Monster Hunter



""In the world of Monster Hunter, you are never alone.""

- Monster Hunter Freedom Unite Tagline

Monster Hunter is one part role playing game, one part action game, one part MMORPG and two parts adventure game, cooked by a pack of anthropomorphic cats and lifted from the flames the second it turns a delicious bronze hue, all to the sound of a surprisingly cheerful jingle. So tasty!

Developed and published by Capcom, it wasn't so big a smashing success in the United States as it was in Japan. However, its portable sequels are among the most popular games available for the PSP, and subsequent sequels have been released on the Nintendo Wii, PSP, and Nintendo 3DS (an expanded port of the Wii game, and also a new game).

Monster Hunter is a unique experience. Playing as a hunter assembled from a list of faces, voices, etc., you try to make a name for yourself battling an array of increasingly bigger and nasty creatures that can kick your butt shockingly fast if you're unprepared and/or rush them head-on as if they're Mooks. Each Monster not only has a variety of attacks, but a number of both subtle and overt visual and audio cues to each action, as well as its own status. Recognition of these cues is crucial to properly defeating them. A typical Monster Hunter battle has a graceful Zen-like quality to it, like a bullfight with a 700-pound gorilla (or wyvern, or dragon, or Giant Enemy Crab) should.

The weapons and armor store is actually pretty weak, and everything they sell will be out of date only a few hours from starting the game. To get better equipment, the player has to assemble his or her own equipment from parts of fallen monsters as well as activities like combining, mining, fishing and bug collecting. Has nothing to do with He Who Fights Monsters, though.

Also spawned a manga adaption, called Monster Hunter Orage, written by Mashima Hiro of Fairy Tail and Rave Master fame.

How popular is it? Portable 3rd for the PSP, sold over four million copies in Japan alone in a mere two months. Cha-ching!

Current games:
 * Monster Hunter: Playstation 2 - The original.
 * Monster Hunter G: Playstation 2, Japan only - An Updated Rerelease of MH1 with some new monster variants.
 * Monster Hunter Freedom: Playstation Portable - A straight port of MHG.
 * Monster Hunter 2: Playstation 2, Japan only - A sequel to MH1, with all new monsters and new subspecies of old ones.
 * Monster Hunter Freedom 2: Playstation Portable - A sequel to MHF1, separate from MH2. Uses the same monsters but has different quests and setting.
 * Monster Hunter Frontier: PC and Xbox 360, currently limited to Japan, China and Korea - A spinoff of sorts that has mostly exclusive monsters.
 * Monster Hunter Freedom Unite: Playstation Portable - An Updated Rerelease of MHF2 with a few new monsters and subspecies. Has the most content monster-wise of any game in the series to date.
 * Monster Hunter Tri: Nintendo Wii - The third main game. Many new monsters, but only three old ones make reappearances.
 * Monster Hunter Portable 3rd: Playstation Portable - A sequel to MHF2. Has several new monsters and subspecies. Not a port of MH3, same deal as MHF2.
 * Monster Hunter Tri G: Nintendo 3DS - An Updated Rerelease of MH3, with several new monsters and touch screen features.
 * Monster Hunter 4: Nintendo 3DS - The fourth main game.

Here is the list of monsters you will inevitably encounter.

""Let's see, Flooded Forest... a forest flooded with water. Okay then.""
 * Aesop: No matter how vicious, scary, or outright massive the obstacle, with preparation and teamwork, you can make it fall!
 * An Interior Designer Is You: Monsters are used for equipment and decoration of the headquarters.
 * Ancestral Weapon/Empathic Weapon/Evil Weapon: Weapons come with a description that can fit one of these. For example...
 * Black Lance - "Lance that holds a dark power within. The despair within eats at its user."
 * Tenebra - "A dark blade that pulses with the lifeforce it saps from any who wield it..."
 * And There Was Much Rejoicing: Naturally, defeating the flagship monster of the game results in this. Special mention, however, goes to Portable 3rd, which features a festival for which Yukumo invites people from across the realm (explaining several cameos from previous games).
 * An Axe to Grind: The new weapon class, Switch-Axe. Bonus points for being a Swiss Army Weapon.
 * And Your Reward Is Clothes: Played straight. You usually make either Armor ("Clothes") or Weapons with the materials of monsters.
 * Averted in the sense that the "clothes" aren't actually useless, with many being awesome and completely practical. Since you are making the clothes out of monster parts, you can pick and choose what you make, so getting a full set is actually a lot easier than just getting anything that looks good.
 * Antidote Effect: Who actually bothers with the Lightning Rod? Ditto the Tranq Shot...
 * However, the usual target of this trope (Items that only heal a certain status ailment) are actually very useful in Monster Hunter, because the statuses are indeed quite debilitating, and because you know which monster you're going in to fight, which means you can choose to have the status cure with you only when you need it.
 * A Taste of Power: The training missions and many of the downloadable quests give you pre-determined sets of equipment, some of which is far beyond what you're capable of making around the time you first unlock these missions.
 * Ditto the arena battles in Tri.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: For the higher rank monsters, this is pretty much the only way to inflict decent damage to them.
 * Attack of the 50 Foot Whatever: Pretty much the purpose of the game is to fight these things. Better examples are Lao, Shen Gaoren, Fatalis and all the other really huge stuff.
 * Taken to new heights in Monster Hunter Tri. While exploring the woods outside your town you may encounter super-sized versions of normal creatures with increased HP but much better drops. While not as big as some of the elder dragons they can still be quite massive, with the super-sized aptonoths appearing to be around 30 feet tall.
 * In the online event quest World Eater, you hunt a Deviljho so huge you barely come up to its ankles. It's attack power and range increase proportionally.
 * Coincidentally, Tri also inverts this trope in the form of the Phantom Uragaan, in which it's almost one-tenth of the the size of a normal Uragaan but retains all of its power (normal Uragaan are around 2500cm, the Phantom is around 400 cm). There are also the equally tiny At Bird's Hill Yian Kutku and high pitched, tiny Khezus.
 * Frontier manages to beat them all with Raviente. He's so big that up to 32 players can hunt him at once in 8 groups of 4 hunters each (it's a server-wide battle) AND he has an entire quest just to get carves off of him. Just look here if you want to see for yourself.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Most of the Dual Blades that feature two elements. They look Crazy Awesome, but in the 2nd Generation games, the combinations of elements are unwieldy, i.e. monster is weak against one but immune to the other. The notable exception is the Fatalis/White Fatalis duals, which do kick ass.
 * Badass Adorable: Your Felyne Comrades, natch.
 * Badass Normal: The Hunters in general, though one tends to wonder how "normal" they are.
 * Bag of Holding: The storage boxes and the hunter's (unseen) item bag. Q: How does a hunter store dozens of claws carved from the Giant Enemy Crab? A: In a Bag of Holding of course!
 * BFG: Well, big f*** ing bowgun at any rate. If it looks like a gun and it shoots like a gun...
 * Don't forget the gunlance!
 * Did somebody say gunhammer?
 * BFS: Comes in two varieties, the bulky greatsword and the slimmer longsword.
 * Really, this series loves giant weapons. The only weapon sets that aren't ludicrously over-sized are the sword and shield and the dual wielded sword sets, and even then, they would usually be two-handed weapons.
 * Even so, the Akantor Broadsword (Great Sword) is absolutely humongous even compared to other Great Swords.
 * And then there's also the Huge Dragon Sword "Olympus", which makes the Akantor Broardsword seem tiny.
 * Big Badass Wolf: Jinouga, the flagship monster of Portable 3rd, combines lupine features and an ability to generate electricity from its body.
 * Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: The Great Jaggi is an adult Jaggi, they mate with the female Jaggias, which look like mere toddlers when they stand next to a Great Jaggi.
 * Same goes for the Ludroths. The Royal Ludroths are only males of the species, the regular Ludroths are mostly female, and they are easily less than 1/4 of a Royal Ludroth's size.
 * Bonus Boss: In Unite, finishing every regular monster training mission unlocks Black Fatalis. Beating him unlocks Crimson Fatalis. Beating a total of three Fatalis unlocks White Fatalis. All of them take several quests to kill and are known for their many one-hit-kill attacks.
 * Boring but Practical: Keeping the monsters dazed with flashbangs and shooting them to death with a team of gunners.
 * Subverted for some monsters, who actually become completely erratic when hit with a flashbang.
 * Keeping the monsters stuck to one spot with endless Shock/Pitfall traps, and everyone hacking (or shooting) it to death for a more true-to-trope example: Get a monster to run into a Shock Trap, then as soon as it expires, someone places another one nearby as the monster is recovering.
 * Hunting monsters with other players, especially the full 4 member team, is ridiculously easy in general. Its solo hunting monsters that can kill you in 1-3 hits that are the hard fights of this series.
 * And then there's the fact that in the G rank quests every hunt will have another big monster add and since you don't have to kill the add to complete the quest, both big monsters are at full strength.
 * Boss Game: Despite the fact there are collection quests and stuff like Treasure Hunting, boss/monster fighting takes up about 90% of the game.
 * Boss Rush: The "Epic/Marathon" Hunting Quests. Made particularly difficult because you can't change your weapon mid-hunt and each monster is easier/harder to deal with using certain weapons more than others (e.g Dual swords on a Plesioth is pain incarnate; a bow or bowgun with Pierce shots will make sashimi out of one).
 * Bottomless Magazines: Bows have unlimited arrows despite their quiver being quite visible.
 * The same can apply to Gunlances... who knew bullets are for Bowguns after all...
 * Normal Shot level one, for the Bowgun, and (At least up until Unite) the Autoreload skill actually makes it so you don't have to reload, either.
 * Bragging Rights Reward: Seriously, if you can clear all the training missions with all the weapons, you probably don't need that Sword Saint Piercing. Ditto for the stuff that's unlocked once you clear G Rank in Unite. Also applies for getting a full set of White Fatalis armor.
 * In Tri, most HR51-armorsets count (Deviljho, Alatreon, High-Rank-Ceadeus and High-Rank-Jhen-Mohran). Getting these means you already killed everything you can kill. Multiple times.
 * Breakable Weapons: Subverted, as they don't really break, but lose sharpness. Even the hammers.
 * Butt Monkey: The aptonoths seem to be at the very bottom of the food chain. Wyverns, raptors, Hunters. Name a carnviorous species, chances are they've eaten an aptonoth at some point.
 * Came Back Strong: With the Survivor skill found on equipment such as the HellHunter Jacket, your attacks get a stackable boost each time you faint.
 * Captain Obvious: The Guild Sweetheart, or rather, her guidebook.

"Argosy Captain: Now that other lands want to trade with you, we must formulate keikaku. "Keikaku" means plan!"
 * Cats Are Mean: Melynx, black Felynes who tend to snitch Hunters on sight, charging at and sometimes knocking them out. Can be irritating during those egg fetching quests.
 * "Wild" Felynes can be just as bad. Though they have to be provoked first, at least Melynx don't go around tossing explosives.
 * Chainsaw Good: The Prototype Saw-slicer. Dual-wielded chainsaws. There is also the Chain Blade, a BFS chainsaw.
 * Which both do lightning damage.
 * Challenge Gamer: In games that allow modding, many players produce differently sized, stronger or more numerous versions of regular monsters. Many also stick to one 'trademark' weapon regardless of how suitable it is for a quest, refuse to use items and traps or solo online-only superbosses like the infamous Fatalis. There are players who do all of that and more.
 * Character Level: Notably absent. Played straight in Unite with the Felyne Fighters as well as in Tri with Cha-Cha the.
 * Played straight however with the Hunter Rank system in the online modes of the console games. Completing quests awards Hunter Rank Points, which contribute to raising a player's Hunter Rank. In most cases, clearing out all the quests in one tier won't be enough to unlock the next set. You'll have to redo quests over and over until your HR is high enough. It doesn't really make a difference though, since you'll be farming the wyverns for their armor and weapons anyway.
 * It's not entirely played straight, since between each tier of quests, online or offline, is an Urgent Quest that must be completed before moving on to the next tier. The Guildmaster in Tri explains that this is a way to prevent people from doing easy quests over and over until they rank up, because the Urgent Quest is supposed to test if the player has improved their skills. This does not stop players from leeching off of more skilled players, however.
 * Charles Atlas Superpower: Your hunter, a normal-ish human, can fish out a 20-30 meter Plesioth.
 * Character Select Forcing: Played straight-ish though averted. Any monster can be killed with any weapon once you understand the limitations and openings specific to each weapon. However, some weapons have a huge advantage over others against certain monsters. e.g Any close range weapon against a Plesioth is frustrating as hell since it has the hitbox from hell and it sometimes refuses to leave the water. A bowgun or bow prevents both of these.
 * Charged Attack: Comes in eight different flavors (as of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd)!
 * Collect Type: Long Swords, Switch Axes, Dual Swords
 * Hold Type: Great Swords, Hammers, Bows, Gunlances
 * Literal Type: Lance. You duck behind your shield, hold your lance close to your body and pointed outwards, then run as fast as you can forward. Run far enough and the power of your attack increases.
 * Cherry Tapping: Killing a monster by kicking it. For Plesioth (a giant amphibious fish-like "wyvern"), it is possible to kill it by fishing it out of the water. In rare cases, the monster will die by accidentally getting hit by a Mook.
 * In Tri, letting Cha-Cha get the kill can feel like this; though he can reach decent levels of power, he's still not nearly as strong as your hunter.
 * Also Felyne Comrades in Unite.
 * Colossus Climb: While fighting the Jhen Mohran, you have the option to jump on it's back so you could either blow it up, attack its weak points...or mine ore off of it.
 * A lot of enormous monsters have this, including Lao, Yamatsukami and Shen.
 * Cool Shades: The Shadow Shades in Tri.
 * Competitive Balance: Each of the weapons fits a role:
 * Jack of All Stats: Sword and shield
 * Fragile Speedster: Dual Swords
 * Mighty Glacier: Great Sword, Switch Axe, Heavy Bowgun
 * Glass Cannon: Hammer, Longsword,
 * Stone Wall: Lance
 * Squishy Wizard: Bow, Hunting Horn, Light and Medium Bowgun
 * Magic Knight: Gunlance
 * Continuing Is Painful: If you die in a mission, your money reward is cut by a third, which is painful if you already spent most of that money on ammunition and supplies. If you die three times, however, all items you used on the mission disappear, you lose a small amount of money, and you have to repeat the mission again. And the worst part? Most missions usually take around 20 minutes to complete.
 * This sort of thing could be hard to keep track of. To put it simply, if you complete a quest or fail it by getting knocked out three times, you don't get back anything you used up, but you keep whatever items you found. If you abandon a quest, you get back whatever items you brought and used up, but anything you found is lost.
 * Convection, Schmonvection: Averted, in that if you go to a volcano, you'll take continuous damage unless you use a Cool Drink, or have the Heat Resistance skill.
 * However, everything else can walk through lava completely unharmed, including giant rock wyverns, small raptors and cats.
 * Conservation of Ninjutsu: The real difficulty in fights with multiple wyverns is keeping them apart and fighting them seperately. As the quest time and item limits do not change depending on quest type, each of them are notably less threatening and easier to kill in such a quest. This varies depending on wyvern type, however. Nobody wants to fight two Tigrex at the same time.
 * Kinda subverted in the High Rank quests, in Monster Hunter Portable 3rd anyways. Every High Rank hunt will have another large monster in addition to the one you have to kill. Unless you use Dung Bombs, you will have to fight with both of them in the same area over 50% of the time. You don't have to kill the other large monster but since you don't have to kill it, both monsters are in their full powered form.
 * Covered in Mud: Tri introduces the Barroth, the love child of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Bulldozer that is often covered in mud. It has a habit of shaking said mud off, and any hunters unfortunate enough to get hit by the flying globs are covered in quickly-hardening mud that makes it impossible to attack (and open to getting plowed under by the Barroth!).
 * Critical Existence Failure: Taken to ludicrous heights. While it's relatively normal for the player, a monster can be near death and be stuck in rage mode, where it will be moving faster than normal and putting more force behind its attacks.
 * While played fairly straight in that monsters enter rage (aforementioned 'moving faster and dealing more damage' mode) more easily when nearly dead, also averted in that after breaking certain body parts monsters may not be able to use some of their attacks, and in Tri monsters become tired after throwing out powerful attacks or being hit by concussive attacks.
 * Also, when brought below a certain health threshold, they will try to escape by slowly limping away, practically making them sitting ducks.
 * Also when the monsters are below a certain health threshold, they will always try to sleep whenever not engaged in battle. Did I mention that a sleeping monster takes three times the normal damage? Using bombs and the Great Sword, you've basically guaranteed a kill once they've entered this state.
 * Crazy Prepared: Playing this game requires you to equip yourself accordingly to whatever you're going up against. In some cases you simply won't win or get what you want without the right tools. For the record, this means arming yourself with the proper weapon, an armor set that complements this weapon or is useful against the monster, and several items ranging from healing potions to Flash Bombs to traps. Hell, you even have to consider details like keeping your hunter well fed, his or her weapon sharp, look out for the climate of the area you're going to (going into the desert without something cool to drink is generally a bad idea) and even the weather (some tools do not work in rain or snow, others ONLY work there...)
 * Death of a Thousand Cuts: What you have to do to take down most of the monsters.
 * Marathon Boss: Some monsters can take up to 40 minutes to kill. This is mostly for stuff like Fatalis.
 * Description Porn: They manage to do this with some weapons and armors, despite the small text character limit. Just check the descriptions for the various Rathalos sets, for instance.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: The highest-ranked Nargacuga greatsword is called the Darkness Darkblade.
 * Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: All elemental weapons to an extent, but special mention goes to Dragon element weapons. It's never specified just what is it, but it sure kills elder dragons fast
 * Most dragon weapons are made with elder dragon blood, the content of which has been baffling the Guild and scholars for some time. Dragon Shot ammunition, however, is made with Dragon Seeds, so that might fit the trope better.
 * Desperation Attack: The Armor Skill "Potential" will give you a big Defense boost when your health is below 40% (and if you get 15 points in it, you'll get an Attack boost too). The Kitchen Skill "Felyne Heroics" doesn't kick in until your HP is down to 10 or less, but it gives you an even bigger Attack and Defense boost. Some expert players use Heroics and deliberately injure themselves down to 10 HP for it to activate, allowing them to kill whatever they're hunting much faster but at the risk of getting downed with a single hit. This is particularly useful for bosses that'd kill you in a single hit anyways (all the Fatalis "brothers" in particular).
 * On the flip side, a lot of monsters will go into near-permanent rage when near death - they move faster and hit harder. Special mention to Shogun Ceanataur, who does go into literal perma-rage as soon as you smash one of his claws.
 * Determinator: The hunters, of course. Considering how extremely hard to kill their prey is, this is practically a requirement to make it far in the business. Also present among some of the monsters. Special mention goes to Tigrex; this wyvern is made out of the following things: 50% determination and 50% pure rage. He's so stubborn that, if you dodge his charge, he won't just finish it and then turn around to try again like other wyverns, oh no, he is going to change the direction mid-charge just to get you, and he'll do that up to four times. Combine this with him being a Lightning Bruiser and a creature whose Rage Mode is absolutely devastating and you'll understand why he's considered the bane of many hunters.
 * Difficult but Awesome: Certain weapons against certain monsters. For example, once you learn the timing, a Great Sword will absolutely destroy a Tigrex with little effort.
 * Difficulty Spike: The first happens once you start doing high-rank quests; it only takes a few mistakes to get clobbered, and some previously trivial monsters can knock you out with three hits, especially the ones that get new attacks. Once you're doing G-rank quests, all bets are off.
 * The first big one is probably when the player fights a Yian Kut-ku for the first time. Before this, missions were simple slaying x Mooks and gathering missions. The Yian Kut-ku shows the lengths that the player has to go to beat the bosses without getting slapped silly (analyzing attack patterns, finding weak spots, figuring out what weapons are best, etc.)
 * Disc One Nuke: Through smart trading with Veggie Elders, one can easily obtain rare materials or materials not normally accessible. Also, the optional Trenya's Boat allows one to get things such as Dragonwoods or Dragonmosses way before you're supposed to.
 * In Freedom 2, the Long Sword "Devil Slicer."
 * If you're a Hammer user, in MHF2 and MHFU, the Bull Tusk Hammer can be made without leaving Hunter Rank 1 and has 936 raw damage
 * Drop the Hammer: The Hammer weapon class.
 * Dual-Wielding: Dual swords, with which you can belt out a continuous barrage of attacks, but you can't block.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire, Water, Lightning, and Dragon, later Ice.
 * The Manga features a protagonist that Dual Wields Wind-element Blades, something unobtainable in-game. This fact is outright stated in the manga itself: the protagonist's partner has never even heard of a Wind element.
 * There is one monster claimed to possess "Wind" element: Kushala Daora. This isn't really an element so much as it is an extra ability given to it to make it on par with other dragons though...
 * Elemental Crafting: basically the whole purpose of the game.
 * Elite Tweak: Mixing and matching armors and gems can result in some potent skill combinations. Add to this that there are several weapons available, each with different playing styles and there are plenty of skills for each weapon.
 * Endless Game: There is no real "end" to the game other than maybe One Hundred Percent Completion.
 * Everything's Better With Dinosaurs
 * Everything Is Better With Explosions: Bombs deal set damage, regardless of the monster's defense, particularly useful for those made of granite.
 * Everything's Better With Monkeys: Four versions, more if you count color variations.
 * Everything's Worse With Sharqs
 * ...Although owners of the Sharq Attaq lance might beg to differ.
 * Everything Is Worse With Bears: Portable 3rd introduces Aoashira, the first bear-like monster throughout the series.
 * You Trying To Kill Everything
 * Played straight in that smaller monsters will attack you even if there is a larger, more threatening monster in the area. For example, Agnaktor will feed on Rhenoplos to regain stamina. Instead of fleeing the area or ganging up on the Agnaktor, they will keep attacking you with their charge attack.
 * Exactly What It Says On the Tin In this game, you hunt monsters.
 * In fact, initially Monster Hunter was only a Working Title, but the developers liked the simplicity so much they just kept it.
 * Fartillery: Congas and the Congalala are able to release a cloud of noxious fumes from their behinds, and this is actually one of the most insidious attacks in the game, as when you are "soiled," you cannot eat or drink any healing items.
 * Final Boss: Despite being an Endless Game as mentioned above, every entry in the series has some sort of final monster whose first defeat generally triggers the credits to roll. In Monster Hunter Freedom 2, this was Akantor, in Freedom Unite, his older cousin Ukanlos took that spot (beating Akantor in the village quests still shows the ending sequence).
 * Ceadeus in Tri is a bit more obviously a Final Boss. He is only available offline and this time, there is a bit more storyline involving him to be seen.
 * While Ceadeus might be absent in the online mode, a different Elder Dragon takes over for him: Alatreon, who's basically every Elder Dragon from MHFU combined into one.
 * Fixed Damage Attack: The Crag S and Clust S bullets for bowguns do exactly this.
 * While not strictly an attack per se, all bombs play this trope as well.
 * Flame War: Mention whether or not Flash Bombs should be allowed.
 * "Longswords suck, get a hammer, n00b!"
 * Ironically, players who use either of these two weapons are by far the most annoying due to friendly fire. Longswords have a really long attack range, Hammers will send anyone flying with even just a tap and are the bane of Great Sword users when they are trying to do a charge attack.
 * Friendly Fireproof: Playing this game multiplayer would be much more difficult if this wasn't the case. When everyone's swinging weapons the sizes of small cars around one area, this is pretty much a necessity. Also demonstrated in the fact that bombs the size of people do little more than inconveniently send a player flying.
 * Not totally fireproof. You take no damage from other players and you take very little damage from your cat comrade's bombs but they still stagger you and send you flying. Longswords and Hammers are especially notorious.
 * Gang Up On the Human: You ARE the most dangerous thing in Monster Hunter's ecosystem, after all.
 * Only because, for some reason, you never die even when taking a full bite from a set of jaws that's larger than you're entire body. At worst, you just "faint" and once you've fainted, the monster leave you alone instead of finishing you off.
 * Genki Girl: The Guild Sweetheart in Tri.
 * Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Your Felyne will do this if you start cowering in fear of a monster, get put to sleep, paralyzed, frozen or otherwise incapacitated. Considering that any time your movability gets hindered, there's a fair chance whatever wyvern you're fighting right now is going to use that oppurtunity to turn you into toast, this is a very useful feature.
 * Cha-Cha does the same thing in Tri. He even has dialog boxes that have some variation of the phrase.
 * Getting Crap Past the Radar: Several members of Moga Village seem to be too innocent for their own good. The shopkeeper even asks what else an Armorskin could make hard...
 * Giant Enemy Crab: Seven versions if you count the color-variations in Unite as separate types.
 * Shen Gaoren is by far the biggest. Fittingly, it seems to be somewhat based on the Japanese Spider Crab, which is among the biggest (if not THE biggest) crab in the world.
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Ceadeus in Tri. A gigantic serpent-whale-dragon thing that and isn't introduced or even confirmed to exist until the final tier of quests, unlike Lagiacrus.
 * Though if it's any consolation, the village elder eventually tells you that he had a suspicion all along.
 * Quite a few monsters in the series have little or no background information -- particularly those introduced in the Updated Rereleases and Frontier's patches -- because what little storyline there is is usually not modified to account for them. Ceadus is only exceptional because he's a storyline boss in a main game.
 * Guide Dang It: Want the Last Gaelic Flame sword in Unite? Well, I hope you have a Freedom 1 save handy, otherwise you will never be able to get the greatsword needed to create it.
 * Focusing on improving one weapon type at the expense of others can make material gathering a nightmare, as certain materials can only be gathered if a certain part of a monster is destroyed, and many of these parts can only be destroyed by a very specific weapon type. This leads to a game of trial and error as you try to figure out which weapon breaks which part of which monster.
 * Healing Shiv: The bowgun's healing shots.
 * Hitbox Dissonance: Many of the first and second generation monsters have a hitbox that is way larger than their bodies. Who could forget Khezu's tail hitting you even when it's several meters high, or Rathalos trampling you when you're in the gap between its feet? The worst offender is probably Plesioth and his infamous hipcheck, which can (and will) hit you even if his body doesn't come in contact with yours. Thankfully, Tri mostly fixed this.
 * Emphasis on Mostly. Almost all monster hit boxes while underwater are ridiculous.
 * Horse of a Different Color: Portable 3rd introduces the Gagua, Bird Wyverns that look like oversized ostriches which not only serve as prey for some of the larger monsters out there, but are also used by the people of Yukumo as livestock and beasts of burden.
 * Hot-Blooded: The Training Instructor certainly seems that way.
 * Human Popsicle: Like the Mud listing above, Tri gives us the Barioth, which can encase you in Ice. Not a nice place to be when dealing with a Lightning Bruiser Saber-Toothed Dragon-Cat. Other games also give this abiltiy to one of the Dromes, an Elder Dragon, and an Tundra variant of the abovementioned Barroth.
 * Hurricane of Puns: Almost all of the lines of dialogue in Tri are puns or other bad jokes. Moga Village is where the puns reach hurricane levels; between Cha-Cha, the Felynes, and the quest descriptions.
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes Too many to list.
 * Impossibly Cool Weapon: The gunlance, basically a lance fitted with explosive shells that can be detonated on command.
 * The switch axe is a mechanic axe that turns into a sword. Like the gunlance, it also shoots explosions.
 * The Bow fires arrows that are as big as (normal) spears. Justified because of what you're hunting.
 * Improvised Weapon: While they may have been crafted rather than picked up from the environment, some weapons' designs have you doubting them. Example: A plunger shaped lance (no, you hold the proper plunger handle - you stab with the plunger head), two stick puppets, and fuzzy maracas. Justified in that some have such terrible stats that they border on being a Joke Item.
 * You know that giant cutlery set your hunter held while waiting for their meal in Unite? It's a craftable Dual Sword set, complete with two upgrade paths.
 * Which can be unlocked for crafting by having your Felyne Chefs handing you a regular meal pass, which in turn unlocks the Felyne Ragdoll and Melynx Ragdoll, both of which are bowguns.
 * Tri brings us the Sharq Attaq lance... which is basically a stuffed sharq that you swing around and beat things to death with. It's actually pretty decent.
 * We are perhaps forgetting the Pop Corn, which is a giant corn-on-the-cob. You wield it like a lance. It comes with a straw hat to be used as a shield. And most importantly, when you stab things with it, they explode.
 * From Portable 3rd: Hunter Dumplings. They're dual blades that are... dumplings. On sticks. Specifically, three (really big) dumplings per stick. The weapon tree branches from there into White or Purple Dumplings. The Purple ones can cause the Poison status effect.
 * Also, the Scabbardfish Blade - a longsword that is, quite literally, a fish on a stick. It does additional Water damage.
 * And of course, the Ruinous Mushroom, a greatsword that looks like someone cut down a rather thick tree with mushrooms on it and mounted a hilt on one end. How does this thing even do cutting damage?
 * Also, the Nummingbird! It's a giant flower that has the hitting power of a hammer and can paralyze monsters to boot.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: One of the Moga villagers in Tri is an absolute master of these, and throws at least one in almost every single conversation with the player. She manages to make them even worse by explaining them all.
 * Instant Sedation: Tranquilizer Bombs, or Tranq Bombs. Damage a monster until it starts showing signs that it's almost dead (usually limping), catch it in a trap and chuck Tranq Bombs at it and you'll capture it by putting it to sleep. Bigger monsters will take more Tranq Bombs before they'll fall asleep, but you can also use Tranq Throwing Knives or make Tranq bullets for use with a bowgun.
 * Instant Win Condition: In the 20-60 seconds after you finish a quest, but before you collect your reward and head home, you won't take damage from anything, even though any remaining creatures can attack you, interrupting if you're busy carving something.
 * Instrument of Murder: Hunting Horns are almost as effective as hammers at breaking body parts.
 * Item Crafting: The only way to get weapons and armor.
 * Joke Item / Lethal Joke Item (A lot of weapons and armor sets are like this, such as the Vaccum and the Bistro Armor)
 * Kaizo Trap: If weak enough, it is theoretically possible to die from a monster collapsing on top of you after you catch it.
 * Made impossible in normal quests, since after the main quest conditions are fulfilled, the player is invulnerable to any monster attack. In quests with multiple monsters, or quests with monsters that appear but do not need killing, monsters like Congalala that have post-death attacks can potentially harm you.
 * However, there are quests which don't end the instant you capture the monster, but a few seconds later. In these cases you can effectively die if the monster you just caught happens to fall on top of your hunter. Fortunately, this only applies to first-gen monsters (Rathalos, Diablos, etc.) in older games.
 * Lantern Jaw of Justice: Uragaan, while not particularly just, has a very formidable chin. Ukanlos as well, with its mighty shovel jaw.
 * Lethal Lava Land: The Volcano.
 * Level Grinding: Not for character levels as such, but the items: you'd sweat through killing a certain monster sometimes over 20 times only in order to get armor that helps you kill the same monster.
 * Lightning Bruiser The Barioth is one of the fastest wyvern... and hits like a giant flying tiger.
 * The same basically applies to all wyvern of the Tigrex "family". Another famous example is Rajang, who gets bonus points for actually being able to shoot lightning. From its mouth.
 * Low Fantasy: Very little/none whatsoever outright magic. Instead there's a huge amount of fantastic creatures that are used as raw materials.
 * MacGyvering: The local smith always seems to be able to upgrade your equipment in seconds, using materials ranging from iron ore, to monster bones, to obscure pieces of wyvern, to bugs.
 * Made of Iron: The hunters are all about this. Ten story falls? Minor landing stun. Run over by a monster that weighs somewhere around ten tons? Get right back up!
 * Make Me Wanna Shout: A lot of large monsters are able to shriek so loudly they stun your character, leaving them helpless for a moment.
 * Meido: A certain line of female armors puts you in french maid clothes - fully done.
 * Meaningful Name: Lao Shan Lung and Shen Gaoren, both Chinese. Lao Shan Lung means "Ancient/Old Mountain Dragon" and Shen Gaoren means "Godly/Divine Giant."
 * Also, the Ceadeus. "Cea" sounds like "Sea", and "Deus" means God. Sea God. The Japanese name, Navaldeus, is even more blatant.
 * Trenya, the adventurous Felyne.
 * Mythology Gag: The "ending credits" of Portable 3rd (played after you defeat Jinouga for the first time) features Nyanjiro, the courier Felyne (who can deliver items to your box though a barrel he rolls around once a mission) leaving Yukumo to roam the world of Monster Hunter and deliver invitations to Yukumo's victory party onto every past home village up to that point: Kokoto (MH1 offline and MH Freedom), Minegarde (MH 1 online), Jumbo (MH Dos offline), Dondruma (MH Dos online), Pokke (MH Freedom 2), Moga (MH Tri offline) and Loc Lac (MH Tri online), before returning to Yukumo in time for the festivities.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Crimson Fatalis.
 * Ceadeus in Tri. Deus as in God.
 * Diablos and Deviljho.
 * Nintendo Hard: Yeah... there's a bit of a learning curve.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
 * Noodle Incident The description for the Angel Parasol light bowgun states that the weapon was "found in the possession of a captured spy, [yet] the Guild has denied any involvement." This in a series of games where you never really see the actual Guild itself, just liaisons of.
 * Non-Lethal KO: You can faint 2 times in a quest, but on the third time you will be taken out of the quest.
 * Also, by trapping a monster and throwing tranq bombs at its head you can knock it out and capture it. Some quests require you to do this to win.
 * Ominous Latin Chanting (During the battles against the three varieties of Fatalis, recurring Bonus Bosses of the games)
 * Also, the first part of the fight with the Lao-Shan Lung features some Latin.
 * The Ceadeus's second battle theme includes a lot of tonal chanting, but it's Indonesian instead of Latin. Ominous Indonesian Chanting -- that's a new one.
 * Overly-Long Fighting Animation: Rathalos has this annoying move where he pointlessly takes to the air, flies one or two rounds around the region, then attacks the Hunter with a dive.
 * Palette Swap: Used on some monsters in the PSP series (eg. Rathalos: red, blue, and silver), with each different colour variants having very few, if any, noticeable physical differences between them.
 * Averted in Frontier, with some of the new monsters. People complained about Dyuragaua being just a re-skinned Tigrex pre-release. Well, They were very wrong.
 * Panty Shot: Depends on which armor set you use or how much of the armor you choose the equip. Some of them are even the stripey kind.
 * Papa Wolf: Subverted with the Aptonoth. The alpha male will attempt to fight back when its kind is threatened while the others flee... that is before running away himself.
 * Played Straight with the Chief's Son in Tri, who had to face a Great Jaggi to save a child.
 * Poisoned Weapons: Status effects on some weapons.
 * Power Equals Rarity: Played straight. Although in this case, the rarity-number-and-color-coding works more like a weapon ranking, stronger and better weapons generally have both a higher rarity AND need more difficult-to-attain crafting materials.
 * Though since the crafting shops have their services open to anyone in the world, anyone who can A) attain the materials for the weapon and B) pay for the service, can have an Infinity-1 Sword / Infinity+1 Sword. Most likely observable in Monster Hunter Frontier (the MMO game in the series), where basically everyone over around HR200 is running around with Rare-12 weapons.
 * Also, "rarity" is more along the lines of "how difficult it is to make" than actual "how hard it is to find." In Freedom 2, everyone and their grandma had the full set of Akantor armor (both Blademaster and Gunner) despite being Rank 8 (the highest in Freedom 2).
 * Prongs of Poseidon: A few Lances in the game. Bonus points because they tend to be water-elemental too.
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender
 * Rainbow Pimp Gear: Mostly averted; you need to wear the entire set of an armor type to get the full bonuses. However, some skill combinations can only be obtained by mixing armor sets, and some sets are incomplete (Example: Diablos armor used to be only a helm, chestplate, and armguards), requiring you to find another set to fill the missing slots.
 * One a more literal note, S-Rank and other higher rank armours have the option to change its colour, including one "Rainbow" option. Relevant, seeing as they are best worn in sets.
 * Randomly Drops: To be more specific, randomly carves from dead monster.
 * Random Number God: Experienced hunters can tell you horror stories about their attempts to appease the RNG, which has been outfitted with a "desire sensor" that reduces the drop rate of any monster part you really really need to make your armor. The only way to increase the chances of getting something is to not want it. Mind, you have to actually not want it. The Desire Sensor is immune to reverse psychology. Petting the pig may help you, though. Maybe.
 * Raptor Attack: The first aggressive monsters the player always encounters are basically these. The first generation introduces the "Velociprey" line -- Velociprey, Genprey and Ioprey, as well as their "alpha" males Velocidrone, Gendrome and Iodrome, respectively, with the second generation adding the Giaprey and Giadrome to the family. The third generation replaces them with the "Jaggi" line -- Jaggi and Baggi, with their "alpha males" Great Jaggi and Great Baggi, respectively, with Portable 3rd adding the Furogi and Great Furogi to the roster.
 * Red Baron: Many powerful wyverns almost seem as if people are worshipping their awesomeness, as certain titles and motifs tend to appear over Quest Names, Monster Descriptions and Item Descriptions. For example, Khezu is the "Light in the Dark", Blagonga is "The White Darkness", Yian Garuga is The Lone Wolf, Rathalos is the "King of the Skies"...you'd think with all those wyverns they have by now, it'd get difficult to top the titles they already have.
 * Regional Bonus: Tri's Western release drops the monthly fees for multiplayer and also allows for voice chat online.
 * Repeatable Quest: Online play consists almost entirely of repeatable hunts, so the quests are naturally repeatable as well. However, the extended preparation required for each task keeps players involved.
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter The fanbase has taken quite a liking to (miniature, or miniaturized) Yian Kut-Ku. Cutesy fanart of miniature kut-kus aren't hard to find on a certain imageboard on 4chan.
 * The Felynes are 2-foot tall, anthropomorphic Siamese cats with the cutest meow ever, speak in gratuitous catspeak with words like 'purretty' and 'beclaws,' and do a little dance around you when you hold a torch up! Tri adds a Felyne chef who says things like "meown ami".
 * Then there's the Hypnocatrice, which is basically a smaller, cuter version of the Kut-Ku with more birdlike traits and the threat level reduced by a truckload. In a world with many a deadly Breath Weapon, its special attack is... putting its enemies to sleep. You probably are going to feel a bit guilty when whacking on this creature.
 * RPG Elements
 * Running Gag: In Tri, whenever the Guild Sweetheart tries to find helpful information about a new monster or area, she inevitably comes up with nothing, due to either lack of information or a painfully obvious description.
 * Save Scumming Played straight because it's very helpful in manipulating the RNG into giving you that one last monster piece with a 2% drop/carve rate. Somewhat subverted in that you can't instant-save/load at any time, unlike with other games.
 * Schizo-Tech: The original game had an apparent Bronze Age or Iron Age with primitive firearms. The rest of the tech has advanced as the series has continued... but the firearms have kept step, and are always better than what should actually exist at that point in history. Then you get airships in Frontier and Sandships and Steamships in 3.
 * Scratch Damage: Played straight on both the monsters and on the player: any weapon can do damage no matter how insignificant, and most monsters can inflict this upon players who get in the way when the monster is repositioning itself - no, not actively charging, as in, stepping sideways to rotate themselves. Becomes irritating in the latter case as it often leaves you vunerable from the resulting flinch animation.
 * Screw the rules, I have more money than the Guild: An NPC in Loc Lac city says this practically word-for-word.
 * Serial Escalation: The weapon sizes by themselves could fit this trope, but weapon power is a whole different story.The Ukanlos Trampler has a raw damage rating of 1820, the highest of any weapon (at least in Freedom Unite), and that's before applying any attack bonuses. To put in perspective, the only hammer to come close is the Enormous Ham G at 1612, but even then it's missing the Ice Element damage and the Defense bonus (though it does have a better affinity).
 * Shamu Fu: In Tri, you can get the Sharq Attack lance. Basically? The lance is a Sharq. An entire Sharq. And it comes with a "no swimming" sign to be used as a shield.
 * She Fu: In a very bizarre example, Rathian's special attack is a draconic air-backflip.
 * Shoulders of Doom: The Diablos armor makes good use of the monster's horns. The Gunner version of this set is slightly more subdued.
 * Short-Range Shotgun: The "Pellet S" ammunition rounds for the Light or Heavy Bowguns. It's basically buckshot that works exactly how this trope describes it - minus the instant lethality (you are fighting huge monsters)
 * The "Wyvernfire" is also alot like a shotgun - get up close and unleash a massive burst of fire and gunpowder right into a monster's face!
 * Shout-Out: The Rajang is a massive Dragon Ball Z reference, and Lao Shan Lung looks suspiciously like Godzilla when he stands up.
 * Monster Hunter Tri brings you Godzilla shrunk down in the form of Deviljho. He has a destructive breath attack, will attack and kill other monsters, and this game did originally come from Japan, where Godzilla is revered.
 * Doesn't help that people are referring the new version of Deviljo (as seen in the trailer clip of Tri G) as Deviljo of the Awakened Murderous Intent.
 * Also, the Master's Replica looks like a different sort of Master Sword...
 * The starting Great Sword in MHF2 is called the Buster Sword.
 * Some of the armor sets (ex. Obituary) can be taken this way
 * From Monster Hunter Tri:

"Uppity Instructor: "I have more money than the Guild. Screw the rules!"."
 * During his first talk with you in the online mode, the Uppity Instructor says the following. Maybe a coincidence, but quite possibly a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series.


 * Sadly in the Japanese version there was an event that allowed you to actually wield Tessaiga, the weapon used exclusively by the half demon Inuyasha.
 * "Hunter is GO!"
 * One of the dairy products available in the meal menu is "Royale Cheese".
 * "You will drive your prey before you and hear the lamentations of their mates." -- The Savvy Hunter, on pulling off a perfect Spirit Slash combo.
 * In Unite there is a quest that takes place in the Volcano area where you have to kill a certain number of large monsters. The name of the quest? "Hotter than Hell itself." Coffee, anyone?
 * In Portable 3rd, one of the available weapons is based on Asuna's BFS.
 * A Shout Out in translation: The Male and Female Blademaster and Gunner sets for Jhen Mohran are all supposed to be named after Japanese Battleships or Aircraft Carriers. One doesn't have to wonder what the translator was thinking of when the Female Blademaster armor, supposed to be named after the Battleship Hyuga, got called Hinata instead.
 * Sinister Scythe: A few longswords are visibly scythes, but this is mostly aesthetic. Some are capable of literally slicing small wyverns in half, something that most other weapons in the game cannot claim to do.
 * The switch axe named "sinister saints" the axe part looks like death, and the blade of the weapon is death's scythe. making it one in name as well.
 * Situational Sword: Though often just an easter egg/visual gimmick, it's played straight with a lot of Long Swords, Hammers, and Great Swords once their Charged Attack is used.
 * Slice-and-Dice Swordsmanship: many of the smaller sword-type weapons. Example: the Order Rapier - a Dual Sword weapon whose weapon class only has about two stabbing attacks.
 * Smashing Survival: How to escape when a large monster has you pinned. Or you could just detonate a Dung Bomb in it's face.
 * Socketed Equipment: Weapons and Armor can have from zero to three "slots" in which to put gems. Said gems then count towards skill points needed to activate certain skills.
 * Soft Water: Played very weirdly in Tri. As always, your character can fall from any height onto anything without damage -- at least one area has two exits that are probably 100 foot drops -- minimum -- one into water and one onto solid ground, and they're both perfectly safe.. However, whenever you fall into water while carrying a Wyvern Egg, no matter how far you fall, you get the "sinks to the bottom" animation for dropping an egg by entering water, not the "break on impact" animation for falling from a height.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Applied to all items in the games, not just weapons. When looking at any item, you see its Rarity, a number indicating how early or late in the game you're supposed to be able to get it. As of Unite, the Rarity levels go up to 10 (and in Frontier, 12). Everything up to Rarity 5 is the items obtainable with materials from low-rank quests, Rarity 6-8 is items from high-rank quests, and Rarity 9-10 is items from G-rank quests.
 * However, effectiveness is subverted occasionally with some weapons. For example, Siegmund in Freedom 2 is widely considered to be among the best Great Swords despite being Rank 7.
 * Spam Attack: The entire point to the Dual Swords weapon class.
 * Standard Status Effects: Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, and Frozen in later games. You can inflict and be inflicted with them.
 * Sticks to The Back: Played straight. Every single weapon class in the game does this - no, not even the Long Swords that come with sheathes are exceptions. The Bowguns that could have been given shoulder slings? don't have them.
 * Stripperiffic: Female armor sets have a 20-40% chance of being this, but there are also a lot of Battle Ballgowns and everything in between to boot. Some sets, like the Bone armor, are skimpy even on male hunters.
 * Super-Persistent Predator: Subverted- bosses tend to flee when wounded, but minor predators like Velociprey will continuously do Scratch Damage at you even if they should be fleeing from the barn-sized monstrosity that keeps crushing them by accident.
 * Technically, with the practice of Persistence Hunting, the Hunters themselves.
 * Tactical Suicide Boss: The Agnaktor is covered in an armor of rapidly cooling lava. After enough time, it hardens enough that nothing short of explosions can harm him. However, when he burrows underground, or uses his heat beam, or wades into lava, it softens enough for him to be attacked again. He'd be close to invincible if he stuck to just his hip attacks and charges, rather than burrowing and using heat beams.
 * The Agnaktor subspecies has the opposite problem, in that its icy armor melts the longer it's above ground and and freezes back up once it burrows.
 * Take That: The ad campaign for Monster Hunter Tri, pointing out the difference between "sissy" real life hunters and fishermen as opposed to big, awesome monster hunters. The ad campaign often made use of footage from television show Deadliest Catch. Deadliest Catch appears again as the name of a 3 star quest in Tri, pitting you against giant man-eating catfish and alligator monsters.
 * The Blade Always Lands Pointy End In: The "Throwing Knife" items. In addition to always landing (hitting) blade in, they fly perfectly straight as well. These throwing knives have diplomatic immunity from the laws of physics.
 * The Cutie Guild Sweetheart
 * The Hunter: Well, yeah.
 * The Grim Reaper: The Death Stench armor set has you looking like a heavily-armored version. Not to mention its armor pieces' descriptions...
 * You can even forge an accompanying scythe as well, even one that bisects the more miniscule creatures in the game with one stroke.
 * The Slow Walk: Done by some wyverns. Sometimes, they will just decide to screw using their breath attacks or charges and simply walk towards you slowly, then use a bite or hip check. It's actually not dangerous at all and a good chance to get in a few hits, but in a game where you're used to having an intervall between enemy attacks of maybe 2 seconds, such a long silence can be oddly terrifying as the monster approaches you, especially if it's a Green Plesioth...
 * The Medic: If you have the Wide Range skill or Lifepowders, you can heal your whole team if they are in the same area, that also includes status ailments; even Blights!
 * Theme Music Power-Up: In those missions where you're fighting a giant-class monster around the fortress, the BGM will switch from that monster's rather threatening battle theme to a more heroic one once it reaches the final area of the battlefield, since that's where the outcome of the battle is decided.
 * Third Person Seductress: Like any game where you can choose gender, many males tend to choose the female option. Must be due to all those outfits you can dress her in.
 * This Is a Drill A couple of the lances in Unite
 * Also the Dragonator at the Castle Schrade is a drill, a very large, spiky drill...
 * The Dragonator at the Fort consists of four very large, not-so-spiky drills
 * The Skyscraper, a powerful weapon that is hard to obtain and is made from a chunk of worn-out ancient metal, is the largest lance in MH Tri and perhaps the entire series. When the player uses the lance's charge move, the lance spins, resembling something like a portable Dragonator.
 * And according to the description, it's capable of piercing the heavens.
 * Also the Grief Lance/Fiendish Tower
 * The Spiral Heat lance also starts spinning while charging.
 * Throw a Barrel At It: The bombs in this game always come in barrels. Hence the names "Small/Large Barrel Bomb/Bomb+ "
 * Tranquillizer Dart: Used frequently, with Tranq Bombs, Tranq S bowgun ammo, and even Tranq Throwing Knives, required for monster capture quests. It's not Instant Sedation though, the monster has to be near-dead for it to work.
 * Turns Red: Nearly every monster gets angry when you damage it enough, and gains some combination of power, speed, and new moves while enraged. Usually they'll calm down after a while, but the less health a monster has, the less damage it takes to make them angry again. On the plus side, you can get a rough idea of how close a monster is to dying based on how quickly they get mad.
 * Underground Monkey: There are several monster families that share movesets, tactics and certain features, not to mention subspecies and such. This is usually a good thing however, given that having to learn a brand new moveset for every new wyvern would make the game even more absurdly difficult and the wyverns usually have enough distinctions between the subspecies, such as new moves, weaknesses, varied features etc.
 * Unfortunate Names: There's a Black Face armor piece.
 * Useless Useful Spell: Averted. Most monsters can suffer from practically any status effect, and may be particularly vulnerable to one or two.
 * Virtual Paper Doll: With the wide variety of armour you can make, you can mix sets together for skills and looks.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: Tri gives us Barroth, the first urgent "boss" of the online mode. Not only are his movements completely different from anything you know from other MH games, he is also heavily armored, moves around a lot and has a nasty and hard to dodge status attack that renders you unable to act for a short amount of time. The fact it's the first monster whose roar stuns you doesn't help. There's a reason why players above hunter rank 9 tend to be a lot more skilled than below.
 * Yian Kut-ku was the wake-up call in earlier installments.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: All of the series has characters eating MASSIVE chunks of dinosaur meat straight off the bone. They also eat it like they're starving to death or are dogs. Oh, and they rarely even fill you up, so you have to eat more than one.
 * Wutai: Yukumo, the player's base of operations in Portable 3, has a Far Eastern (particularly Japanese) look, down to a guild base which also doubles as a hot springs resort.
 * You No Take Candle: Cha-cha in Tri talks like this.
 * His in-game chat changes depending on whatever mask he's wearing, ranging from toe-curlingly bad puns to quite sophisticated, old chap.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: If you thought the humble Chainmail Bikini was sexy, you have yet to see how this game outfits its girl's chainmail stockings.
 * This game has many of this. If you give her the right combination, you can make her look completely like a school girl. Purely aesthetic though, the defense and armor skill on it blows.
 * This game has many of this. If you give her the right combination, you can make her look completely like a school girl. Purely aesthetic though, the defense and armor skill on it blows.