Video Game / Soul Series

aka: Soul Calibur IV

All spoilers pertaining to the first timeline of the series (Soul Edge to Soulcalibur V) will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Welcome to the stage of history!

"Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold..."

The Soul series (unrelated to the "Souls Series"^note Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Bloodborne and definitely not related to Soul Reaver) is a series of 3D weapon-based fighting games created by Bandai Namco Entertainment's team Project Soul, arriving shortly after the success of its other 3D fighter, Tekken.

In 16th-century Eurasia, rumors persist of a legendary sword of heroes known only as "Soul Edge". Only a few know that Soul Edge is actually an evil Artifact of Doom with an insatiable thirst for human souls. Some warriors seek Soul Edge without knowing the truth, whereas others seek to destroy it or capture its power for themselves.

To counter Soul Edge, an opposing sword of light was created: the spirit sword, Soul Calibur. When these two swords first clashed, Soul Edge was shattered into pieces and Soul Calibur fell dormant. Now, the shards of Soul Edge are seeking to reunite, oozing corruptive power that bestows misfortune on all who encounter them. An epic final battle between the two opposing swords is now fast approaching, with the fate of the world at stake.

The series began in the mid-'90s with Soul Edge, one of the first games to feature three-dimensional combat where every character holds a weapon. Control is mostly similar to Tekken and Virtua Fighter, where characters can move along the three-dimensional plane and can be knocked out of the ring if they were careless. However, unlike its contemporaries, where controls are taken straight out of 2D fighting games (move towards or away from the opponent, upward directions jump, downward directions crouch) with limited sidestep capabilities, the directional controls allow the player to easily move in any of the eight basic directions. Characters can also deflect each other's weapon attacks, or break them and render them useless if hit enough times.

Soul Edge, though mildly successful in arcades (and on the PlayStation as Soul Blade), was largely overshadowed by Soulcalibur, which revamped many of the original game's aspects, including the three-dimensional movement, character combos, and timing, and completely removed the breakable weapon aspect. The Dreamcast port of the game rebalanced the gameplay and overhauled the graphics, becoming its system's Killer App in the process. It is often placed among game critics' "favorite games of all time".

Soulcalibur has since spawned five sequels, which have been ported to a number of home systems. Starting from II, the series would begin making use of Guest Fighter characters from other franchises, most notably Link, Darth Vader, Yoda, and Ezio Auditore, among others. A spin-off Action-Adventure title, Soulcalibur Legends, has been released for the Wii; IV has also been ported to the PSP as Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, which guest stars Kratos, the God of War.^note Despite Ares being a character in the series.

Soulcalibur: Lost Swords was released on February 6, 2014 in Japan and on April 22, 2014 in North America. Lost Swords was a single-player, online-only, free-to-play title distributed through the PlayStation Network and based on Soulcalibur V, the goal of which was for the player to collect loot through battles. Players could imbue the weapons with elemental properties, such as fire and wind. Virtual item sales were also offered. Lost Swords has since been shut down on November 30th, 2015.

On December 7, 2017, Namco Bandai announced the next installment of the series, Soulcalibur VI, which is at least in part set during the events of the original Soulcalibur. It was released on October 19, 2018 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

As of Soulcalibur III, the series title seems to be Soulcalibur in a reference to Excalibur. The series underwent change in direction after this point. Soulcalibur V was directed by Daishi Odashima, who said he wanted the game to be named Soul Edge 2, but was rejected. In December 2013, the series again changed project direction, and Masaki Hoshino took over as head of Project Soul, leading development of Lost Swords and Unbreakable Soul. At some point he also left the team, resulting in Tekken 7 producer Motohiro Okubo stepping in to lead development of VI.

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The series contains the following games:

Main Series:

• Soul Edge / Soul Blade (1995 - Arcade; 1996 - PlayStation)
• Soulcalibur (1998 - Arcade; 1999 - Dreamcast; 2008 - XBLA; 2012 - iOS; 2013 - Android)
• Soulcalibur II (2002 - Arcade; 2003 - PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube; 2013 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)^note The first game to feature guest characters: Heihachi Mishima for the PlayStation 2, Spawn for the Xbox, and Link for the GameCube. Both Heihachi and Spawn were made available for the 2013 re-release.
• Soulcalibur III (2005 - PlayStation 2; Arcade - 2006)^note The first game to feature the Create-A-Soul Mode.
• Soulcalibur IV (2008 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)^note Star Wars guest characters: Yoda for the Xbox 360, Darth Vader for the PS3, and Starkiller/The Apprentice for both versions. The previously console-exclusive characters would later be made available for the other system as DLC.
• Soulcalibur V (2012 - PlayStation 3, Xbox 360)^note Guest characters: Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Devil Jin (fighting style only).
• Soulcalibur VI (2018 - PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC)^note Guest characters so far: Geralt of Rivia, 2B, and Haohmaru

Spinoffs:

• Soulcalibur Legends (2007 - Nintendo Wii)^note A non-canon interquel set between Soul Edge/Blade and Soulcalibur showing Siegfried's transformation into Nightmare. Guest character: Lloyd Irving.
• Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny (2009 - PlayStation Portable)^note A non-canon parody of Soulcalibur IV. Guest character: Kratos.
• Soulcalibur: Lost Swords (2014 - PlayStation 3)^note A single-player free-to-play game using a token system to unlock characters from Soulcalibur IV and Soulcalibur V. Terminated in November 2015.
• Soulcalibur: Unbreakable Soul (2014 - iOS)^note A Card Battle Game set after Soulcalibur IV. It was terminated after only a few months of service.
• Soulcalibur Pachislot (2017 - Pachinko)^note A pachinko slot machine using the character designs from Soulcalibur IV and Soulcalibur V.

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Transcending media and the internet, a tale of tropes and cliches, eternally clicked...

A-D

• Action Mom: The Alexandra sisters; Cassandra's main reason to fight was to spare her older sister Sophitia from doing so since she's a mom, but when her kids are affected, Sophitia comes back to fight against Soul Edge anyway.
  • Taken to a more extreme and utterly cruel angle in IV when Sophitia's daughter Pyrrha needs Soul Edge's influence to live, forcing Sophitia to kill anyone trying to destroy it.
  • Hilde, as of V, is the mother of two children.
• Age-Inappropriate Dress: Amy, Talim, and Leixia all wear fan service-laden outfits despite being underaged in Western countries.
• A.I. Breaker: Anti A.I. moves in the third game, and Astaroth's Discus Breaker (1AB in community notation) in Soulcalibur IV. Also, lying down facing the edge when fighting Algol on Floor 60. In V, the A.I. simply does not know how to block Viola's orb setups. See Artificial Stupidity.
• Alien Geometries: V has a few infinitely large stages. You can see scenery in the distance, but you can never get any closer to it no matter how far you move.
  • This can be rather dizzying if you watch the middle ground, where the ground you fight on blends into the fixed background. Perspective does not work that way...
• All There in the Manual:
  • For the first several games, the canon storyline was only revealed in the opening pages of the guidebooks, or hinted at in the opening cinematic and character biographies.
  • New Legends of Project Soul is an artbook guide for V that provides a lot of background exposition many of the characters - including some who weren't in the game, as well as minor and background character - in addition to expanding on the series' lore and setting in general.
• Alternate Universe: Setting aside the various non-canon modes (Weapon Master, Cot S), some of the character endings are not only mutually-exclusive, but simply can't exist within the context of the series as a whole. Some examples:
  • Tira in III. In her Good ending, she sacrifices young Pyrrha and Patrolkos to Soul Edge. In her Bad ending, she gets sacrificed instead. Since all three are alive and well in V, Tira's story can't fit in the main timeline either way.
  • Zasalamel's story in III either ends with him successfully using Soul Edge and Soul Calibur to become mortal, or it fails and he Goes Mad from the Revelation. Since he's still around, immortal, and sane in IV and V, neither ending could have happened.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The arenas where you usually face off against some permutation of Soul Edge like Inferno or Night Terror tend to be eerie, distorted planes of existence, some of which are hauntingly beautiful in spite of this. One of the biggest exceptions to date was Tartaros from II, and even that was a Fire and Brimstone Hell.
• Anachronism Stew: Supposedly, this game takes place during the mid-to-late Renaissance, but there are certain aspects of the series that never really conform to a single real-world era. You have the costumes that cater to Rule of Cool and Rule of Sexy than historical basis or combat utility, the Clock Punk and Steampunk elements that appear in things like Yoshimitsu's prosthetic limb and the big carousel in Hilde's home kingdom of Wolfkrone, you have Sophitia's dress sense and religious beliefs...
  • Design-wise, some of the cheongsam inspired clothes the Chinese characters wear shouldn't exist yet.
• Ancestral Name: The series features a character named Yoshimitsu, who is said to be the ancestor of Tekken's Yoshimitsu.
• Antagonist Title: Soul Edge as well as Soulcalibur.
• Apologetic Attacker: Sophitia, Pyrrha, and Talim.
  • Siegfried tends to go into this when fighting non-possessed enemies, as they usually go after him for his past deeds as Nightmare. He accepts that they're angry at him, but he can't die until Soul Edge's done for. So he beats them down, and then apologizes.
• Appropriated Title: The series was originally called Soul Edge but is now better known as Soulcalibur.
• Armed Legs: The Grieve Edge moveset for custom characters in III.
• Armor Is Useless: Heavily-armored characters take just as much damage as the characters who can barely even be considered as wearing clothing.
  • Averted starting Soulcalibur IV; each character has a secondary costume that affects their attributes while it's intact. For example Cassandra has the green Atlanta items which greatly boosts her attack while Sophitia is wearing a fantasy version of Greco-Roman armour which reduces a large chunk of the damage she takes. The most protective clothing your character can wear, really does look like heavy armour.
• Art Evolution: Starting with Soulcalibur II, character artwork became more realistic, as opposed to the Animesque style from the previous two entries, with the more realistic style solidifying in the following game. Compare SCI Kilik to SCIII Kilik.
• Artifact of Doom: Soul Edge is a cursed, possessed soul-eating sword that wants to destroy the world. And as Soulcalibur IV and V prove, so is Soul Calibur.
• Artificial Stupidity: Algol loves to use a certain combo that involves jumping over his opponent's head. He will use this even if his opponent is lying on the ground at the edge of the arena, flinging himself to his doom. Talim also did this a lot with her "Wind Flip" maneuver, particularly in III.
  • Soul Edge itself, way back in the original game. Its habit of spamming that charged-up bum rush attack makes it all too easy to simply sidestep or jump over it, sending the final boss clear out of the ring. It's actually the easiest way to beat what is otherwise a major SNK Boss.
• Ass Kicks You: Cassandra's Critical Finish, where she literally knocks her foe over with her rear end, then proceeds to violently sit on her opponent's face, the second time using her shield. There is some lampshading when she calls out "You like this kinda stuff?" while she's doing it. Not to mention all the pink hearts. She also has an attack that involves flinging herself butt-first at the enemy (which is her longest-range attack).
  • Rock does this too.
  • Even more disturbingly, Voldo does this, although not as a Critical Finish.
  • Like her sister, Sophitia has two or three of them as well.
  • And Pyrrha continues the tradition.
• Attacking Through Yourself: Yoshimitsu is able to stab his sword through himself to damage his enemy. The attack does serious damage to himself, but even more to his enemy if it successfully connects.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel:
  • Setsuka's alternate costume in SCIV, which has been dubbed her "Mary Poppins outfit" by fans, references her European origins but has far more in common with the fashions of the much more recent Edwardian (1900s) era, rather than late Elizabethan era in which SCIV is set.
  • Sophitia's overall look and design is more evocative of Ancient Greece rather than 16th-Century Ottoman Greece with her Hellenic style skirts, togas tops, laurel-leaf hair decorations. There is also the fact she worships the Greek Pantheon rather than Eastern Orthodoxy, just like in real life though this is admittedly noted to be an anachronism in-universe.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Unblockable attacks look very cool, wreathing your weapon(s) in flames for the duration of the attack and darkening everything on-screen aside from the fighters and the HUD, and usually do a good chunk of damage. However, that duration tends to be a few seconds before the attack is actually pulled off, allowing players who notice the attack to generally dodge it with ease. And then punish the attacker right after with an attack of their own. Some of these attacks (such as Ivy's heel drop) leave the attacker open during the prep stages, too, making it very impractical unless the opponent is on the ground. They're really more for threatening a guard-happy opponent, as every character has at least one, and most are easily cancelled. IV fixes this by giving the characters several different types of unblockable attacks: Some are incredibly weak but come out quickly, others are done after combos to confuse the opponent and others cancel into stances and other attacks.
  • Soul Edge in II and III often carries elements of this; while generally more powerful than any other weapon, most of its side effects are negative compared to the many more useful abilities offered by Soul Calibur or other weapons. This is notably absent in SCIV, except for certain forms which have the detrimental abilities Slow Feet and Evil Sword Berserk attached.
  • In IV, Algol's 214A+B and 4B+K are awesome when they work, but they never will in a serious match. Nightmare's A+B and his 236A+B are also really cool, but are terrible moves.
  • In V, Aeon's Critical Edge consists of knocking the opponent down with a Screw Attack, sprouting wings, flying up in the air, and breathing fire over the downed opponent. However, it's one of the least damaging Critical Edges, the fire breath attack can randomly miss due to a bug (which sometimes results in Aeon ringing himself out), and is punishable on hit by certain characters.
  • The Critical Finishes from IV can only be pulled off in very specific situations: you break your opponent's armor, force them into Soul Crush, then hit all four face buttons while they're reeling back. They're harder to pull off than it would seem, not least because the Soul Crush is hard to predict, and hitting the opponent even once before pressing the four face buttons will end your chance to perform it.
    • Broken Destiny does simplify this to the point where they can be practically relied upon now. Each character now has a unique Guard Break attack done by hitting all three attack buttons, and landing one while the opponent's Soul Gauge is flashing red automatically triggers a Critical Finish. Soul Crushes are easier to force by mainly attacking blocking enemies and breaking their guards.
• Badass Adorable: Many of the younger girls, particularly Talim and Ashlotte.
• Badass Back: Voldo legitimately; other characters in III who shouldn't be allowed to.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Ideally, the conflict between Soul Edge and Soul Calibur is supposed to manifest itself like this, but in reality, Soul Calibur doesn't quite "get it" and thinks the only way to solve the problem of there being too much evil in the world is to freeze it and halt all of existence, making it closer to Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• BFS: Siegfried, Nightmare, Strife.
• Big Bad Ensemble: While Nightmare is normally the main villain of the series, Soulcalibur V has three separate entities competing for the title. The first is Graf Dumas - the new Nightmare - who uses politics, manipulation, and the power of Soul Edge with the goal to Take Over the World using his army of malfested slaves. The second is Tira, who wishes to resurrect the old Nightmare by using Pyrrha as a vessel, viewing the current one as a fraud, so she can reign chaos just as the original Nightmare did. The third is Elysium, the living incarnation of Soul Calibur, who wishes to destroy Soul Edge and bring absolute peace to the world — regardless of the consequences. Behind the scenes is Algol, who serves as the Greater-Scope Villain. How this all would've come together is unclear, due to the fact that only 1/4 of the story made the final cut of the game.
• Bittersweet Ending: Weapons Master ends with you forced to kill your rival to stop Inferno/the latest host of Soul Edge; while you are now worthy enough to wield Soul Calibur, the game makes it clear you are but a footnote to the countless holders of Soul Calibur and heavily implies your story was just a pit stop compared to the main character's journeys. Your name fades into legend, known only by a few hardcore historians... and your newly immortal best friend.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: One possible way to interpret the conflict between Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, if the Order vs. Chaos interpretation isn't doing it for you. On one side you have the unambiguously Evil Weapon Soul Edge whose main goal is to claim as many souls as it can through strife and carnage. Opposing it is the holy weapon Soul Calibur that, on the surface seems to have humanity's best interests in mind, yet believes the only way it can protect the human world is to paralyze it rather than save it, with no compromise that leaves the world intact.
• The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: In the intro.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: Dampierre, although he doesn't rely only on it.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Averted in Soulcalibur IV, which raises just as much Fridge Logic as the regular version does when Yoda and Darth Vader take damage from somebody punching them in the lightsaber.
• Blood Knight: Mitsurugi and Algol.
• Bloodless Carnage: You'd think with all the blades flying around, someone would get at least a small cut. It is, however, worth noting that this is a gameplay restriction, and within the story itself, the weapons do cause injuries and even death.
• Blue Blood: Three of the main cast are nobility. In order of rank:
  • HRH Princess Hildegard Von Krone (a princess)
  • Lady Isabella Valentine (an Earl’s daughter, therefore Lady)
  • Raphael Sorel (noted to be nobility, though his rank in the French peerage is not specified).
• Body Horror: Soul Edge can twist the human body quite grotesquely, best seen in the number it did to Siegfried's right arm. The same corruption later happens to poor Pyrrha.
• Bonus Level of Hell: Edge Master Mode, Mission Mode, Weapon Master Mode, Chronicles of the Sword, Tower of Lost Souls, and Legendary Souls, in chronological order.
• Boss Rush: Legendary Souls in V, which pit players against a gauntlet of bosses at the highest difficulty. Each of the 7 opponents there all have unique conditions and appearances compared to their playable incarnations:
  • The mimic characters are all locked into specific movesets for their fights: Kilik uses Xiba's moves to reflect his previous movelist, Elysium uses Pyrrha Omega's due to being physically similar to Sophitia, and Edge Master uses Alpha Patroklos'.
  • Siegfried and Nightmare are fought in their incarnations from IV, right down to wielding that game's version of Soul Calibur and Soul Edge.
  • Cervantes uses a modified version of his second costume which turns him into a mass of flames trapped in a suit of armor, similar to his first appearance as Inferno.
  • Averted with Algol, who has no notable changes as the final enemy of the route.
• Bottomless Pits: Some arenas have cliffs, chasms, or are being hoisted into the air by an Egyptian construction crane. These are some of the most common forms of "Ring Out."
• Bowdlerise: In countries (specifically, Korea) that discouraged references to samurai due to their histories with WWII-era Japan as well as various invasions from the 1590s, Mitsurugi was replaced twice: first with Hwang in the Korean arcade version of Soul Edge, and then in SC with an English-born, Japan-raised "samurai" named Arthur, who sported an Eyepatch of Power and wielded a katana. The former became a main by the 2nd arcade revision, the later became an unlockable bonus character in III as well as making cameos in the introduction for Weapon Master in II and The Gauntlet in Broken Destiny.
  • Interestingly enough, the backstories of the Korean characters involve those very same 16th-century conflicts, so you'd think the Korean audience would cherish being able to beat up a hardened samurai warrior with their national heroes.
  • Also, the PAL release of Soul Blade changes the weapons of Li Long from Nunchaku into Three-Sectional Staffs because of the legal status of the former in the U.K. and other countries.
• Breakable Weapons:
  • Soul Edge only, although IV and V have breakable armor.
  • In the story mode of III, this becomes the excuse for having a character use Soul Edge or Soul Calibur. Abyss will toss his scythe at you, requiring a quicktime event to block it. If the character is scripted to end up fighting with one of the Soul weapons, the strike will break the weapon the character is holding no matter what, and then one of the Soul weapons will be launched at the character, which they pick up to finish the fight.
  • For an ultimate evil weapon, Soul Edge itself is surprisingly fragile. Several characters are shown to be capable of smashing to pieces it in a single blow during their endings. Canonically, it's been destroyed by Taki (One half anyway), Xianghua, and Siegfried. Mitsurugi and Siegfried can destroy it in no less than two games.
• But Not Too Foreign:
  • Ivy is of complete Spanish ancestry, but was born and raised as a British aristocrat.
  • Arthur is a British orphan who was raised in Japan. His entire backstory was to appease the Korean market, because samurai are viewed very negatively over there after countless invasions, colonisations, and massacres at the hands of samurai.
  • Setsuka, who hails from an unknown European country but was raised Japanese. This is important, as she was shunned as a child for her overtly non-Japanese appearance until she was taken in by her master.
• Canon Immigrant: Sort of... A character named Yoshimitsu appears in all five Calibur games; he's similar to the Yoshimitsu from Tekken, but may not be the same person.
  • According to his story, "Yoshimitsu" is actually the name of the sword he wields, as well as a title given to the strongest Ninja in his clan (the Yoshimitsu in Soulcalibur is the founder and the Yoshimitsu of Tekken is the current leader); the personality and fighting style are adopted to give the impression that he is immortal (Legacy Immortality, as popularized by The Phantom). However, Yoshimitsu is the same guy in the first four Soulcalibur games, as his story makes constant references to his development in past games; he is replaced by a new swordsman (who refers to himself as "Yoshimitsu the Second") in the events leading up to V. The Tekken games all feature a single Yoshimitsu as well.
  • The Tekken 3 booklet's bio of Yoshimitsu says something like "He may have existed since the 18th Century." If this is true (it's mentioned nowhere in the NTSC-U English manual), it's only an addition of the English translator, as no such mention appears in any of the Japanese profiles.
  • Staying within the confines of the series itself, we have Hwang and Arthur. In both cases, the characters were conceived as alternates to Mitsurugi for the Korean market (who have a high distaste for samurai due to their bad history), Hwang for Soul Edge and Arthur for Soulcalibur. Later on, a second revision for Soul Edge was released and Hwang was canonized as a real character for all regions and given his own story. Likewise, in III, Arthur was given some back story and added as a bonus character. Arthur has little relevance to anything in the narrative but Hwang has been a prominent player through the first two titles.
• Canon Welding: Possibly implied with Tekken at the end of Zasalamel's story in IV, which depicts him still alive in modern New York.
• Captain Obvious:
  • Since the announcer in IV didn't have different quotes depending on who won, he could become this pretty often.
    Announcer: Victory belongs to the last one standing!
  • In Broken Destiny when you end up fighting Dampierre.
    Announcer: Only those who survive can fulfill their destinies.
    • In general, the announcers go for "Rule of Cool Purple Prose" even if it doesn't make sense. This becomes much more prominent by the later games, to the point where in V even some of the fighters are doing it.
• Carry a Big Stick: Rock, Kamikirimushi.
• Celibate Hero:
  • Ivy. No, seriously. She knows that she has "cursed blood", thanks to Soul Edge (her blood type is even listed as "Soul Edge"), so she has taken a vow to never have children, lest they too be cursed.
  • Kilik. By IV, he returns Xianghua's love, but says it can never be because he plans to throw away his life to become a hermit/the eternal guardian of both swords, and wants Xianghua to continue and live a full life rather than do the same just for him. She eventually moves on and has a daughter of her own named Leixia. Although, sometime after IV Kilik and Xianghua spent a night together, from which Xianghua eventually conceived Xiba.
• Character Customization: The games started featuring Create-a-Fighter mode in III, IV, and V. It's arguably one of the biggest draws of the games.
• Character Development: Siegfried turns from a deluded young man, into the Big Bad, and finally into The Atoner and the arguable protagonist/hero of the games. Similarly, Ivy has moved from evil to good. Most of the characters undergo some level of character development between games.
• Character Roster Global Warming: Soulcalibur has four "big" characters (Astaroth, Nightmare, Siegfried, Rock) compared to more than twenty others.
• Chekhov's Gunman: As Algol is the Hero King who was able to wield Soul Edge and created Soul Calibur, he has been mentioned since the beginning, they just gave him a name in IV. But to those unfamiliar with the backstory, he would appear to be a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere.
• Cherry Tapping: The Joke Weapons since II. All of them make a light squeak sound effect when they makes contact with the opponent. Cherry Tapping indeed.
  • Xianghua's Crybaby is the [[www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhdS2HP07Bw ultimate humiliation finishing move]].
• Chivalrous Pervert: Raphael and Dampierre both fight over Amy dolls and constantly make Double Entendres in Broken Destiny, while trying to keep their honor.
  • Maccoi, in the same game, really would like to feel you up (and it's implied he does each time you lose), but still gives you hints and tips when fighting him, out of a sense of duty. And molestation.
• Clock Punk: Clockwork cogs are theme in many arenas (more prominently in Zasalamel's stage in III, which is inside a clock tower). Yoshimitsu has a clockwork cybernetic arm (with wooden parts!), while Ashlotte in IV is a clockwork robot.
• Clothing Damage: IV has this in spades, for all characters with the exceptions of the bonus characters and the Star Wars exclusives. Kratos in Broken Destiny is also an exception. V retains the feature, though it only can occur once (as opposed to the High, Medium, and Low areas of equipment in IV) and only if the finishing blow of a round is a sufficiently strong attack. Like the other guests before him, Ezio serves as the game's sole exception.
• Comeback Mechanic:
  • IV allows players to assign skills to custom created characters. Among them are Will Power and Hysterical Strength. Both are passive abilities that activate when the player's health dips below a certain point. Will Power requires the player to be in critical status (low health) and causes the character to glow red when active. It sharply increases the user's stats for the remainder of the round. Hysterical Strength only requires that the player's health drop below half and only offers a boost in attack power, noted by a greenish yellow glow when active.
  • In V, if a player is one round away from losing a match, they receive one free meter stock.
• Comic-Book Time: Although a conflict of this nature would take copious amounts of time, not a single character has celebrated a birthday since II. In fact, II, III, and IV all take place within the same year.
  • Averted in the first three games, which took place in real time, as the passage of years between the plots (3 and 4) coincided with the games' initial releases (1995-1998-2002).
  • Also averted with V, which takes place 17 years after IV.
  • Especially silly in the story mode of III, which has the characters travelling back and forth several times between Europe, Asia and northern Africa, which in their age should have taken many years.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The A.I. of III blatantly reads your controller inputs, leading to things like a nigh-100% success rate in parrying basic throws (where there should be a 50% chance of failure), the ability to guard impact any attack, and never reacting incorrectly to any mix-up or cancelled attack. This makes anti-AI attacks a necessity to use, especially near the end of Chronicles of the Sword mode, where the AI operates on a higher level than the game's maximum difficulty!
  • There is one challenge in II where, in order to get to one of the special areas, you have to break your opponent's guard within a certain amount of time. Taki re-guards too fast after breaking her guard.
  • IV has the Tower of Lost Souls. Notably, it's not just in gameplay mechanics; the A.I. gets a number of unique character skills that are far more powerful than anything the player can ever get, up to and including near-100% automatic Guard Impact!
  • Back with a vengeance in V (at least in Legendary Souls mode and the harder opponents in Quick Battle). In addition to reading inputs, being immune to mix-ups, and abusing its own lack of needing input by executing complex moves faster than a human could ever do it, this A.I. will also flawlessly space your characters (staying close to long range characters and keeping away from short range ones) and perfectly confound all attempts at horizontal containment.
• Confusion Fu: Voldo, Yoshimitsu, and Dampierre. Xianghua and her daughter's movesets also rely on feints to a much lesser extent.
  • Voldo gets a particularly honourable mention since, thanks to his incredible speed and moving like as though his skeleton is made out of slinkies, even his own player will need practice to figure out what exactly he is doing.
  • The rock-paper-scissors-style game mechanics (guards and sidestepping can only null certain types of attacks each) encourage mix-up tactics in general.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In Soul Calibur IV, Yoda's Critical Finish is a replica of how he dispatched a Clone Trooper during the attack on the Jedi Temple in Revenge of the Sith.
  • Again in IV, Kratos' Critical Finish is an exact replica of the finishing move used on Ares in the final battle of the first God of War, though with the Blade of Olympus replacing the Blade of the Gods.
    • He also name drops Zeus after his opponent has not seen the end of this day. ("Zeus! You will be next!")
• Continuity Snarl: Despite being a guest character in Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, a non-canon game, Kratos being present in the Soul series world monkey wrenches everything about Sophitia's character; as the Greek pantheon (despite having long since fallen into antiquity by the late 1500s) does exist and Sophitia continues to receive guidance from Hephaestus. However, since Kratos is infamously known for completely destroying the Greek pantheon, this causes a conflict.
• Contortionist: II has purchasable "demonstrations" for the fighters, with Yun-seong and Voldo's coming off more like circus contortion routines more than martial arts training. Well, Voldo comes off like that even when he does fight, but still.
• Cool Sword: Everyone that's mentioned in the sword tropes here, plus Soul Edge, Hwang, Xianghua, Yun-seong, Shura, Leixia, Z.W.E.I. and Alpha Patroklos (if an iai version of Soul Calibur counts).
• The Corruption: Malfestation, the curse spread by the Soul Edge's evil energy that turns normal beings (both humans and animals) into monsters. It was released upon the world when Siegfried became Nightmare, infecting many with this condition. Many evil characters are associated or infected with it, but there are exceptions. Fortunately, it can be treated under the right circumstances as well.
• Cosmic Chess Game: Soul Edge versus Soul Calibur. The two swords have been warring in the hands of various wielders since ancient times, and no clear victor has emerged yet.
• Counter-Attack: Several characters have these. Some attacks just have frames at the beginning that cause a Guard Impact, which would make the rest of the attack sort of like a Counter Attack, but there are moves that genuinely won't do anything unless the opponent lands an attack at the proper frame of the animation. All attacks do more damage if they hit during the start-up or cool-down frames of an opponent's attack.
• Covers Always Lie: Usually in game covers, ads, and merchandise, Ivy is usually shown lined up with the other villainous characters, because of her rather interesting appearance. Even though at one point she committed murders in the sword's name, she's been trying to destroy it for most of the series.
  • Soul Edge's cover shows Mitsurugi duel-wielding katanas. He only does it once, for non-gameplay reasons. In his ending in III, if he meets up with Taki then he will have taken Soul Edge away from the last fight, and it will manifest into his in-game weapon while he still has the sword that he used since the beginning of the Tales of Souls story mode.
• Creator Cameo: Katsuhiro Harada can be fought in the Quick Battle mode of V. He wears a turban and a sleeved version of Heihachi's black dogi, and fights with the Soul of Devil Jin (i.e. Mishima-style karate + Frickin' Laser Beams). Appropriately enough, he appears under the name "Harada_TEKKEN" (which is the Twitter username he uses for Tekken-related tweets).
• Crossover:
  • II includes Heihachi, Spawn, or Link, depending on which console you use.
  • IV includes Star Wars characters Darth Vader and Yoda, as well as the Apprentice from The Force Unleashed. ^note Yoda was initially exclusive to the Xbox 360 version, while Darth Vader was originally exclusive to the PS3 version; both eventually became available as DLC for the other version. Starkiller has always been available in both versions.
  • V actually includes a character who makes sense within the context of the series' story and time period: Ezio Auditore, from the Assassin's Creed games. Well, story maybe, but time period, most certainly not; V takes place over a century after Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood, wherein Ezio is in about his 30s; ergo, he should already be dead by the time the game's story rolled by. And, even considering Assassin's Creed III had been released before V, having Connor as a Guest Fighter wouldn't normally have made sense, as he would only be born about 50 years later (same century, different timeframe).
    • The backstory explains that Shawn Hastings deducted a jump in Ezio's timeline thrusting him about 100 years into the future and then back again after he found a artifact. So the same could happen to Connor, Altaïr or Edward if the Animus malfunctioned again.
    • Also, Heihachi's appearance in II is explained by him having found a shard of Soul Edge in a dig site which thrust him back in time — he'd only return after beating Inferno.
• Crystal Prison: Soul Calibur likes to pull this as of IV whenever it trumps Soul Edge in certain character endings. (And it has no qualms about doing it to fighters who oppose Soul Edge either, who, in effect, helped it reach that point. One example, in Ivy's ending to IV, it does this to Nightmare, but also tries to inflict the same fate on Ivy; she's willing to accept it as punishment for what's she's done, but is saved when her own sword destroys itself to save her, convincing her she still has purpose.
• Cute Clumsy Girl: Talim becomes this when you use her running "kick" attack, which is more of a "trip and fall" attack. One of Xianghua's attacks when she is on the ground has her throw a tantrum. Dampierre is prone to falling in some of his attacks (when intended), and blocking will often get him to fall over in pain. In fact, in The Gauntlet, he's constantly accidentally activating his daggers into his own flesh. In Broken Destiny, the first assassin sent to try and kill you is so clumsy that your character allows themselves to get hit, out of pity for her.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Every character's ending inevitably has them doing something with Soul Edge and/or Soul Calibur.
  • The setup for Soulcalibur (and by extension Soulcalibur VI) assumes multiple elements from characters' endings. Li Long lost a fight with Cervantes that left him gravely wounded, seemingly dead in fact until III confirmed his survival. Sophitia was Cervantes' next opponent and despite a valiant effort where she managed to destroy one of the swords, she too was left badly hurt. Then Taki appeared, quickly finished Cervantes off and carried Sophitia away to safety. Siegfried came seeking the sword and defeated the possessed corpse of Cervantes after a brief fight, and took the remaining sword, becoming Nightmare. Also, Mitsurugi lost his duel against the Tanegashima rifleman, leaving him with a gnarly gunshot scar and a renewed desire to find Soul Edge.
  • II assumes elements of Xianghua's, Kilik's and Siegfried's endings. Xianghua and Kilik confront Nightmare at Ostrheinsburg Castle, and Kilik wins his fight against Nightmare but shatters his mirror in the process. When Soul Edge becomes Inferno, Xianghua's Krita-Yuga reveals itself to be Soul Calibur, the holy antithesis of Soul Edge, and Xianghua uses it to defeat Inferno and sunder Soul Edge, shattering the cursed sword into pieces. The castle crumbles and Kilik and Xianghua have to abandon Soul Calibur in their escape. With the destruction of Nightmare, Siegfried regains his sanity and control of his body after facing his dad in a dream and making peace with his father's spirit and his past sins.
  • III takes the basic setup from Nightmare's ending and also includes elements of Raphael's ending. Siegfried's freedom from Soul Edge's influence was short-lived and he became Nightmare again, travelling the world to gather the pieces of Soul Edge. Meanwhile, Soul Calibur had been corrupted by the presence of the cursed sword and become a weapon of similar evil. As Nightmare's quest neared completion, Raphael appeared and challenged Nightmare for the cursed sword. Just as Nightmare stood at the cusp of victory, Raphael pierced Soul Edge's eye with a desperate last attack, and Nightmare became wracked with pain. Siegfried's consciousness used this moment to regain control of his body, seize Soul Calibur (freed from Soul Edge by Raphael's attack) and plunge it into the eye of Soul Edge, locking the two swords into a Soul Embrace that sealed away both of the swords' powers.
• Cut Short: Soulcalibur V's Story Mode was only ¼ complete when the game was released due to the team running out of development time.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Namco LOVES this trope. Voldo is a particularly egregious example; from II to III, his moveset remained the same, but the inputs changed.
  • Ivy is practically a completely different character in every game. This is especially noticeable in the transition from IV to V, where she goes from having four stances to zero.
• Darker and Edgier: IV has many formerly-good characters — not to mention the pure Soul Calibur — take a swing into the dark side. These include Sophitia (forced to protect Soul Edge, with deadly force if necessary, to save her daughter's life), Maxi (driven to wield Soul Edge to destroy Astaroth by Tira), Taki (her ending has her murder Siegfried to prevent his attempt to create a utopia going horribly wrong), and Siegfried himself (his own storyline presents him as becoming increasingly suicidal, and his ending implies that Soul Calibur may have frozen the entire human population in crystal stasis, not to mention killing him). Soul Caliber itself is depicted as, in fact, evil.
  • V deals with the massacre and persecution of those who are and are accused of being "Malfested." Original-Cassandra in VI reveals that the events of V are a Bad Future that should be avoided at all costs.
  • Traditionally a lighthearted character with an unusual fighting style and a grandoise air, VI presents Yoshimitsu as a tragic man who is nearly consumed by his grief and desire to avenge his slaughtered ninja clan, only narrowly managing to turn away from the abyss before he falls in. He growls to his enemies that "(his) hatred for them has turned him into a demon", and it's entirely possible that he wasn't speaking figuratively.
• Decomposite Character: Siegfried and Nightmare. In the original Soul Blade, Siegfried appeared as the main BFS user and story-wise he only became Nightmare at the end. An early version of Nightmare, titled "Siegfried!" appeared as a bonus costume. Then in Soulcalibur, they were largely Moveset Clones with little variation, and Nightmare was the evil Brainwashed and Crazy version of Siegfried. In Soulcalibur II, Nightmare replaced Siegfried entirely. Due to lore reasons however, Siegfried became separate entity from Nightmare, having broken free of Soul Edge's grasp, but the Nightmare persona itself remained due to Zasalamel using his sorcery to bond the armor to Inferno, thus allowing him to operate without a host. This marked the beginning of Siegfried and Nightmare being officially separate characters, with greatly diversified movesets and lore. In all appearances onward, the two are completely different characters, despite starting the same.
• Denser and Wackier: Broken Destiny's Gauntlet Mode is essentially "What if Soulcalibur IV were a Gag Anime"? Exaggerated characters (IE, Xianghua), ridiculous scenarios (saving Hilde's father with "a Messenger of the Universe" aka Yun-Seong) and much more. Including Nightmare being way too innocent for words.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Guard Impacts. The requirement (pushing forward and guard right as an opponent's attack is about to hit, plus knowing what height to use) plus the consequence (there is no "fallback" if you miss, you will take damage) are demanding but execute one and your opponent's only response will be to do one of their own, bound by the same condition.
  • Several characters fall into this as well; Ivy and Setsuka are both extremely difficult to learn but utterly devastating when mastered. The Grieve Edge style from III could be considered this, too, as it was heavily reliant on expert timing for attacks and Guard Impacts but was extremely powerful when executed with proper precision, in addition to looking really awesome.
  • Just Guard in V.
• Disney Owns This Trope: Why is this series called the "Soul Series" as opposed to the "Soul Edge Series"? A man known as Tim Langdell has spent the last 30 years or so sitting on a trademark over the word "edge" in video game titles.^note At least prior to 2013, when a legal battle with Electronic Arts resulted in his trademark being surrendered and cancelled. Namco fell afoul of his notorious trademark squatting when they released Soul Edge, prompting them to rename the PlayStation port "Soul Blade" in the US (it retains the Soul Edge name in Japan both in arcades and console). Going forward, the entire series was rebranded as "Soulcalibur" to avoid dealing with this kerfuffle again.
• Ditto Fighter: Edge Master, Charade's II incarnation, and Olcadan. Inferno also acts this way in his appearances, save for his very first one (where he was just a pumped up Cervantes named SoulEdge). In II, he switches styles in the middle of the fight and has a super move regardless of style.
  • In V, Edge Master returns as a mimic character, along with Kilik and newcomer Elysium. The difference between the three is that Edge Master can mimic all characters (except for Ezio, Algol and the Devil Jin style) while Kilik and Elysium can only mimic male and female characters respectively. Additionally, Kilik gains back his Kali-Yuga and some of his old moves with his rod if copying Xiba. Elysium, if using Pyrrha Omega's style, alters it to more closely resemble Sophitia's in past games. She's also the only one of the three to possess her own Critical Edge (usable regardless of who she's currently mimicking).
• Divergent Character Evolution: Hwang & Mitsurugi had the same moves in Soul Blade until Hwang developed his acrobatic, one-handed style in the sequel.
  • Cassandra was originally envisioned as a Moveset Clone of Sophitia, due to replace her older sister. Sophitia was too popular to be replaced however, so Cassandra instead became a grappler Lightning Bruiser to Sophitia's rushdown Jack of All Stats instead.
• Dramatic Irony: After Patroklos finally finds Pyrrha (his long-lost sister) he reassures her that he'll protect her from the malfested. He doesn't know that 1) she is a malfested, or 2) despite her deceptive appearance, Pyrrha doesn't really need protection. Actually, she's spent like the last two scenes killing people.
• Dressed Like a Dominatrix: Ivy Valentine usually wears some sort of skimpy costume, thigh-high boots and opera gloves. She wields a Whip Sword and loves being cruel to her enemies.
• Dual Wielding: Cervantes, Kratos, Lloyd Irving, and Shura all dual-wield swords, as well as Talim, who dual wields Tonfas. Taki and Natsu dual-wield daggers for certain attacks, and Algol's hands transform into Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, as well as double bubble cannons. Maxi can dual-wield nunchaku as an extra kata in Soulcalibur.
  • Aeon Calcos (Lizardman), as of V, duel-wields axes.

E-H

• Early-Bird Cameo: The Apprentice/Starkiller/Galen Marek from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, in IV. Amy makes a short cameo in the second game's intro (of course, she's part of Raphael's backstory, and he was introduced here).
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Soul Edge features concepts like the Weapon Break meter and Critical Edge combo, stuff that was never revisited in later installments of the series. It also lacked the 8-way Run movement system that would become the trademark of the later games and as a whole, was slower and played closer to Tekken 2.
  • A move called the Critical Finish showed up in IV, but seems to be unrelated. The Critical Edge itself returns in V.
    • In Name Only. The Critical Edge in V is a conventional super move, governed by a gauge, instead of a long string of attacks.
    • The Critical Edges in Soulcalibur V are actually quite similar in principle to the ones in Soul Edge/Blade. The original Critical Edges were essentially Tekken-style 10-hit combos, but rather than using a long complex 10-part input string, they consisted of two half-combos with an a single input for each half. Pressing all three attack buttons initiates the first half of the combo, and a second (character-specific) input finishes the combo if pressed during the final hit of the first half (shown here with inputs). In V, only Algol's Critical Edge still functions in this manner; the rest of the cast use a single universal command.
    • Additionally, both versions of the Critical Edge consume meter when performed. The key difference is that in V, the meter starts at zero and has to built up during the fight, as is common for super-combos. In Edge/Blade, the meter starts full, as it doubles as the weapon's defense/HP gauge, and is reduced by blocking attacks or performing Critical Edge; if depleted, the weapon will break and the character must finish the round unarmed.
    • In a sense, the Brave Edges (enhanced versions of particular moves comparable to the EX Moves in Darkstalkers, Street Fighter, and the like) could be seen as faint spiritual successors to the first game's Critical Edges.
    • Similar to above, characters have a Weapon Gauge of sorts in V as well, which is similar to the Stun gauge in Street Fighter and other series. Repeatedly guarding attacks will eventually cause their guard stance to shattered, leaving them completely defenseless for a brief moment. The Weapon Gauge resets immediately afterward.
• Easter Egg: V's Quick Battle mode gives players the chance to fight Katsuhiro Harada, the producer of Tekken. Harada uses a Create-A-Soul exclusive Devil Jin fighting style. Defeating him allows the use of the Devil Jin style for created characters.
  • It's also possible to to assemble KOS-MOS in III's Character Creation.
  • V has DLC items that reference other Namco games, including accessories of Pac-Man and Klonoa, costumes from Tekken, and even the Terror Mask.
• Egypt Is Still Ancient: Sophitia is a woman from 16th Century Greece who dresses like a warrior-woman from Greek Antiquity, and also worships the god Hephaestus. At the time, Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (which was Muslim), and the people of that country were Christian and very insistent on it. It's really just an excuse to have an ancient Greek warrior fighting people in the Renaissance.
• Eldritch Location: Astral Chaos, the dimension that Soul Edge retreats into whenever it gets too damaged.
  • Its predecessors Valencia Port - Chaos (Edge/Blade), Chaos (Calibur), Tartaros (SCII), and Chaos - Spiritual Realm (SCIII) are no slouches in this department, although the latter two Chaos stages are implied to be alternate planes of existence within Soul Edge where one does battle with Inferno as well as an extension of/one in the same with Astral Chaos. Similar to Valencia Port - Chaos, Astral Chaos later bleeds into the real world when Pyrrha Omega uses Soul Edge to tear open a rift in the sky above Denevér Castle, turning the stage into Denevér Castle: Eye of Chaos.
  • Ostrheinsburg Castle and the surrounding area is implied to have become this in IV after Nightmare decides to use it as his base of operations and transforms the city into what is known as Dark Capital Ostrheinsburg using Soul Edge's power.
  • The Lost Cathedral in III is a more benign version, crossing over with Lost World: it's a breathtakingly beautiful palace of pristine water drawing from all forms of European architecture which can only be reached by "those with a strong will and a willingness to bet their own lives." Algol's Tower of Remembrance in IV (particularly its "Degration" version) and Tower of Glory in V could also qualify, with the latter explicitly residing in Astral Chaos.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Amy. And then IV has Setsuka's alternate outfit (although an early concept brought it closer to the trope; it's likely it was discarded because the girl in the art looked too young to be Setsuka) and Ashlotte, a robotic clockwork gothic lolita.
• Empathic Weapon: Soul Edge and Soul Calibur. Ivy's Valentine Whip Sword is also alive, which is why it can do all those improbable things in battle. Yoshimitsu's katana is shown to have a a level of sentience as well, especially in his II ending.
• Enemy Within: Inferno serves as this to anyone who would try to wield Soul Edge without getting taken over.
• Enemy Without: Nightmare to Siegfried, after the events of SoulCalibur II.
• Epic Fail: Admit it, anyone who has played this game was able to ring themselves out by accident at least once.
  • Like this guy did!
• Eternal Recurrence: The series' motto isn't "a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold" for nothing. Soul Edge awakens and claims a host in order to destroy/conquer the world. Soul Calibur awakens and claims a host to seal/shatter Soul Edge. Once Soul Edge regains enough power to take a new host, the cycle repeats, and it's been going on for millennia with neither weapon being powerful enough to fully destroy the other.
• Evil Only Has to Win Once: So far, Soul Edge has been shattered or destroyed at least three times (Soul Edge, Soulcalibur, Soulcalibur II), twice by Soul Calibur. What happens each time? The sword just breaks into pieces (each one every bit as evil as the whole sword) and eventually reforms itself, stronger than before. Now, what happens in every ending where the Soul Edge wins instead? The world gets hosed, that's what. Even worse, in IV, we learn that Soul Calibur is actually just as evil, but with a penchant for order rather than chaos.
• Evil Weapon: Soul Edge. Soul Calibur during the period where it was corrupted by Soul Edge's evil; it's normally a holy sword meant to oppose Soul Edge. IV reveals that Soul Calibur can actually be considered just as evil, when it reaches its full power and sentience. Unlike Edge, which revels in chaos, destruction, death, and torment, Calibur wants peace, harmony, and safety — by freezing the entire world so that no one can move.
• Evil vs. Evil:
  • Nightmare vs. Cervantes over who will be the one true wielder of Soul Edge.
  • Pyrrha Omega vs. Nightmare in SoulCalibur Pachislot.
• Expy: In V, many characters deemed too old or are dead are replaced with characters who have the same fighting style. Examples include Natsu for Taki and Pyrrha for Sophitia.
• Fanservice:
  • In Soul Edge, Sophitia appears naked in the opening (censored overseas, of course) and Taki has Jiggle Physics. On the original PlayStation. Which is hilarious. Not to mention the Clothing Damage aspect added into later games and the ability for players to create intentional Mr. and Ms. Fanservice characters via the "Create a Soul" system.
  • Algol's costume in V. Seems like he and Gill shop at the same outlet.
• Fanservice Pack: Most of the female characters' bust sizes were increased over the course of the series, most noticeably with Sophitia and Ivy. This also corresponded with a reduction in the amount of clothes they were wearing.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The roster is composed, but not limited to, a Greek warrior blessed by the gods, a ninja with mystic powers, a samurai, a ghost pirate, an immortal alchemist femme fatale, an snotty aristocrat-turned-vampire, a Omnicidal Maniac Black Knight, a Golem, a lizardman, a blind/deaf/mute old man who is barely human, an immortal scythe-wielder, and an interdimensional being, and that's for starters. The Greek Pantheon is confirmed to be real alongside the titular magic swords and so is a Gilgamesh-expy. It seems that different forms of magic, both eastern and western, exist in this setting. That's also not taking into account the Anachronism Stew in the mix.
• Femme Fatalons: Viola, although she relies more on her crystal ball.
• Fights Like a Normal: For much of the series, there were many characters with magical ties and could in theory be capable of different abilities beyond that of a normal human. However, with a few exceptions, almost all of the cast fought without using any of their potential powers and relied solely on their skills with their weapons. For example, Zasalamel in the lore is portrayed as a sorcerer capable of many different feats of magic but in-game however, he just uses his scythe as a normal blade. In IV and V, characters will only use special abilities when using a Critical Finish or Critical Edge, though we don't know how much of that was just for show. This is finally and completely averted in Soulcalibur VI. Due to Gameplay and Story Integration, any character who has ties to magic will use their magic in a fight alongside their weapons, and each of them tie specifically to their backstory. It's not just for show either, as they are true mechanics and not simply visual effects; the aforementioned Zasalamel can create vortexes, manipulate gravity to draw his opponent in, and even slow down time to gain a temporary advantage.
• Finishing Move: The Critical Finish in IV. Don't expect to pull this one off all the time; it's mostly there to keep people from spamming guard the whole match. The fanciness is lost on Yoda though, who is too short for most of the animations, and thus Critical Finishes on him are simply the character performing an unblockable attack on him.
• Flynning: Can be seen in the attract mode for III.
• Fragile Speedster: Taki and Maxi both have extremely fast attacks, but can't take what they dish out, especially against characters with longer reach. And even the slow, strong characters they counter still outrange them.
• Freeze-Frame Introduction: The arcade version features this in attract mode. We see a fight between two characters. Halfway through the fight, one of the characters gets a profile and the other gets a profile after winning the fight. Both profiles list their names, origins, weapons, and weapon names.
• Gaiden Game: Broken Destiny's story mode starts by stating that its plot is based on "obscure fables" and therefore isn't canon. Legends was also referred as such in the early press releases.
• Game-Breaking Bug: III. Save file wipe. If you moved or deleted any other save file on your memory card, it's impossible to save in Chronicles of the Sword (and therefore to play that mode properly).
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • In the game, any character can beat any other character depending on skill. In-story, some characters are portrayed as being clearly out of the weight limit of others. For example, Nightmare is portrayed as being practically a One-Man Army that can obliterate entire armies all on his own, and only a few others could seriously give him trouble in the lore. Yet in the gameplay itself, for balancing reasons, he's a Mighty Glacier that's strong but slow, and characters with canonically far lesser power can beat him with enough skill on the player's part.
  • Depending on the game, you can unlock Soul Edge as a weapon for any character. It might have some negative effects like random stats or depleting your HP, but it will not actually drive your character insane unless they pick it up in a cutscene. In fact in some cutscenes, you can get the amusing spectacle of your character destroying Soul Edge using another Soul Edge, or tossing their Soul Edge aside having suffered no ill effects from holding it to pick up the enemies' one and only then becoming corrupted by it.
  • Changing weapons no longer changes anything gameplay-wise to the characters in V. So characters acquiring Soul Edge and powering them up does nothing in their matches.
• Glacial Apocalypse: This result is revealed to be the true goal of the Soul Calibur. The Calibur is opposed to its progenitor and counterpart, the Soul Edge. Soul Edge seeks endless war, bloodshed, torment and chaos across the world while Soul Calibur wants peace, harmony and order. Its preferred method of attaining this, however, would be by freezing the whole world over. In certain bad endings, we are shown such an apocalyptic scenario as ice envelops the world.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Heihachi and anyone with the Soul of Devil Jin. It comes to a head in Heihachi's final battle, as he decides to put fist against sword with Raphael in a sword-styled duel.
• Good Armor, Evil Armor: The Create-A-Soul feature in Soul Calibur III features a Karma Meter of sorts that determined your character's general attitude and outlook in combat based on what equipment you attached to them. Certain types of armor would move the meter between "Good" and "Evil". Equipping heavy armor covered in spikes would move you pretty far to the Evil side, where your character's dialogue would be aggressive and unrepentant.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Siegfried (scarred from being Nightmare's host and tormented to Hell and back, but ultimately a good guy) and Kilik (the good guy of the series).
• Gorgeous Greek: The Alexandria family are from Greece and they are all extremely good-looking. Sophitia, Cassandra and Pyrrha all have generous chests, long shapely legs and immaculate blonde hair. And it's not just the women: Sophitia's son Patroklos invokes Classical Greek sculptures of beautiful young men with his cherubic blond hair, and Sophitia's husband Rothion when he briefly appears as an opponent in her story in VI is also shown to be very handsome.
• Glass Cannon: Possible in IV with custom characters. Several characters have weapons with extremely high damage but low health.
• Grail in the Garbage: Charade's backstory in states he bought shards of the Soul Edge from a random merchant.
• Grapple Move: Grab moves can be canceled by doing your own grab move so that it connects with the opponent's. Later entries even allow you to counter an opponent's grab so you grab them instead. Both require A LOT of Dexterity.
• Gratuitous German: With bad grammar.
• Groin Attack: Several examples.
  • Sophitia's infamous "Widow Maker" throw, where she grabs her opponent and rams her knee into their crotch at full, pelvis-crushing force. Hilariously, if her opponent is male, she underscores the strike with a genuinely sympathetic-sounding "I'm sorry!" Both her and Cassandra are also known to attack using their groins.
  • Seong Mi-na has multiple variations. One has Mi-na thrust the spear between the legs and raise up to slice the groin, another has her vault onto her opponent's shoulders, take them to the ground, and thrust down into the crotch. Kilik will also use the first attack too, though small mercies, he's not using a blade.
  • Dampierre, the vicious bastard he is, uses this as his back throw, the "Distinguished II Capitan": pushes the opponent to the ground, raises their legs, and just keeps kicking and stomping there before finishing with a strong kick to the tender area.
  • Ivy as well. She has a stomping move. If performed on a downed opponent she rubs the tip of her foot on them. This counts if her foot lands on their groin, which is almost guaranteed to happen if they're lying face up. This is quite similar to a move of Nina's in Tekken.
• Guest Fighter: Heihachi, Link, and Spawn, who were each a console-specific character in one of the versions of II; Lloyd Irving in Legends; Darth Vader, Yoda, and the Apprentice in IV; Kratos in Broken Destiny, Ezio Auditore in V, and Geralt Of Rivia and 2B in VI with the latter as DLC.
  • KOS-MOS appears in a roundabout fashion in III. She appears as a special set of items for Character Creation that creates a character with her appearance when put together.
  • In a similar vein to KOS-MOS is Devil Jin in V; his fighting style is available in the game^note while unlockable, can be obtained fairly early (upon reaching Player Level 5, which frankly is an easier feat than beating Harada_TEKKEN), and Jin's outfit is available via DLC in the first Tekken-themed pack.
  • Product Placement: Adding the Apprentice from Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a game that was going to come out a month after IV, was totally this.
  • Also, a bunch of anime/manga designers were hired to create an original character — and by "original character" we mean "they look different." Each of their individual fighting styles are copied from another character. They don't even have their own voice sets (using the ones from Create-a-Character mode instead), although several of their lines are unique to those characters.
• Guns Are Useless: While in-story the advent of rifles making swordsmen obsolete is a plot point, guns are quite useless in gameplay:
  • The only firearm in the game (Cervantes' "pistol sword"); while the strongest attack that uses it deals decent damage (between a 4th and 3rd of health), it is very telegraphed, and can be dodged by simply moving to the side once. Back in II, the only attack that involved it was a weak, easy to miss, anti-air attack grab (which is as useless as it sounds). (Of course, the game does take place in the 16th Century; firearms were rather primitive back then.)
  • Ezio's hidden pistol in V is even more useless than Cervantes's pistol sword. While unblockable, it takes a whole second to fire (although he can cancel it if needed).
  • Mitsurugi's character arc in the earlier games is to find a way to combat firearms. Initially, he thinks that finding Soul Edge is the key, but he ends up evolving his own sword techniques to defeat riflemen without the cursed sword. His non canon input ending from Soul Edge has him defeat a Tanegeshima musket wielder in a duel by dodging the first shot and charging him while he's reloading, while the intro movie to Soul Calibur 2 shows him charging an army and cutting a rifleman's weapon in half, showing his progress from his defeat at the hands of the Tanegeshima. By 3, gun wielders no longer concern him.
• The Hero: Sophitia, the kind-hearted baker's daughter on a Mission from God, is canonically the one who defeated Cervantes and destroyed Soul Edge (or at least half of it) in Soul Edge/Blade. Later games relegated her to a side character and other characters like Xianghua (Soulcalibur I and II), Siegfried (III and IV) and Patroklos (V) would become the canon POV characters in the story, but Sophitia keeps many of the hallmarks of the fighting game protagonist (her newbie-friendly Jack of All Stats playstyle) and she also remains one of the most noble and good characters in the cast (barring a very reluctant Forced into Evil phase in IV).
• High Fantasy: By later games, the series may have made a Genre Shift into this territory despite ostensibly taking place in our world. While real world figures are referenced, and the lands are real, you have so many different fantastical aspects that it might as well be a Constructed World. The roster includes a golem, a lizardman, a beautiful Greek woman granted power and weapons by the ancient Pantheon, a demon-hunting ninja with mystical powers, a Ghost Pirate, two vampires, a Scary Black Man who happens to be immortal, an Deity of Human Origin who rules an Eldritch Location, a sexy Femme Fatale alchemist, another ninja with mystical powers (who's also a Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot), a teenage priestess who can control the wind, and the setting revolves around two magical swords that drive the plot. That's still not naming everything. And when you're not just looking at the roster itself, Schizo Tech is involved like Yoshimitsu's mechanical arm, various Steampunk-flavored stages, and costumes not being period appropriate in the slightest. With all that in mind, it's rather jarring when you remember that when the series began, it was largely based in real world history with very little magic, the ones that did exist being low-key and downplayed, amounting to Magic Realism or even Low Fantasy.
• Historical Fantasy: What the series started off as before taking a dip into High Fantasy territory.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: Conceivably possible with Spawn's signature fire/acid ball move. Any competent human or AI will be able to sidestep the fireballs, but against the easy and the inexperienced, you may be able to wipe the enemy health gauge clean before the enemy can so much as close for combat. Same goes for Link in the same game (except in the GameCube version only). Can also be attempted with Ivy's whip and Kilik's staff to a lesser extent.
• Hoist Hero over Head: One of Darth Vader's grappling moves in IV. Two of Hilde's throws also do this.
• Horny Vikings: The Viking Helm in IV is an example of this.
• Hotter and Sexier: From Soul Edge to Soulcalibur IV, the girls all saw an an increase in breast size and skimpier outfits to match. There's also characters like Ivy, Taki, Sophitia, Cassandra, and Setsuka who have always been fanservice staples and got even sexier with each game. This picture sums it up nicely◊.
  • Inverted in Soulcalibur V, the game notably dials the fanservice down a notch. Ivy was much more modestly dressed (even moreso than the first game), while all the other girls were replaced by much smaller-chested, more modestly dressed successors.
  • But then it comes back full force in Soulcalibur: Lost Swords. All the girls that were replaced/removed return, fanservice and all. But that doesn't cover the new costumes in customization such as the ultra-risque "Rabbit Football", "SC Woman", and "Mystery Armor". Even their advertisements reek of Sex Sells, and it's starting to put Dead or Alive levels of focus on the female cast.
  • Played straight with mainline Soulcalibur again in Soulcalibur VI, a Continuity Reboot that marks a complete reversal of the Tamer and Chaster direction of V and also brings back every girl who had been dropped from the cast previously.
• Hungry Weapon: Soul Edge has an insatiable thirst for souls.
• Hurt Foot Hop: A standard stun animation that can inflicted by several low attacks, some even as simple as the character deliberately attempting to stomp on their enemy's feet, involves the character holding their foot in agony and hopping around until they lose balance and fall to the ground.
• Hyperlink Story: While only V makes it apparent by including a story mode with an obvious plot, the series has a canon storyline with details taken from some of the various characters' individual endings. Which story lines get pieced together usually isn't revealed until the into of the next instalment.

I-L

• I Got Bigger: Almost every character experiences height growth as the series progresses.Very wonky, because several characters get taller past their mid twenties. Siegfried is the biggest offender because he grows in almost every game for an timespan of at least 7 years and after IV, he grows a whole 4 cm after the age of 23. That would mean he grew for at least 10 years when the max time a person grows in their growth spurt period is 6 years. Mitsurugi stops growing for a whole four years, and in V, he grows two centimeters extra.Also, this only extends to the men. Only three women, Seong Mina, Hilde and Amy have experienced growth. All but three men, Raphael,Yun-Seong, and Maxi have experienced height growth. One gets the idea that either Retcon is in play to heighten up the characters when the designers feel the character isn’t tall enough and a sense of favoritism for the male characters
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Many of the girls' outfits, including Amy and Ivy.
• Improbable Age: In a series with a roster consisting primarily of adults, there are some characters who are in their teens yet can fight with the best of them, such as Talim, Amy and Tira.
• Improbable Weapon User: Plenty, even without counting anyone's Joke Weapon. Tambourines, anyone?!
• Infinity +1 Sword: Each character has one; also inverted in Soul Edge itself, which may count as an Awesome, but Impractical Infinity -1 Sword, as it often drains the health of its possessor.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: Yoshimitsu can do this to set up a Sword Plant.
• Instrument of Murder: Talim of IV uses a pair of ocarinas as her joke weapons.
• Jiggle Physics:
  • Almost all female characters have breasts that jiggle as they move, most noticeably with the bustier ladies like Taki and Ivy (although there are exceptions).
  • In IV, Cassandra's alternate costume applies this to her thighs.
  • III also has Valeria the shopkeeper, and more of the girls have this in IV, including Sophitia, Setsuka, and pretty much every female Create-A-Character, especially since they'll end up in their underwear anyway. Astaroth has chest jiggle physics, and Xianghua has ass jiggle physics.
  • In II, Lizardman's thighs jiggle!
  • Jiggle Physics is even customizable for custom characters, where (reasonably) undergarment choice affects bounce. The strapless bra will have more jiggle than what is essentially a leather sports bra.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: The series' canon storyline up until V combined bits and pieces of several character-specific endings, and wasn't revealed until the release of the next game.
• Joke Item: Each character has one. Usually a wooden sword of some description that does very little damage and/or makes amusing noises whenever it connects with someone.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Mitsurugi, Yoshimitsu, Arthur.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Several outfits the ladies wear are very fancy and elegant.
• Lampshade Hanging: Seong Mi-na + bladed weapon + Groin Attack + "Bye bye" = not pleasant™.
• Large Ham: Nightmare's taunts before a battle and after winning a match. His lines could be very scary, if he didn't sound like he was trying so hard. "Have a taste of my darkness!" Also The Narrator at times.
  • Kratos in Broken Destiny, even more than in his own series.
  • Cervantes is extremely hammy as well, being a pirate and all except during his alternate ending in Soul Blade, where he reclaims his sanity and is a lot more composed.
  • Abyss in III actually has some pre-battle lines that are so lengthy that they get cut off/run into the other fighter's!
  • Everything Astaroth says is incredibly melodramatic.
  • Yoshimitsu is in a category all his own.
• Large-Ham Announcer: Except in the fifth game, where the announcer has a calm, sexy voice instead of a loud and hammy one.
  Announcer in Soul Calibur: <Character> was seriously wounded, but the SOUL STILL BURNS!
• Laser Blade: Darth Vader, Yoda and the Apprentice (for obvious reasons).
• Legacy Character:
  • Nightmare is the name of the wielder of Soul Edge, and there have been three hosts so far in the series. The original was Siegfried, who was freed from being the host at the end of II. In III and IV the host was Inferno himself, thanks to Zasalamel bonding the demonic entity to Nightmare's discarded suit of armor, but it was destroyed by Siegfried at the end of IV. The third is Graf Dumas, who arose seventeen years later and became the ruler of Hungary, and it's heavily implied that Dumas is actually Raphael.
  • The original Astaroth was slain by Maxi in IV. The one that appears in V is part of a mass-produced line from another cult.
  • Yoshimitsu was already established as a legacy with Tekken, and this is enforced in V where the original was slain by Cervantes sometime after IV, and the one appearing in V is a new man behind the mask. He even makes sure to introduce himself as Yoshimitsu the Second.
• Leotard of Power: Ivy, particularly in II. Cassandra in IV has a coat on over one of these.
• Lighter and Softer: Broken Destiny's Gauntlet Mode is Denser and Wackier than the main story and contains massive amounts of Lampshade Hanging (ranging from one of the wild creatures asking why their wolf protector is suddenly walking around on two legs, to the characters constantly asking each other, and themselves, why they keep giving hints to the player when they fail a mission), a few personality changes, starting with Cassandra being a Genki Girl, no one getting killed aside from the wolf you eat in the beginning, Nightmare becoming a good guy, anime-style illustrations (including a Yukkuri shiteitte ne! cameo), with all the standard visual gags.
• Light Is Not Good: The titular blade, Soul Calibur. It was shown in IV that it wants to freeze the world in crystal, thus creating a World of Silence. Soul Calibur's justification is that if nobody can move, there won't be any more war. Granted, it's still insane.
  • Reinforced in V when its spirit presents itself as Sophitia to manipulate Patroklos into killing Soul Edge's wielder, his sister Pyrrha.
• Lightning Bruiser: Siegfried and Nightmare hit hard and fast naturally. Ashlotte, Astaroth, and other slow-but-strong characters can be modified into this through the Step Speed Up and Run Speed Up abilities. Hilde's movement is among the fastest in the game, and she also has the two most powerful attacks (her 30 second charge attacks), both of which are near one hit K.O.s.
  • Cassandra, originally planned to be a Moveset Clone replacement for Sophitia, gradually became this instead through Divergent Character Evolution. Sophitia remains a (very strong) Jack of All Stats, while Cassandra is definitely geared towards an aggressive rushdown/grappler playstyle. She's quite a bit faster than her older sister, has great frame advantage and hits like a truck, but her inability to deal with a threat at any range other than "very close" is more readily apparent.
  • Darth Vader in IV, which is rather true to his portrayal in the Star Wars universe.
• Limit Break: The Critical Edge attacks in V, complete with their super meter.
• Low Fantasy: When the series first started, it was this trope before it became Magical Realism that mutated into High Fantasy. The setting was 16th century, had a primarily historical focus with the fighters (almost all being ordinary humans) using real weapons. Magic did exist, with Soul Edge having been there from the the start, and a few other factors like Sophitia getting her skills from the Greek Pantheon, Taki being a demon hunting ninja, and Inferno as the final boss were there, but it was largely downplayed in favor of making the roster and setting feel like products of the real world. It wasn't until later installments really played up the magical elements did the series become the Fantasy Kitchen Sink it was known for.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Sophitia, Lizardman, Link, Cassandra, Patroklos and Pyrrha, all coupled with a sword.

M-P

• Magic Realism: All games in the series are set in the real world, and there are plenty of historical references to real life events and people of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Story Mode (in III and V) features a world-map of Eurasia that the fighters traverse. This, however, is all juxtaposed with the use of "magic" powers (especially in the Critical Edge super moves where energy emissions are fired off), as well as fantasy creatures such as golems (Astaroth) and animated skeletons (Revenant). It all works rather well, though, and it doesn't cross the line too much into Dungeons & Dragons territory.
  • Although arguably V has taken the series into the realms of High Fantasy — despite retaining a real-world map, two of the new characters (Viola and Zwei) use weapons and fighting styles that are completely fantasy-based, namely a floating crystal ball and a floating were-wolf torso respectively...
• Malevolent Architecture: Abound in Legends, where even Leonardo da Vinci's house is full of swinging blades, rolling boulders, and puzzles.
  • Considering the role played by Leo in Assassin's Creed II, this might be intentional...
• Mana Meter: V has one (with multiple stocks at that), and it's used to power the Brave Edge and Critical Edge moves.
  • The Star Wars fighters in IV had a unique Force gauge attached to them. They have the ability to perform enhanced moves and unblockables by sacrificing a portion of it, which is then recovered over time or when they give or take damage. Unlike most other examples of this, they can still perform Force moves if the meter is empty or they lack the adequate amount of meter, but will be momentarily stunned and left open.
• Manipulative Bastard: Zasalamel in III manipulates Nightmare, Siegfried, Ivy, and a bunch of Mooks as part of his plan to raise both swords' powers back to full. Also, in each character's own story mode, there's one path in which he baits said character into his clock tower, tests him/her in battle, and then either directs him/her to Nightmare (so he gets a chance to feed the sword with a strong soul) or curse him so he'd not become a nuisance later.
  • Also Tira in IV, as she convinces many of the characters to seek out Soul Edge to meet their goals, most notably manipulating Sophitia into working for the side of Nightmare by saying that her daughter was at risk if Soul Edge was destroyed.
  • Dampierre in Broken Destiny. To get two men into his service, one of which attempted to shoot him earlier, he reveals his hideout to the police, and later saves them when they are cornered. This act, plus a claim of greatness and his impressive counterfeit collection, are enough to turn them into his lackeys.
  • Iska in Legends fits this trope perfectly as he makes the character do the whole story then attempts to kill them.
• Master of All: Edge Master, a proclaimed master of the art of fighting, who has supposedly mastered every fighting style known to man to the point that he can teach others and utilize them himself if need be. It's also noted that he has clashed with the Warrior King Algol and perhaps was the one person who fought Olcadan to a draw. Especially enforced in Soulcalibur V, where he is the only character able to mimic every style, while fellow mimics Kilik and Elysium can only copy male and female fighting styles respectively.
• Meaningful Name: Pyrrha, Sophitia's daughter. You just know there's only one way for that whole mess to end.
  • It doesn't help that her other child is named Patroklos, as in the man who wore Achilles' armor in the Trojan War.
  • Also Amy, coming from the old French Amee, means "beloved"; this is played up with the mission you need to complete to unlock her in III, named "Beloved."
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Several. Generally, the less normal a character is the higher chance of an unusual style they'll have.
  • Both Voldo and Dampierre's main attacks largely involve being able to block due to their stances, be they facing away from the enemy or being downed on the ground.
  • Yoshimitsu has a number of different quirks befitting his status as a Fighting Clown, and each one of them could've made him an example all by itself, but combined he takes it up to eleven. For one, he has by far the most moves in the game. Many of them do little more than confuse the opponent, but mastering each stance is what separates the best from the average. While other characters have stances, his are by far the most unique as they include sitting, flying while using his blade as a helicopter, and bouncing on his sword like a pogo stick, and all of them give him additional options. He's one of the few characters capable of self-harm with moves that Cast from Hit Points, even having an enhanced dodging mechanic that can get him out in a pinch but at the cost of his health, and he even can stab himself with a move... and take the opponent down in the process. Some of his moves can even harm himself if performed incorrectly, meaning that there's no margin of error when using them. Others are reliant on baiting the player and thus must be timed right, and this is in a series that doesn't feature an active counter system. Oh, and he's also the only character who can heal himself mid-match. Finally, he can make full use of Teleport Spam to further confuse the opponent. As you can tell, Yoshimitsu is what happens when someone with Combo Platter Powers is made into a fighting game character.
  • Tira has a Stance System with her "Jolly" and "Gloomy" states. What separates her from the other characters with stances is that she can't actively switch between them, and changes after she performs a successful combo on an enemy. The change is marked by a gold yellow flash if changing to Jolly or a dark purple flash when changing to Gloomy. Also, the latter state actually damages herself with every move. While the damage is tiny, using Gloomy could potentially knock you out without the opponent landing the final blow.
  • Algol doesn't play like a standard fighter in the series. For one, he doesn't use a standard weapon, but rather his body. He can create up to 10 different weapons, which includes Arm Cannons (making him the only standard character with a long ranged projectile), a Blade Below the Shoulder, blades that can be summoned from his back, just to name a few. He's one of the few who can teleport (alongside the aforementioned Yoshimitsu), which he does via a stance that involves sitting in his chair. Algol's variety of weapons means he can be Difficult, but Awesome; though he's tough to master, he can rush down his opponent, deal heavy attacks, and engage enemies trying to flee with Spam Attack.
  • Soulcalibur IV has Star Wars characters as guests. Darth Vader, Yoda and The Apprentice have their own "Force" meter that governs how much of their Force power they can use at once, and thus players must be mindful of them. On the other end, they have access to a whole new subset of moves that the rest of the cast doesn't have. Yoda in particular is an example of his own, since he's much shorter than everyone else, which means mid and high attacks flat out don't work on him, nor can he be grabbed. On the flip side, Yoda is painfully slow when using standard movement, and must use combat rolls and his own attacks to traverse the stage.
  • Soulcalibur V introduces Z.W.E.I. and Viola. On top of the two being unusual aesthetically (looking like fantasy characters in what is supposedly a historical setting), both of their playstyles involves multitasking. The former must balance out normal combos with his minion E.I.N., and knowing when to summon the spirit wolf is absolutely crucial to his style of play. The latter uses an orb that the player actively controls and assists her during her attacks, while the orb stays where it was last placed, so the player must be mindful of where it is at all times.
  • V also gives us Devil Jin as a style exclusive to created characters. Thing is, Devil Jin doesn't use weapons at all, instead relying on his fists. That being said, the style gives the character Flight and Eye Beams, and combo potential in line with the Tekken series. Basically, apart from the Critical Edge, the style plays like Devil Jin transplanted in Soulcalibur while losing nothing along the way.
  • Kilik in Soulcalibur VI mostly plays like his usual self from the past games, but with one major change. The return of the Soul Charge mechanic, which gives most of the cast extra moves and the ability to hurt enemies even as they're blocking. The effect is almost universal for each fighter. For Kilik however, his Soul Charge triggers his Possessed State which increases his overall damage output, gives him new moves, and a completely new Critical Edge, which makes him one of two characters with two different versions of the attack. As a trade off, it will actively drain his health, and unless one has high health to begin with, there's a huge risk versus reward factor in initiating the super.
• Meido: Lynette, one of the three shopkeepers in III. In IV, we also have Marienbard and Jacqueline, Raphael's servants.
  • You can also create characters with maid costumes in III and IV, though in the latter case it requires a DLC to do so.
  • Pamela in Broken Destiny, who also serves as an assassin. A really bad one.
  • Pyrrha worked as a meido until she was implicated in a murder. Probably the first example for a main character in Soulcalibur.
• Mighty Glacier: Rock and his Moveset Clone, Astaroth, have a big, slow-swinging axe that can cause insane amounts of damage with each slow, telegraphed swing.
• Mighty Whitey: Subverted with Setsuka; she's a woman of European heritage, who was orphaned and ended up being raised in Japan. Because of her appearance, however, she was shunned and distrusted by the majority of the native people around her.
  • Played a little straighter with Rock, an English boy lost in a shipwreck who grew up in America, who became a fearsome giant. Still mistrusted and feared though, because, y'know, GIANT.
    • Despite this Rock isn't even all that big, standing at only 175cm and weighing 85kg. Cervantes in SCV is both taller and heavier.
  • Arthur as well: an orphan who ended up in the care of a Japanese merchant and was raised in Japan. He was despised by his peers, which made him the preferred target for projectiles in the battlefield.
• Mini Dress Of Power: Sophitia, Cassandra, and Amy.
• Morph Weapon: Soul Edge and Soul Calibur. Normally, they take the shape of a really big sword and a jian, respectively, but they can morph to fit just about any weapon shape. In II, three characters (Xianghua, Nightmare, and Talim) could use Soul Calibur, and every character had a Soul Edge version of their weapon (Nightmare had three: Soul Edge, Soul Edge [Growth], and Soul Edge [Complete]). By III, Siegfried has Soul Calibur, and it too becomes a BFS.
• Mortality Ensues: In his input ending of III, Zasalamel succeeds in becoming mortal and spends the rest of his life as a scholar, chronicling everything he experienced.
• Multi-Melee Master: Edgemaster, Olcadan (both are proficient with any weapon), Inferno (who can manifest the forms of any other weapon), Charade, Ezio, Elysium (who can use any style used by female fighters) and, as of V, Kilik (who uses male characters' styles).
• Multiple Endings: Soul Blade had two endings for each character, the second of which could be accessed by performing a certain input at the right time. The bad endings for Mitsurugi and Siegfried, where the input is not entered, are canonically what happened to them (Mitsurugi gets shot and Siegfried becomes Nightmare). This mechanic returns in Soul Calibur III, though this time prompts are provided for the inputs.
• Ms. Fanservice: Basically every female character. Ivy is the clear standout with her dominatrix outfit, Sophitia the Gorgeous Greek is practically wearing see-through clothing by III, and Seong Mina's outfit in II is basically just a bra and a loincloth. V saw a reining-in of sexy clothes and exposed cleavage for females, before VI brought it all back with a vengeance. Even Hilde, who was originally conceived to avoid this by looking fetching in utilitarian steel armour, has been sexed up.
• Naginatas Are Feminine: Kilik and Seong Mi-na are built off of the same moveset. Kilik (male) uses a staff while Mi-na (female) uses spears, including one weapon simply called "Naginata."
• Nemesis Weapon: Soul Edge is the original Evil Weapon, born from a normal sword that had killed countless people. Algol, fearing its power, breaks the sword, and then uses some shards of the sword to forge a new one, while using his sacrificed soul to purify it, creating Soul Calibur. Soul Edge, however, would later regenerate itself over years.
• Ninja: Taki, Natsu, and Yoshimitsu; Yoshimitsu's fighting style is classified as that of a Samurai, but his backstory indicates that he was part of a Ninja clan.
• Nintendo Hard: Soul Edge. So much so that the original arcade version was recalled due to the final boss (SoulEdge, better known as Inferno in the sequels) being impossible to defeat due to moving faster than the player could counter. Whilst in the home version, the A.I. was less difficult in Arcade Mode, Edge Master Mode — with its specific requirements — could be ridiculous at times, offsetting the lowered difficulty. This all was in part thanks to holdovers from Tekken 2's A.I. design; while characters could sidestep, a mechanic not present in T2, Soul Edge retained its sister series' tendency to make CPU-controlled opponents evade/block moves in any way they could. There was a significant decease in difficulty in later Soul games, though Soulcalibur III's Night Terror and Soulcalibur IV's The Apprentice brought back the controller-smashing frustration of the first game, to say nothing of higher-level opponents in IV's Tower of Lost Souls or the entirety of Soulcalibur V's Legendary Souls.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: No matter what happens, "KO" is the worst that you can expect. Fatalities do occur in the actual story but in-game it never goes beyond a mere knockout (and this includes being hit vertically by a BFS or thrown from a shrine suspended in the sky and coming back for another round).
  Siegfried in III: I avoided your vitals, you'll live.
• No Side Paths No Exploration No Freedom: Granted, we don't expect those things from the main fighting games, but it seems like a cop-out in Legends.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: A particularly extreme example. Almost everyone in the series speaks with a generic American accent despite the fact that Soulcalibur takes place in the 16th/17th century, with the characters hailing from primarily Europe or Asia before the United States even existed. The exception to this is Ivy, who is voiced with a deep British accent that's appropriate for her. Guest Fighter Ezio is another exception, being voiced with an Italian accent that holds true to his original series.
• Oddly Common Rarity: There sure were a lot of ways for characters to stop aging, something that was billed as unique. Of all the returning characters, the only ones who aged were Siegfried, Mitsurugi, Hilde, and Voldo. Compare that to Ivy, Cervantes, Maxi, Kilik, Edge Master, Tira, Raphael, Dampierre, Algol, and Aeon. They do get around this with Nightmare, Astaroth, and Yoshimitsu, as they are technically different characters but share the same identity. This was one of the reasons why V was hit with a backlash — they aged so few of the returning characters yet still cut out fan-favorites like Taki, Talim, Setsuka, and Seong Mi-na for "being too old."
• Ominous Pipe Organ: "Hellfire" begins with one. Also, "Forsaken Sanctuary" is full of it.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: Nightmare uses his sword like this. Averted by Siegfried, who uses both hands to swing his BFS. Most of the time.
• One-Man Army: Mitsurugi in his backstory and certain endings, Nightmare in the introduction to III as well as a character with a discipline with a good anti A.I. move in Chronicles of the Sword.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. III contains both Eurydice Shrine (a stage) and Eurydice, a character in the Chronicles of the Sword sub-game.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Siegfried sometimes makes the claim "I avoided your vitals. You'll live," after winning a fight in III. Apparently the brain isn't a vital area.
• Order Versus Chaos: If Soul Calibur's own ambition to freeze the world in crystal is its actual motivation, then the battle between Soul Calibur and Soul Edge is more this than good vs. evil. Both will do bad things to the world, it all comes down to how they bring it about (Edge wants violence and terror, Calibur wants order and serenity through nothingness).
• Painted-On Pants: Very possible in Character Creation, and is pretty much your only alternative to fighting in underwear after Clothing Damage in IV.
• Parasol of Pain: Setsuka (though she doesn't actually use the umbrella itself, given that she's a Iaijutsu Practitioner).
• Parrying Bullets: Mitsurugi is seen deflecting a bullet with his sword in the intro of Soulcalibur II.
• Patriotic Fervor: Figures into the backstory for all of the Korean characters in the Soul series. Hwang is a soldier in the Imperial Navy seeking Soul Edge in order to stop Japan's invasion of his country. Seong Mi-na is trying to prove that females can be as capable soldiers as male recruits, and Yun-seong's out to prove his worth to Hwang and his country. In later games, they realize that the sword is evil and instead fight to destroy it, with the side goal of proving the nation's strength.
  • Yun-seong, in his III pre-boss fight (the one where you fight someone who has to do with the character's backstory), has him walking into the room, taking one look at Mitsurugi, whom he has never seen before, and yelling something along the lines of "Enemy of my homeland, prepare to die!"
  • Ivy also exhibits this, but visually. In her IV costume, her shoulder pauldron and the various metal clasps on her costume incorporate the Tudor Rose of England motif, which is a traditional symbol of her native England and also probably serves as a medieval example of Wearing a Flag on Your Head.
  • Hilde: "My people give me strength! For our homeland!"
• Perfect Play A.I.: Some of the AI opponents in Broken Destiny's Quick Match mode can play like this, especially a Setsuka-styling custom character named "Alissa" who will flawlessly guard everything you throw at her while effortlessly winding her way around your defenses. Quick Match is set up like a faux-online queue of opponents so you can see how good your foe will be based on their W/L rate at the menu.
• Personality Blood Types: Blood types are listed in the character profiles.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Quite a few of the outfits.
• Pirate: Cervantes. Maxi may not look the part, but he's a pirate from Ryukyu.
• Prayer Pose: Often invoked by Sophitia in her victory poses, particularly in Soulcalibur IV, including one where she kneels and clasps her hands together, bowing her head, as she implores the gods for their divine protection.
• Press X to Not Die: Tales of Souls in SCIII features several QTEs during a few of the more important storyline battles. Failing to input the right command usually results in the character getting tanked by a sneak attack at the expense of health and, in one case, affects the outcome of a battle between two other NPCs during endgame. Likewise, each character's ending in ToS abides by the same principle, although the consequences there range anywhere from comedic to fatal.
  • Earlier in the franchise, Soul Edge used QTEs to determine what ending you get in Arcade mode. However, you weren't told what button to press.
  • Special mention goes to Seong-Mina's ending in III where you must match several QTEs in succession.
• Pretty in Mink: A few outfits with fur trim. Amy's outfit in IV has a fur neckline.

R-Z

• Rainbow Pimp Gear: To get the best possible statistics in IV's CAS mode, your fighter will be horribly mismatched. Just go with it.
  • To be fair, you can still color-change most of the clothing, so you can make it less horrible.
• Recovery Attack: Generally averted, but played straight with Heihachi's guest appearance, since he comes from a series that does have recovery attacks.
• Recruited from the Gutter: In the back story for Soulcalibur II, Raphael is on the run from the king's men when he comes upon a village ravaged by plague. A young girl (Amy) hides him in a nearby building and when asked by the king's men, she sends them in a different direction. Since Amy's parents died from the plague, Raphael adopts her as a daughter.
• Recurring Riff: "Path of Destiny", titled "Recollection" in its first appearance, is the ending theme to every Calibur game prior to V.
• Repeat Cut: In Soulcalibur V, scoring a knockout blow strong enough to destroy part of the other fighter's clothes/armor results in this.
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices: Incredibly, Namco managed to restrain themselves in this regard. IV has costume packs and the Soulcalibur soundtrack available for DLC, plus PS3 owners can download Yoda and Xbox owners can download Vader. Now, why couldn't they have offered the custom weapon disciplines from III and some more characters...
• Ring Out: The other major fighting series to employ the trope (Virtua Fighter being the predominant entity). Unlike VF, there is Edge Gravity in this series so it's not as easy to throw yourself out of the ring (though it is possible through a number of ways).
• Rings of Death: Tira wields one huge bladed one.
• Royal Rapier: Raphael, Amy, Scheherazade.
• Rule of Sexy: The outfits of most of the female characters aren't historically accurate in the slightest, but well, you know...
• Running Gag: Never ask an Alexandria woman how much she weighs.^note Sophitia's weight is listed in her bio as "Refuses to reveal", Cassandra's is listed as "Claims to have lost weight recently", and taken full circle with Pyrrha's weight which is listed as "Embarrassed to reveal". Mind your own business, eh?
• Samurai: Mitsurugi. Arthur is an interesting case: being an England-born orphan, he was raised and trained to serve as a samurai by his Japanese master (who previously bought him).
• Scenery Porn: A lot of the stages.
• Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains:
  • Tira wears a skin-tight bodysuit and caters to the "Hot Goth" fandom. She's also The Ophelia, which can endear anyone to fans if they're attractive enough.
  • Ivy counts as well (she's not the current poster girl for the Video Games section of the Ms. Fanservice page here for nothing), but only during Soulcalibur (and even then, Ivy was merely an Anti-Villain misled by Nightmare's scheming); she'd undergo a Heel–Face Turn afterward and become a more heroic, if not morally gray, character.
  • A few others could also fit the criteria at various points in the series (such as Raphael), depending on how far you're willing to stretch the definition of the word "evil."
• Series Continuity Error: During a flashback in V of Tira kidnapping Pyrrha, Pyrrha is shown as a baby when she should have been three years old.
  • Then again, that could be how Patroklos imagined it.
• Set Swords to "Stun": Everyone just ends up knocked out at the end of any bout, despite the fact things such as being hit vertically by gigantic axe can happen during the fight. Siegfried even reassures his opponent that he "avoided [their] vitals, [they'll] live" in III regardless of the fact that his weapon, a BFS in all senses of the term, doesn't really have the necessary precision to avoid doing anything but catastrophic damage to an opponent. IV gets the most extreme with this as opponents can be hit by honest-to-goodness lightsabers and leave both their weapon and body unblemished. However, as stated under Bloodless Carnage, in the series canon the weapons do real damage and characters have died from wounds suffered during duels.
• Ship Sinking: When Leixia's profile was released, many a Kilik/Xianghua fan panicked that Project Soul was doing this, due to the news that Xianghua had married a general of the Ming Empire and had two children with him. Possibly averted by later information which implied that she was forced into the marriage and that she still loved Kilik; later, it was truthfully averted with the Japanese official artbook, which revealed Xiba as being their son, so by proxy Kilik and Xianghua had upgraded their relationship, even for a brief moment.
  • V makes it explicitly clear that Siegfried and Hilde are mere comrades-in-arms and not a Battle Couple.
• Ship Tease: Someone on the team noticed that the fans really dug on LinkxTalim. So much so that in IV, Talim's joke weapon is a pair of ocarinas.
• Shockwave Stomp: Night Terror when he stabs the ground. A few other characters have ground stabbing moves that make one, and Xianghua has an actual stomp.
• Shoo the Dog: Kilik tries several times to keep Xianghua from following him, because he doesn't plan for his quest to end well. This is also the case for Hwang in Soul Edge and the first Calibur, who keeps sending Seong Mi-na home when she follows him out.
• Shotoclone: The Dagger moveset for custom characters in III includes a jumping uppercut and spinning midair kick, with and bombs as a projectile in place of the Hadouken.
• Shout-Out: Gameplay-wise, most of the new additions and systems in V come from Daishi Odashima being a fan of Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike.
  • The Just Guard system, however, is more or less the Just Defend system from Garou: Mark of the Wolves.
    • The whole Time Skip setting of V seems to be a Shout-Out to both games. That or Tekken 3.
  • Several characters in II have costumes that reference characters from other video games:
    • Mitsurugi's 2P costume makes him strongly resemble Haohmaru.
    • Sophitia's bonus costume is a shout-out to Princess Ki.
    • Cassandra's bonus costume is a shout-out to the eponymous heroine of yet another Namco game, The Legend of Valkyrie.
    • Voldo's bonus costume looks a lot like an Alien. The design was later used for ghosts in Namco's Ghost Hunter.
    • Ivy's bonus costume is a shout-out to Anna Williams.
  • Raphael's IV 1P costume resembles Alucard.
  • Iska in Legends mentions learning/using alchemy in some of the dialogue sequences; he's even voiced by Edward Elric in both Japanese and English.
  • In V, there's a Quick Battle opponent named Diego Umeharez, as in Daigo Umehara.
    • More specifically, it's the screen name used by a Mexican Daigo impersonator. However, being ranked D4 by the game, he is not hard to beat.
  • Another Quick Battle opponent is called Kerrigan, is from the United States, and has the title "Leg Crusher"... Sure, it's a switcheroo, but does it sound familiar?
  • One particular shout out is the part before Natsu begins a battle, one of her lines is "Man, what a drag."
  • Siegfried plays homage to Nordic folk hero Sigurd; his namesake is Sigurd's German counterpart (in-universe, this was deliberate on Frederick's part when it came to naming his son), one of his extra weapons is named Gram, and Siegfried even squares off against a dragon by the name of Fafnir in Legends. Coincidentally (or perhaps not), the eight members of Hilde's all-female royal guard in IV ^note CAS characters Gerhilde, Siegrune, Waltraute, Schwertleite, Grimgerde, Helmwige, Ortlinde, and Rossweisse, the last three becoming Malfested due to an attack on Wolfkrone by Nightmare prior to the events of the game are named for eight of the nine valkyries from Die Walküre, with Hilde being partially named after the ninth, Brünnhilde.
  • In V, the story where the new male protagonist has the new female protagonist until her betrayal. It looks familiar in the Scenario Campaign for Tekken 6.
  • Yoshimitsu's Iron Fist Possession move has him do a random^note less random in recent titles since it's partly based on the timer move from a character in Tekken like Paul's incomplete somersault kick, Jin's Power Stance and a Kazuya Lightning/Lightning Screw uppercut. Also counts as a Bilingual Bonus since Tekken is Japanese for Iron Fist. Also Tekken Possession
  • Siegfried's alternate look gives him a haircut that makes him resemble Cloud.
• Skill Gate Characters: For the most part, averted; a number of the easy-to-learn characters like Talim, Kilik, and Mitsurugi are so deadly because they're even worse to fight against when mastered. Those that don't consider Necrid completely broken argue he falls more into this category, since the majority of people play him for his stupidly cheap spam attacks without regard for how poorly this fares against players that know what they're doing.
• Single Player Gauntlet: A recurring feature throughout the series. Soul Edge, I, II, V, and VI are very traditional in their implementation of their respective Arcade Modes, while III and IV work in more elements of their characters' respective stories.
• Single-Stroke Battle: During III, many characters will have to face off against either Nightmare or Siegfried. If the player avoids being trapped by the falling cage, they come across the pair of them fighting. At the end of it, they charge at each other and strike at the same time. Depending on who you're playing as, one will collapse and you'll now have to fight the other.
• Sinister Scythe: Zasalamel (and Abyss, by extension).
• SNK Boss:
  • Soul Edge from, um, Soul Edge. Do you like fighting Cervantes? How about a much tougher Cervantes that can teleport and use flying unblockable attacks? It can take several attempts to beat Soul Edge and the original arcade had to tone down the difficulty just for his fight because he was nearly impossible to beat. There is also Tanegashima, from Mitsurugi's story, who also qualifies because he's got a rifle already primed and loaded and pointed at your face when the fight starts... and if you don't dodge the fast-moving projectile within a split-second of the match starting, he hits you with an unblockable One-Hit Kill.
  • II has Inferno, a final boss who uses random movesets from other characters, has a deceptively large lifebar (three times bigger than a normal characters'), a damage bonus, a special throw that knocks off half your health in one hit, and he changes movesets when reduced to 2/3rds and 1/3rd of his lifebar. If he weren't so susceptible to throws, he'd be a complete joystick-snapper.
  • III has several. First off, the aptly-named Night Terror. He has Eye Beams that can kill you in one hit, a stance that renders him immune to damage from most attacks, Nightmare's moveset with even more stupidly high damage and reach, oh, and you can't beat him with a Ring Out because he'll just fly back into the ring? What about Colossus, a giant stone statue you sometimes fight in Sophitia's stage? He can't block (you're just hacking away at his shin) but he has a huge life bar and half his attacks have Guard Break or Unblockable and ridiculous range that can yeet you off the stage in a Ring Out even if you're hit in the centre of the ring. Oh, and if you do knock his HP to zero then he has one last trick where he can crush you with his body if he falls on top of you and this counts as his win because the announcer only declares him defeated once he's nose-down in the dirt. There's also Keres, a story mode-only character who is Immune to Flinching, which also renders him immune to most throws and knockback and allows him to wail on you since you can't interrupt him.
  • V offers you Legendary Souls Mode. Remember Score Attack? You fight SEVEN nightmarish bosses one after another controlled by a demonically-possessed AI that seemingly reads your inputs and reacts with unbelievable timing, doesn't allow you to so much as breathe once it goes on the offensive, and always, always performs Just Frame attacks perfectly, allowing them to pull off disgusting combos that are nearly impossible for master players. Let's run down the list:
    • First up, you got Kilik. Normally he's a mimic character who can use random movesets. Here, Kilik sticks to Xiba's (originally his moveset) and combos you like a maniac the moment he's able to get an opening with ambiguous mixups, and doesn't stop for noone. Not content to just beat you with Xiba's tricks, Kilik also uniquely uses some of his old signature moves as well.
    • Second, you have Nightmare, wearing a special IV costume. He'll always have you beat on reach and can take away 50-70% of your HP with Brave Edges and a special command throw for when you are downed.
    • Your third opponent is Siegfried, also using his costume from IV. Siegfried acts like a combination of Nightmare's insane reach and power with Kilik's confusing mixup game, while also being a Stone Wall. Good luck here, he'll ring you out several times while you wail against his defences.
    • Opponent No.4 is Cervantes, decked out in a costume that makes him look like Inferno. Fortunately he's a bit easier than Siegfried, but your jaw will drop when he shows how to juggle you with instant strings of Geo Da Rays/Psycho Crushers for mental damage.
    • Made it past Cervantes? Congratulations, a lesser player would have snapped their controller by now, but here's where the fun really begins. Your fifth opponent is Edge Master, who uses Alpha Patroklos's moveset (i.e, Setsuka's moveset). All he has to do is block a single attack and that's it, you will be punished with either a combo finishing up with his Critical Edge which can be pulled off pretty much any move due to how fast it comes out, or a Just Frame Sakura Twister which he can do twice in a row and deals incredible damage for a combo finisher. For many, this is the breaking point, but there's two more to go, and the next is even more terrible than him...
    • Now for Elysium, using Pyrrha Omega's moveset, or Sophitia's style from IV if you are unfamiliar. Welcome to the hardest boss of all the seven, the lowest and hottest pit in the Legendary Souls Tartarus. Elysium's take on Sophitia (who it bears noting, was top tier back in IV) is even faster and more dangerous than she was before with an astonishing mixup game, spamming Angel's Strike (her gut stab) like it's going out of style, and she always finishes it with a Just Frame. In addition, just like with Kilik, Omega Pyrrha's style gains some of Sophitia's old and best moves with special properties exclusive to Elysium. And if that wasn't enough, she has an exclusive 20-hit, full-screen Critical Edge she'll unleash on you with any opportunity and at the worst possible moments.
    • If you manage to get to the seventh and final opponent, you might be shocked to see a familiar face - it's Algol, but he's taken fashion advice from Gill. This time he's gotten smarter and he doesn't accidentally ring himself out anymore, and he's not as tough as Elysium before, but don't underestimate him: he's a force to be reckoned with if allowed to build up some meter, spamming Brave Edges and Critical Edges with sadistic abandon. And if Algol is feeling nasty, he might save up his meter and use it all at once. Nothing quite says frustration like a 10-hit touch of death combo where he flips you like a beermat and you can do nothing but lie back and take your beating like a good soldier. Orrrr he might unleash his Complete Critical Edge at full meter which is among the most damaging single hit moves in the entire game. He's not quite as oppressive as Elysium, but don't let the bastard gain momentum, or you will regret it.
• Soft Reboot: Soulcalibur V jumps ahead seventeen years later after the original series, replaces many of the regular characters with successors, removes others, and has a different storyline compared to previous games. In fact, the game's director Daishi Odashima originally wanted it to be called Soul Edge II, in order to mark his new direction for the franchise. However, with director Odashima gone and the series promoting pre-time skip characters, it's anyone's guess if his changes will stick.
  • Soulcalibur VI is a more direct example of a series reboot. According to director Motohiro Okubo, the game is to be set in the events of 1586, or in other words, the events of the first Soulcalibur. The team decided to reboot the series in a hope to re-engage old fans and to attract newer fans. Which makes the Wham Shot of Original!Cassandra stumbling out of a time portal all the more shocking.
• Soul-Cutting Blade: Soul Edge.
• Spectral Weapon Copy: Necrid's weapon in Soulcalibur II was a glowing orb. His moveset, however, is based off of different moves from every other character in the game. As such, the orb usually shapeshifts into an energy form of the weapon of the person whose move he's using.
• Spell My Name With An S: Seung Mina and Yunsung? You mean Seong Mi-na and Yun-seong?
  • The title of the series since Soulcalibur has been subject to this a few times, evidenced even by this very wiki. At first, it appeared to be two words like the titular sword (i.e. Soul Calibur), up until Soulcalibur III, where it became one word (which in turn retroactively affected the titles of the previous games). The official website supports this spelling, although you'll still see Soul Calibur being thrown around, as well as SoulCalibur due to the title font for every game other than III, Legends and Lost Swords. All of this, of course, excludes those who spell the name of the game as "Soul Caliber."
• Split Personality: Tira in IV switches between Slasher Smiling psycho to Kubrick Staring psycho when her health is half-depleted (or by using Gestalt Madness -A + K-), as a side-effect of prolonged exposure to Soul Edge.
  • She was also a lot like Harley Quinn in her first appearance, except oddly, switching between grinning and not at random.
  • Also, oddly enough, Soul Calibur is like a split personality of Soul Edge, since it was created from Soul Edge — one's a Knight Templar and one is The Heartless.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad:
  • Siegfried in III and IV. While he was arguably the main character in the very first game, he comes back with a vengeance in the third game, becoming the wielder of Soul Calibur itself and the one who has to destroy Soul Edge.
  • Even more so is Patrokos in V, where the entirety of the game's story mode is centered around him. At least previous games had story modes for other characters (individual story modes for all characters were on the cards for V, but the developers ran out of time).
• The Starscream: Astaroth, in IV, as detailed in his Story Mode profile. This started as far back as the first Calibur game, where he joined Nightmare to help him restore the sword just so he could claim it in perfect shape for his true master.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Single-player modes do spill some of the story, but it's hard to separate the canon from the "we needed a few more scenarios for Character A, so we put him in Character B's role" scenarios, and almost every character's ending contradicts the bulk of the cast's. Practically all of the story information comes from story, weapon, and stage profiles and the official site, and those still require some context work to piece together.
• Stripperiffic: Women wear everything from skirts that flip up at the slightest provocation, to battle thongs, to ornate dental floss, with heels being standard. Men tend to go shirtless but are otherwise adequately dressed.
  • According to Word of God, Hilde's character design was intentionally made to avoid this trope. Pyrrha dresses comparatively sensibly as well.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: This happens to Sophitia Alexandra in IV, where she's made to defend Soul Edge in order to save her daughter's life.
• Surrounded by Idiots: Hilde (and you) in Broken Destiny.
• Sword and Gun: Cervantes.
• Sword of Damocles: The Critical Finishes in Soulcalibur IV are these, due to requiring your opponent to have an empty Soul Gauge, which can only happen if your opponent abuses blocking. Thus, the Critical Finishes stop guard spam merely by existing, even without being used.
• Take That!: Dampierre's reactions to Sophitia's married status in The Gauntlet mode of Broken Destiny could be seen as this to those who refuse to accept that she has a husband.
• Temporary Online Content: Sometime around possibly Late 2016/Early 2017, the DLC for Soulcalibur IV has been delisted from both respective console stores in all regions (Playstation/Xbox). This also includes the digital Xbox 360 version for unknown reasons (although back in the day, full games for PS3 digitally weren't a thing yet until the Early 2010's, so no digital PS3 version never happened). Although no official sources mention anything about the delisting besides word of mouth by some social areas/forums for Soulcalibur. Fortunately, the game is still available physically, but those looking to have a complete character roster will be sadly attuned that the DLC characters for Darth Vader and Yoda are no longer available (although, this isn't the first time a fighting game with DLC and the digital game gets removed, that honor goes to some of the titles in the Capcom vs. series).
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-universe example: Tira's reaction in V to the new Nightmare being a manipulative warmonger instead of the sociopath One-Man Army it previously was.
• Thong of Shielding: Several of Ivy's costumes.
• Time Skip: A major feature of V's story, which is 17 years forward of the events of the last canon installment.
• Title Scream: A random character or the announcer will do this.
• Wise Serpent: Ivy Valentine is a trained alchemist and sorceress who dedicates most of her time to research and experiments in attempts to find ways to destroy Soul Edge. She has a snake Animal Motif — her Whip Sword is sometimes called the "Snake Sword", her primary outfit in Soulcalibur V has a shoulder pauldron resembling a hissing snake head and her secondary outfit is a golden snakeskin suit with a choker shaped like a coiling snake. The background of her artwork in SCVI even features caduceus, a staff featuring two snakes winding around a winged staff and an ancient for wisdom, eloquence, diplomacy and alchemy.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The reason Soul Edge was renamed Soul Blade — and the reason the series eventually became Soulcalibur — was Tim Langdell's questionable (and now invalidated) trademark on the word "Edge" in relation to video games. After the trademark was invalidated, V's director wanted to rename the game to Soul Edge 2; Namco executives wouldn't let him.
• Together in Death: Kilik is determined to destroy Soul Edge even if it costs him his life. Xianghua makes it clear that if he succeeds, he won't be alone.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Taki becomes a bitch between III and IV. Her treatment of Ivy and Siegfried, who have both become The Atoner by this point, is particularly grating.
  "You're your father's daughter after all."
  • Though worth noting, Taki has no reason to know that they become atoners. Ivy and Taki especially have a history of not getting along very well.
  • Inverted with Patroklos, who starts a Jerkass and later takes a more heroic route.
  • This happened earlier with Siegfried, who also started out as a self-serving jerk unable to take responsibility for his own actions. Like Pat, he slowly matures into a force for good, although his character progression involves him tangling with a loss of lucidity to truly horrific extents and taking several more games before his transformation into a man looking for penance finally culminates.
• Tragic Irony: Siegfried frees himself from the control of Soul Edge, cleansing himself of his sins. Then he takes Soul Calibur, believing it to be a holy weapon of pure good to counter Soul Edge's evil. Unbeknownst to him, Soul Calibur is a Knight Templar that intends not only to freeze him and Nightmare into crystal, but the rest of the world as well, and Siegfried's adamant claim "never again will I bend to anyone's will" has been subverted without him realizing it.
• Trapped in Villainy: During the events of Soulcalibur IV, Sophitia Alexandra is threatened with the death of her daughter Pyrrha if anything happens to Soul Edge, and ends up fighting anyone who would destroy it.
• Treasure Room: Voldo has been tasked with protecting his master's treasure, in a trap filled labyrinth called the Money Pit.
• Tricked-Out Shoes: The grieve edges, bladed footwear from SoulCalibur III.
• Underwear of Power: Though none of the main characters use this (even Ivy just wears a very, very skimpy leotard), this can be done in character creation, and is a must in IV, where clothing damage often reverts characters to their underwear anyway.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Gauntlet, Broken Destiny's campaign mode, is pretty much a memory/timing puzzle, except with fighting. It's strangely addicting.
• Unreliable Narrator: When confronting Tira in V's Story Mode as Patroklos, the narrator refers to her as "your mother's murderer" seemingly confirming that Tira killed Sophitia. This was later disproven in the official sourcebook.
  • The implication is that the narrator was voicing Patroklos' interpretation of the event, similar to how Jin believes Jun to be dead despite Word of God saying only that she's "missing"/"in hiding."
• Unusual Ears: IV bonus characters Kamikirimusi and Scheherazade.
• Updated Re-release: Soulcalibur II got this treatment in the form of Soulcalibur II HD Online for the PS3 and 360.
• Version-Exclusive Content: Soul Calibur 2 and onwards has one exclusive Guest Fighter on each release platform: The Xbox version gets Spawn, the PS2 version gets Heihachi from Tekken, and the GameCube version gets Link. It is however not possible to connect and battle other players on different versions. Soul Calibur 4 has Darth Vader as a default character on the PS3 version, and Yoda on the Xbox 360. (The other exclusive character can be purchased as DLC.)
• Video Game Perversity Potential: A given due to the extensive character creation tools, but Soulcalibur V has it best thanks to "specialized equipment" which can be placed anywhere on the character's body. It is not surprising that one of the first things people tried to do with it was giving their characters penises.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Create A Soul mode allows for huge Character Customization with loads of different clothing and armour available.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Apprentice in IV's arcade mode is much more difficult than the fights preceding it due to the computer opponent abusing the Force
• Walking the Earth: Every characters travels all over Europe and Asia in search of the Soul Edge for their personal reasons.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Raphael's life was saved by a little girl named Amy. After they appear to get vampiric symptoms, he attempts to change the world by spreading it since it doesn't accept them, as opposed to attempting to cure themselves.
  • Zasalamel can be seen as this in IV, since in order to attain his goal of "leading humanity into a bright future", he's more than willing to torture, murder, or destroy the life of anyone, either for obstructing him or because it helps move his plan along.
  • Soul Calibur itself is a holy weapon created by Algol to keep the evil Soul Edge sword in check. However, the sentience granted to Soul Calibur has allowed it to come to the conclusion that the world is full of chaos and violence and the only way to save humanity from itself is to crystallize the world and all its inhabitants.
• Western Samurai: Arthur was originally conceived as an alter-ego of Mitsurugi for countries that are culturally sensitive to depictions of Samurai, like Korea and China. Arthur is a blond Englishman with an Eyepatch of Power who was raised in Japan and eventually became a samurai - he is loosely based on the legendary English sailor and samurai William Adams.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: The whole reason why Zasalamel brings the two swords together — he's tired of living forever. Reversed in IV, when Zasalamel decides he does want to live forever after seeing humanity's future, which apparently is so awesome that he also performs a Heel–Face Turn. He's still a Jerkass, however. There's a odd kind of morality to his speeches on human potential versus his sociopathic comments before fights. He also has a tendency to make people fight those who were important to them before they died, like Siegfried's father Frederick, Kilik's adoptive sister Xianglian, and Algol's son, THEN fight completely-dead versions of them.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The Story Mode for V focuses, for the first time, on the actions and destinies of only a few characters. As a result, many characters never have their reasons for being in the game stated and some, like Zasalamel, Talim, and Cassandra (who's the aunt of both the main characters no less), have disappeared entirely without explanation.
• Whip Sword: Ivy.
• Wolverine Claws: Voldo.
• World of Buxom: Thanks to the incremental Fanservice Packs the girls have been receiving since II. (You'll notice that everyone was more modest in cup size back in Soul Edge and Soulcalibur, although the non-canon Legends nullifies that where Taki, Sophitia, and Ivy are concerned.) When Project Soul's director Daishi Odashima released an official height and breast size chart on his Twitter account prior to V, seven of the eleven playable females in IV were at least D cups (though they appear to have recanted where Hilde is concerned); the only ones who didn't qualify were Seong Mi-na (slightly smaller than Tira), Xianghua (who makes up for her more petite bust with junk in the trunk), Talim (who's 15), and Amy (who is even younger than Talim and likely prepubescent). Part of this falls under Depending on the Artist, as Takuji Kawano (the lead character illustrator from II to the current day) tends to draw the women larger, regardless of how chesty they really are (such as Tira and Viola). Like the clothing choices themselves, the new additions in V backtrack on this; of the five girls joining vets Ivy, Tira, and Hilde, only Pyrrha and Elysium are noticeably endowed.
• World of Ham
• Wrecked Weapon: For an ultimate evil weapon, Soul Edge has a tendency to get broken quite a lot. Its shards end up being plot points for several characters. Siegfried's original sword, Faust, was apparently broken at some point, but was restored by the power of Soul Edge. In her ending in III, Cassandra breaks her own sword in the process of destroying Soul Edge.
• Wrestler in All of Us: Among many shining examples, Astaroth's powerbomb and Nightmare's dropkick.
  • Darth Vader's Dark Glory is essentially a Gorilla Press Slam. Yep even the Star Wars universe has professional wrestling apparently.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: If you beat the Colossus in III, do not just stand there!
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The Soul Embrace (which is what happens when Soul Calibur and Soul Edge merge) in III and IV, and Kilik's weapon Kali-Yuga which absorbs both good and evil energies.
• You Go, Girl!: Seong Mi-na.
• You Killed My Father: Siegfried's original motivation. Although in this case it's more like I Killed My Father.
  • In V, Patroklos seeks revenge on the Malfested for his mother's death.

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The alternate universe single player modes, Weapon Master and Chronicles of the Sword, have examples not found in the main games:

• All There in the Manual: The Japanese website gives (gave) a good deal of backstory for Chronicles of the Sword.
• Asset Actor: The NPCs in Weapon Master are portrayed by standard fighters, since the character customization feature didn't exist yet.
• Defeat Means Friendship: How you get your old friends back from Soul Edge-induced mind control post-time skip in Chronicles of the Sword.
  • Also, there are two sets of two possible party members, the one who you beat first joins you. The other waits for New Game Plus.
• Dual Boss: Lanbardy and Hobb at the end of the Underground Juno.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The Chronicles of the Sword mode in III. While most of the fodder can be dealt with quite easily, the bosses can be an absolute chore to bring down (most of the time).
• Evil Wears Black: Every single Elite Mook from Maletta wears entirely black armor.
• False Flag Operation: Strife sends you into atleast two of these, both which are painfully obvious to the cadet.
  • In one of the beginning missions, you're fending off a bandit attack, but the cadet notices atleast two Grandall soldiers in the mix which the cadet takes notice of before the next mission, with later interactions between Strife and Chester indicating that Strife had been ordering the latter to attempt to kill you since the beginning.
  • One of the chronicles after the Mantis War has your unit fighting off a "rebel" attack that's quite heavily implied to be yet another assassination attempt sent by Emperor Strife. If the dialogue between him and Chester at the start of the level and your squadmates' remarks about the "rebels" acting strange don't set off any red flags, the fact that their commander wears Grandall colors probably should.
• Gaiden Game: Neither Weapon Master or Chronicles of the Sword take place in the same world (seeing as how the Soul series takes place on an alternate Earth), but share a few similarities (the presence of Soul Edge and Soul Calibur, for example).
• Genre Shift: The Chronicles of the Sword sub-game in III mashed strategy and fighting together.
  • That is, unless you're strong enough to crush multiple enemies outright. There is perhaps one Chronicle in which strategy is needed: Chapter 8, City Of Coffins, the first half of which is a rescue mission. It's often impossible to do anything else in some levels, as the enemies favor rushing you (while it is their best option, as this forces you to face everyone at once and you can't recover between them, it tends to make the rest of the map fairly boring).
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
  • The Kingdom of Maletta counts as one. They were never mentioned in the intro nor were there any hints that they existed.
  • In Chronicles of the Sword, on the second-to-last level, the stronghold right next to your main stronghold is guarded by a level 99 Boss in Mook Clothing named Ende. He is never referenced prior to this, is the first enemy to have a purple health meter (the highest CotS goes), and has exactly one line of dialog when you bring his stronghold down, apparently referencing the fact that he is just a mercenary. He also has a unique weapon for the Katana discipline of Character Customization, the Kokuenra. Beating him allows you to use it as well... Too bad his stronghold has the habit of slowing your falls, allowing him to juggle you mercilessly with his sword.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Aurelia is the final boss of the first half of Chronicles of the Sword, has tried to Take Over the World, and wields "Black Widow."
• Heroic Mime: In both modes, your character will think to themselves between chapters, but never actually say anything.
• Instant-Win Condition: Averted in Chronicles of the Sword, a ring-out will only take 50% of a combatant's max HP, though for the toughest fights it's still something to aim for as it's the quickest way to do telling damage.
  • Played straight on one occasion in Chapter 16 Carrying On A Legacy. There is one stronghold in the game where falling to the floor means instant death. And your opponent is a Level 60 character (Zasalamel). Thank your lucky stars that he isn't immune to the stage's effect, unlike other occasions in the game.
• Lethal Joke Character: The Dancer class in Chronicles of the Sword fights with a pair of tambourines as its first weapon. Did we mention the most basic attack from these tambourines utterly breaks the A.I.? Or that their fast attack rate is paired with a weapon that regenerates health with every swing? Swordmaster using tambourines is better because of much higher stats, but impossible to unlikely to use for a first playthough.
• Louis Cypher: Wonder what Demuth Beel Zebus Halteese could mean...
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • Merope Monastery's bonus mission in Weapon Master is dependent entirely on if the AI moves the right way, as you have ~15 seconds to defeat each of the 6 foes, only truly possible with a ring out while over 3/4 of the stage is wall.
  • In Chapter 8 of Chronicles of the Sword, you have to rescue at least 3 of 5 allied units on the field from the enemies. Outside of a New Game Plus (where you can get through fortresses much quicker with your higher strength units), unless you're intimately familiar with who to deploy where, the A.I. decides if you can rescue the three named ones that will join you as well as your ability to rescue the two generic ones for bonus points, as if they attack any unit with more than one of theirs, they are going to die.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Her name, backstory, and dying words all but outright say that Mooncalf is Luna's mother.
• Make Way for the New Villains: When it gets to the Halteese arc, it seems that Halphas and the sons of the Halteese ruler are going to be the main antagonists, then Mooncalf assassinates Halphas and the Kingdom of Maletta, whom were never mentioned in the intro, end up launching an attack against the remnants of the Republic and become the new villains for a while after Halteese crumbles entirely.
• Manipulative Bastard: Chester has three out of the four kingdoms under his strings around the end of the first half, part of his Evil Plan to become king himself.
• Mook Chivalry: Chronicles of the Sword both averts this and invokes it. When multiple units from both sides meet on the battlefield, they'll all attack each other simultaneously. However, you also have the option of settling the skirmish the old-fashioned way, in which case the game's combat system forces both sides' combatants to line up and fight one-at-a-time. Battles involving forts have the latter by default.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Abelia in Chronicles of the Sword. You befriend this out of her.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lanbardy, Marauder of Slaughter.
• New Game Plus: Chronicles of the Sword; either this or a fresh game is required to get all of the create a character parts (as at least one part will be unlocked by picking one Optional Party Member over the other).
  • Weapon Master Mode has special chapters unlocked after defeating the Big Bad, which offered a sidequest set after the plot's end.
• Nominal Importance: Averted in Chronicles of the Sword; most named characters are merely Elite Mooks (as opposed to the Red Shirts who are named for their affiliation).
• Obviously Evil: Many, many characters in the main series apply, but Emperor Strife in Chronicles of the Sword is a conventional example. The nature of CotS leads most players to suspect that you'd end up fighting him right from the start, if the brutal orders he issues you and that 90% of your allied units end up rebelling against him didn't seed that already. Oh, and the small fact that his name is, y'know, Emperor Strife.
• One-Man Army: Chronicles of the Sword. It's even lampshaded, with generic soldiers thinking your character is a War God(dess).
• Perverse Puppet: One appears in Weapon Master that can only be defeated via ring out.
• Pirate: Alfred, king of pirates in Weapon Master, as well as his crew.
• Player Mooks: An option for Chronicles of the Sword over preset characters. They are stupidly broken due to the ability to put them into a strong class and use any "reliable" weapon of your choice, plus you don't lose them during the Time Skip.
• Putting the Band Back Together: You do this post-timeskip in Chronicles of the Sword (see above).
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: Luna and her subordinates in Chronicles of the Sword (named "The Klessirpemdo"). Their quirks only go as far as elemental theming due to a lack of development.
  • Amazon Brigade: All 5 of them are women.
  • Degraded Boss: For a single chapter, all 5 are fought at once, rather then the 4 minibosses and 1 boss fashion they use in their other appearances. They are back to normal in a few chapters.
  • True Companions
• The Republic: The Halteese Republic was meant to be this but it fell apart thanks to infighting, along with Chester influencing Demuth to secede so that he could take the latter's kingdom away from him. It's also an oligarchic republic at most given that it has a royal family (which a random mook of all people points out while his commander is busy expositing).
• "Risk"-Style Map: Weapon Master
• The Rival: Abelia in Chronicles of the Sword.
• Rival Turned Evil: Quite a few in Weapon Master. Justified; they were seeking Soul Edge, a sword that has a tendency to turn people evil.
• Scenery Gorn: The Castle of the Dead, as well as anywhere Veral has been once he acquires Soul Edge.
• Scenery Porn: Chronicles of the Sword's levels are rather well detailed.
• Sidequest: A few optional chapters in Weapon Master.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: The end of Weapon Master tells you that whatever your choice was when confronted with Soul Edge, it was never put into history. Indeed, the Big Bad of Weapon Master is said to have only been a footnote in the Soul Edge's long and colored history, and you're completely forgotten.
• Suave Sabre: Downplayed. While Raphael and Amy both primarily use Royal Rapiers, a Roman saber called "Schweitzer" has been available as an alternate weapon for both of them at different points in the series.
• Superboss: Weapon Master has a bonus chapter gained by fighting enough battles to reach the rank of Edgemaster, with four very difficult opponents to fight. Chronicles of the Sword has the main universe characters appear at a rate of 1-3 a chapter, and do not require the player to fight them to finish the level.
• Theme Naming: All the areas in Weapon Master (and a lot of the main story's characters/places/etc) are named after stars: Aldebaran, Mizar, Castor, Pollux, Regulus, Antares...
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Link, for a few of the Weapon Master levels due to his proficiency with ringouts (and for 1 stage, ability to get a high number of hits) he excels, even though he is placed on the bottom of the tier list. (That happens to him a lot.)
  • Obviously, these stages aren't as easily gotten around in the Xbox and PS2 versions.
• Throw-Away Country: The Halteese Republic was treated as such by both Demuth and Chester for the sake of creating the Kingdom of Maletta.
• Time Skip: In Chronicles of the Sword, the story skips ahead a year after the war ends to pit the player against a rebellion.
• Training Boss: The first level of Weapon Master. The first two chapters of Chronicles of The Sword.
• Uriah Gambit: Strongly implied why Strife sends the cadet after the gates of the Halteese Republic with as little resources or soldiers as possible. Even Gidarot gets sick of this when confronting Strife himself over the fact.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Luna's first appearance in in Chronicles of the Sword (Chapter 4, Battlefield Moon). Before this chapter, the A.I. is passive and fairly weak. Now they will rush you on multiple fronts with overleveled troops and there is a "main universe" character on the field for the first time (in this case Astaroth; he is level 60 when you are 5 at best, learn to avoid them).
  • Beating them all makes you feel badass. But, if you have enough skill, then you can overcome the level gap and defeat all of them, even without the use of A.I. breakers, because despite being competent, they don't use any of the A.I. special tactics too much, meaning that they are as defeatable as an average human player.
  • Not to mention that "main universe" characters can be exploited, if you know what you're doing. Note that losing still gives you experience... just have one guy protecting your base (particularly one you're good with), send the rest to fight the level 60. Sure, you'll likely lose easily, but you'll see them gain levels EXTREMELY fast. Not to mention beating said character gives the biggest level-up chain ever for that point. This can quickly become a Game-Breaker.
• War God: One chapter of Chronicles of the Sword has your character note they overheard someone call them this once.
• Weapons Kitchen Sink: Chronicles of the Sword has katana wielders fighting side by side with people who wield claymores, Chinese swords, rapiers, and nunchucks.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: A few Chronicle Missions, including the final one, have your main character's death as a loss condition.
• Worthy Opponent: Luna says you are this during the first fight with her, and her dialog throughout the rest of the game supports it.

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The soul still burns...