NieR

This cannot end well.

Hidden so deep in veils of deceit
Imprisoned in twisting spells
Are we the plaything of fiends?
Or merely their dreams
That we're telling ourselves?

NieR is an action/role-playing game developed by Cavia and published by Square Enix, released in April 2010 world-wide for the Play Station 3 and Xbox 360.

Set in a dying world, over 1000 years after a great calamity nearly wiped out the human race, those remaining live on as best they can, robbed of resources and technology. Yet the already dwindling population is again under threat from the Black Scrawl, a terminal disease that seems to be connected with the dangerous creatures known as Shades. One of those affected by the Black Scrawl is a little girl named Yonah. This is where it gets a bit complicated...

There are two versions of the game: Gestalt and Replicant, and each has a slightly different protagonist. Both are named Nier, but the former is a burly middle-aged man who is Yonah's father, whereas the latter is a slender adolescent who is Yonah's elder brother. Though everything else remains the same, the age gap between the two Niers produces a different context for the story, with the world-weary Father Nier contrasting sharply with his younger, foolishly-optimistic counterpart. However, Replicant is Japan exclusive.

Nier survives by hunting Shades and relying on the charity of his village, but he is powerless to help his precious Yonah. However, after a chance encounter with a talking spellbook named Grimoire Weiss, Nier discovers that there may be hope for a cure after all and immediately sets out on a quest to find it, using his newfound Black Magic to cut down anything in his way. During his travels, he is also joined by a scantily-clad foul-mouthed swordswoman named Kainé, and Emil, a young boy with terrible powers.

Gameplay is a combination of traditional Hack and Slash combined with various other RPG elements thrown in. The story is closely related to Drakengard, following directly from its final ending. As with its predecessor, this game gets very depressing at points.

Oh, and play it more than once. It has secrets that are revealed after the first playthrough. Many secrets.

A DLC package called The World of Recycled Vessel was released May 2010 that included various bonuses. The plot revolves around the death of Nier's wife/mother and the cryptic diary entries she left behind.

In E3 2015, however, Square Enix made a surprising announcement with the reveal of a sequel NieR: Automata, that's set for a 2016 release. Although developed by Platinum Games, the original's creator Taro Yoko, producer Yosuke Saito and composer Keiichi Okabe have also returned to their respective roles. While the game itself takes place in the year 11941, thousands of years after the events of NieR.

Tropes used in NieR include:
  • 100% Completion: Finishing the story mode, obtaining all the weapons and three of the four endings will get you the final ending which deletes your save file.
  • Addressing the Player: You can call Nier whatever you like at the start of the game, so he is never referred to directly, but you will need to enter the name you gave him to advance in the ending.
  • Adult Fear: The whole idea of your daughter/baby sister being terminally ill and seemingly having no way to save her, when it's already hard enough to make ends meet.
  • After the End: While life did get better for a short time after the first disaster reduced it to a World Half Empty, it is implied that sooner or later humans will die out altogether.
    • Well, humans: the Shades are trying their best to prevent it by stealing the bodies of all the Replicants.
  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: On the one hand, Defense System Geppetto, which has gone berserk and will kill anything that approaches. On the other, Military Defense Unit P-33 a.k.a. "Beepy" who is intelligent enough to recognize invaders that need to be killed as well as innocents who need to be protected.
  • Alas, Poor Villain: Devola, and a borderline case for The Shadowlord.
  • Alien Invasion: The aliens that arrive after the game (an event not from the game, but described in an interview with the director) won't help anyone using their technology. With the Shades and Replicants finally working together against the invaders. Word of God also mentions that the events of NieR: Automata involve said invasion and its aftermath.
  • All Just a Dream: The entire opening battle sequence is described as being either a dream or a distant memory. Eventually, the player can learn that it did actually happen, but not with the people you've known throughout the game.
  • All There in the Manual: Almost the entire backstory of NieR, such as where the Black Scrawl came from, how it ties into Drakengard, the names of the Shades, weapon history, and what happened to the world, is in the Japan-exclusive Grimoire Nier resource book. Fortunately, it has been (mostly) translated to English by fans.
  • Already Undone for You: The Junkheap. Nier and Weiss go in looking for Jacob and Gideon's mother, but there's no way she could have gotten through with all those barriers and mechanisms still up. An exasperated Weiss even hangs a lampshade on this. Turns out, she had taken the back elevator which led directly from a separate room in the surface to the chamber adjacent to Defense System Gepetto's, and was killed there.
    • Similarly, the Barren Temple will test Nier with a new Block Puzzle in every room, and then it turns out the Prince had already made it to the innermost sanctum without incident. Perhaps the Temple resets itself for every new challenger...
  • Alternate Continuity: Of Drakengard's fifth ending.
  • American Kirby Is Hardcore: The younger Nier was the original concept, but the creators decided that he didn't fit the fighting style, so they made him older and more macho. However, this version didn't test so well with its native audience, and the director was so fond of the younger design that he decided to find a way to include him, which ended with him having his own game. See here.
    • It would seem that in Japan, Replicant is considered the true version of the game, since Grimoire Nier deals mainly with the younger character.
  • And I Must Scream: Heavily implied in Replicant Yonah's case, when Gestalt Yonah takes over her body and claims to hear another girl inside her. In Gestalt Yonah's own words, that other girl could only keep crying and calling for her Dad/Brother, which presumably was all she could do all during the five-year Time Skip.
  • Antagonist Title: NieR Gestalt.
  • Apocalyptic Log:
    • The reports concerning the Gestalt project, the situation in Shinjuku, White Chlorination Syndrome, etc that appear in the Now Loading screens and Grimoire. Aside from the Twins, it's safe to assume the scientists who wrote them are either long dead or turned into Shades.
    • The diary in Recycled Vessel plays a similar role.
  • Artificial Human: Replicants, which cannot reproduce and thus are recreated entirely from the data of a Gestalt to serve as its future vessel. In addition, Devola and Popola straddle the line between this and Ridiculously-Human Robots: both they and the in-game Project Gestalt refer to them as soulless "androids", and they can only mimic emotion, not feel it, but by the end, they can feel grief, rage and despair, and can even cry.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: Lampshaded by Weiss when fighting Defense System Gepetto.

Weiss: Really, the mouth? Such an obvious weak point!

  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Knave of Hearts, a colossal Shade that attacks Nier's village, and Hook, the giant lizard Shade that attacks the Aerie (and killed Kainé's grandmother).
  • Autobots Rock Out: Some of The World of Recycled Vessel soundtrack, "Blu-bird" in particular.
  • Ax Crazy: Tyrann, the Shade possessing Kainé. Grimoire Rubrum can only be described as damn freaking batshit insane.
  • Badass: Nier and Kainé, definitely.
  • Bad Powers, Good People: The whole main cast pretty much. Nier chooses to use Black Magic for a greater purpose, Emil refuses to unleash his petrification powers, and Kainé doesn't have much choice in the matter.
  • Baleful Polymorph: It's revealed that the Grimoire (including Weiss) were originally humans who learned magic and were turned into books by the Gestalt Project, to ensure the operation would succeed. Never mind that they were drugged and forced to fight to the death against their will...
  • Batman Gambit: Once the Shadowlord plays his hand, Devola and Popola are forced to take action, giving Nier clues that they KNOW will cause him to fulfill their intended role for him.
  • BFS: Nier's default weapon. In fact, most of Nier's weapons, particularly the two-handed swords.
    • Special mention goes Iron Will, which may very well be Hymir's Finger from Drakengard. When fully upgraded, it clips through the ground even with Nier standing up at his full height.
  • Big Bad: Subverted. There IS no Big Bad. Just two Not So Different Well Intentioned Extremists with identical motivations but whose objectives directly clash with one another. The closest thing to a Big Bad is in the backstory: a WCS-induced abomination known as "Red Eye", which led a Legion of other WCS monstrosities against mankind. And THAT was wiped out centuries earlier, along with said Legion.
  • Big Badass Wolf: The desert wolves are massive and extremely dangerous. The Shade that leads them, Roc, particularly.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The Masked King and his entourage at the Shadowlord's castle.
  • Bigger on the Inside: The Shadowlord's Castle, which is several times larger than the roof of the Lost Shrine that leads to it. The view of a metropolitan skyline, the looping gate with the garden and the Gate Guardians, and the several unrelated areas visited inside the "castle" suggest some sort of teleportation involved.
  • Bilingual Dialogue: Invoked at least in Japan. The Japan-exclusive Replicant version was done with Japanese voices only while Gestalt, the version to be released to international audiences, was done only in English with Japanese text.
    • Played straight with the ending song "Ashes Of Dreams", which has an English, French, Gaelic and Japanese version depending on the ending.
  • Birds of a Feather: Of a non-romantic kind. Kainé, cast out from her village due to her condition, and Emil, who lives in total isolation due to his terrifying nature. Kainé immediately saw a kindred soul in him and constantly encourages him to be proud of who he is.
  • Bishonen: Young Nier, Emil and the King of Facade.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Endings A and B. D may actually count as a Downer Ending.
  • Bizarrchitecture: The Aerie, which is comprised of many tiny houses dotted over a sheer cliff face, connected by a series of huge bridges and ladders. Also Facade, which is built almost entirely of stairs and is virtually impossible to navigate unless you take the sand boat.
  • Black Speech: Shades tend to murmur in some unintelligible, mixed up language when you kill them, which can be pretty discomforting. That is until you finish the game. Then you can actually understand them. As you can guess, it's not pretty. Their written text is also identical to that of the Watchers in Drakengard.
  • Blade on a Stick: Nier can use lances in battle. This also seems to be a Weapon of Choice for the people of Facade.
  • Bleak Level: The mansion on the hill. Your camera even picks up grime.
  • Block Puzzle: Often used so Nier can jump onto higher platforms, or to go around obstacles he can't jump over. Even in the mail room. The most epic example takes place in the Barren Temple, where he must use blocks to create safe paths across cannon-filled rooms.
  • Blood Knight: Kainé particularly, thanks to Tyrann. Nier may have a similar side to him.
  • Blood Magic: Of a kind. Shades despite looking semi-corporeal bleed quite red blood which is then absorbed by Grimoire Weiss and has a chance of granting him new magic words. As he puts it, "Blood is sound, sound is words, and words are power!".
  • Body Horror: The Black Scrawl. Black symbols appear all over your skin as your body disintegrates and you turn into a Shade.
  • Book Ends: Ending B. At the beginning of the game, Yonah tries to share a cookie she found with Nier, insisting that he should eat. During Ending B, Gestalt Nier, alone in an endless white expanse, hallucinates about himself and Yonah hiding out in the grocery store. When he comes out of it, the real Gestalt Yonah joins him and gives him his half of the cookie.
    • The last thing the player does in Endings A and D is type what they have called the protagonist.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: Weiss starts acting like this when Grimoire Noir tries to remind him of their original purpose to serve the Shadowlord... at least until Kainé's profanity snaps him out of it.
  • Brainwash Residue: Nier decides to save Kainé at the cost of his own existence in the final ending. When she comes to, she starts crying when she finds the flower Nier gave her, but doesn't know who it reminds her of.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: The Forest of Myth has a truly impressive amount of this. There's also a moment in a New Game+, when Gideon gives you the sword (which, in an New Game+, you already have, causing Nier to wonder if they didn't have it already and Weiss to tell him to just go along with it since that's how things go the second time around).
  • Break the Cutie: Everybody. But especially Emil.
  • Broken Bridge: A literal one. Shortly into your adventure, Popola asks you to get rid of the Shades infesting the construction of a bridge in the Northern Plain. Doing so will give you access to the northeast half of the Plain and let you advance the plot.
  • Bullet Hell: A rare appearance for this in a game that isn't a Shoot-em-Up, but rather a third-person sword-slinging game. Fortunately, Nier is able to slash the magic bullets to destroy them and restore his own magic power as a bonus.
  • But Thou Must!: Thou must enter a pact with Grimoire Weiss at the Lost Shrine, at the beginning of the game. Otherwise, the game will continue to spawn more and more Shades for you to fight until you either die or accept the pact.
  • Came Back Wrong: "Relapsed" Gestalts, the remnants of human souls that lose their memories and sentient mind and become hostile, nigh-mindless creatures that attack anything that moves.
  • Camera Screw: The game cannot decide if it wants to have a free camera or a fixed camera in some areas. Also, the Haunted Mansion switches to a particularly awkward Resident Evil 1 style camera as a Shout-Out to said game.
  • Character Title: Though it becomes muddled a bit since there's a Hello, Insert Name Here at the beginning, which means nobody ever directly addresses him.
  • Charged Attack: All weapons have a charged attack resulting from holding down the melee button at some point during the combo (which results in a different animation, range and attack vector depending on the timing). Most of them coat Nier's weapon in flames, others in dark or light magic, and even others in lightning. There is no point to these visual effects other than to look cool.
  • Cloudcuckooland: Facade, due to Loads and Loads of Rules.
    • And the Forest of Myth, after its people get brainwashed.
  • Climax Boss: Devola and Popola.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Virtually the entire Opening Narration courtesy of Kainé.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: Gestalt is characterised by reds and browns, and Replicant with colder colours like blues and greys, to contrast the protagonists and the general theme of the game.
  • Combat Tentacles: Wendy and to some extent the Knave of Hearts.
  • Con Lang: The vocals on much of the soundtrack.
  • Continuity Nod:
    • Sleeping Beauty hints at one during its monologues.

"Look at my memory. A red dragon falls from the heavens... Ah, that memory has been lost. A shame. It was a favorite of mine..."

    • Also the presence of weapons that despite having different names are clearly from Drakengard.
  • Convenient Questing: Everything Nier needs to complete his journey is conveniently located in the immediate area around his village. And while he supposedly travelled far and wide during the Time Skip, it's only after he comes back to the village that he picks up the clues necessary to continue the plot.
  • Cool Mask: Everybody in Facade wears one.
  • Cosmic Keystone: The Keystone.
  • Coup De Grace Cutscene: Nearly every boss fight concludes with a cutscene of Nier applying an insanely over-the-top version of one of the Sealed Verse attacks to the boss in question.
    • Also counts as a slight case of aversion of Gameplay and Story Segregation, since the last attack you perform on the boss that leads to the cutscene also completely fills your MP.
  • Crapsack World: It looks nice enough on the surface, but we are repeatedly informed that humanity's days are numbered, and things are just winding down in general.
  • Creepy Child: One of the short stories also included a Shade in Seafront who takes the form of a little girl.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: The boss Shades certainly tend to suffer these. Examples include getting skewered bodily on a wooden tower, ripped to shreds over and over until you can't regenerate, stabbed through the skull, half your face torn off, your throat crushed by two giant hands until it collapses, and impaled from the inside-out by hundreds of spikes. Ouch.
  • Cruel Twist Ending: Reading all the extra material only makes it worse.
  • Cycle of Revenge: The wolves and the people of Facade are locked in this, especially once the Masked Men slaughter all the pups in the den, and the wolves kill Fyra in retaliation. After these events, even Weiss warns the vengeance-obsessed King not to enter a battle he can't win.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Kainé, Emil, Weiss, Fyra, Nier and Yonah to some extent.
    • Hell, even the fisherman who gives you the Fisherman's Gambit quests qualifies.
  • Darker and Edgier: The Western version is normally portrayed as this in trailers, with less emphasis on the plot and more on the fighting style and gore, plus a much grittier, more ruthless protagonist.
  • Dark Reprise: During the endgame, the final battle with the Twins is scored with a dramatic, high-tempo version of their theme "Song of the Ancients (Fate)". They also each have their own different version of the theme, including a down-tempo variation called "Hollow Dreams".
  • Daylight Horror: Shades are weak to sunlight, and in the world of NieR, it is always daytime; however, as the grow more powerful, they are merely limited to shadowy areas, and once they start wearing armor, they are free to roam where they wish.
  • Day Old Legend: Take your weapons to be upgraded, and you get some backstories claiming that the weapon once caused an ancient tragedy.
  • Days of Future Past: Kinda justified, since civilization essentially had to be rebuilt from scratch.
  • Deal with the Devil: Nier makes one with Grimoire Noir in the opening. It's what turns him into the Shadowlord.
  • Death Is a Sad Thing: Every single death is treated as a significant, tragic and often pointless occurrence. Their loved ones are always shown to be deeply affected, with even nameless background characters getting a few minutes to be mourned by the main characters.
  • Death Seeker: Played with.
  • Deconstruction Game: The game is ultimately this with regards to Protagonist-Centered Morality and Dark Is Evil. Especially given how there are no real enemies in the game, with the "Shades" being the actual humans and the supposed "humans" being their intended vessels. Not to mention that the supposed Big Bad is Not So Different to the protagonist but with conflicting goals and the closest thing the game has to an actual villain has been dead for centuries.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: In Emil's mansion, the moment you walk past the entrance gate, all color fades away, aside from the characters.
  • Depopulation Bomb: WCS—White Chlorination Syndrome. A disease originating from the world of Drakengard and brought over when Caim, Angelus and the Grotesqueries Queen arrived in Tokyo. It has a near-100% mortality rate, and those who survive only exist to become Legion. Eventually, WCS annihilated all of mankind... except for the Original Gestalt, the Shadowlord and the Shades.
  • Destructible Projectiles: The pink ones.
  • Determinator: Past Ending A, turns out P-33, the Knave of Hearts and Goose are also this, fully committed to their goal, and they will not stop until success or death.
  • Deus Ex Machina: Apparently shortly after the events of the game, aliens suddenly start arriving.
  • Didn't See That Coming: Project Gestalt was created to save humanity from the White Chlorination Syndrome, separating their souls from their bodies before these could be infected by the disease, and creating soulless Replicants to inhabit later, once the disease had vanished. They didn't foresee Replicants gaining sentience...
  • Died in Your Arms Tonight: Fyra in the King's arms, Devola in Popola's arms. In Ending C, Kainé in Nier's arms.
  • Distant Finale: The game is basically this to the fifth ending of Drakengard. The sequel NieR: Automata takes place even further down that timeline.
  • Does Not Like Shoes: No one in Facade wears shoes, which seems unwise considering they have nothing to protect their feet from the burning hot sand and rock. There's probably a rule against wearing them.
  • Double Jump
  • Downer Beginning: The moment you hear the Ethereal Choir, and see the snowy, abandoned city, and the guy in the overcoat fighting to stay awake to protected a little girl from giant bloodthristy shadow creatures, you know this is gonna be a pessimistic game.
  • Dual Boss: Hansel and Gretel, the twin statues you fight when you find Grimoire Weiss. Also, the Twins, at the Shadowlord's Castle. Twice.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole: In making Papa Nier much older than his Replicant counterpart, it becomes a LOT harder to believe that he wouldn't realize that the Twins never age.
  • Dungeon Bypass: Sort of an intentional example: when you're requested to visit a dungeon on the second playthrough onwards to get some rare metal from a boss enemy, you only need to enter the said dungeon for the game to drop the said item in your inventory right at its entrance, allowing you to skip the first visit entirely.
    • This only works if you have the necessary item in your inventory when you enter. Otherwise, you'll have to go through the dungeon again.
  • Dwindling Party: Depending on which option you choose, the only characters who survive until the very end are Yonah and either Nier or Kainé.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Note that this doesn't just apply to the main party. The Ultimate Blacksmith is a batshit insane babbling lunatic obsessed with creating weapons of mass destruction with no regards to the consequences due to the deaths of his mother and brother. The people of the Aerie are utter Jerkasses who refuse to give any foreigner the time of day just because one of them turned out to be a half-breed. The people of Facade are locked in a Cycle of Revenge against a wolf tribe, and neither side is clearly in the right over their conflict. The people of Seafront are in on a lie perpetuated for fifty years against the lighthouse keeper, all so they can keep her from learning that her husband had died from Black Scrawl long ago as well as forcing her to keep operating the lighthouse since nobody else knows how to.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Most of the bosses you come across, which seem to get bigger, squishier and uglier the more you play.
  • Ethereal Choir: "Snow In Summer", "Cold Steel Coffin", "Gods Bound by Rules" and "Shadowlord - White". Yeah, the soundtrack likes this trope.
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Young Nier, if that guy from Seafront and Emil are anything to go by.
  • Everything's Better with Samurai: The downloadable expansion has alternate costumes with samurai motifs.
  • Evil Counterpart: Grimoire Noir to Grimoire Weiss.
  • Exclusively Evil: This is what the people of Nier's world believe Shades to be, which is why they live in fear of them and will annihilate every last one if given the chance. The truth is far more complicated than that: only severely relapsed Shades become hostile, but since they've lost all trace of sentience then, it's doubtful "evil" even applies anymore.
  • Exposed to the Elements: Kainé, naturally. Also Father Nier, who wears little more than a shoulderguard and oversized bermuda shorts. The people of Facade claim that their simple, cone-shaped robes protect them from sandstorms and make it easier to move around the desert, but one has to question the truth of this when they're all barefoot and the robes fully expose their limbs.
  • Expy: The small, child-like Shades look very similar to the Heartless.
  • Face Heel Turn: Devola and Popola, once Nier strays too far from their objectives. The game itself refers to them as "The Betrayers".
  • Faceless Eye: One of the Boss Shades, Wendy, resembles a giant eye with tentacles.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Most of Nier's world is based off Medieval Europe; however, Facade seems to be influenced mainly by Mayan culture, particularly the clothing and architecture. Never mind that it's meant to be set in Japan. Justified, however, in that the Replicants, the "people" in question, had to build everything from scratch and scattered fragments of human civilization as they previously had no sentience to speak of.
  • Fantasy Gun Control: Firearms are a long-forgotten notion in Nier's world. Also justified in that, since the Replicants had unintentionally developed sentience, they have no real knowledge of firearms to forget about in the first place.
  • Feed It a Bomb: Defense System Gepetto dislikes having its own bombs tossed into its mouth. Maybe he should stop spawning them...
  • Fictionary: The language of the people of Facade. According to Grimoire Nier, it was created by shuffling hiragana around, which sometimes makes it sound like actual Japanese.
  • Fighting Your Friend: Kainé, twice. First as a regular boss (until the battle is hijacked by a bigger threat), and then at the Lost Shrine, when her fatal wounds cause her to be momentarily taken over by her inner Shade. And then, in Endings C and D, she's completely taken over and becomes the True Final Boss. You then must make a final decision concerning her fate.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Kainé joins Nier's group after they take down Hook together, and they earn the King's friendship after rescuing him from the temple and defeating Shahriyar.
  • Flower From the Mountaintop: The Lunar Tear, a very rare white flower than grows in high places, like The Aerie and The Lost Shrine. Rumoured to have healing powers, though this is never confirmed in-story; however, if you spend ridiculous amounts of time to actually grow your own in the garden, you'll find out that they heal you completely. Yonah goes to find one in the hopes it will make her better, which eventually leads to Weiss joining the party.
  • Flunky Boss: The opening parts of the Hansel and Gretel battles, during which they fight alongside smaller Shades; Defense System Gepetto will raise elevators containing lightning-prod and magic-battery robots after its laser finger attack; Hook will hork up bomb-type Shades that just roll around and spit out magic during the second phase of the fight; Wendy will use its tentacle attack to slam down armored Shades on the platform to distract you from hitting its eye; Roc will sic his pack on you before joining the fray himself. Evidently, all of these but the first and last examples are also Mook Makers.
  • Foreshadowing: In the backstory Red and Black, Nier notes how eerily similar Shades and humans are. Guess what The Reveal was.
    • Nier also notes following the timeskip that Popola doesn't appear to have aged since he first met her.
    • The first Shades Nier encounters after the prologue literally just stand in place. As in they don't attack you with anything. I wonder why...
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: Nier is choleric, Kainé is sanguine, Weiss is phlegmatic, and Emil is melancholic.
  • Full Boar Action: One of the side quests involves hunting a giant boar on the Northern Plains. After defeating it, you gain the ability to use boars as transport.
  • Functional Magic: The Sealed Verses, which fits into Device Magic, as it can only be used with the assistance of a Grimoire.
  • Fusion Dance: Larger, non-humanoid Shades result from this. In a few cases, you'll get to see the fusion take place.
    • Also, Number 6 and Number 7 Halua and Emil do this in order to combine their power, resulting in the latter's mind ending up in the former's nigh-invulnerable body (though it loses much of its size in the process).
  • Future Imperfect: The people of Nier's future era only have scattered, distorted records of the past. The Shades at large, as well as certain individuals like Devola and Popola, however, know perfectly well what happened, but have no real incentive or interest in letting the Replicants in on the world they never really had in the first place.
  • Gaiden Game: An odd case, since it's based on a non-canon, joke ending from Drakengard.
  • Gargle Blaster: Popola is too shy to sing a duet with Devola unless she's completely hammered. What sort of drink does she crave? A bizarre... concoction that includes, among other things, mouse tails and lizard tails.
  • Gender Blender Name: It would appear that both Hansel and Gretel are male.
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: After Emil's apparent death, Kainé beats Nier to a pulp, partly to snap him out of it and partly to vent her own frustration and grief. According to Word of God, this is also where she has her Love Epiphany.
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: If you look closely, you can see Kainé's areolae through the slits in her nightdress.
  • Glasgow Grin: No. 6 and No. 7 both have their mouth fixed in a toothy Slasher Smile.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Many of the Boss Shades have these, in particular the two golems at the Lost Shrine, with the added bonus of Red Eyes, Take Warning.
  • Golden Ending: Inverted: the easiest ending to get is (by comparison) the best ending, the one you get simply from beating the game once. As you replay, the endings becomes more and more depressing. This culminates in Nier annihilating himself as well as your save files after 3-4 playthroughs.
  • Good Colors, Evil Colors: All the central protagonists have white/silver hair, and their Grimoire's name also means "white". In turn, they are fighting against the Shadowlord, who has black hair and whose Grimoire's name means "black".
  • Grand Theft Me: Once Replicants started developing their own sentience and consciousness (they were supposed to be empty vessels), being "possessed" by a Shade actually meant that a Gestalt was returning to its intended shell. Which is what happens to Gestalt Yonah and Replicant Yonah, what Devola and Popola intended the Shadowlord to do to Nier, and what the overall Project Gestalt tried to accomplish by force via Grimoire Noir and Grimoire Weiss.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: The songs are sung in a mixture of Gaelic, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, English and nonsense.
  • Great Offscreen War: The extensive backstory reveals that more than one of these had been waged against the WCS and the Legion of abominations spawned from it. By the time the game takes place, however, both the Legion and WCS have been gone for centuries. Unfortunately, the final "purification" of the world had awakened the Gestalts a.k.a. the Shades.
  • Grey and Gray Morality: Especially evident during New Game+ playthroughs.
  • Griefer: After going through the Aerie segment in the Ending B path; you'll probably be wondering who'd be stupid enough to set up a trap in the Aerie despite the fact that NONE of the Shades living there wanted Nier and co. to show up at all.
    • It's implied that the Shades wanted to show Nier that not all of them were crazed monsters. They probably were going to sell some things to him, wait for him to walk away a bit, then reveal their true identity. Unfortunately, one of the Shades wasn't able to keep it together upon talking to Nier, and things quickly got worse.
  • Guest Star Party Member: Both Kainé and Emil before they officially join the party.
  • Hammer Below The Shoulder: A certain type of Shade possess giant hammers in place of arms.
  • Hannibal Lecture: Grimoire Noir to Grimoire Weiss.
  • Happily Ever Before: This is technically what Ending A counts as: it cuts away from the rest of the ending right before everything goes to hell and moves onto a previously unseen flashback with Nier and Yonah lying happily in the grass before any of the game's events took place.
  • Haunted House: The mansion where Emil lives looks like a stereotypical version of this, being dilapidated with disembodied screams, empty rooms infested with Shades, a courtyard with human-looking statues, paintings that switch places when you're not looking etc, etc. The whole stage also has a very creepy soundtrack and a huge Creepy Basement.
  • Healthcare Motivation: Nier (particularly the younger version) has been through hell and back in the past to get Yonah her medicine.
  • Heel Face Turn: In Endings C and D, Tyrann actually helps Nier in defeating Kainé after she loses control of her body. Heck, both of the options he gives to Nier in saving Kainé's life only screw HIM over.
    • The second choice also affects the PLAYER by giving a whole new meaning to Heroic Sacrifice. Make a backup if you intend to go this route because it will delete all your save files. Seriously.
  • Hell Is Coming With Me: Emil comes to warn Nier at the latter's village moments before it's invaded by Shades and the Knave of Hearts. A Man of the Mask in Facade comes to warn "the wolves are coming" during the King and Fyra's wedding. Both are too late to make any difference.
  • Hermaphrodite: Kainé. The English version is more ambiguous about this, but it can be found in Kainé's diary after beating the game once and in some Japan-only supplementary material.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: You don't get lances until after the timeskip. Aside from that, all your weapons are swords.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The Masked King. And Emil. And Weiss. Hell, even Nier in one ending.
  • He Will Not Cry, So I Cry for Him: Nier for Kainé and Emil, although he doesn't actually cry, just feels terribly guilty for their unfair treatment by the villagers and how they accept it without protest.
  • Hidden Elf Village: The Aerie is a town full of xenophobes who are too terrified to leave their houses for fear of either Shades or just outsiders in general. Given how at least a good portion of the Aerie is comprised of Shades in disguise, there's a good reason for them to keep hidden.
  • High-Pressure Blood/Overdrawn At the Blood Bank: Even getting kicked by a sheep will cause what appears to be half the fluid in your body to gush over the surrounding area. Any more serious wounds will resemble a small fireworks display. And this is nothing compared to the rivers of blood that pour forth from any boss shades you defeat (which tend to be killed in pretty grisly ways).
  • Hold the Line/Last Stand: The men of Facade seal themselves in a room with the immortal Goose to prevent it from chasing Nier's party. In the post-Ending A paths, it's revealed that many sentient Shades, particularly in the Lost Shrine and the Shadowlord's Castle, were attempting this against Nier.
  • Hope Spot: The same infobook that reveals the below Nice Job Breaking It, Hero also says that even with that, there's still a small sliver of hope in Ending D that mankind isn't completely screwed.
  • Humanity's Wake: Almost.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Played with. In the Ending B path, the player discovers that not only are the "humans" mere sentient replicas of the true human beings, but that the latter have been reduced to Shades... which the Replicants have no problems slaughtering with prejudice. Taken to a vicious extreme in Kalil's backstory.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: While Nier's carrying around stacks of documents and letters, a grocery store's worth of healing items, seeds, fruits and potions, and a veritable museum of key items somewhere on his person is not too surprising, his carrying dozens of weapons larger and heavier than himself probably is. Especially with weapons like Iron Will and Fool's Lament hiding somewhere in his pockets.
  • I Don't Want to Die: Emil's last words.
  • Immortality: Humanity's Project Gestalt attempted a Type II combined with Type IV, as separating body from soul results in Gestalts who cannot die unless they are killed or "relapse" into Shades. Due to their origins and extremely long lives, it's possible Devola and Popola, as well as Number 6 and Number 7, were given Type II.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The game is fond of these.
    • Roc, the wolf Shade, in an awesome moment for the King of Facade.
    • Again, the King of Facade when he drives his spear into the nigh-invulnerable boar Goose's skull and finally kills it.
    • Nier, twice in the same scene from Noir's Blood Magic spikes, first through the shoulder from behind, and then as an near-fatal attack to defend Weiss.
    • Kainé, courtesy of Gretel's pike when he deflects Nier's magic and the weapon goes flying. It heals almost immediately. Somehow.
      • Again in Ending C, where she is impaled on Nier's sword. Though in this case, it was with the best intentions.
    • Any Coup De Grace Cutscene involving Dark Lance. And, during gameplay, finishing off Shades with Dark Execution (which causes spears to shoot up from the ground) will lift the Shades off the ground and leave them hanging there from the spears until the magic fades.
  • Impassable Desert: Played with. The desert is difficult to get through without being attacked by wolves or stung by hidden poisonous scorpions, and some parts are only accessible when Fyra is with you.
  • Insistent Terminology: You shall refer to the great book Grimoire Weiss by his full and proper name!
  • Instant Runes: A primary element of the game's style. Everyone's magic has it, and the Black Scrawl even makes them appear on your skin. They're also remarkably detailed and complex; try taking in all the interlocking spinning symbols present in Kainé's electroball attack.
  • Interface Screw: The Forest of Myth.
  • Interface Spoiler: Surprisingly averted: until you get Weiss, a vast portion of the menu doesn't even exist.
  • It Can Think: Shades learn to wear armor and lure you into ambushes as the plot advances. It becomes increasingly hard to deny that they are sentient beings.
  • Item Crafting: Nier's weapons get stronger (and sometimes their weight changes) by being reforged at the Two Brothers Weapon Shop. In the case of the Drakengard-derived weapons, their appearance also changes.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: To try and get ride of the White Chlorination Syndrome, Tokyo was walled off and then had a nuke dropped on it by the USA. Which then spread the disease worldwide.
  • Jerkass: The people of the Aerie trump overall. By far.
  • The Juggernaut: The Knave Of Hearts, which attacked Nier's village, and Goose, the boar Shade that will absolutely not stop in its pursuit. Both are the accumulation of countless Shades, have a Healing Factor that makes them Nigh Invulnerable, and possess endless vitality.
  • Kick the Son of a Bitch: The destruction of the Aerie is nothing short of karmic. Especially as the denizens could've prevented it if they had simply allowed foreigners to help them instead of being a bunch of bitter, selfish shut-ins.
  • Kill'Em All: The creators pretty much admit to it in one interview, saying that everyone is going to die sooner or later, and your actions in the game were all for nothing.
  • Kissing Discretion Shot: When Nier kisses Kainé in Ending C, the camera moves away just before their lips meet. Due to the situation, this makes it more emotional.
  • Lampshade Hanging: Weiss comments that it was a bit too easy collecting the pieces to the keystone. Almost as if someone set them on the right path...
  • Last of Their Kind: Devola and Popola are the last "androids" of their kind tasked to oversee Project Gestalt.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: Kaine being Intersex and Emil being gay for the titular character are this, especially with many reviewers that go in depth with the series popping up everywhere since NieR: Automata's initial announcement.
    • Leitmotif:
    • "Ashes of Dreams" has four variations (one for each ending), and it shows up everywhere throughout the game in the form of "Dispossession" and "Yonah"... which also have four variations each.
    • An orchestral version of it called "Dance of the Evanescent" also plays in the Shadowlord's Castle.
  • The Library of Babel: Sleeping Beauty a.k.a. the Divine Tree was originally intended to be this being a supercomputer cataloging and recording memories. Unfortunately, as time and decay have robbed Sleeping Beauty of an ever growing number of said memories, it's desperately seeking to use the Forest of Myth to find new purpose.
  • Loads and Loads of Rules: Facade, which has over 1,000,000 rules (and they're still coming up with more). As a result, Facade is a maze of stairs, everyone has to wear a mask at all times, one is only allowed to buy items there after seeing the entire village from a sandboat and so on. Their holy site, the Barren Temple, operates on this premise as well, with each room forbidding a specific action (such as guarding, running, using magic, using weapons and so on).
  • Lonely Piano Piece: Yonah's theme has a variation like this.
  • Lost Forever: Many quests from the first half of the game become inaccessible after the Time Skip... which is reasonable enough, since who would wait five years for his mutton to be delivered? If you accept these quests, but fail to complete them before that deadline, they will be placed in a special section of your menu for quests that can no longer be completed. And since New Game+ places you after the Time Skip, it means you'll have to start a whole new game in order to finish these quests.
  • Lost Technology: The Scrap Heap and the mines beneath it are full of this.
  • Love Hurts: There is not a single successful romantic relationship in the game. Either it's unrequited, or one or both of the lovers expire before anything can come of it.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Nier, although he doesn't realize it until the end. Kainé to a lesser extent.
  • MacGuffin Delivery Service: Nier and Grimoire Weiss are told that collecting the Sealed Verses could lead to defeating Grimoire Noir and eliminating the Black Scrawl off the face of the Earth. When they finally do, turns out that it was exactly what their antagonists needed all along.
  • Madness Mantra: Recycled Vessel, Severance, Penance, Aberrance, Sufferance, Acceptance, Disturbance, Hindrance, Defiance, Forbearance, Intolerance, Vengeance, Repentance, Radiance, Extravagance, Malignance, Vigilance, Obeisance, Dominance, Allegiance, Resistance, Discordance, Petulance, Misguidance, Deliverance...
  • Magic From Technology: Or, more accurately, Magic From Another World That Led To Countless Technological And Scientific Breakthroughs Which In Turn Use And Produce Even More Advanced Magic. Even the Junkheap's robots and security systems use the exact same magic that Grimoires and Shades and the Twins use.
  • Magitek: The best way to describe the surviving, functional bits of Lost Technology, as even the Junkheap's robots are partially operating on magical sources.
  • Male Gaze: This screenshot says it all.
  • Mama Bear: Mother Goose. And when we say she goes Mama Bear, we mean Nigh Invulnerable Determinator Juggernaut who curses Nier and the King of Facade in rage for destroying her children's future.
  • Meaningful Name: Kainé means "broken sound", and Tyrann means "tyrant". Emil is named after the younger of The Brothers Grimm, and Yonah after the biblical Jonah. Nier is a little more ambiguous, though the director mentions something about his body being "near" to his soul.
    • Not sure if this was done on purpose but "nier" means "to deny" in French.
  • Mecha Mook: The autonomous robots in the "Junkheap", which apparently utilise the same magic as Nier himself. Also, the majority of enemies seen so far in NieR: Automata.
  • Mega Corp: The Hamelin Organisation, who try and dragoon refugees into working with them in Project Gestalt against the Legion.
  • Mercy Kill: In one ending, Nier is forced to kill Kainé to prevent them becoming a complete Shade.
  • Mood Dissonance: The ending credits music. While Endings A and B are mostly optimistic, the lyrics that are sung for the credits song are pretty nihilistic. To paraphrase it: "things might be fine for now but it's all meaningless because of what we've already lost and the inevitable return of danger."
    • This was the whole point of the game, essentially. Nier fights to protect those he loves because life and family are made all the more precious due to not knowing when the world will end, and you'll lose everything. You need to make the most of what you have while it lasts. Particularly since they're still doomed to extinction.
  • Mood Whiplash: The Stinger of Ending B, which, after the Player Punch that is seeing original (Gestalt) Nier finally die together with his Yonah, has the nerve to be pretty damn hilarious.
  • Multi-Track Drifting: ...with boars. And it is awesome.
  • Multiple Endings: There are four of them.
  • Mythology Gag: A good number of weapons from Drakengard, almost all of which have had their names changed, make a return. Why? Word of God says they went flying and were scattered when Caim and Angelus were hit by the missile that killed them during Drakengard's Ending E.
  • Names to Run Away From Really Fast: "Shadowlord". "The Black Book".
  • Nerf Arm: Nier starts off the game by taking on a huge army of Shades armed only with a metal pipe. It's just as effective as any of his low-level swords.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Word of God confirms that, no matter which ending you get, your actions have doomed both Gestalts and Replicants, turning the world into an empty, rotting husk. Nice going!
    • Also the backstory revealed that in an attempt to wipe out the disease afflicting humanity, Tokyo and everybody in it was nuked, which only served to spread the particles further abroad.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: The Knave of Hearts and Goose, being made up of lots and lots of Shades. Also, Number 7, who can survive blowing up and being reduced to just a head rolling cheerfully in the desert.
  • No Hero Discount: In all fairness, Nier isn't out to save the world, just his daughter/sister, and he gets legitimate payment for running errands for the villagers. However, after saving the son of one particular shopkeeper, she will give Nier a lifelong discount at her store.
  • No Name Given: The Masked King. Interesting, since he is considered a major character in the story while several of the more minor characters are named in-game.
    • Although in Grimoire Nier, the King and many minor characters not identified in-game are given names.
  • Not So Different: A man who will do anything, even at the cost of his own soul, and even if it means damning the world, for the sake of the person most precious to him. Now, are we talking about Original Nier a.k.a. the Shadowlord, or Replicant Nier?
  • Offscreen Teleportation: By the time Nier and his party make it into the Shadowlord's castle, the Twins are already there, even though he had last seen them at the village and it's a very long road to the castle. He expresses no small surprise at this, until the ensuing battle reveals they have Villain Teleportation...
  • Oh Crap: Kainé spends considerable effort kicking down a door, and feels pretty good about herself when she does... until she sees that the room beyond is packed floor-to-ceiling with "bomb" infant-type Shades. She barely has time to say these words before she's bowled over and knocked unconscious.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: "Blu-Bird" and "The Dark Colossus Destroys All".
  • Once More, with Clarity: New Game+ playthroughs make it possible to understand what the Shades/Gestalts are actually saying, painting Nier's actions in a whole different light.
  • Only One Name: The entire cast.
  • Opening Narration: One of the most unique in recent history.

Kainé: Weiss, you dumbass! Start making sense you rotten book, or you're gonna be sorry! Maybe I'll rip your pages out one-by-one, or maybe I'll put you in the Goddamn furnace! How can someone with such a big, smart brain get hypnotized like a little bitch huh?! Oh, Shadowlord! I love you Shadowlord! Come over here and give Weiss a big sloppy kiss, Shadowlord! Now pull your head out of your Goddamn ass and START FUCKING HELPING US!

  • Orcus on His Throne: The Shadowlord was willing to wait for 1300 years, believing in Project Gestalt's promise that it would one day restore his Yonah to him. When he finally loses patience and does something about it, he kidnaps Replicant Yonah so that his sister/daughter's Gestalt may inhabit her... and then goes back to doing nothing, even as Nier keeps killing his guardians and comes ever closer to him.
  • Parental Abandonment: Virtually all the characters have this to some degree.
  • Pinball Scoring: Applies to your stats, most notably your HP: you start with 100 HP on lv 1 and end up with 400k+ HP on lv 99. Granted, it's not like you'll ever really notice it since the only place where it's shown in numerical form is the status screen, and your HP bar extends very little with each level up, with the lv 99 bar only being maybe 2 or 3 times the lenght of a lv 1 bar despite the actual difference of their contents being over 4000 times larger.
  • The Plague: Both the White Chlorination Syndrome, which caused The End of the World as We Know It in the backstory, and the Black Scrawl in current times.
  • Planet of Hats: Or City of Masks, anyway. The people of Facade must all wear masks, and their "hat" is that there are an incredible number of rules that govern their daily life. In Nier and Weiss' opinion, these rules often have no apparent function other than to make life frustrating; in the opinion of the people of Facade, these rules exist "so that you may know your freedoms."
  • Playing the Player: On New Game+ subsequent playthroughs.
  • Poor Communication Kills: A lot could have been avoided.
  • The Power of Friendship: What stops Weiss from merging with Grimoire Noir. Also invoked by Gretel the second time you fight him. It doesn't go quite as well...
  • Promotion to Parent: Jakob with Gideon, and 'Brother' Nier with Yonah.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: One of the sidequests also deals with a runaway boy from Facade who thinks of himself as this.
  • Ragnarok Proofing: Although the landscape is littered with remains of what seems to be a railroad track, the entire military facility known as "the Junkheap" operates perfectly, from the cargo lines to the defense systems to the autonomous robots to the elevators and even the lighting. Also, the Weapons Research Laboratory beneath Emil's Mansion (and the Mansion itself) is in pristine condition despite being well over 1300 years old.
  • Random Number God: Many of the items required for upgrading weapons and for the side quests are rare spawns and/or drops from monsters. Expect to spend much time cursing until the game finally coughs up the items you need.
  • Recurring Riff: The theme of the Grotesqueries Queen from Drakengard returns as the underlying melody to most songs in the game.
    • Inuart's song a.k.a. "Fate" from Drakengard 2, is the "Song of the Ancients".
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: A special kind of WCS Legion known as Red Eye are not only extremely violent, but also fully sentient, allowing them to organize other Legion into armies.
  • The Remnant: By the time the game takes place, Devola, Popola and arguably the Shadowlord a.k.a. Nier Gestalt are all that remain of Project Gestalt.
  • The Reveal: Turns out the Shades are the real humans.
  • Revenge:
  • Robot Buddy: P-33 Military defense robot, also known as Beepy, with the child-like shade.
  • Rousseau Was Right: On your first New Game+, we find out that all of the conflict stems completely from misunderstandings, as we are shown the enemies' perspective and/or background behind the situations and conflicts that arise. There are one or two times when the boss fight is only just the boss protecting themselves from your relentless bloodlust.
  • Running Gag: Weiss scaring fish away by being a Large Ham, much to Nier's annoyance.
  • Sand Is Water: In Facade it is, anyway.
  • Scenery Porn: Some of the stages (like Seafront, the Aerie and the Forest of Myth) are made in stunning detail and very pretty. Most of the others, like the Forbidden Shrine, fall into Scenery Gorn.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right
  • Sequential Boss: At least half, or more, of the bosses, including the Final Boss. Special mention goes to the Defense System Geppetto, Hook, the Knave of Hearts and Wendy.
  • Shout-Out: Several, but a notable one to the 3D Legend of Zelda games all throughout the Barren Temple.

Item Get! Even the jingle is just one note away from a copyright infringement...

  • Sir Swearsalot: Does it even need spelling out?
  • Slept Through the Apocalypse: It's revealed that part of Project Gestalt involved placing what remained of humanity, by then made into the titular Gestalts a.k.a. Shades into what amounts to a thousand year hibernation until the Earth's fully "purified" of the WCS and a cure could be found. The eventual "success" of the world's "purification" subsequently began the process of awakening the Gestalts, only to find that their Replicants had become sentient.
  • Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Weiss, so much so that they need to put his picture on the page.
  • Spell My Name with an "S": Debol/Devola and Popol/Popola. Vier/Fyra, Cleo/Kalil and Curly/Kali also run into this issue.
  • Sphere of Destruction: The result of Emil unleashing his power as "the Ultimate Weapon". It even leaves a perfect sphere-shaped void in its wake.
  • Sphere of Power: Mage-type Shades will empower themselves and their allies with support magic that has this visual effect. They (and the Grimoires) can also surround themselves with spherical shields that make them impervious to magic or physical attacks.
  • Spoiler Opening: Big time. Though to be fair, it's rather cryptic given the (lack of) context, and the significance behind the scene isn't made truly apparent until much later.
  • Stop Helping Me!: Weiss becomes somewhat annoying during some parts of the game, such as the final phase of the battle against Wendy where he might keep repeating the same thing over and over again: he also tends to get annoying during the mandatory part of the fishing minigame by repeating the same hint over and over again instead of asking whether you're even at the right location, which is a possible mistake to make since there's a beach right next to the person who gives you the fishing equipment.
  • Stripperiffic: Kainé is wearing little more than a skimpy nightdress, high heels and some bandages. Lampshaded during younger Nier's first meeting with her.

Nier: Why is that woman going around in her underwear?!

  • Suicide by Sunlight
  • Super Drowning Skills: Nier drowns in any water deeper than his ankles. He'll lose a bit of health (unless he's in a town) and wash up somewhere nearby for his troubles. Explained in that none of the villagers know how to swim, since they are forbidden from coming into contact with the precious water resources.
  • Take Your Time: While fishing for the Shaman Fish which will ease Yonah's pain, you can go do the a part of the Fisherman's Gambit quest which will put you on a boat for two months.
  • Taking You with Me: Popola attempts this on the group, but Nier and Kainé escape thanks to Emil's Heroic Sacrifice. The boar Shade Goose has a better go at it.
  • A Taste of Power: During the game's prologue, you make a pact with a Grimoire and slowly unleash each one of the Sealed Verses in sequence. Not only will you level up abnormally fast (typically ending up in the 30s by the time the miniboss arrives), but the charge time for your magic attacks is decreased tremendously, allowing you to use the complete forms of Dark Execution or Dark Hand after only a few seconds of charging.
  • Terrible Ticking: If you start hearing bells ringing in your ears, it's a sign you're going insane from WCS and will soon turn into Legion.
  • Theme and Variations Soundtrack: Over half the soundtrack consists of variations of earlier themes, with a subtitle tacked at the end. Surprisingly, these variations are different enough to stand out on their own, enhancing the overall quality of the soundtrack.
  • Theme Naming: Of the Shout Out kind. Major Shades are named after literary references to Peter Pan (the Aerie's Hook and Wendy), Pinocchio (the Junkheap's Cleo/Kalil, Defense System Geppetto, P[inocchio]-33), Alice in Wonderland (the Knave of Hearts), Mother Goose rhymes (Goose), "Sleeping Beauty" (the codename of the Divine Tree), "Hansel and Gretel" (self-explanatory) and Arabian Nights (Facade's Roc and Shahriyar).
    • Emil, Hans, Carlo and Ursula are named after famous authors. Blue, Gideon and Jiminy after characters from Pinocchio.
    • Residents of Facade are named after German numbers.
    • The Grimoire are all named after colours.
  • These Questions Three: You have to answer three riddles surrounding the cause of humanity's downfall in order to enter the Shadowlord's Castle. Each answer has two options, and getting one wrong will only send you back to the entrance of the room, so there's not much at stake, and their actual purpose is to clue you in on things not being what they seem due to what the correct answers are.
  • Thirteen Is Unlucky: The thirteen Grimoire. Only three make an appearance in the game, and only one of them is remotely benevolent.
  • Time Abyss: Devola and Popola, who've been monitoring the state of the world and the progress of Project Gestalt for over a thousand years.
  • Together in Death: The Masked King invokes this when he dies, promising to meet with Fyra again. Possibly the Shadowlord and Yonah too.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: The human race. But particularly Nier.
  • Tragic Dream: Nier's simple dream to live a healthy, happy life with Yonah leads to all sorts of questionable behaviour and heartbreaking decisions, and is ultimately doomed to failure anyway.
  • Tragic Monster: Every single Shade after watching Ending A.

{{quote|P-33: Beepy... broken... Beepy... cry}?}

  • Triumphant Reprise: The wistful and melancholy "Emil (Sacrifice)" is revisited as the much more spirited "Emil (Karma)" for emotional action sequences. Likewise, "Kainé (Salvation)", a peaceful and mostly happy theme, is made into the rousing "Kainé/Escape" for appropriately inspiring effect, or the eerie electronic remix "Kainé/Rain of Light".
  • Trophy Room: And it's located across the stairs from Popola's office in the Library, filled with effigies of previously-defeated bosses. Nier and Weiss will have choice comments for each, always wondering who could have put them there.
  • True Companions: Nier refers to himself, Kainé, Weiss and Emil as this. Also a standard Ragtag Bunch of Misfits.
  • Tutorial Failure: The in-game instructions for the fishing minigame are flat-out wrong. Interestingly, the correct method is actually a lot simpler than the awful tutorial would have you believe.
  • Twenty Bear Asses: The vast majority of the sidequests require you to obtain various items and fetch them for the requester. You can mess with it in some cases where you can just buy some of the items from a vendor, but in general, there's not always much of a tangible reward for some of the sidequests. Certain sidequests, however, have significant rewards, like unlocking your farm (one of the only consistent sources of revenue in the game).
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: The prologue, set in 2049/53.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: And a lot of it. There are a few 2D Platform Game sections, as well as some top-down bits reminiscent of Robotron. In addition, enemy magic attacks, especially those of bosses, are straight out of a Bullet Hell shooter. And then there's the Forest of Myth, which involves a dreamworld that's a damn text adventure.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Nier and Kainé, particularly in Replicant.
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Even as the people of Nier's world (and Nier himself) marvel at the thought of mankind once moving via "metal boxes on rails" (railroads), they don't bat an eye at the highly-sophisticated robots or heavy machinery in the Junkheap. And when they finally take notice of the flying book floating right behind Nier, they take issue with his manners rather than the flying book itself. Even more befuddling, they never seem to notice that Devola and Popola never age, and have always been taking care of the village, even when the people themselves do.
  • Utsuge: Sure, it has its more light-hearted moments, but once you get down to it, (and know the full backstory), dear God is it depressing!
  • Van Helsing Hate Crime: The Shades are fully sentient and were in fact once human too. This hits full force when you're able to understand what they're saying...
  • Variable Mix:
    • In the last part of the final battle, the layers of the boss music gradually fade out as you come closer and closer to defeating the Shadowlord, eventually leaving a simple and mellow music box version of his theme.
    • Some towns also have variable mixes in them: in Nier's home village, the regular village theme gets vocals added to it when you get close to Devola (who is usually singing in the bar or at the fountain).
    • During the last flight through the Shadowlord's Castle, the vocals fade out to leave behind the high-energy music, hurrying you to your goal.
    • Encounters with Shades in the Lost Shrine will add percussion to the "The Incomplete Stone" track.
    • The haunting music heard throughout Emil's mansion won't go into its second phase until Nier and Emil discover and go into the Weapons Research Lab beneath it.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: The game does its best making you care for Yonah, from adorable little "Now Loading" animations, to letters to you telling you about her daily life, to her earnest efforts to cook a good meal, to her vulnerable, frail demeanour.
  • The Virus: White Chlorination Syndrome. Contrary to its name, the Black Scrawl isn't actually a virus.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Nier and Grimoire Weiss, early on, until they settle into a powerful friendship. Weiss and Kainé, on the other hand, remain acerbic to each other throughout the whole game.
  • Voice of the Legion: Larger Shades and boss Shades have this, especially those that are an agglomeration of multiple Shades. Most notably, Wendy, once it sucks up all the Shades and villagers of the Aerie, and they all start crying out and screaming in confusion.
  • Was It Really Worth It?
  • Was Once a Man: All the Shades. It's the game's main reveal.
  • Weather Dissonance: In the opening, it is snowing heavily. In summer. Though it turns out that it's actually not snow, but salt.
  • We Could Have Avoided All This: A lot of Nier's wanton slaughter of Shades could have been avoided if they could simply communicate with him, but no matter how loud they scream or how much they beg him to stop, their speech is unintelligible to humans except Kaine. Popola and Devola have their own reasons for keeping Nier in the dark though, and the one time a Shade in possession of a Replicant could have tried, Nier's smug boasting about "killing them all" caused said Shade to freak out, and an entire city full of Shade-possessed Replicants turned on Nier.
    • They thought he already knew.
      • Nier has plenty of hints that he REALLY knows that Shades are good, but he's committed to his goal no matter the cost. The forest Shade and his hesitation at killing the Shadowlord are the big ones.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?/What Measure Is a Mook?: These two tropes are carefully analyzed, deconstructed, subverted, kicked and stomped and strangled and throttled until they beg for mercy. Especially after seeing Ending A, but also during many insightful sequences in one's first playthrough.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: After the Knave of Hearts is (finally) defeated for good, and Kainé is cured of her stone curse, the villagers call Nier out for bringing "monsters" (referring to Kainé and Emil) to their village... At which point, he then proceeds to call them out for ignoring the fact that the so-called "monsters" basically saved all of their lives five years ago. Popola reluctantly agrees to try and talk them into understanding afterwards.
  • When You Coming Home, Dad?: Nier and Yonah rarely saw their father, who worked in a far away city and died before returning home. Also traces of Disappeared Dad.
  • Where It All Began: The game's plot kicks off when Nier retrieves a wayward Yonah from the Lost Shrine, meeting Grimoire Weiss for the first time. At the end of the game, the Shadowlord's Castle is accessed via a portal at the top of the Lost Shrine. Even Weiss himself comments that it feels strangely nostalgic.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Nier believes, or at least wants so hard to believe, that he's fighting monsters and their demonic overlord for Yonah's sake. The truth is that this isn't that kind of game.
  • Yin-Yang Bomb: Uniting Grimoire Weiss and Grimoire Noir will force all Gestalts into the bodies of Replicants.
  • You Are Number Six: You actually fight a boss called No. 6, who used to be Emil's sister. Also, Emil himself is actually No. 7.
  • You Bastard: The game had might as well change your profile name to "Asshole" for how much it uses this. For all his good intentions, Nier ends up doing some very nasty things... and while he might not be aware of them, the player definitely is.
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