Yu-Gi-Oh! (anime)

caption-width-right:220:The Pharaoh [left] and Yugi.

"I made a wish on that puzzle... for friends I could count on... friends who could count on me! No matter what!"

Following the manga made by Kazuki Takahashi, there were actually two Yu-Gi-Oh anime series: The first anime, which covers the first seven volumes of the manga (though with very major changes, including making Kaiba a more frequently recurring villain), which was made by Toei; and this one, the second series, Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Monsters, was produced by NAS and is adapted from volume 8 onward, rather loosely in some places (and featuring several Filler Arcs).

This second series is probably the reason why you are reading this, since it was the one who made the series popular as it today.

There's a huge amount of video games based on this series, the most famous of which is Yu-Gi-Oh Reshef of Destruction. It spawned a movie called The Pyramid of Light. Yugi and his alter ego return in the Yu-Gi-Oh Tenth Anniversary Movie that teams him up with Juudai and Yusei.

This show in particular is also responsible for the creation of The Abridged Series genre of internet videos, with Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.

This series has Tear Jerker, Nightmare Fuel, Awesome Music, and Character Sheet pages.

For the card game based on the manga and anime, see Yu-Gi-Oh.

This show provides examples of:
"Random Mook (to Yugi): Wow. Your hair's crazy enough for two people!
 * Abandoned Warehouse: Bandit Kieth dueled Yugi in an abandoned warehouse that had its own Duel Monsters arena.
 * Aborted Arc: Beginning in Season 2 of the anime, the stone tablet that would continue to be a plot point for the rest of the series showed Kaiba and Yugi dueling in ancient Egypt. A vision from Isis to Kaiba showed him a vision of the battle. Later in Season 3 another vision of this battle is shown, but it's completely different from the vision showed before. The battle is seen first-hand in Season 5, and is rather underplayed given the amount of foreshadowing and importance given to it before. Furthermore, though they differed greatly both visions showed Kaiba was quite clearly the Pharaoh's enemy, but in Season 5 he's completely loyal and the only reason the battle occurs is because he gets possessed.
 * This can be attributed to Executive Meddling, as Kazuki Takahashi never got to flesh out the story with Seto and Kisara the way he wanted, and rebelling against the Pharaoh was probably intended to be a larger plot point for his story.
 * In the original version of the anime, Kaiba and Atem even point out that the duel was completely different from what they expected. Atem handwaves it, saying the memory world is probably not an accurate representation of what really took place.
 * Also noteworthy is that when it first appears, the tablet does not have Kaiba holding the Millennium Rod--it's just a generic staff, and he doesn't have it in the vision Isis shows Kaiba either. Later the fact Kaiba has the Rod on the tablet becomes a major plot point, and over time the image on the tablet changes to the point it is quite clearly the Millennium Rod. Compare this screencap of the tablet in Season 2, and this screencap in Season 4.
 * Absurdly High Stakes Game: Shadow Games and Duel Monsters. The world is frequently at stake.
 * Abusive Parents: Gozaburo Kaiba, Marik and Isis's father.
 * Accent Adaptation: In the 4Kids dub, Joey/Jonouchi was given a Brooklyn accent to represent his plain speech patterns in the original. On the other hand, Ryou Bakura was given a British accent to reflect his politeness.
 * This is actually really common for dubs, because it's hard to get across the dialectical differences in Japanese into a dub. Jonouchi sounds like a punk when he talks, so they thought the best way to convey that with the Brooklyn accent. Yu-Gi-Oh! isn't the first to do it.
 * Acting Unnatural: Since he and Anzu/Tea are stowaways on the ship to Duelist Kingdom (and Joey wasn't really supposed to be there either), Honda/Tristan advises everyone to "act casual" going past the guards...and then marches past looking ridiculously uncomfortable and suspiciously.
 * Aerith and Bob: By-product of dubbing. 4Kids gave new names to only some of the characters, resulting in completely typical sounding names like Joey, Tristan and Devlin appearing alongside characters like Yugi, Seto, Mokuba, and Bakura. Somewhat jarring when none of the cast themselves ever notice or mention it. Not at all helped by the fact that certain people, like Tea, still had somewhat unusual sounding names after the fact.
 * Joey makes sense as a shortening of Jounouchi, and Honda's name might have been changed to avoid confusion with the car company...but where the heck does one get Tea out of Anzu anyway?
 * In all honesty though, names like Yugi, Seto, Mokuba, and Bakura sound unusual to Japanese ears as well.
 * Agent Peacock: Pegasus is this.
 * Aloof Big Brother: Seto Kaiba.
 * Zigfried von Schroeder may as well count, too.
 * Alternate Universe: The PS 2 game Duelists of The Roses, which takes place during The War of The Roses. Yugi and Yami are two separate people (although they usually are, in the games), and Yugi's friends represent the Tudors, while Kaiba and crew are the White Rose faction. Some fans have actually admitted to reading up on the actual historical events after playing the game!
 * Yu-Gi-Oh Reshef of Destruction is this to the anime's season 4.
 * Alternative Foreign Theme Song: As with all the anime that 4Kids dubs, the English opening is different from the Japanese opening. You can listen to it here.
 * Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Yugi's Millennium Puzzle given that it has the soul of a 3,000 year old Pharaoh in it and tends to be generally badass when it takes over Yugi's body. Actually, most of the Millennium Items in general fit this trope.
 * Ancient Egypt: A large chunk of the characters and artifacts come from this time period. It was also the scene of the final Shadow Game.
 * Angel Face Demon Face: The differences in appearance between Yugi, Bakura, and Marik and when their Yami sides take over. Though Yami Yugi isn't the most demonic per se, and normal Marik isn't the most angelic.
 * Also: when Yugi, during the tabletop roleplaying game with Bakura, uses his ability to turn enemy creatures to the "good" side, they suddenly become extremely cute.
 * Angry Eyebrows: Yugi --> Yami.
 * Animation Anatomy Aging
 * Animation Bump: As a general rule of thumb, the more important episodes are animated with an art style which is superior to that seen during other episodes. The opening/closing sequences are also animated using a cleaner animation style.
 * Anime Hair: Yugi. I mean, just look at it! In fact all the supporting characters tend to be trying to outdo each other in outlandish hairstyles, at the same time.
 * Excluding the Kaiba brothers, though. Their's seem normal enough, for a cereal bowl mullet and a black mop.
 * Lampshaded in the Abridged Series:

Head Mook: Attention, Duelists! My hair is now an internet phenomenon!""

"Gozaburo: "I treated you better than my own son!"
 * Artifact of Doom: Millennium Items tend to give their owners awesome Psychic Powers of some sort. However, more often than not, they will also harbor or lead to the development of their owners' Super Powered Evil Sides, or at least contribute to their Face Heel Turning.
 * Technically, with 4 items to 3, there are more benign or beneficial cases - the necklace, the key, the scales and the puzzle against the eye, the ring and the rod.
 * Art Shift: In the first episode. Once Yami defeats Kaiba and performs a mind crush on him, his face becomes less angular and his eyes gain pupils.
 * Ascended Meme: The nicodouga phenomena relating to the "Enemy Controller" scenes from the Virtual Arc was referenced in a minigame on the Duel Terminal Arcade game. (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C Lud BL Sx 9 LQ)
 * Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Goes from mild (Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood have dinosaur and insect themed decks, respectively) to the truly tasteless (Zombie boy has an all zombie deck).
 * Awesome but Impractical: Pretty much every character's deck only works because of The Magic Poker Equation and that fact that the writers can let them get whatever cards they need. For a fun drinking game, watch the show and take a drink any time a duelist's strategy could be utterly ruined with any simple one-for-one destruction card like Mystical Space Typhoon or Smashing Ground -- cards that no one seems to use, not in multiple copies at least.
 * This continues into the spin-offs as well. Most of the protagonists of GX rely on Fusion monsters, which are horrible for hand advantage and are easily disposed of with any of the mentioned destruction cards. There's a reason real-life VWXYZ and Cyber End Dragon decks don't exist in any seriously competitive capacity, and the Elemental Hero ones rely on cards from the manga -- they just don't work like the anime shows them.
 * A Villain Named Zrg: Zork
 * Ax Crazy:
 * Yami Marik and Yami Bakura.
 * Even our hero Yami Yugi can become Axe Crazy if you get him mad enough.
 * Badass Adorable: Yugi, anyone?
 * Badass Normal: Yugi -- the normal one, not the Pharaoh one -- manages to take out all three God Cards in one turn against Atem.
 * Joey as well who's arguably the most normal of the main duelists.
 * Arguably? He's firmly set himself as the permanent underdog. No one ever thinks he'll win, and he loses the most. He does have some of the more spectacular Ass Pulls in the show, given that his strategy relies on luck of all things.
 * Beam of Enlightenment: Any time one of the characters has a sudden revelation. Mostly when Yami figures out how to beat his opponents.
 * The Bechdel Test: Despite having only one female character stay from the beginning to the end of the story, and having a maximum of 4 important female characters ever in the same scene (or season), it actually passes. But not by much.
 * Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Capsule Monsters only- Alexander the Great had the Millennium Ring.
 * Berserk Button: If you don't want to see a very angry Kaiba, don't tell him Yugi lost a duel.
 * Or when you try to steal his company. Or you kidnap his brother. The guy just has anger issues coupled with the fact that everyone takes cheap shots at him.
 * And if you don't want to anger Jou, don't insult him in any way or harm any of his friends.
 * You want Berserk Button? Try what Yami did to Insector Haga. Never ever threaten Yugi in his Other Self's presence. Just... don't.
 * Between My Legs: This shot is how Rebecca is introduced in her first appearance.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Ryou Bakura is a very sweet, shy, quiet, polite guy. With a Super Powered Evil Side that he's only vaguely aware exists.
 * Yugi later on in the series has also shown that he has the ability to kick ass even without his Other Personality, at times.
 * Also, the Seal of Orichalcos.
 * "Namu" anyone? Bullshit, we know who you are.
 * Big Bad: Kaiba, Pegasus, The Big Five, Noah/Gozaburo, Marik, Dartz, and Zorc/Bakura. Subject to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.
 * Big Damn Heroes: Seems to happen a lot. Notable because oftentimes the mere presence of the friends of whoever is dueling gives them the strength to win, or at least continue playing into the next episode.
 * Big Shut Up: Pegasus tells Dark Bakura to shut up after the latter reads his past like an open book through Duel Monster cards used as Tarot cards.
 * Bilingual Bonus: Played straight with the Egyptian text. Atem's name is written as "Atemu" and the carvings on Rishid's face and Malik's back are genuine hieroglyphs. The author knew what he was doing.
 * Subverted in the anime, where the Enochian text on the Orichalcos cards is a random jumble of nonsense. However, the card title spells "Orichalcon" and the rim of the seal spells "Oreichalcos" twice.
 * Bishonen: And how!
 * Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
 * The spirit of the Millennium Ring, even more so in the manga. In the anime, he has been an antagonist from the beginning, trying to kill the gang in a duel, attempting to kidnap Mokuba because he needed a soulless body, and everything else that happened. In the manga however, he doesn't show any ambitions to kidnap Mokuba, he just helps Honda, making him wonder whether the spirit was now on their side. Sure, Yugi and the others were still a bit wary of him, but by the time the whole Dungeon Dice Monsters/Putting the puzzle together in the fire scenario was going down, they seemed to almost consider him a (not so trust-worthy, admittedly) part of the gang.
 * Slightly different in the anime, but maybe a more literal example, as he used the innocent Bakura as his "sheeps clothing". One could almost never be sure who was in control, one second had Bakura smiling innocently, the next second when the others turned their backs, the spirit smirked.
 * Marik. When he personally meets up with Yugi's friends for the first time, he pretends to just having found Bakura injured. He actually does this to gain their trust. He introduces himself to them as "Namu", acting as a humble beginner who participates in Battle City Tournament. Right afterwards Marik's minions attack and Anzu and Jounouchi get kidnapped, then brainwashed. He keeps up the innocent act later too, claiming to having gotten into finals only because of dumb luck, even as Jounouchi grows suspicious of him. Now, Marik's past and his dark side business considered, he still showed rather malicious personality on his own. He didn't seem to have any regrets of his actions either, except for getting Rishid hospitalized and over the fact that he had blamed pharaoh for the death of his father. Rather, he's just confused why would Yugi want to help him after he tried to kill them all. So it might be that he's still Bitch in sheep's clothing when we see him again later in the series, just maybe not to the same extent as before.
 * Black Box: The IC chips inside the cards have been described as this in the Pyramid of Light novelization.
 * Black Cloak: Marik Ishtar and the other Rare Hunters are garbed like this when we are first introduced to them.
 * Also in the Waking the Dragons arc.
 * Black Magician Girl: Trope Namer due to the "Dark Magician Girl" card, which is actually named "Black Magician Girl" in the original anime.
 * Bland Name Product: Most of the fads, toys, and games in the early parts of the manga. Duel Monsters itself (Initially called Magic and Wizards) was most likely a Bland Name Product of Magic the Gathering before it became the main focus of the series.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: The card known in Japanese as "Shisha Sosei" (literally "Raise Dead") was called "Reborn the Monster" early in the English dub, before changing to "Monster Reborn", which makes a lot more sense.
 * Body Surf: Marik causes much grief to the protagonists by doing this during the Battle City arc.
 * Book Ends: For Yami Bakura's involvement in the overall story, anyways. Both the first and last games the Pharaoh plays against him are RPGs with the souls of his friends at risk
 * For a straighter example, Yugi's winning card in the last duel of the series is Golden Sarcophagus; it's pointed out that the card looks just like the box the Millennium Puzzle was in,
 * Brainwashed and Crazy: Happens quite a bit considering most of the enemies tend to use this trope. Joey and Bandit Keith would be two of the most notable cases -- in both cases by Marik.
 * Break the Haughty: Kaiba gets this a lot.
 * Cheap shots. If they took him on head-to-head, no dice.
 * Broken Bird: Mai Valentine/Kujaku.
 * Broken Bridge: The only thing that keeps Marik from interfering the events of Noah's Arc is... a locked door.
 * Although, he did manage to blow up Noah's control system.
 * Brooding Boy Gentle Girl: Priest Seto and Kisara in Ancient Egypt, Yami Yugi and Tea in the main timeline
 * But Now I Must Go:
 * But Thou Must: The Playstation game Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories does this often.
 * The Sacred Cards does this when you finally collect all three god cards, making it impossible to ever use the third card.
 * Butt Monkey: Jou at times, usually at the hands of Kaiba. Bakura is even more so the Butt Monkey. That might be hard to realize considering that when most people think of Bakura they think of the Dark Spirit that possesses him starting in the first season, but the very fact that he spends little time in control of his own body shows just what a Butt Monkey he really is. When he rarely does come to his senses, he has no idea what's going on, and sometimes must cope with the consequences of the spirit's actions.
 * Remember that when Joey picks a fight with Kaiba, he usually loses, so it's his own damn fault.
 * Calling Your Attacks: "DARK MAGICIAN, DARK MAGIC ATTACK!" "BLUE EYES, COUNTER WITH WHITE LIGHTNING!" and so on ad infinitum. Several of these attacks even have their own cards, which require their monster to be out. Mainly used for important monsters early on, with smaller ones just getting descriptions of what was happening, but later in the series and on through GX and 5D's it reaches silliness of epic proportions.
 * Yami Yugi seemed to use "OBLITERATE" often, for both Exodia and Blue-Eyes.
 * Though, characters will tell the one calling the attacks to shut it. Episode 120 was a good one, even if Kaiba (who told Gozaburo to be quiet) told us what the card did anyway. The "I know what the card does, you fool" was just marvelous.
 * Card Carrying Villain: Oh, come on.
 * Card Games: DURP.
 * CCG Importance Dissonance: Countless examples, the most famous of which being the Dark Magician and the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
 * Those cards did have importance in the early days of the card game, since effect monsters and monster removal, amongst other meta-defining concepts, were few and far between at the time, thus making the game more about which monsters had the higher stats, with BEWD in particular standing alone at the top.
 * Even now, most monsters with 3000 or more ATK have some form of summoning conditions to keep Blue-Eyes White Dragon unique (although these conditions often make such monsters easier to summon that BEWD).
 * Chained By Fashion: Exodia.
 * Chastity Couple
 * Character Development: Mostly for the two Yugis, but everyone gets a decent amount at the least.
 * Chekhov's Gun: Although the fact that we rarely see the characters' entire decks allows players to bring out a previously unseen card to turn the game around, pay close attention when a character specifically singles out or is shown acquiring a new card before a duel. It's bound to be important in the upcoming match.
 * Played straight in the Duelist Kingdom Arc, where Joey is seen trading for Sword and Shield, which he later uses against Ghost/Bonz (Zombie boy) to pull off a win. At the same time he got Kunai Whipchain and Salamandra, which he used to defeat two troublesome monsters in the team duel with the Paradox Brothers, as well as Baby Dragon, which combined with the Time Wizard given to him by Yugi ended up finishing off Mai in his first duel with her.
 * Kuriboh made a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in episode 5 to diffuse one of Weevil's traps, before Yugi brought it back in episode 24 to hold off Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon.
 * Another, ultra-delayed Chekhov's Gun comes from the first title sequence, where Yugi's shadow splits in two, representing his two sides. 220 episodes later, this happens when Yami and Yugi face each other in the ceremonial battle.
 * If the camera ever pays particular attention to the cards that players put in the graveyard when they have to discard cards for some reason, it's likely (though not guaranteed) that at least one of those will have an effect that works in the graveyard, or that the player will otherwise get to use that card later on.
 * Cherry Tapping: Yugi managed to stall off Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon with Kuriboh, labeled as the weakest monster in the game.
 * Yugi seems to have a thing for using weak monsters to deliver a disproportionate bitch slap to his opponent.
 * Whenever he played Capsule Monsters, the game was rigged so that Yugi's monsters were all weaker than his opponent's, yet he destroyed them anyway.
 * The Chew Toy: Joey, to Kaiba.
 * Chronic Hero Syndrome: Yugi
 * Circle of Friendship
 * Clip Show: Episode 74, "The Rescue"
 * Clock Punk: The Ancient Gears.
 * Also, one Shadow Game between Yugi and a collector/thief of rare watches.
 * Closed Circle: In the Virtual World arc.
 * Also in the Dawn of the Duel arc.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Jounouchi/Joey.
 * Cock Fight: Tristan and Duke, over Serenity.
 * Collectible Card Game: DURP DURP.
 * Cooking Duel: Figuratively speaking. The series often stakes the lives of its characters, or even the fate of the world, on a game of Duel Monsters.
 * Cool Big Sis: Mai Kujaku.
 * Cosmic Role-Playing Game: Season 5
 * The Corruption: Multiple instances with various characters. The entire Doma arc works on this.
 * The Cracker: In a scene early episode, Seto Kaiba goes through a Batman-esque security system to reach a sentient computer which he uses to hack into Pegasus's computer system to mess with a duel. Lampshaded, of course, in The Abridged Series.
 * It was, however, a very important duel, as the ownership of his company was on the line, but that only makes the plot seem more ridiculous.
 * Crazy Consumption: Yami Bakura and his steak. Censored in the dub.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: The first Kaiba vs. Joey duel.
 * Zigfried VS Weevil/Rex. In one move.
 * Also the first Yami/Kaiba VS Rare Hunters battle. Kaiba summoned Lord of Dragons AND special-summoned all three Blue Eyes and a spare dragon in just the first move, then summoned Obelisk on Round Two (sacrificing his Blue-Eyes to do so) AND sacrificed his other remaining monsters to activate Obelisk's Total Party Kill special ability to defeat both opposing players (the Pharaoh, for what it's worth, only had enough time to play Kuriboh while all of this was going on except Kaiba wanted to flaunt power).
 * The Winged Dragon of Ra versus basically anything. Except for Bakura's Critical Failure attempt at using it.
 * The first Kaiba/Pegasus battle is one of these as soon as Toon World is played. Later Kaiba smartened up.
 * Nameless Player Mooks versus numerous Designated Villains like Rex and Weevil.
 * Valon defeats Rebecca and Duke on his second turn.
 * Cut and Paste Translation: Most infamously the Shadow Realm concept.
 * Cutesy Dwarf: Yugi.
 * Dan Green: Probably his most iconic role.
 * The Dark Side: Many characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! fall into some Dark Side's trap, usually by trying to use an Artifact of Doom (e.g., Marik, Bakura, Pegasus, Aknadin). Yami Yugi is not immune to this effect.
 * Dead Ex Machina: Yugi gets help from all his petrified friends (and Kaiba) in his head before playing his last turn in the duel against Noah.
 * Dead Little Sister: Pegasus got his Start of Darkness after his beloved Cyndia passed away.
 * And a literal case with Amane, Ryou's little sister who was killed in a car accident. Mostly subverted by the fact that aside from writing her a letter in the manga, her death doesn't seem to have any effect on Ryou's actions. In a series full of significant sibling relationships and characters motivated by protecting/rescuing/avenging their loved ones, it's a little jarring.
 * Considering a big part of his back story was that he felt alone due to his lack of friends, his little sister dying is only going to make that worse. Also, not many people write to their deceased relatives, so some would argue that it's messed him up a little bit.
 * Dead Man Writing: Slightly subverted with Pegasus in the Doma filler saga.  However, one could bring up the manga here...
 * Deadpan Snarker: Later in the 4Kids dub, Bakura is quite good at this.
 * Forget Bakura, Kaiba has been this consistently during the entire show.

Seto: "Thanks for nothing.""

"Seto: "Anyone who's late to my tournament will automatically be disqualified. Mokuba, make sure Wheeler's late.""
 * An even better one:

"Seto: *hardcore laughing* "Aaahh, funny.""
 * Don't forget this gem from the Grand Championship arc:

"Kaiba: So you have a geek army. Is that supposed to scare me?
 * One of his better ones from the Waking The Dragons arc:

Dartz: Only if destroying an innocent soul concerns you.

Kaiba: Nah. As the president of a major company, I have to do that every day."

"Dartz: "You've left yourself open to attack. Rather, you've left yourself open to four attacks!""
 * And then we have Dartz.

"Dartz: "The score stands--Orichalcos one, Seto Kaiba, zip.""

"Kaiba: Alright, that little detour was a complete waste of my time and effort. So let's move on and pretend that nonsense never happened. It's time for us to continue the Battle City Finals! Set us back on course, to Kaiba Corp Island."
 * Death By Childbirth: Marik's mother.
 * Debt Detester: Kaiba claims that Tea helping Mokuba escape from the Rare Hunters is the only reason he's helping Yugi find his friends. Then he uses it as his reason for saving Tea's life. Considering all the times he makes a point of explaining how he's only "helping" the gang out of selfish reasons, it's pretty clear that it's only a shield for his Hidden Heart of Gold.
 * Defeat Means Friendship: Ryuji Otogi/Duke Devlin in the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc.
 * To an extent, Mokuba Kaiba and Marik Ishtar also.
 * And averted hard with Seto Kaiba.
 * Defictionalization: The card game was originally just a plot device thrown into the manga, intended to be the topic of a single plot arc with no real world equivalent -- the manga was supposed to switch to a different game with every plot arc, and originally, the card game didn't even have any real rules, which is obvious in the early parts. Now it is the highest-selling trading card game in the world.
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Mai Kujaku/Valentine for the first few arcs, and then heads back to Arctic levels during most of Season 4 due to her Face Heel Turn.
 * Kaiba may count as a male example, at least in the Japanese version. He becomes more amiable and less openly insulting towards the others.
 * There was actually a moment in Season 1 in which he was considering the truth behind the Heart of the Cards, but he reverted after he was saved by Yugi in the end.
 * Demoted to Extra: Ryou Bakura in the second anime. In the manga, he appears with the main group most of the time after his initial appearance and has tons of screentime, while in the anime, he usually only appears whenever it involves Yami Bakura or if it's Yami Bakura pretending to be the real Bakura (in most cases). Lampshaded in The Abridged Series. Who's Bakura?
 * Inverted in the first anime adaptation, where Ryou is given more screentime even in episodes that correspond to the manga chapters before he was introduced.
 * Depending On the Artist: The first two seasons of the second series anime follow Kazuki Takahashi's manga style pretty well, but the various animators start to show their specific styles around the end of the Battle City finals and into non-manga material. This causes discrepancies between the proportions of the characters; for example, the ever-changing size of Yugi's hair. Some artists, like Kagami Takahiro, are consistent with art and animation. Others, like Kawaguchi Keiichirou, are very Off Model.
 * Designated Victim/Distress Ball: Mai Kujaku/Valentine, subjected to several on-screen losses for the sake of plot advancement, and between the Battle City Finals and Doma, for real.
 * Hiroto Honda/Tristan Taylor falls here too.
 * To be fair, many of Yugi's rivals fall into this trope.
 * Determined Expression: A staple of Kaiba, to the point where many a fanfic has waxed eloquent over his "icy death glare". Yami Yugi usually prefers speech-making, but has been known to utilize this effectively as well. Joey doesn't do this as frequently as Kaiba, but when he does, a crowning moment of awesome will ensue.
 * Deus Ex Machina: Whenever one of the heroes is in a hopeless situation, the solution is often them drawing a card we've never seen or heard of (and in many case never will again) that provides the perfect solution.
 * Deus Exit Machina: The three Egyptian God Cards, which Yugi worked hard to acquire in Seasons 2 and 3, are stolen in the very first episode of Season 4 by the local Quirky Miniboss Squad and are drained of their power. Yugi manages to regain them in time for the final battle, but up until then only one God is used, just once right after the theft, and then by a friggin' Mook, who should have been unworthy of/too weak to use it, but gets to anyway because he has a power that allows him to have limited control over it.
 * Did Do the Research: Though occasionally the exact details are fuddled, the mythological concepts explored throughout the franchise show that someone obviously did their homework.
 * Did You Think I Can't Feel
 * Do Not Adjust Your Set: Kaiba uses this to announce the Battle City Tournament.
 * Dub Induced Plot Hole: In Season 2 Isis/Ishizu arrives in Domino City via plane. A Domino museum official welcomes her "to America." This is contradicted in Season 4 when the protagonists actually travel overseas to America to investigate the local Filler Villains.
 * Dub Name Change: The dub was done by Four Kids Entertainment, after all. Some card names were also changed, for example, Black Magician being renamed to Dark Magician (and the same for the card's female counterpart, Black Magician Girl to Dark Magician Girl) and its corresponding attack card, Black Magic, being renamed to Dark Magic Attack.
 * Dude Where's My Respect: Joey says this almost word for word upon hearing that Kaiba refused to invite him into the Battle City tournament even though he was the runner up in Duelist Kingdom.
 * Lampshaded in Duel Academy's school pledge.
 * Dysfunction Junction: Several characters experienced a tragic and/or depressing event in their life, especially the villains.
 * Early Installment Weirdness: Duelist Kingdom used completely different rules for the card game than later arcs, but at least the rules were consistent within that arc. Before Duelist Kingdom, the manga wasn't completely about Duel Monsters, and was much darker; for example, Ironic Hell as the consequence for whoever lost Yami's shadow games.
 * Ear Worm: The Japanese openings and endings. The biggest offender is Rakuen from season 3.
 * Easily Forgiven: The Kaiba brothers, Pegasus, Malik.
 * Averted in the first anime series, though, where the Kaiba brothers are anything but easily forgiven.
 * Embarrassing Rescue
 * Environmental Symbolism: Whenever Shadi goes into someone's Soul Room with his Millennium Key, which reflects their personality and mental state.
 * Evil Eye: Pegasus's Millennium Eye, possessing the power to read minds and probably do other sinister things. According to Word of God, it also brainwashed Pegasus into creating Duel Monsters, making it a literal evil eye.
 * Evil Is Not a Toy: Nor is it a card game, Pegasus.
 * Evil Sounds Deep: Played straight with Yugi/Yami Yugi and Marik/Yami Marik. Both played straight and subverted by Bakura/Yami Bakura in the original Japanese. Yami Bakura does have a deeper voice than Bakura, but both have a high-pitched squeaky effeminate voice.
 * Also used with Marik when his Super Powered Evil Side isn't in control. When he's pretending to be a protagonist, and after his Heel Face Turn, his voice is higher and softer.
 * Also inverted with Noah; when he's a villain, his voice is high-pitched and bratty, but when he makes his Heel Face Turn, it gets lower and more mature.
 * Played straight with Yugi in the first series anime produced by Toei.
 * Evil Versus Evil: The duel between Yami Marik and Yami Bakura is this.
 * Exactly What It Says On the Tin: A lot of the cards, like "Red-Eyes Black Dragon," "Man-Eating Treasure Chest" and "Dark Magician," just to name a few.
 * Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes upon the Giant Turtle Who Feeds On Flames!
 * Expy: The original manga has "Chopman" working in Death-T 2. He's basically Leatherface, but he did some Jasonesque stuff.
 * Extra Eyes: Pegasus' Thousand-Eyes Restrict.
 * Eye Scream: The series seems to love this trope. Pegasus and Aknadin as the owners of the Millennium Eye have pretty gruesome moments. Then there's Jonouchi stabbing Zork in the eye during the Monster World arc in the manga. Tenma Yakou from Yu-Gi-Oh R has his eye melting out from his face in a surreal scene.
 * Face Framed in Shadow: Every major villain has this going on for them, especially friends who have been made Brainwashed and Crazy.
 * Also used to somewhat hide Yami Yugi's identity, first in Season 0 when Tea wonders who saved her and again in Season 2 for Kaiba during Ishizu's Millennium Necklace visions. The shadow even followed him as he stood up.
 * Fairytale Wedding Dress: In a fantasy sequence in the first anime.
 * Fake Brit: Bakura in the dub.
 * Fiction 500: Seto Kaiba.
 * Fetal Position Rebirth: Yami Yugi at the end of the Orichalcos Arc.
 * Field Power Effect: Various boosting and nerfing cards, as well as terrain.
 * Fighting Series: Using a children's card game.
 * Filler Arc: Virtual World, DOMA, and Kaibacorp Grand Prix.
 * Kaiba hilariously lampshades this directly after the Virtual World Arc, directly after they've all narrowly escaped with their lives.

"dub!Kaiba: "Mokuba, make sure Wheeler is late."
 * Filler Villain: Dartz, Noah, Gozaburo, and Zigfried von Schroder.
 * Five Bad Band: The Big Five, Dartz and his men. You could also make a case for Pegasus' Player Killers if you wanted.
 * Five Man Band
 * The Hero - Yami Yugi/Yugi
 * The Lancer - Jounouchi (Joey)
 * The Big Guy - Honda (Tristan)
 * The Smart Guy - Yugi/Kaiba when he's not being a Jerkass
 * The Chick - Anzu (Tea)
 * The Sixth Ranger - Bakura
 * Flanderization: Kaiba's rude tendencies in the dub. Compare:

Japanese!Kaiba: "Mokuba, please show them around."

dub!Kaiba: "Wait and see, you geeks haven't seen the last of me." (Paraphrasing.)

Japanese!Kaiba: "One day, I will invite you [to Kaiba Land].""

"Marik: "My name is Marik"
 * Bakura, (lampshaded in the Abridged Series too):

Japanese!Bakura: "I'm Bakura."

dub!Bakura: "I don't care.""

"Seto: If I had a dime for every time you said the word destiny, I'd be even richer."
 * Freudian Excuse:
 * Also Seto, arguably, given his orphaned childhood and history with Gozaburo.
 * Friendless Background: Yugi had one of these before finishing the puzzle.
 * Friendship Moment: Given the main theme of the series, there's bound to be plenty of this.
 * A really touching one in particular it's between Yami and Yuugi; after Yuugi is discharged from the hospital after his duel with Bandit Keith, he becomes uncharacteristically quiet and gloomy. Even though he knows something is troubling him, Yami decides to patiently wait for Yuugi to voice his concerns, and only then he realizes that Yuugi had been afraid of losing him after his duel with Keith, and now feared that Yami would leave him someday. So Yami, knowing full well that one day he would have leave his side, tells him that despite what he had to do, he wanted to be with him forever. And Yuugi, realizing as well that Yami would have to go, replies that he also wished for them to be together; even if the Pharaoh didn't get his memory back, he and Yuugi would make new memories together.
 * Fun Size: Yugi Mutoh and Yami.
 * Gag Dub: Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series, The Abridged Series' Trope Maker.
 * Geo Effects: Field Power Bonus. Emphasized very much earlier in the card game, but dies out to only Field Spell Cards by the Duelist Kingdom finals.
 * Genki Girl: Mana, whose introduction consisted of jumping out of a vase to glomp the pharaoh.
 * Get a Hold of Yourself Man: Yami gets one of these from Joey in the form of a punch to the face.
 * Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Rebecca had a teddy bear that she regularly spoke to in her first appearance. By the time she reappears in the Doma arc however, she's ditched the "cutesy little girl" angle, and Teddy is nowhere to be seen.
 * Gotta Catch Em All: Averted -- even though the show is largely about a collectible card game, the actual collection aspect is barely seen, with most characters pulling new cards out of nowhere during duels rather than explicitly obtaining them through booster packs or trades.
 * Yugi's grandpa owns a trading card/game shop and Kaiba is rich. The second season has the rule that a loser must hand over their rarest card after they lose, with Joey's (formerly Rex Raptor's) Red Eyes Black Dragon being a significant plot point. Joey often uses cards he received from winning, such as Jinzo.
 * Possibly an Aversion of a Subversion (maybe?). Unlike in real life, where serious players usually have 2 or more decks at once for a Collectable Card Game, all the characters in Yu-Gi-Oh have only 1 deck that they retool constantly. That being said, those retoolings might as well count as entirely separate decks unto themselves.
 * Mai Kujaku, who switches from Harpies to Amazons from Duelist Kingdom to Battle City, is probably the closest-to-real-life player in that she has an entirely new deck, though she still includes her Harpies. Then again, can you blame Kaiba for wanting Blue-Eyes in every deck?
 * The Pharaoh does, at one point, buy a booster pack which contains a card seen in later duels. While on a date with Anzu. Who notes grimly that it's the happiest he'd been thus far.
 * Played straight on the part of the evil version of Bakura, who wants to collect all the Millennium Items so he can rule the world.
 * Depends on which version of Bakura from which version of the anime (or manga) you ask, though collecting them all is still featured prominently either way. Also in Season 0 when he would collect the souls of his victims into miniatures.
 * In Season 0, Yugi's Grandpa said that Capsule Monsters was not a collection game, but the epitome of a fighting game. Yami Yugi later echoed this in delivering his Poetic Justice.
 * Yugi when it comes to games in general - he has every kind of game imaginable in his room. He even went as far as going to a rival gaming shop (which his grandfather was highly against) just so he could get his hands on the newest game they were marketing (Dungeon Dice Monsters).
 * Graceful Loser: Pegasus, who after being thoroughly trounced by Yami, fulfills his promise by releasing the souls trapped in cards and stops causing problems for the protagonists.
 * Averted with Kaiba though, especially his manga incarnation, who takes the concept of "sore loser" up to some levels.
 * Billion-dollar theme park of death, anyone?
 * Grade School CEO: Seto Kaiba won Kaiba Corp from his step-dad when he was a teenager, and turned it from a weapons-manufacturer to a gaming company.
 * Grand Theft Me: Gets attempted MANY times. Usually tends to fail, but succeeds on rare occasions.
 * Gratuitous English: Pegasus in the Japanese anime.
 * "UNBELIEVABLE! Kore wa NIGHTMARE!"
 * Most of the cards have names in Gratuitous English too; Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Blue-Eyes White Dragon are completely unchanged from the Japanese version.
 * Hacker Cave: Owned by Seto Kaiba.
 * Ham to Ham Combat: Although many duels feel this way, the Yugi vs. Kaiba ones are the greatest examples. At some points it feels like their voice actors are competing to see who can do the most over the top performance and still keep it in the final cut.
 * The Yami Marik vs. Yami Bakura duel is a fabulous example of this, especially since most of their dialogue consists of them making very enthusiastic death threats to each other.
 * Hannibal Lecture: During every single duel against a major rival.
 * Hard Work Hardly Works: Yugi plays it straight, Joey/Jounouchi actually earns his wings through hard work.
 * We're talking about a card game here. Two years practice tops is all anybody needs to be good at it...
 * Along with several thousand dollars spent on building a deck.
 * And yet the two finalists in Duelist Kingdom were still in high-school, one of whom had to work just to pay for his own school. Although, he won pretty much of his duels in that arc using either Time Wizard (gift from Yugi) or Red-Eyes B. Dragon (won from Rex using Time Wizard). After that, he always wins using either a rare card he won or just luck.
 * Yugi has always been extremely talented at games.
 * Healthcare Motivation: The reason Jono-uchi participates in the Duelist Kingdom tournament.
 * Heart of the Cards is an Awesome Power: Because in a Gaming and Sports Anime And Manga, being able to choose what cards you draw in a duel means everything.
 * Heel Face Turn: Malik, and in the anime, Pegasus.
 * Heroic Safe Mode: Yami to Yugi.
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Yugi and Yami Yugi, Joey and Tristan.
 * Yugi and Joey are like this as well, with Yugi calling Joey his best friend. It gets to the point that,, Yugi does his best to help Joey and, when Yugi thinks he's about to die, he tells Joey that he loves him.
 * Hilarious in Flashback: Grandpa Muto makes a vow in a flashback that if he ever loses a game, he'll give up adventuring, open a game shop and wear overalls for the rest of his life.
 * Hollywood Hacking: Complete with virtual doors that can be blown up with virtual dynamite...
 * Homage: The card game was originally intended as a homage to Magic the Gathering, of which Takahashi is a fan.
 * Hostage for McGuffin: So much so (especially with Kaiba's little brother Mokuba) that LittleKuriboh's Gag Dub of the show has an entire running gag built around it.
 * Hot for Teacher: Subject to interpretation, but Mana in the anime is very devoted to Mahad. Her goal through season five is to become a better magician, both because it's his will for her and because she wants to be able to summon and see his spirit. "Prince can summon him from the tablet, right? Please! Bring me and Master together!" She talks or thinks about him in every scene, and her other goal is to always be with and protect him... which she succeeded in, if the existence of the Black Magician Girl in modern times is any indication. One must note that the subtext is only present in the Japanese version -- 4Kids rewrote her dialogue and character entirely until she and Mahad have nothing but a classroom relationship.
 * Hot Blooded: Jou/Joey.
 * Bakura, especially as Thief King Bakura in season five. He makes the most arrogant pronoun ever (Ore-sama) sound good in constant use, and... 'ORE-SAMA NO TURN!'
 * Sort of lampshaded in the Japanese anime. In a duel between Yami Bakura and Yami Malik, Bakura shouts "Ore-sama no turn!" to which Malik replies "You're no ore-sama."
 * Hybrid Overkill Avoidance: Usually averted, but played straight in the first tournament when Yugi fused his Mammoth Graveyard to Kaiba's Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon to slowly weaken it.
 * I Am Your Opponent: Used a few times by Yugi.
 * I Never Said It Was Poison: You could practically make a drinking game out of the number of times this basic scenario shows up: Yugi activates a card effect. Opponent believes it to be targeting their best monster and make moves to protect it, scoffing Yugi's "wasted effort." Yugi then reveals he was going after something else instead. Opponent has a massive Oh Crap moment and, usually, loses shortly thereafter.
 * Idiot Ball: In the first ever duel between Joey and Kaiba, Joey's entire strategy could be summed up as "summon monster to attack." He apparently forgot that his monsters weren't nearly strong enough to beat Kaiba's, but he just kept summoning them and having them attack Kaiba's monsters, so they'd be destroyed instantly and cost him points. He never shows this level of stupidity in any duel before or after this. Justified as he was unfamiliar with the Duel Disk technology and didn't know how to set monsters in defense mode.
 * Yugi's largest Idiot Ball was when, in his duel against Pegasus, he summoned Celtic Guardian to attack Toon Mermaid, hoping to destroy them both. If Toon Mermaid merely dodged the attack, as Toon Blue-Eyes had done before, Pegasus would attack Celtic Guardian with Toon Summoned Skull, winning the duel. But then, Yugi was under a considerable amount of stress.
 * Here's a drinking game--watch the series and take a drink every time a duelist makes a move and doesn't notice the opponent has countered it until its too late. Blame Rule of Drama, since apparently if it'll make for a dramatic twist then duelists can activate cards without announcing such (ie, Isis activating Blast Held By A Tribute to "secret" infect Obelisk without saying so). However, in the real card game every play of a card must be announced and your opponent given a chance to respond if they are able, and if they choose not to they don't get to just rewind and change their minds once you begin to make another move.
 * If I Had a Nickel:
 * If I Had a Nickel:

"PENALTY GAME!"
 * I Have Your Wife: Used by various villains throughout the series. The target is usually Mokuba, who is kidnapped a grand total of 15 times.
 * I Just Want to Have Friends: When Yugi first completes the puzzle, he makes a wish on it to have some true friends.
 * I Know You're in There Somewhere Fight: Yugi has one of these with Joey/Jounouchi when Marik takes control of him.
 * Ill Girl: Shizuka/Serenity.
 * In the End You Are On Your Own
 * Inaction Sequence: Very, very often.
 * Inadequate Inheritor: Gozaburo to Seto.
 * Indy Escape: Subverted during Duelist Kingdom. The boulder in question was just a balloon with a speaker in it.
 * Ineffectual Loner: Seto Kaiba.
 * Informed Ability: The Kaiba brothers -- for all of their supposed awesome skill at playing their favourite games they tend to fall for very simple ruses. Mokuba and Yugi's Capsule Monsters match was an especially blatant example.
 * I guess there's a reason why we never see Yugi and Seto play chess. King of games or not, but you can't use the heart of the chess piece to win a game. And there are no power ups (other then promoting pawns, which isn't too hard to see coming) or convenient special abilities.
 * Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood were in a tournament championship facing each other right before the Duelist Kingdom arc. Yet from then on out they never pose much of a threat to, well, pretty much anyone, effectively becoming recurring joke characters who sure don't look like champions of any level of tournament.
 * Rex is an unfortunate case. Of all the duels he lost in the canon arcs almost all of them were against opponents who were willing to cheat or against Joey (who won by dumb luck). Admittedly we don't see anything to suggest that Weevil cheated in their first duel but considering that it was Weevil who threw Yugi's cards into the ocean it wouldn't be too surprising.
 * The same could be said of Weevil/Haga really. Joey had quite a bit of dumb luck (namely dice and perfect draws) against him as well. Other than that, Weevil went up against Yuugi/Yami Yugi twice and did very well both times. Certainly Weevil cheats but he's still shown to have great skill. The cheating only seems to serve as a supplement to his own abilities, or because he enjoys it. Other than Joey, Weevil's only ever lost to exceedingly great duelists. The main reason he becomes a joke character is because he's a Smug Snake who Can't Catch Up as far as powerful cards go.
 * Insult to Rocks: "You know, I'm not quite sure what to call you. I was thinking about 'monster'... but I wouldn't want to insult the cards."
 * Intergenerational Friendship: Big time.
 * Interplay of Sex and Card Games: Yami Malik seems prone to causing this.
 * Invincible Incompetent: Katsuya Jonouchi (Joey Wheeler) perpetually comes from behind to win. Granted, everyone does this, but Joey never seems to be picked as a favorite to win anything, despite several finals showings.
 * Ironic Echo: In season one, Kaiba threatens that he'll fall from the castle's battlement if Yugi wins the duel, so Yugi forfeits in fear that Yami would finish Kaiba off.. In season five, Yugi again faces the decision of defeating his opponent in a duel to kill him. In this case, the opponent is . Yugi hesitates on finishing the duel, but carries it out, as this time, the reason is.
 * I Will Show You X: When Tristan has an open crush on Joey's sister Serenity, which Joey is none too pleased about. At one point in the English dub, Tristan talks about how he's going to visit Serenity (read:hit on her) in the hospital, to which Joey responds "I'll send you to the hospital!"
 * It Meant Something to Me
 * Jerkass: Kaiba.
 * Bandit Keith is a bigger one. He and his Mooks trapped Yugi and the gang in a cave, and he also stole Jounouchi's Glory of the King's Hand card while he was sleeping.
 * Jerk With a Heart of Gold: Jounouchi/Joey and Honda/Tristan.
 * Joker Jury: In the dub version of the Virtual World arc, Johnson, whose Deckmaster and appearance is that of Judge Man, claims he is putting Joey on trial for gambling.
 * He then proceeds to make every trial joke imaginable.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: Because of some legal issue, it's impossible outside Japan to find any official release of the anime other than the edited dub version. 4Kids attempted to release unedited DVDs of the show, and later put subtitled episodes directly on YouTube, but both of these releases were cancelled, leaving people who don't want to endure 4Kids' edits out of luck if they want to be legitimate customers.
 * Little Kuriboh has noted that he doesn't abridge "Season 0" because high-quality footage of that series is impossible to find, but of course it has to exist somewhere out there because there's many fansubs of it. (He was right.)
 * The Kid With the Remote Control: In the Toei anime Capmon story,
 * Killer Yoyo: Hirutani's gang in one story in the manga and one story in the Toei anime
 * Knight Templar Parent: This is about the nicest description possible for the way Gozaburo Kaiba raised his children. Although it was probably really just the company he was worried about.
 * Lawyer Friendly Cameo: Seiya and Shiryu make a cameo here!
 * Lethal Joke Item: Some cards are weak or nearly-useless on their own but devastating in the right circumstance. For example, the Ojamas, three monsters with 0 Attack, but have a support card that can wipe out all opposing monsters, spells, and traps, and can fuse into a potent defensive wall. Or the four Parodius monsters, each with minimal ATK and DEF, but which can combine with one another as Union Cards to have absurd ATK and DEF.
 * Baby Dragon was the earliest example. It starts with only 1200 ATK, easily destroyed, but with Time Wizard, it becomes Thousand Dragon, with 2400 ATK, stronger than most cards in the game.
 * Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: They settle every conceivable difference via a collectible card game, for cryin' out loud!
 * Lighter and Softer: The second-series anime.
 * And within that anime, the KC Grand Prix. A breather arc with a campy villain whose crime is not mine-rape, not soul-stealing, but hacking into Kaiba's computer system.
 * The Load: Mokuba. Serenity. Also Tea and Tristan, who were pretty much just around to provide moral support (Lampshaded multiple times).
 * Lovely Assistant: Stage Magician Arkana was in love with his Lovely Assistant, Catherine, and they were engaged--before his disfiguring accident. Although Catherine still loved him, Arkana pushed her away. He later regretted his choice and fell in with Marik when he promised he could restore Catherine to him.
 * Love Makes You Evil: Pegasus' motive. Also Akunadin to some extent.
 * Love Martyr: Odion.
 * Luke I Am Your Father: Akunadin and Priest Seto in the Memory World Arc.
 * Lull Destruction
 * The Magic Poker Equation: Arguably Yu-Gi-Oh's central trope, where "important" players have an uncanny ability to draw the only card that will help them. Some adaptations present that drawing is a matter of skill, determination and faith, and the duelists are aware of this fact.
 * Episodes 41 and 42, while an otherwise unremarkable pair of filler episodes, shows Yugi and Rebecca's duel, which apparently goes exactly like a duel their grandfathers played decades earlier, turn for turn, card for card.
 * Lampshaded in the anime arc Waking the Dragons, along with Plot Armor, in the English dub by Rex Raptor/Dinosaur Ryuzaki, when he and Weevil Underwood/Insector Haga witness Yugi use the Eye of Timaeus with Dark Magician Girl. He mentions how Yugi and company tend to draw the cards they need at the right moment, but he and Weevil don't.
 * Mark of the Beast: If a character has a glowing eye symbol on their forehead, has Mind Control Eyes, and talks in a creepy superimposed voice, it's most likely that Marik is remotely possessing them using his Millennium Rod.
 * If you find someone with a green circle on their forehead, they probably want your soul so they can feed it to their ancient beast.
 * Meaningful Name: Happens for a couple of characters, particularly the (ancient) Egyptian ones:
 * If Marik's name were transliterated differently when moving into the English dub, it would be the Arabic name Malik (or "ملك" in Arabic), which is based on the words for "king" or "possessor" in the Arabic language. Incidentally, Marik possesses several people and wants to be the pharaoh/king of Egypt/the world as a Big Bad.
 * Also Odion's name in the Japanese version is Rashid (or "راشد"), meaning "rightly guided" in Arabic. Odion/Rashid is Marik/Malik's older adopted brother and serves as one of his two Morality Pets in the series.
 * Shadi's name is only a phoneme different from the ancient Egyptian word shabti. Shabti are figurines placed in tombs among funerary goods so they can be servants to the tomb's owner in the afterlife. Using representative figurines replaced killing actual servants for this sole purpose. Shadi guards the Millennium Items' original resting place and  And like Malik's and Rashid's names, the name "Shadi" is also Arabic in origin, reflecting that all these characters come from modern Egypt where Arabic is the official language.
 * There's also Ishizu, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. Isis is the queen of magic, dedicated wife to her murdered and undead husband Osiris, and honored for being a good mother to her son Horus. Ishizu is a Mysterious Waif of a character who can see the future using her Millennium Necklace. One of her major goals is to stop her Face Heel Turned younger brother Marik from being villainous. She is also another one of Marik's Morality Pets.
 * "Yugi" means "game"
 * Yami means dark or shadow, which means that "Yami Yugi" means "Shadow Game."
 * Oh, also, the whole Yu Jou thing. Take the initial syllables of Yugi and Jounouchi's first names and you get the Japanese word for "friendship." (Which manifests itself in real life as the "Yu Jo Friendship" card.)
 * And the fact that Seto Kaiba, the most dragon-obsessed guy in the cast's surname translates to "sea dragon." On a related note, the same guy's first name translates to "shallow man."
 * There's an even weirder couple of meanings behind his name. "Seto" is basically the Japanese pronunciation of "Set". Combine this with Yugi's name ("Game", "Set", Match) for one meaning, but for the other, Set was the Egyptian desert god, a completely appropriate name for a.
 * Possibly unintentional, but the English surnames for Jonouchi, Anzu and Honda are all occupations: Wheeler, Gardner and Taylor.
 * Yami's real name
 * Mind Rape:

"Computer: It looks like you're just pressing the same buttons over and over.
 * Morality Pet: Mokuba Kaiba.
 * More Than Mind Control: Dartz in Season 4.
 * The So Bad Its Good Movie
 * Ms. Fanservice: Mai Valentine and Dark Magician Girl.
 * Multicolored Hair: Yugi, and his grandfather.
 * Mundane Made Awesome:
 * "Card games are serious business."
 * Dramatically animated belt clipping-on sequence?
 * Musical Pastiche: The track "The Priests" in the Japanese OST is a pastiche of the transformation theme from Cyber Team in Akihabara, it's not too surprising since both show's share the same composer, Shinkichi Mitsumune
 * Musical Spoiler: As if the Like You Would Really Do It nature of the scene is not enough, the lack of the "Life Points hitting 0" sound effect when  makes it very obvious that the duel is not over.
 * My Little Panzer: Duel Monsters is such a safe game for little kids, isn't it?
 * Subverted: By itself, the game is perfectly safe; it's the duelists like the Ghouls that add in their own, more dangerous, rules or invoke the dark magic of the Millennium Items that make it so dangerous.
 * Necromantic: Pegasus.
 * Necessary Fail
 * Never Say Die: In the English dub, at least.
 * Except for Episode 8 where Kaiba tells Pegasus' men he'd rather die than be captured and promptly leaps to his supposed death, which is mentioned in the next episode where Yugi duels Kaiba's "corpse".
 * New Powers As the Plot Demands: Frequently, characters reveal to have cards in their decks that they never used before (and never will use again), but which help them win the current duel.
 * The Winged Dragon Of Ra is especially guilty of this; it seems like every time Yami Marik plays it, Ra just happens to have a previously-unused power that just happens to perfectly counter his opponent's new winning strategy.
 * New Rules As the Plot Demands: Duelist Kingdom is this writ large. Some make at least a bit of sense, like flying monsters having an advantage over land-based monsters, or machine monsters rusting due to a mist over the field. Others just plain have no basis in fact at all, most prominently the infamous Catapult Turtle move Yugi uses to defeat Panik. However, Duelist Kingdom is stated to use custom rules specific to the tournament.
 * Once the rules were written and pinned down in Battle City, this turned into "New Cards As the Plot Demands," with duelists producing cards never before seen at just the right time. Many of these cards exist for Rule of Cool, as there are other pre-existing cards that do the same thing as the new card but don't fit the theme of the duelist's deck. Change of Heart for example has equivalents with Yugi and Kaiba in the forms of Brain Control and Enemy Controller.
 * There's also a ton of cards that were created to allow the duelists to draw cards so the writers can keep their hands filled, such as Card of Last Will, Card of Demise, Nibelung's Ring, and especially Card of Sanctity. Kaiba's "Power Balance" in particular is ridiculously overpowered in this regard, requiring the opponent to discard half their hand and then allowing the user to draw the same number of cards discarded, all with no drawbacks. But hey, it added tension to his duel with Yugi so why not? Though it doesn't beg the question why he only uses it once.
 * Lapses of the random new rules still occurred: Jinzo is supposedly immune to Time Wizard's effect due to being made of special metal, and Yugi uses the effect of Kaiba's "Flute of Summoning Dragon" to call a dragon of his own. Neither of these supposed rules ever comes up again.
 * Nietzsche Wannabe: During the duel between Joey and Yugi in the Duelist Kingdom finals, Pegasus's narration, at least in dub town, slips into this. To quote:
 * "Oh, I know you'd like to think that your friendship would be enough to sustain you through any mishap or misfortune, but that's not the way the world works."
 * "... when fate hits you with a cold slap of reality and shows you who's boss. Yes, the world has taught me that only the strong and the ruthless survive."
 * Kaiba is seen reading Nietzche in his first appearance. (In the Japanese, at least.) No better way to paint yourself a villain immediately, aye?
 * Maybe. Maybe not. Anyone who reads Nietzche and truly understands his philosophy would know how to be the Ubermensch, a character that some would think is a villian, but can be a hero (think Batman).
 * No Kill Like Overkill: Numerous times, characters will pointlessly weaken themselves in order to boost their monsters powers or completely clear the field before delivering a final blow so that not only do their opponents life points drop to 0, but all their monsters are gone too. This being in situation where they could save themselves the trouble and just attack outright and win.
 * A prime example is Atem's fight with Weevil, after the latter pretended to destroy Yugi's soul just to get a rise out of the Pharoah. Atem used a card that let his monster attack directly every time he drew a monster card, and proceeded to pound Weevil again and again, long after his Life Points ran out. He would've kept going too, if Tea hadn't stopped him.
 * Noble Demon: Seto Kaiba.
 * Non Human Undead: In the first tournament, Yugi defeats Kaiba's Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon by fusing his Mammoth Graveyard into it... which, because both are incompatible types, slowly weakens the resulting fusion and will cause it's eventual death. After this, the rule is never referenced again.
 * Another example are Bonz's monsters brought back from the grave.
 * Not a Date: Anzu/Tea goes on one of these with the Pharaoh.
 * Not Just a Tournament: Virtually every Tournament Arc, to the point where it's commented in-story how refreshing it is to go to a tournament that's only a tournament (it still manages to get hijacked by a villain's scheme, but at least that wasn't in the host's plans).
 * Obvious Trap: The point of Odion's deck is to focus on laying tons of trap cards and then wait for the opponent to spring them. Thing is, he makes the point to play almost no monsters thereby leaving him wide open to attack except for his traps, which you know will protect him, he's not stupid. Unless you pack an insane amount of spell/trap destruction or run an unorthodox deck theme, you're gonna have to attack him sooner or later, and when you do, he'll be ready to turn it back on you. Joey found this out the hard way.
 * Joey and Mai later learn Marik also plays a lot of traps, which are even more brutal and painful than anything Odion used.
 * Besides the specific duelists, quite often the characters know the opponent has a dangerous trap waiting, but they acknowledge if they want to win they either need to find a way around it, or trigger it and hope they can come back from whatever it does.
 * Off Model: Several moments. These actually make some of the more threatening characters even scarier.
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Yugi vs. Jonouchi immediately after Battle City, even if we know Joey won (he was battling Yugi for his Red-Eyes and is shown to have gotten it back). Both mediums skip this.
 * Oh Crap: Being on the receiving end of a spell, trap, or ability that they didn't see coming.
 * Older Is Better: The older your magic, the better it is.
 * Older Than They Look: Yugi.
 * Oddly Named Sequel: Yu-Gi-Oh GX; Yu-Gi-Oh 5 Ds; Yu-Gi-Oh Ze Xal.
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: To the point where Kaiba stalks Yugi for an entire episode in Season Zero because he suspects someone else is trying to defeat him in a duel.
 * Not to mention the hissy fit Kaiba throws upon learning Yugi has 'allowed' someone else to defeat him in Season 4.
 * Outrun the Fireball: At the end of the Virtual World arc, Kaiba presses a Big Red Button, sacrificing the greater part of his blimp to accomplish this.
 * Orgasmically Delicious: Bakura's steak, in the manga. In the anime it was more Crazy Consumption.
 * Orphanage of Fear: According to Kaiba, at least.
 * The Other Darrin: Tristan's original voice (the one that gives him super-strength) was Sam Riegel. He was then replaced by Frank Frankson.
 * Mai Valentine: Megan Hollingshead --> Bella Hudson.
 * Mokuba Kaiba: Tara Jayne --> Caroline Lawson.
 * Overtook the Manga
 * Panty Shot: Joey and Tristan randomly lifting up Tea's skirt in class and yelling "Panty tank!"
 * Also in Season 0, Joey uses a Yo-Yo to accidentally cause a dangerous flurry of wind toward Anzu and Miho.
 * Parental Abandonment
 * The Password Is Always Swordfish: Pegasus isn't very password-savvy, is he?
 * Well, in his defense, the place where the password needed to be entered was so far into the program that it seemed impossible that anybody could get that far. Shame that Kaiba isn't just "anybody".
 * In the original anime, the password is "Alcatraz," which matches the scene - an island prison which, once entered, can never be left.
 * Pensieve Flashback: The Kaiba brothers experience these in spades during the Virtual Nightmare arc.
 * Phantom Zone Picture: People's souls were trapped within the cards.
 * Pinball Scoring: Every card in the anime does base damage/bonuses/etc in increments of 100; the actual card game has a handful that have 50s.
 * In the Duelist Kingdom season, there were a few duels where damage/bonuses were calculated by percentages of other stats, creating some odd prime numbers. From Battle City on, most all the numbers ended in even 0's.
 * Unless you're Marik, in which case you can have attack points that end in --99.
 * A few monsters have ATK or DEF stats that aren't divisible by 50. Castle of Dark Illusions has 920 ATK and 1930 DEF, Reaper of the Cards has 1380 ATK and 1930 DEF, King of Yamimakai has 2000 ATK and 1530 DEF, and Seven-Armed Fiend has 666 ATK and 666 DEF (1000/1000 in the Dub).
 * Pint Sized Powerhouse: Yugi.
 * Plot Tumor: The ultimate one, possibly. Originally, the manga was not about any specific game, much less a single card game. He's supposed to be the King of Games.
 * Lampshaded in The Abridged Series. Yugi is just referred to as "The King Of Card Games".
 * To be fair, after the point where the Plot Tumor hits, the card game is only played during Duelist Kingdom saga, the Battle City saga, and the Ceremonial Battle. In the manga, the Dungeon Dice Monsters saga and the Pharaoh's Memory saga are almost completely devoid of Duel Monsters. It's much more prevalent in the second series anime, where even flashbacks to chapters where the card game wasn't even introduced yet in the manga were altered to involve cards. This also doesn't stop every other related spin-offs from focusing exclusively on the card game after the original manga ended.
 * Powered By a Forsaken Child: Creating the Millennium Items required a sacrifice of 99 human lives.
 * Power Levels
 * Power Makes Your Hair Grow: When Yugi, Bakura and Marik become possessed by the spirits of the Millennium Items (or in Marik's case, their hair gets even more ridiculous than usual.
 * The Power of Friendship: Prior to the card game Plot Tumor, this was going to be the main theme of the series. It still has a fairly strong presence. Occasionally to the point of Narm.
 * Word of God says that it was the intended main theme the whole way through. The card game Plot Tumor just created alot of Misaimed Fandom, that's all.
 * Power Trio
 * Beauty Brains and Brawn: Shizuka, Anzu and Mai.
 * Blonde Brunette Redhead: Mai, Anzu and Shizuka.
 * Freudian Trio: The Doma arc.
 * The Kirk: Yugi/Yami
 * The McCoy: Jounouchi
 * The Spock: Kaiba
 * Pragmatic Adaptation: Many actually prefer the English opening for the darker and more mythical feel it gives the series, as opposed to the J-Pop opening of the Japanese ones, not to mention the sheer Narm Charm of "It's time to D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-DUEL!"
 * Princesses Rule: Princess Adina, ruler of Simlow, in Kaiba's virtual world.
 * Promotion to Parent: Seto Kaiba.
 * Psychic Powers: The Millennium Items give their owners a variety of psychic powers, depending on the item. Some examples being mind crushing, mind raping, locating and identifying other Millennium Item holders, mind reading, visiting someone's mental landscape, seeing the future, and possessing other people.
 * Don't forget how Bakura used his Millennium Ring to.
 * Put On a Bus: Bakura. So in this case, it would be more like Villain On A Bus.
 * Bandit Keith in the anime, who, after losing his duel with Yugi, is never mentioned in the story again.
 * Quest for Identity: The second series. The pharaoh in particular.
 * Rage Quit: Several times, low rank villains will screw the rules and attempt to get their job done directly. This has had varying levels of success.
 * This is especially fatal in a Shadow Game, which enforces the rules very strictly and very harshly.
 * Rapid Fire Typing: Seto Kaiba often utilizes this whenever he's operating or hacking into a computer.
 * Parodied in Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series:

Kaiba: That's because I learned how to hack by watching old episodes of Star Trek!"

"Noah: Seriously though, that was splendid, Yugi! You possess both the skill and judgement necessary to catch your enemies off guard the second they lose focus. When you think about it, you and I have no reason to be enemies. If you swear your loyalty to me, I'll save all your friends from hell this very instant!"
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: Kaiba, most notably.
 * To anyone unfortunate enough to lose to him. Joey is victim to this more often than not.
 * Tea, of all people, turns out to be surprisingly good at these, although she doesn't give them often. She gives one to Kaiba at Duelist Kingdom, although it's more of a "the reason Yugi is better than you" speech. Then there's the time she let Johnny Steppes have it for running away when his duel with Yami got too difficult.
 * Recap Episode
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Red Eyes Take Warning: Hey, did Yugi's irises just turn red? Better start running.
 * Reincarnation: Gets rather complicated.
 * It's slightly less complicated if you look at the Ancient Egyptian concept of soul. One of the key pieces being the "ren" or name implies Kazuki may have done this on purpose.
 * Heck, it only makes it more complicated. Consider how differently Kaa and Baa in season five behave to their Ancient Egyptian counterparts (and don't even try to come to a strict definition of how the soul parts work in Ancient Egyptian writings). A tip: never sit down with two fans who also like to study Ancient Egypt and ask them whether the series is accurate to Ancient Egyptian mythology or not. They might have matching opinions... or you might end up with a monstrous debate on the topic.
 * Well, it was only the dub which decided to call Yuugi . In the Japanese version of that scene, Ishizu just said that she believed that Yuugi had been fated to be Atem's host. The real confusion is caused by the
 * Reincarnation Romance: Seto and Kisara.
 * Road Sign Reversal: The Marik-brainwashed Bandit Keith has set up arrows to lure Yugi into a trap. Yami Bakura flips the arrows around so Yugi's friends can't follow.
 * Rousseau Was Right: Numerous bad guys including  all seem hopelessly callous and evil only to eventually prove to be good at heart, whether by exorcism of an evil side or simple persuasion, usually by Yugi or Pharaoh. Seto Kaiba is also routinely obnoxious and cold yet occasionally proves to have a compassionate side, which is usually related to his love for his little brother Mokuba.
 * Rule of Empathy
 * Rule of Symbolism: The author intended to have the cards represent the character and personality of their users.
 * Rule Thirty Four: Usually done with Dark Magician Girl, Tea/Anzu, and Mai, but other instances exist.
 * Most notable is what the Crump v. Tea duel in the Virtual World arc spawned.
 * Sadly Mythtaken: An Ancient Egyptian card game, for starters...
 * Screw Destiny: It's revealed in the final arc that one of the Millennium Puzzle's abilities is to "alter fate", which in the context of the Duel Monsters, allows him to change the card he's going to draw as long as he believes it will happen hard enough, rendering every past example of Yugi drawing the exact card he needed by "Believing in the heart of the cards" more than just good luck.
 * Kaiba manages this rule in the Battle City Arc. Screw Destiny, I have money!
 * He also changes the future itself by following his instincts and
 * Screw The Rules, I Have Money!: The Gag Dub is the Trope Namer.
 * Occurs within the series itself. Kaiba does it, of course. Pegasus, however, even makes special cards that never go into circulation just so that it gives him an advantage.
 * Didn't help him in the movie, much -- but his loss did end up giving Kaiba his best creature ever because of it, though, so Kaiba fans can't complain.
 * That's because, for some weird reason, Pegasus used the real-life version of the Toon cards, which possess so many drawbacks and so little support that no serious player would be caught dead using them..
 * It's because you have to use life points to summon them, when really you could just use the normal versions instead.
 * Screw The Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!
 * Screw The Rules, I Make Them!
 * Really, the series is a poster child for most of the Screw The Rules tropes.
 * Sculpted Physique: Many of the mons.
 * Which makes sense with some of the Warrior type monsters like Gilford the Lightning and Gearfriend the Swordmaster, but this seems to apply to most any other species. Hell, a few of the game's Dragon types like Timaeus are hugely muscled beasts!
 * Marik sans shirt works, too.
 * Self Made Orphan: Kaiba has a long history of these kind of tropes. Also Marik.
 * Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Yugi and Yami, respectively.
 * Serious Business: Duel Monsters. The universe runs on it. Didn't you know that?
 * Justified in Real Life, where the card game is truly serious business, one could make you some hefty prize money in grand tournaments. The manga & anime series now serves a double role along with being an entertainment medium: strategic documentations!
 * Blown to ridiculous proportions in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, in which it takes an entire navy and air force to deliver a briefcase of rare cards safely to Duel Academy. The Princeton brothers even plan to take over the world through the three pillars of humanity: politics, economics, and Duel Monsters. No joke.
 * Sexy Whatever Outfit: The Dark Magician Girl wears a sexy Robe and Wizard Hat.
 * Sharing a Body: Yami and Yugi. Dark Bakura and Ryou. Dark Marik and Malik.
 * Ship Tease: Rebecca kisses Yugi early on in Season 4. Cue Luminescent Blush (and he had an awkward expression on his face before she kissed him).
 * Shout Out: Both the card game and anime series feature cards based on Konami's Gradius and Mystical Ninja series, and even one that references Metal Gear Solid.
 * First episode, take a look at the shelf that Yugi covers up just as he answers the phone call from Kaiba. Even Super Robot Wars can find its way into a show about a children's card game.
 * Yu-Gi-Oh has referenced Dragonball on three occasions: the first chapter of the manga references Dragonball by name, when Yugi figures having the Millennium Puzzle grant his wish would be similar to collecting the Dragon Balls. Another instance is that a Dragon Ball poster can be seen in Yugi's room during the Battle City arc. Finally, during the KC Grand Championship, Weevil's and Rex's ambush of Fortune Salim and following masquerade a la Totem Pole Trench replicates a similar scene in Dragonball, where Goten and Trunks use a similar tactic to get into a tournament. There is also Big Bang Shot, which has a picture of Vegeta doing a Big Bang Shot.
 * One of Pegasus's toons sure loves spinning.
 * Skepticism Failure: Hey, Kaiba. Guess what? Ancient Egyptian trading card game!
 * Social Services Does Not Exist: Story of the Kaiba brothers' life. Also, the manga implies that Bakura lives all alone.
 * That one's more of a self-imposed exile by Bakura, because Very Bad Things keep happening to people around him. At the very least, he still and keeps in contact with his father.
 * Solomon Divorce: Jounouchi and Shizuka.
 * Somewhere, An Egyptologist Is Crying: Beyond the parts that never would have been accurate to begin with (Obelisk as a God, the costumes, the fact that most of the characters in the Memory World are going around with their own hair), other Anachronism Stew mistakes crop up - such as people using what seem to be steel or iron swords during what should have been the Bronze Age. Doubly the case for the dubbed version. Five thousand years ago - 3000 BCE - would have been before the pyramids were built. Horses weren't introduced to Egypt until around 1700-1550 BCE.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Kaiba --> Pegasus --> Marik --> Dartz --> Zorc/Bakura.
 * Soul Jar: Millennium Ring, Millennium Puzzle, various gaming equipment,
 * Although "Soul Jar" sounds like a good name for a Duel Monsters Spell Card, it's not one. There are some other Jar monsters though.
 * Spared By the Adaptation: in the anime.
 * Also,.
 * Spell My Name With an S: Marik? Malik? In the Bunkoban series, it was spelled Maric.
 * Also Cyndia, although some spell it as Cynthia or Cindia. Then there's her dub name, Cecelia Pegasus, which becomes Cecilia, despite the fact that the proper dub name was shown in episode 40. It gets worse when people assume her original name is Cyndia Crawford, as she does not have a surname in the original.
 * Split Personality: Not quite, since it's more like another person sharing their body, but it still fits.
 * Split Personality Makeover: How do you know who's in control? Well... just look at the page image.
 * Sometimes averted with Bakura, who often seems to be controlled by the spirit even when he looks like his nice self, which the audience usually finds out mere seconds later.
 * Played straight with Marik and Yami Marik.
 * Stalker With a Crush: Warashibe, the Capmon guy who has a crush on Miho, in the Toei anime
 * Stepford Smiler: Ryou Bakura.
 * Stock Foreign Name: Vivian Wong.
 * Story Arc: Duelist Kingdom, Legendary Heroes, Battle City, Noah's Virtual World, Battle City Finals, Doma, the Kaiba Corp Grand Prix, and Millennium World, with a Myth Arc spanning all of these arcs.
 * Stronger With Age: The Baby Dragon to Thousand Dragon age up.
 * Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Season 4 turns Mai Valentine into an angst-ridden member of a villainous biker gang. It turns out she was tricked into Heel Face Brainwashing by Dartz.
 * Suggestive Collision: Happens to Joey and Mai in the episode "Lights, Camera, Duel." Played with though, in that Mai fell on top of him because he was catching her as she fell from a dangerous height--and instead of going for the pervert-slap, Mai thanks him for saving her and calls him an "action hero".
 * Sunglasses At Night: Bandit Keith wearing his sunglasses in a dark cave.
 * Because he's an American! And Americans always wear sunglasses!
 * In America!
 * Super Powered Evil Side: Various characters' Yami versions, including the early appearances of Yami himself.
 * Synchronization: Between the duelists and their cards, to some extent. Showcased when Yugi's grandfather Sugoroku actually has a heart attack when he loses.
 * Take Over the World: Both Marik and Yami Bakura want to do this by usurping the pharaoh position from Yami Yugi, mostly as Revenge for personal beefs they have with him.
 * Subverted by both Marik/Yami Marik and in the Japanese versions. Marik merely wants to torment the Pharaoh's spirit as part of revenge and Yami Marik wishes to torture and kill every living thing on the planet. . Even Yami Bakura's motives were unclear and didn't really seem to involve wanting to take over the world in the Japanese version. It eventually becomes clear that he really just seemed to subconsciously desire to collect the Items throughout the manga so he can.
 * Taking the Bullet: Kisara,
 * Earlier in the series, Yami saves Mai and Joey from Marik's Winged Dragon Of Ra by diving in front of a fireball and blocking it with his body until it dissipates. He promptly collapses.
 * Tank Goodness
 * The Tape Knew You Would Say That: Is it crazy? No, it's magic.
 * For the newcomers, Pegasus duels Yugi in the second episode via prerecorded video tape sent to Yugi's house. Pegasus wins.
 * Actually, he didn't duel through the tape. The tape was enchanted to pull Yugi into a Shadow Game, where the actual Pegasus was waiting. The recording only made the announcement and activated the spell. Straighter in the manga where Yugi doesn't get pulled anywhere (unless the whole living room with his friends and Grandpa got pulled in too and it wasn't noted in any way).
 * Tattooed Crook: Big Bad Marik Ishtar has a large tattoo covering his back and he is the leader of his own criminal organization. However, it was his reception of the tattoo that had originally caused him to turn to evil, not the other way around with him getting the tattoo after turning evil. The tattoo was carved into his back in the Japanese version, though it’s similar, and the dub changes it to a tattoo.
 * Theme Deck: Trope Namer
 * There Are No Therapists: Several characters would be better off with professional help. Most notably the villains.
 * They Were Holding You Back: Dartz' recruitment method.
 * Third Eye: The card "Goddess with the Third Eye", and most Millennium Item holders when using their item.
 * Took a Level In Badass: Joey/Jounouchi. As early as the Duelist Kingdom arc, he spammed monster after monster without any regard of strategy, because he relied too much on the idea of beating things to death even though the attack stat was too low. It became apparent in the second episode of the show that he lost to Tea/Anzu, probably the least competitive players of all, because she knew a thing or two about magic and traps. It took a lot of encouragement and guidance on the Pharaoh's part to help him, but by Battle City he grew into a very competent duelist and became a finalist, managing to go toe to toe against Marik.
 * Too Many Mouths: Slifer the Sky Dragon has two.
 * Toon: Pegasus' Toon Monsters.
 * Toon Town: Pegasus' Toon World.
 * Tournament Arc: And how. The only arc two arcs that weren't tournaments were Waking the Dragons and Dawn of the Duel.
 * Only with the second series anime, of course.
 * Tsundere: Mai Kujaku/Valentine and Jou/Joey.
 * Traintop Battle: Or blimp-top in this case. Played straight in Season 4.
 * Also, in Season 5, a ferris wheel-top one.
 * Trauma Conga Line: Happens several different times, to several different characters.
 * Troubled but Cute: Early childhood Seto Kaiba. Also early childhood Malik.
 * Truth in Television: Pegasus's Toon cards are said by Yugi to be kept out of circulation for being too powerful, but Pegasus is the creator of the game so he kept them for himself. The Seal of Orichalcos, a Game Breaker if there ever was one, exists in real life and is limited to a few copies that were used by members of Upper Deck's R&D department in a special tournament.
 * Ungrateful Bastard: Kaiba, after several rescues from Yugi and co.
 * He does show some limited thanks for Yugi, and only Yugi, at times, such as freeing him from Pegasus and the Big Five.
 * Unstoppable Rage: Specifically, after Yugi's soul is taken by the Orichalchos, and Insector Haga taunts the now rather unstable Yami by tearing up a card in front of him after claiming it was Yugi's, just "as a joke", Yami... well, he goes totally and utterly apeshit, really. He defeats Haga using a card that grants extra attacks by drawing and discarding monsters, and then he continues bashing at him by trashing more monsters long after Haga's lifepoints have hit zero. He would've kept going too, if Anzu hadn't stopped him. Here's the scene... Not pretty.
 * There's (possibly deliberately) an added Meaningful Echo -- the last card in his hand (the one he would have tossed next if Anzu hadn't stopped him) was Dark Magician Girl. Not only was she the card spirit who had asked him for help at the start of this arc, she quite frankly has seen enough of the Orichalcos effect to last a lifetime and could do without watching her master going nuts about it again.
 * Utopia Justifies the Means: Dartz.
 * Vendor Trash: When the rules got more defined, a lot of the worse cards didn't have Deus Ex Machina powers anymore and were pruned. Though some of them got updated versions that are useful.
 * Viewers Are Goldfish: Hey Yugi, remind me again, what does Pot of Greed do? Or how about flashing back to that play that happened one minute ago for those who missed it? Even if you have no idea how the card game actually works, you can follow every single duel in the later seasons because every single card will have at least ten seconds spent explaining its effect. Even if the card is used every single duel, its effect will be explained. This continued into Yu-Gi-Oh GX, right up until Pot of Greed got put on the real-life banned list and the anime suddenly stopped using it.
 * Voice of the Legion: Marik.
 * Also the Steves under his control.
 * Waterfall Shower: First season has this.
 * We Can Rule Together: Noah makes this offer to Yugi in the Japanese version of episode 118, after Yugi managed a formidable counterattack and after Noah turned some of Yugi's Nakama to stone:
 * We Can Rule Together: Noah makes this offer to Yugi in the Japanese version of episode 118, after Yugi managed a formidable counterattack and after Noah turned some of Yugi's Nakama to stone:

"Ishizu Ishtar: And the young man who stands behind the pharaoh... Above his head is"
 * Wham Line: From episode 52:


 * What Happened to The Mouse: Gurimo from the first two episodes of the Waking the Dragons arc. Once he's finished being Mr. Exposition: everybody forgets about him, including his cohorts, even when all of the souls are being restored and only the battle is referenced briefly during Raphael's last fight, prior to his Heel Face Turn:
 * What the Hell Hero: Rebecca does this to Yami when his reckless use of the Seal of Orichalchos results in Yugi losing his soul. Heck, even WEEVIL does this effectively, pointing out that while he might be an asshole, at least he didn't knowingly endanger his friend simply to win.
 * White Haired Pretty Boy: Bakura, Marik, and their evil alter egos.
 * White Haired Pretty Girl: Kisara.
 * AKA Seto Kaiba's totally hot dragon girlfriend?
 * Wine Is Classy: In the original, there's a scene where Pegasus is drinking a glass of wine. For the dub, this got changed to "the world's finest fruit juices".
 * Wok Fu: Yugi faces off against Vivian Wong inside a Chinese restaurant. His friends get distracted from their usual Power of Friendship cheerleading routine by all the food.
 * The Worf Barrage: Kaiba's Crush Card. Number of times he tries to use it? Seven. Number of times it actually works? Three. And of those three times, Yugi found ways to work around it and lost for entirely unrelated reasons, and Ishizu made its effect work to her advantage and turned it back on Kaiba. So really, of the seven times he uses it the Crush Card only works the way he plans it to once. Though, the one time he couldn't get it off normally, he was able to and win that way.
 * The Worf Effect: The 2nd anime series added several duels for Joey, most of which he lost. The most offensive example being in the final filler arc where he loses disgracefully to the effeminate German Filler Villain.
 * Mai Valentine/Kujaku. No, seriously. Top-notch duelist who gets seeded off against the most dangerous opponents, eventually becoming deconstructed in Season 4: Despite being a very skilled duelist; she keeps going up against super-powerful opponents to show the viewers how hard it'll be for the other heroes to win. On top of what Marik does to her, she starts to have a breakdown over it (to the point of destroying a first-place trophy she just won), and Dartz is able to brainwash her over to the villain side because of it.
 * World of Ham: Especially when two hams duel against each other. The Kaiba/Yami matches in particular take the ham Beyond the Impossible.
 * If you watch the first few episodes, the ham isn't as big. But the bigger that rivalry got, the bigger the ham really got.
 * You Can't Fight Fate: Somewhat. Averted hard in Kaiba's duel with Ishizu.
 * You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Some minor characters, and Kaiba in the first anime.
 * Although Kaiba's hair is technically green.
 * You Monster: See the trope page quote.
 * You Would Make a Great Model: Happens to Anzu/Tea, who is promised a chance to be a dancer like she's always wanted.
 * Zenos Race: Inverted with the pharaoh's backstory, seeing how more information is revealed from the early manga, to Duelist Kingdom, to Battle City, to the Millennium World.
 * Zerg Rush: At one point, Yugi uses Monster Multiply, which causes Kuriboh to multiply each turn, in conjunction with Kuriboh's special ability allows it to nullify the damage done by one enemy monster. Due to there being no limit on how many monsters can be summoned with one magic card in the anime's version of the game, this allows him to create a virtually impenetrable barrier of the little guys.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Rebecca Hawkins manages to pull off a grade-A in her initial appearance. Also, she's twelve years old.