In the aftermath of Mission 17, V decides to merge with Urizen again, bringing forth a recompleted Vergil who's now free from the corruption that his body suffered. He also gained new things due to the actions of his two halves; with V, it's a Character Development of interacting with Dante and Nero on a friendlier basis (which is mostly shown only after the Final Boss fight of Mission 20), while a Hand Wave from Nico's Reports imply that Vergil gained his Sin Devil Trigger form because of Urizen.
• Spoiler Cover: It's treated as a massive deal that Vergil has finally returned in the series' present canon since DMC3 (which was a prequel) and DMC1 (where he was still Nelo Angelo). However, the cover of the Special Edition boldly displays◊ Vergil behind Dante and Nero.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation:
  • Dante's personal Devil Sword conjures four blades to attack on his behalf. He can also just summon Devil Sword Dante out of thin air, as shown in the cutscene leading to his boss fight with Vergil.
  • In addition to the Summoned Swords (now called "Mirage Blades"), Vergil also uses a spectral version of the Force Edge called the "Mirage Edge" for his third melee weapon configuration.
• Sprint Shoes: Just like DMC4, the "Speed" ability allows Nero, Dante and Vergil to sprint properly after a bit of sustained strides. V's counterpart of "Speed" is named "Quickplay" and he rides Shadow instead of sprinting like the other characters.
• Stance System:
  • Aside from Dante's returning Style system, when equipping the Balrog he can switch between "Kick" mode, which focuses on sweeping Capoeira-style kicks and "Blow", which focuses on quick jabs and sways.
  • A variation of Cerberus from 3 returns as King Cerberus with two new forms on top of its regular ice mode: A staff mode that deals fire damage and a three-sectioned staff version that deals lightning damage.
  • Dante's Styles can also directly affect some of his other weapons; the properties of his "Swords Formation" skill vary depending on his current style, Swordmaster converts the Cavaliere from two buzzsaws into a motorcycle weapon, Gunslinger now provides separate button inputs for the Ebony & Ivory, and a hidden Gunslinger mechanic of the Double Kalina Ann allows Dante to use just one rocket launcher instead of Dual Wielding them.
  • Nero's "Tomboy" Devil Breaker gives him an entirely different moveset when activated, the drawback is that you lose it if Nero takes damage while it's active.
• Standing Between the Enemies: Nero does this in between Dante and Vergil at the end of the game to get them to stop their constant fighting and sibling rivalry once and for all.
• Status Effects: The gameplay uses freeze and burn mechanics; the former is a self-explanatory effect that freezes the target for a certain amount of time, while the latter deals Damage Over Time. Bosses such as Goliath and King Cerberus can inflict these effects on you.
• "Stop the Hero" Twist: After revealing that the newly-resurrected Vergil is Nero's father, Dante leaves to fight Vergil in a final duel that will determine which of the two twin brothers will emerge victorious in their long rivalry. While the other heroes argue to just leave things to Dante, as it would be cruel to make Nero kill his own father to stop The End of the World as We Know It, Nero feels like none of this makes any sense and won't allow anyone to die, including Vergil, over something so petty. Thus, he finally awakens his matured Devil Trigger form and drops between Dante and Vergil just before their final blows connect, knocking Dante for a loop with one punch and then declaring that everything will be settled for good if he defeats his father. He does, and the two men stop fighting long enough to enter the Underworld and close the gate—Passing the Torch to Nero to protect the world in their absence.
• Suddenly Shouting: The flashback with Nero lost his Devil Bringer has the moment where Nero realizes that a man with murderous intent is in his home and his defenseless girlfriend is only a couple rooms away.
  Nero: Kyrie! GET BACK INSIDE NOW!
• Suicide by Cop: Happens at the end of Mission 18. After V merges with Urizen and returns to his old state as Vergil, his familiars attack Dante in order to goad him into killing them. This is because they're the manifestations of Vergil's trauma as Mundus' puppet, Nelo Angelo, and don't want to burden Vergil with old wounds any longer. And on both sides' parts, it's understood that Dante is out of their league.
• Summon to Hand:
  • Dante and Vergil can recall their BFS-type swords back after tossing them during Round Trip.
  • Dante, Nero and Vergil all gain a Next Tier Power-Up to their Devil Trigger forms and demonic abilities, which include letting their sword magically vanish into Hammerspace, and make those manifest to their hands when they need to use their weapons again. This is an inherent trait of Devil Sword Dante so he no longer has to grab his sword from his back anymore, Nero can only do this trick with Red Queen if he's in Devil Trigger form (because he would just normally stick his sword to his back otherwise), and as stated by Nico's Reports, Vergil "absorbs" the Yamato and its sheathe into his skin while in Sin Devil Trigger form, but they'll re-appear whenever he attacks.
• Sunken City: Large portions of Red Grave City end up flooded due to the Qliphoth's appearance. This is best seen in Mission 3 as Nero hops along several rooftops in order to cross the flood.
• Super Mode:
  • Dante has his Devil Trigger, as usual, which boosts his attack power and speed, changes the properties of several of his attacks, and regenerates his health. Midway through the game, he gets an even more powerful form called the Sin Devil Trigger, which must be charged in a separate bar by sacrificing normal DT energy. Sin Devil Trigger grants him ridiculously powerful unique moves, but removes the health regeneration and can't be turned off manually.
  • V's version of Devil Trigger doesn't actually have him power up himself, but rather has him summon his third familiar, Nightmare to demolish enemies. He can jump on Nightmare's back to take further control, and summoning it in certain areas can even open up hidden passages. He can also use a couple of units of the DT gauge to empower Griffon and/or Shadow temporarily.
  • As Nero's Devil Bringer, and with it his demonic powers, was torn off before the events of the game, he doesn't have Devil Trigger, with the closest he's got being a technique called Break Away that sacrifices his current Devil Breaker to deal damage to nearby enemies and escape from attacks and combos. Until the final mission, when he finally gains a proper Devil Trigger that grants him all the abilities he had in 4 and more, including his version of Summoned Swords and a spectral guardian supporting his attacks. He keeps this ability on repeat playthroughs once you beat the game for the first time.
  • In the Special Edition, Vergil has two different Devil Trigger meters. The bottom meter allows him to summon a doppelganger of himself, while the top meter (which can be filled by transfering energy from the bottom one) works like Dante's Devil Trigger. On top of that, Vergil can also consume his Concentration meter to temporarily transform back into V and use his familiars.
• Super Spit: Chaos demons can spit harmful neurotoxin projectiles at you.
• Surprisingly Super-Tough Thing: The Red Orb Crystals can only be destroyed if you deal enough damage within a given amount of time. If you're not fast enough to shatter them after landing the first hit, these crystals will turn black and become impervious to all further attacks.
• Suspend Save: Unlike the previous games, the Bloody Palace mode in DMC5 allows you to suspend your current floor progress via the pause menu and then continue at a later time. However, the floor must be free of enemies first. The suspend save is also treated as a checkpoint, which means going through the Mission Select menu or The Void overwrites it.
• Swiss-Army Weapon:
  • Nero's new Devil Breaker cyborg arm system not only serves as a full prosthesis, but can also be used as a transformable Shock and Awe weapon, a Grappling-Hook Pistol, a Harpoon Gun, a Time Stands Still device, a Rocket Punch, a Rocket Punch Hover Board, among various other handy abilities.
  • Dante can cycle King Ceberus from its initial icy three-part nunchaku, to a fire bō staff, and to an electrical three-section staff.
• Sword Sparks: Happens when Dante and Vergil clash and lock their swords after the latter re-emerged from the fusion of his two halves.
• Sword of Plot Advancement:
  • By the end of DMC4, Nero is in possession of the Yamato through his Devil Bringer arm. In this game, it's then revealed that the conflict started from Vergil yanking off the Devil Bringer from Nero because it contained the Yamato. He uses the sword to split himself in two, creating V and Urizen.
  • The Devil Sword Sparda is absorbed by Dante along with the broken Rebellion in order to unlock his Sin Devil Trigger form and have an upper hand against Urizen.
• Take That!: Infamously, the art director for DMC: Devil May Cry blasted the main series in a GDC presentation, showing pictures of the original Dante photoshopped into Brokeback Mountain among other things. It's widely believed that this is why this game gives Dante a cowboy hat... and it's one of the best weapons in the game.
  • Also of note, Dante's hair in his the EX costume, based on his appearance from DmC, is actually shown to be simply dyed black as seen when Dante sweeps it back in his Bloody Palace taunt unlock cutscene and his white roots are plainly visible; this is undoubtedly a jab towards the infamous "Not in a million years" scene from DmC where that game's Dante throws a white wig aside after it lands on his head.
• Tattoo as Character Type:
  • Nico has various weapon tattoos on her body to better illustrate her rough and tumble character and her occupation as a weapon designer.
  • V has curved mystical-looking tattoos over his arms and body to illustrate his supernatural ability to fight toe to toe with demons.
• Temporary Platform: Some sections of the Qliphoth feature platforms that fold back into the walls at regular intervals.
• Theme Music Power-Up: One of the game's main mechanics has the music grow more intense as the player's combo meter is kept up, with the soundtrack going into full lyrics by SSS Ranking. Additionally, during the final boss fight between Nero and Vergil, a techno remix of "Devil Trigger" called "Silver Bullet" begins to play when Nero activates his Devil Trigger, with the lyrics kicking in if you manage to play particularly well.
• Theme Naming:
  • Nero's moveset continues to be named after gambling terms, including new attacks Hard Way (a type of bet in craps), Color Up (exchanging multiple low value chips for an equal amount of high value ones), and Payline (the lines in slot machines that have to be matched up to hit a jackpot).
  • V's moveset is mostly named after chess terms, such as Checkmate (finishing off dying enemies), Promotion (V riding atop Nightmare to take direct control of him), Switchback (a Griffon-aided backwards dodge), and the hilariously-named Illegal Move (Nightmare teleports to enemies, overcoming his normally-terrible mobility).
  • Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form has two moves named "The Luce" and "The Ombra", which are Italian words for light and shadow, respectively. They also double as a reference or nod to the Luce & Ombra, the pair of handguns once used by his father Sparda, and then by Trish.
• Theme Song Reveal: V's leitmotif "Crimson Cloud" has the lines "devil in my blood" and "split myself in two", foreshadowing the fact that he's the Literal Split Personality of Dante's Evil Twin Vergil.
• Third Party Stops Attack:
  • Because the heroes mostly split up on the way to Urizen in the prologue, Nero arrived late as Dante, Lady and Trish are already on the floor, but he still manages to shoot a Qliphoth Root that Urizen aimed at Dante.
  • Near the beginning, an Empusa's leap towards an unnamed soldier gets interrupted by Nico and Nero arriving at the scene, with their van bumping the Empusa in mid-air.
  • In Mission 8, Nero loses his rematch against Urizen. Just as he's getting crushed by Qliphoth Roots, Dante arrives (in a newly-acquired Sin Devil Trigger form) to sever the roots and save him.
  • In the climax, as Dante and the Final Boss Vergil charge towards each other for an attack, suddenly Nero in his new Devil Trigger form stops them and their weapons in their tracks, as he doesn't want the two of them to fight to the death anymore.
• This Is a Drill: Nero's Helter Skelter Breaker is a massive arm-mounted drill.
• Threat Backfire: At the very start of the in-game Goliath boss fight, Nero quickly returns the giant demon's threat by twisting the word "sorry" in another context:
  Goliath: You'll be sorry for this!
  Nero: Yeah, maybe I will. Sorry I'm about to kill ya!
• Throw the Sheath Away: Vergil does this when preparing to use Yamato on himself to separate his human and demon halves, which would end up creating V and Urizen respectively in the process.
• Time Skip: 5 takes place after 4, which is several years after 2. Nero has undergone considerable change (trimming back his hair substantially and having his Devil Bringer arm replaced with a mechanical limb) and Dante bears a more grizzled beard. Dante's face is also considerably aged, making him look closer to the visage he bore in 2.
• Time Stands Still:
  • The Ragtime Breaker can slow down an enemy or freeze them temporarily in place, allowing Nero to move about freely while still able to attack his enemies.
  • One of Urizen's moves is sending a time orb at the playable character that slows them down if they're caught in it.
  • Just like Geryon from 3, the Elder Geryon in this game is a horse that can slow down time to a near halt for those trapped in its "bubble" fields.
  • Vergil's "Judgement Cut End" from 4:SE returns, and you will be affected by its time-stopping effect if you can't escape its field fast enough. The player can execute this ability when controlling Vergil in the Special Edition.
• Title Drop: Aside from the series title sharing its name with Dante's demon-hunting business/shop, "Devil May Cry" also serves as the protagonist devil hunters' first reply to their customers' phone calls, as heard in some cutscenes.
  • In the flashback cutscene, Dante answers the phone call with this phrase, only to be surprised by Patty Lowell.
    Dante: Devil May Cry.
    Patty: Dante, Dante! Do you have any idea how many times I've tried to call!? Like a zillion! Oh my God, tonight's my birthday party! Yeahhhh!! I'm turning 18! Not a little kid—
  • Nero also says it this time since he and Nico have the mobile Devil May Cry branch, but the comedic twist in one of the ending cutscenes also has him blurting it out after an awkward conversation with Nico, and mistaking Kyrie for a customer.
    Nico: —Why don't you cry on my shoulder. —Come on, cry on my shoulder! I know you wanna.
    Nero: —Stop saying cry. If you say cry again— Devil May Cry—@#$!
• Tomato Surprise: In the flashback where V requests Dante's help to stop a strong demon's resurrection, the cutscene just fades to black before V could utter that demon's name. However, a closer inspection and some lip reading gives us a foreshadowing; V is about to pronounce "Vergil", and it's indeed the case that Dante's brother, Vergil, returns. Dante himself knew this detail already, but the player only gets to learn it later on.
• Toplessness from the Back: After Lady disrobes in order for Nico to find her some new clothes, the camera turns towards her back, but placed low enough that a convenient Lens Flare Censor is needed to hide her naughty bits.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Red Grave City seems to be a normal town, until Mission 12 where you find a rather large statue and shrine to Sparda, complete with blood fountains that had to have been built before the demon invasion. The implication seems to be that the city's primary or hidden religion was demon worship with Sparda as a patron deity.
• Trailers Always Spoil:
  • The E3 2018 Trailer: Sharp-eyed fans, brightness/contrast adjustments, and going frame-by-frame of the scene where Nero loses his Devil Bringer had many series veterans spoiled of the revelation that Vergil returns, albeit he first appears in his "corrupted" state referencing his time as Nelo Angelo.
  • The Final Trailer: Dante having another Devil Trigger form, Sin Devil Trigger (to series veterans, it resembles his Majin Devil Trigger in 2 even before this form's official name was revealed), Nero gaining his own proper Devil Trigger, and finally confirming Vergil's return.
  • The Special Edition Trailer directly spoils several plot twists from this game's main story, such as Vergil coming Back from the Dead and being able to turn into V, and Nero getting a true Devil Trigger.
• Training Dummy: Borrowing an element from DmC, this game features a dedicated training area, known as "The Void", where the player can set up their loadouts, enemy variety and other options in order to learn and master their combos and maneuvers.
• Training Stage: The game has a fleshed out training room called "The Void". Taking place in an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield surrounded by four large invisible walls, the player has access to a settings menu that's fairly similar to the Street Fighter games - players can change the training dummy and/or how they act, toggle on damage and input displays, and toggle infinite use of the player character's various Mana Meter-based and ammo-based moves.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Though it's already a staple trope in the series, thanks to the Devil Trigger transformation acting as a Combo Breaker that grants you invincibility frames, this game provided another justified example - When Dante transforms into his Sin Devil Trigger which takes about 6 seconds to complete before control is given back to the player, time around Dante slows down, and when the initial transformation is complete, the energy discharged is strong enough to damage surrounding enemies, sending them flying into the air. Dante is also Immune to Flinching during the entire duration of the transformation.
• Translation Style Choices: This entry finally gave prominence to Dante's ultimate form, but its name in English has been revised. What was known as "Majin Devil Trigger" in the West is called "Shin Majin" in Japan; "True Devil Trigger" would be a more accurate translation due to Japan calling the Devil Trigger simply "Majin". 5 gives Dante's true form an actual English name: Sin Devil Trigger. This could make people in the West think it is a new form unrelated to what was known as Majin Devil Trigger, but Japan still calling it Shin Majin makes it perfectly clear that it is the same form Dante debuted in 2 but given a proper revised concept.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • In the beginning, Dante, Trish, and Lady don't take V's warnings of Urizen seriously and treat it like a standard demon hunting mission, bantering with each other and racing each other to Urizen's hideout. The result? Urizen effortlessly defeats them while Nero, Nico and V have to find and rescue them. However, it's eventually revealed that this was subverted regarding Dante. In a flashback, specifically when V met and hired him for the job, V revealed to Dante that Urizen is in fact Vergil (without revealing that V himself is Vergil's human side) and Dante instantly knew that this was a serious issue. Furthermore, Mission 10 shows a flashback of what happened before the prologue; Dante acts smug towards his female partners, but once he's alone, he shows seriousness toward the situation and is not surprised when Urizen defeats Lady and Trish.
  • In the opening cutscene of Mission 1, a soldier thinks that Nero is gonna get himself killed from the demons. He realizes that Nero is a capable demon hunter when Nico explains it to him.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Nero's Devil Breakers act like traditional weapon pick-ups/power-ups because they have a distinct glow effect and a hovering label when they appear in the stages. But since they are also rendered as actual objects, the enemies can destroy them upon contact.
• Unexplained Recovery: When we last saw Vergil (as Nelo Angelo), he had been killed by Dante all the way back at Mallet Island. Many years later, both In-Universe and out, he's back with no explaination as to how, nor where he's been since then.
• Un-Reboot: After 4, the series attempted a reboot with DmC: Devil May Cry, a new Origins Episode take on the Devil May Cry mythos, but it didn't meet Capcom's critical and commercial expectations. As such, 5 returns to the original continuity, picking up after the events of 4 and revisiting numerous plotlines and other elements from 1 and 3 as well. The game was also developed by many of the same staff who worked on 3 and 4, in hopes of giving the gameplay with more of a "classic" feel.
• Unique Protagonist Asset: Each of the three protagonists has a stake involving the plot and the Big Bad which differ from what the other two could bring.
  • V has information regarding the sudden demon invasion in Red Grave City and the Demon King behind it, Urizen. He's the client of the Devil May Cry this time around, urging J.D. Morrison to gather Dante, Lady, Trish and Nero for a mission, while V serves as their guide towards Urizen in the Qliphoth. In the end, it turns out V needed to defeat and land the killing blow on Urizen so that both of them could merge back into a fully-healed Vergil, as he was actually the cast-off humanity of the latter.
  • The game's entire conflict began because Nero had the Yamato inside his Devil Bringer arm, which Vergil had torn off in a flashback to regain the weapon. Nero and V are also the only two heroes who managed to flee in the Prologue, which later on allows them to find or rescue the other three who went missing.
  • Dante is roped into the conflict because V believes that he could defeat Urizen. V is proven right; while Urizen had curb-stomped Dante, Nero, Lady, and Trish for the first half of the game, Dante acquired a Next Tier Power-Up that helps him turn the tide, the Devil Sword Dante and the Sin Devil Trigger were enough to take down the Demon King.
• Unlockable Difficulty Levels: Apart from the series' recurring trend of unlocking the next difficulty mode upon clearing the previous one, this game also puts a twist or add more to that pattern. The fights against Urizen in the Prologue and Mission 8 are meant to be Hopeless Boss Fights. Should the player somehow manage to win anyway, they'll unlock the "Son of Sparda" difficulty. Doing it again on that difficulty will further unlock "Dante Must Die", and so on.
• Unskilled, but Strong:
  • The Tomboy Devil Breaker turns Nero's moveset into this, replacing his multiple combos, Exceed system, and input attacks with a wild sword combo that ramps up in damage with each successive hit.
  • Nightmare basically moves on pure instinct, so it either just flails around or fires beams willy-nilly, even when V takes direct control over its attacks. Despite that, it still hits like a truck, can't be stalemated, and can even revive Shadow and Griffon when summoned.
• Unusual Euphemism: Nero and Nico sometimes call the giant demonic tree, Qliphoth, as a "house plant". When V is separated underground in Mission 5, he and Griffon also allude their act of destroying the Qliphoth's roots as "clearing up" but without "garden shears", likewise downplaying their threat.
• Urban Fantasy:
  • The game features superhuman demon slayers battling monsters across modern urban cityscapes. This is in comparison to most of the previous DMC titles, which only featured a small amount of modern elements before moving to purely old world or fantasy environments like castles, demonic towers, medieval cities and so forth. With that said, this game has a lot of modern elements just like the 2013 DmC game.
  • There also appears to be some element of Magitek at work, to complete the new motif. The Devil Breakers have mechanical functions (such as replacing the Devil Bringer's Snatch move with the harpoon Wire Snatch that drags the foe to Nero, or vice versa on larger enemies), whereas the Buster Arm Breaker replicates Nero's earlier Devil Bringer on performing Buster. Nico also created the Ragtime Breaker that can slow down enemies in time while Nero can still move about normally and deal damage.
• Use Their Own Weapon Against Them:
  • Some of V's finishing animations against the Death Scissors and Hell Judecca demons involve killing them with their own bladed weapons.
  • In a Buster move, Nero can also pull a Hell Judecca's blades and force the demon to be stabbed with its weapon. During the Final Boss fight, a Buster sequence also lets Nero impale Vergil with his own katana, Yamato.
• Variable Mix:
  • Each character's battle music changes depending on his style ranking; The intro plays when he encounters an enemy, the primary verse starts when either he or an enemy gets struck and loops throughout D to B-rank, percussion and/or vocals increase in intensity as he climbs higher through A-rank, and if he manages to get to S-rank or higher, the song jumps straight to the main chorus, dipping back to the verse if he falls below S-rank again. Sadly, the downloadable bonus songs don't do this.
  • Cavaliere Angelo's boss theme, "Voltaic Black Knight", progresses to the second half when his health gets low enough.
  • The boss theme for King Cerberus, "Roar, Roar, Roar!!", switches between three different styles of harsh techno as the heads switch between elements - thumping and quick for fire, frantic, distorted, and squealing for electricity, and smoother and slightly deeper for ice.
  • During Dante and Vergil's battle in Mission 19, the boss theme, "The Duel", gets more distorted and frantic during the sections when Vergil activates his Devil Trigger.
  • During Nero and Vergil's battle in Mission 20, The vocals of the final boss theme, "Silver Bullet", progress as the boss's health gets lower.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers:
  • Nero's Devil Breaker arms put a twist on this. By obtaining a body part of a defeated demon, Nico can engineer a mechanical arm for Nero that allows him to use said demon's powers in a way. For example, V defeated the time-stopping horse demon, Elder Geryon, and gave its chunk to Nico, allowing her to craft the Ragtime Devil Breaker which lets Nero stop time in a given field.
  • Dante obtains the Cavaliere and King Cerberus after defeating their respective demon forms.
• Visual Title Drop: The opening sequence (which is also played in Mission 1) ends with the camera slowly panning over the "Devil May Cry" neon sign on Nico's van along with a small number "5" on the upper-right corner. After a few seconds, the screen transitions into the stylized title art for Devil May Cry 5.
• Vocal Evolution: Considering the Sequel Gap between the fourth and fifth games (not accounting for the reboot), Reuben Langdon's take on Dante in Devil May Cry 5 is noticeably deeper and gruffer compared to that of 4. The same can be said about Johnny Yong Bosch as Nero, whose portrayal in 5 is a lot deeper and more matured than that of 4, which works well enough given how 5 is the most recent game in the series' chronology. Vergil, however, is a different story, since Dan Southworth's voicework is almost unchanged between games, owing to his very distinctive inflection as the Dark Slayer.
• The Voice:
  • Kyrie never appears on-screen. Her voice is heard from off-screen in Nero's garage and in phone calls.
  • Patty only gets a brief Continuity Cameo in a phone call with Dante.
• Warm-Up Boss: The Qliphoth Roots fight in Mission 1 simply serves as a way for players to familiarize themselves with the dodging controls and the Exceed mechanic for Nero. The boss is just stationary, its attacks aren't difficult to evade, and it has a low health gauge compared to the bosses that you're gonna be dealing with later on.
• Weapon Across the Shoulder:
  • Dante rests a huge sword in his shoulder in at least two cutscenes; one with the Devil Sword Sparda prior to the fight against Cavaliere Angelo, and another with the Devil Sword Dante when he talks to Vergil in Mission 19.
  • If the player doesn't move Nero after executing Red Queen Combo B, thus letting the recovery animation play until the end, Nero will rest the blunt side of Red Queen on his shoulder while he puts his right hand on his hip.
• Weaponized Headgear: Dr. Faust's "Mad Hatter" skill allows Dante to send the hat itself spinning around him, damaging nearby enemies. The "Magic Hat" skill also lets the hat float and fire Red Orbs on its own.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: The Visions of V manga reveals there was a Phantom demon among V's would-be familiars, but his disobedience and violent behavior meant that V had to put him down instead of forming a contract with him.
• We Will Meet Again: Right before he departs to the Underworld with Dante to sever the roots of the Qliphoth, Vergil declares to Nero that "[he] won't lose next time", and tells him to hold on to his poetry book in the meantime.
• Wham Line:
  • Urizen establishes how powerful he is by dismissing the much sought after power of Sparda as irrelevant.
    Urizen: The Devil Sword Sparda no longer serves a purpose.
  • After the Cavaliere Angelo fight, Trish reveals a very interesting fact about the Demon World.
    Trish: Urizen is not a demon.
  • Rebellion has been overshadowed by the various other weapons in the series, with people questioning why Vergil got the Absurdly Sharp Blade Yamato while Dante just got a BFS without any notable abilities, so when this line is uttered, it reveals that Rebellion is an opposite force to that of the Yamato, and considering that Vergil using Yamato's power on himself created Urizen and V, you know something big is about to happen.
    Dante: If the Yamato can seperate man from devil... then what about the Rebellion?
  • Dante drops one once Vergil resurrects. It's not so much one for the fans, but boy howdy is it one for Nero.
    Dante: This isn't your fight. I need to stop him, and that's all that matters.
    Nero: I'm not gonna let you have all the fun, Dante!
    Dante: You don't get it!
    Nero: Lemme guess, I'm dead weight? You can shove that—
    Dante: That's not it, Nero!
    Nero: WHAT IS IT, THEN!?
    Dante: He's your father!
  • The line Nero shouts just when Vergil and Dante are about to deliver the final blow to each other, heralding the awakening of his true power and his resolve to save his family at all costs.
    Nero: I'M NOT LETTING YOU DIE!!
• Wham Shot:
  • A dying Vergil uses the Yamato to expel a humanoid figure from himself. The figure morphs into a nude V... while the camera pans to show Vergil's shadow morphing into Urizen's silhouette.
  • Nero recklessly fights Urizen alone for the second time, which led to him almost getting crushed by the demon king. Just before Nero loses consciousness, another demon flies in the room to save him and face Urizen on his behalf. Urizen is even briefly shocked at this sudden turn of events. That new demon is actually Dante in his Sin Devil Trigger form, with a later mission revealing how he obtained a new power.
  • After V stabs him, Urizen explodes into a pillar of blue light, shattering the fake sky around him and revealing a fully healed Back from the Dead Vergil, Dante's brother and Nero's father, standing where he once was. By this point, Dante will realize that V disappears because just like Urizen, he is also another part of Vergil.
  • A brand new demon (Nero in Devil Trigger form) appearing between Dante and Vergil just as the two are about to kill each other. It's so intense that the following chapter is dedicated entirely to how Nero achieved it.
• What Does She See in Him?: In one of her reports, Nico is intrigued at how Kyrie and Nero ended up together, as she describes the former as a "sweet girl" and the latter as a "punk". She later admits not prodding too much on it though.
• What the Hell Are You?: This is asked word-for-word by Nero to V, especially because the latter knows too much about the Qliphoth tree that damaged the city, and because he has just summoned a demonic familiar.
  Nero: V... What the hell are you?
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: At exactly 12:00 PM of June 15th, the Qliphoth starts to grow. There's even the sound of a bell when it happens. This event is significant as it creates a problem for the heroes that doesn't get solved even after Urizen is defeated. Though Nero, Dante and Vergil are working together to stop it in the ending.
• When Trees Attack: The focal cause of this game's demonic apocalypse isn't a portal into the Demon World, but instead a giant demonic tree, known as the Qliphoth, that sprouts devils from it. Its spiked roots also pierce civilians in the prologue, and Nero gets to destroy a mass of giant Qliphoth Roots in Mission 1.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: DMC5 brings in Red Grave City with its mixture of British and American architecture and urban design. However, it's not established in which country the city is located. It's also revealed Red Grave City is Dante and Vergil's birth place as their childhood mansion is located in it, although it isn't mentioned if Dante's Devil May Cry shop is set there as well. No one also says if it's the same city in DMC3 where the Temen-ni-gru was summoned, which all traces back to Dante's supposed nationality in DMC1; if he is American, then Red Grave City should be located in the United States, but again, nothing is ever said or made clear. Not helping the matter is that Mission 2 of DMC5 (set in Red Grave City) starts in a shopping mall based on the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a real-life famous mall in Milan, Italy.
• Whip Sword: The Rawhide Devil Breaker is a high-tech razor-edged whip.
• Who Dares?: When Urizen gets hit for the first time (just a scratch on his palm), he calmly monologues for a bit about how his attacker is merely a human. Then comes the fury.
  Urizen: How... dare... you... strike... ME!
• Whole Episode Flashback: The story mostly happens on the 15th of June, a month after the heroes are effortlessly defeated by Urizen in the Prologue chapter. Mission 10 revisits and elaborates what happened in said prologue from the perspective of Dante.
• A Winner Is You: The joke Golden Ending you gain by killing Urizen in the prologue or Mission 8, which consists of a few screens of text, sped-up credits, and a photograph of the protagonists.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Urizen is shown to be a serious threat by defeating Dante, Lady and Trish during the prologue (when visiting this from Dante's point of view in Mission 10, he lampshades this by pointing out that Lady and Trish are the most badass women he knows and that there's only one possible person who's strong enough to beat them). Dante is by a fair margin, the most powerful protagonist in the series and one of, if not the, strongest individual in the first four games. So there's no better way to show Urizen is serious business by having him completely overpower Dante's Devil Trigger, seemingly with little effort, and shatter the Rebellion sword into pieces. This shocks Morrison, who knew Dante and his capabilities for a long time.
    Morrison: This can't be happening... Dante lost?!
  • The mysterious hooded man who visits Nero at his garage easily rips the Devil Bringer off Nero's arm in one fell swoop as he's tossed around and can only scream for Kyrie to run as he bleeds on the floor. It's a stark contrast when DMC4 already hinted Nero as an Uneven Hybrid, and revealed his Devil Bringer to be strong enough to defeat Sanctus Diabolica then crush the giant Savior's face, and durable enough to block Dante's Rebellion. This is subverted later on as the man is revealed to be Vergil, a recurring series character whose power was already established in the previous games, and he was exhausted enough to be defeated by a powered-up Nero in the final mission.
  • Urizen is surprised that Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form can easily overpower him even if he defeated Dante in their prior match. This is also reflected in-game; if it took Nero an entire boss fight to shatter Urizen's crystal barrier, Dante's Sin Devil Trigger form shatters it in just a few hits.
• Worf Had the Flu: The final boss of the game is Vergil, fought by Nero. However, Vergil just got finished with an all out fight with Dante moments earlier, so he is clearly not fighting at 100% capacity (his health drains much faster, and though he permanently shifts into Devil Trigger form towards the end of the fight, it provides no health regeneration as it normally does, and he now flinches from Nero's attacks), and this combined with Nero unlocking HIS Devil Trigger moments before the fight leads to it being a pretty one-sided affair. However, it's clear that as powerful as Nero has become, he's still weaker than the two brothers if for no other reason than lacking the decades of experience they have, and they casually knock Nero out when he tries to follow them into the Demon World to stop the Qliphoth from destroying the world.
• World Tree: Red Grave City is being destroyed because the Qliphoth, a giant supernatural tree that gives power to demons instead of the usual humans or spirits, sprouts in the center of the city, as a twisted allusion to the Yggdrasil of Norse Mythology. And it's spreading. The game also uses Niddhog Hatchlings as a way to destroy parts of the Qliphoth as an allusion to the dragon Nidhogg of Norse Mythology who chews the roots of Yggdrasil. An in-game document file also describes the Qliphoth as the Demon World's "Tree of Life".
• Wrecked Weapon:
  • In the prologue, Urizen shatters the blade of Dante's sword Rebellion into pieces with a single punch, leaving mostly just the handle intact.
  • While Devil May Cry 4 has previously shown the Yamato being broken when The Order of the Sword found it, The Visions of V manga (which provides additional backstory to the series) reveals that Mundus was the reason Yamato was broken, having reduced it to just the handle by the time Vergil was turned into Nelo Angelo, making him a precursor to Urizen's own destruction of Rebellion.
• Wrestler in All of Us:
  • Nero can give a pretty satisfying suplex to Vergil, his father, in the final battle when the latter does the attack where he flies around the arena then divebombs you.
  • Nero also gains multiple grapples with the use of Nico's Buster Arm, a Devil Breaker that lets him replicate (and even supercharge) his old Devil May Cry 4 throws; from devastating triple-powerbombs on Hell Antenora to Michinoku drivers/fisherman suplexes on the Angelo units (complete with kneeling on their throat to add insult to injury), Nero has enough grappling experience to give Travis Touchdown a run for his money. Special mention goes to his Super-Buster on Nobodies, where he spins around on the arm emerging from their back and flips them into a cross armbar.
• Yellow Lightning, Blue Lightning:
  • Trish's yellow lightning and electricity powers are briefly seen when she instantly recreates her clothes.
  • Purple, blue and white lightning are also very common in this game, sometimes being mixed together; it's produced by Cavaliere Angelo, King Cerberus, and Nero's Overture Devil Breaker.
• Your Son All Along: Heavily implied by several dialogue lines. In the Visions of V manga, Griffon speculates and tells V that Nero is a blood descendant of Sparda, either the child of Dante or Vergil. The game eventually confirmed the latter, and revealed V as the human half of Vergil. But because Vergil still needed Dante to spell it out for him in the end (as quoted below) in order to remember his visit to Fortuna from "a long time ago", this created the retroactive implication that V and Nero spent most of the game unaware that they are father and son. Likewise, Vergil was "preoccupied" as Nelo Angelo, so the only logical conclusion for him was that Nero is Dante's son.
  Vergil: Nero is my son?
  Dante: Yeah, dumbass. You can't remember through that thick skull of yours?
  Vergil: Well, well... That was a long time ago.

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"This is your legacy..."

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