MapleStory

MapleStory (2003-) is a free-to-play MMORPG from South Korea that is both loved and hated for its unique graphics reminiscent of 16-bit games.

Like most MMORPGs, MapleStory is crawling with all sorts of people, including (but not limited to) kids, tweens, teens, adults, noobs, hackers, people who take it too seriously, and normal people who want to have fun.

At first glance, MapleStory seems like a game that is generally marketed towards children due to the anime-style graphics and the general cute factor of many of the (early) monsters.

The various regions of MapleStory have differing backgrounds and plots. In order to really notice this information, the player has to finish certain quests and then connect the dots while looking through their completed quests log. These quests can be fairly boring since most of them are fetch quests requiring you to collect Twenty Bear Asses. However some quests are worthwhile and have good rewards, but you won't know this until you look at your 'In Progress' quest log AFTER accepting a quest (which most of the time shows the reward) or reading a quest guide on the internet beforehand. Interestingly, a few quests actually have some unexpected plot twists in them, but these tend to be ignored since the player is just clicking "Next" and not reading the text.

Recent MapleStory expansions (as early as the release of the first new adventurer class, The Pirate, with there being many quests in the Nautilus referring to the Black Magician) now hint that a shady character called the Black Magician and his minions, the Black Wings, are responsible for the activities of some of the major bosses (and the chaos happening within the regions where the major bosses reside).

There are currently four main character factions, known as the Adventurers, the Knights of Cygnus, the Legends, and the Resistance. All of them have ties to the ongoing Black Magician and his Black Wings plot, some factions having more (The Resistance) and some less (Adventurers) to do with the Black Magician.

 Adventurers= The characters of the Adventurer (known as Explorer in the Global Version) classes start the game as a Beginner. These were the first classes in the game, and are thus the most basic in terms of skills. Their overall role in the plot is just as simple. Adventurers basically wander the world looking for glory, running across dangerous monsters that the Black Wings are responsible for in some way.
 * Bowman: They are specialists in ranged damage, can take the Hunter/Ranger/Bow Master path and use fast but weaker bows or the Crossbowman/Sniper/Marksman who use slower but stronger crossbows. Definitely a Glass Cannon.
 * Magician: They are not exactly classified as a Squishy Wizard in this game, as they have a skill that converts a large percentage of their damage to damage to their large MP pool. Depending on the path that they choose to take, they either cast offensive/defensive Ice/Lightning, offensive Fire/Poisonous Person, or support Holy spells.
 * Warrior: One path they can take is the Fighter/Crusader/Hero who uses Swords/Axes, who specialize in a Combo Attack, where their attacks gather orbs that further boost their damage. Another option is to become a Magic Knight with the Page/White Knight/Paladin path and have FOUR elements to complement the swords/hammers/maces they use. Then, there's the Spearman/Dragon Knight/Dark Knight path, obviously specializes in Spears/Pole Arms, and tends to Cast from Hit Points.
 * Thief: The ever-so-popular fragile speedsters of the game. They can either take the Assassin/Hermit/Night Lord path and specialize in throwing stars, or become a Knife Nut with the Bandit/Chief Bandit/Shadower classes.
 * Dual Blade: An offshoot of the Thieves. They dual wield with a dagger and short blade. They are so different from the rest of the Adventurers in nearly every way, such as actually having a story and the fact that they have a separate character creation option.
 * Pirate: They have two possible paths to take. The first being a Gunslinger/Outlaw/Corsair, who are possibly glass cannons. The second path being a Brawler/Marauder/Buccanner, who uses knuckles. Brawlers also tend to shove mobs around, functioning like a tank. They are massively slow but hit hard.
 * Cannon Shooter: An offshoot of the Pirates. They use a Cannon and a Monkey companion. It can also summon the Nautilus at will.

After becoming one of the five Adventurer classes, the player character is expected to level up and advance to the second job of that class at Level 30, where they will permanently choose which weapon path to take. The player character advances to the third job at Level 70, and fourth job at Level 120. The maximum level of any Adventurer character is currently 200. Knights of Cygnus= The Knights of Cygnus classes themselves are like elemental variants of the Adventurers, but they only focus on one weapon or spell type from the very beginning. Their role in the plot is to protect Queen Cygnus, ruler of the Maple World, from the Black Wings.
 * Wind Archer: Bowman, Wind and Bow user. Known as Wind Breaker (unfortunately) in non-Global versions.
 * Blaze Wizard: Magician, Fire spell user. Known as Flame Wizard in non-Global versions.
 * Dawn Warrior: Warrior, Soul and Sword user. Known as Soul Master in non-Global versions.
 * Thunder Breaker: Pirate, Lightning and Knuckle user. Known as Striker in non-Global versions.
 * Night Walker: Thief, Darkness and Throwing Star user.

Knights of Cygnus characters are generally identical to the main classes in terms of leveling and advancement, except that their maximum level is 120 (and they lack a fourth job). Though to make up for it they are overpowered compared to their adventurer counterparts at similar levels. Legends= The Legends consist of five ancient heroes (or people related to a specific hero) that fought the Black Magician in the past and managed to seal him away. However, the Black Magician did not go down without a fight, and the five ancient heroes are said to have been cursed, sealing them in ice and wiping out their memories.

Each of the five Legends are all actual individuals (thus not really classes), hence the naming scheme and NPC dialogue treating the player as if he/she actually is the specific Legend. The Legends may use the same equipment and rely on the same stats as their Adventurer and Cygnus counterparts, but they have unique skills and abilities. Also, while all of the Adventurers and the Knights of Cygnus share the same general story across all of their respective classes, each of the Legends have a seperate story, with completely different starting points and quests.


 * Aran, the Ancient Hero (Warrior): An ancient Polearm-wielding warrior of the past who fought against the Black Magician with the other four heroes, and was cursed along with them. Aran wakes up in the present with his/her memories wiped out, although the friendly inhabitants of Rien help Aran to regain his/her memories and former legendary strength while continuing the fight against the present day Black Wings. Aran's special trait involves a combo system and skill usage reliant on button command sequences.


 * Evan, the Dragon Master (Mage): A second-generation son/daughter of farmers living near Henesys who meets a huge dragon in a dream. The next morning, Evan finds a dragon egg, and a voice then speaks of a pact and a bond being forged with Evan. The egg later hatches into a baby dragon, who is later named Mir. Evan then sets out to find out why he/she was chosen, and find out exactly what Mir truly is.  Evan's special trait involves using Mir to attack enemies, and has 10 job advancements (or stages of growth) compared to the usual 4. Qualifies as a red mage.


 * Mercedes, the Elf Queen (Archer):  An ancient Dual-Crossbow Archer of the past who fought against the Black Mage with Aran, Freud and the two other heroes. Wakes up later to travel the Maple World to fight the Black Mage again. Rides a Unicorn and is very acrobatic. Hails from the town of Eurel which was also cursed by the Black Mage.


 * Mysterious Thief, Phantom (Thief):  A thief who became a hero to protect the world his love, the former empress of the Maple World, loved so much. He wields canes and cards and has the ability to copy other adventurers skills. Like the other heroes, he was sealed in ice after defeating the Black Mage, but once again travels the world in his flying ship, the Crystal Garden.

The Legends currently have a maximum level of 200. The fate of the Pirate Legend is not known at this time. The Resistance= The evil group known as the Black Wings are dominant in the town of Edelstein, and do many awful things such as experimenting on humans. One secret faction in the town opposes them and challenges their authority, known as The Resistance.


 * Battle Mage: They wield staves, have melee spells, and have a variety of Aura skills that buff/debuff party members/enemies. Gets a nifty Spin Attack skill late game.
 * Wild Hunter: They wield crossbows, have a few explosive weaponry, and have the ability to summon and ride a jaguar that even has skills and attacks of its own. They can drop Exploding Barrels and capture monsters to use to fight other monsters, though these skills are of questionable usefullness.
 * Mechanic: They wield guns, but rather then using those, they summon a Miniature Mecha to ride and attack with. A few of the things their robots come with are, flamethrowers, giant hammers, rocket-propelled fists, portable teleporters, gatling guns and laser cannons. Can later briefly summon a Humongous Mecha to nuke their entire screen. Considered a Lightning Bruiser.
 * Demon Slayer: A former general of the Black Mage army along with Von Leon, Orca, and Akyrum. His brother was killed by the hands of the Black Mage; therefore he betrayed the Black Mage in an act of revenge and was almost killed. When he woke up, he breaks free from his egg prison in Verne Mine. The mysterious J rescues him and sends him to the Resistance hideout in Edelstein. Uses a special Magic Gauge called Demon Force that replaces the MP Gauge. Uses one handed Axes and Blunt Weapons, and a new weapon type called Maces. Considered the Warrior Resistance member.

A fair word of warning while interacting with others in MapleStory: To a significant amount of players in this game, just about anything can be grounds for some Serious Business.

In short: Picture a 2-D Ragnarok Online and you get the idea.

Not to be confused with Cave Story or Mapletown.


 * A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The main plot point of the Neo-Tokyo level.
 * A Taste of Power: Monsters that could kill any other class in one hit when they're first starting out are no match for Aran... until you finish the tutorial, anyway. The Demon Slayer tutorial allows you to use the 4th job Demon Slayer skills against a group of three Phantom Lykas summoned by Akyrum.... until he goes up against the Black Mage and is defeated.
 * Affectionate Parody: Basically almost every single area of the game and several weapons; even the BGM tends to do this.
 * Allegedly Free Game: Although you can play for free, getting (good) hairstyles/faces, slot/experience boosters, and certain shop-only items require the use of real money. Real world money is also helpful if you want a chance at having higher leveled equipment or over 100 million mesos.
 * Though as of 2011, Nexon has partnered with various companies that offer NX rewards for completing "surveys"(advertiser spam) and other such offers. It is now technically possible to earn NX funds without buying it, but it often requires a lot of patience and a willingness to have an email inbox filled with spam to do so.
 * Anachronism Stew And how!
 * Animated Adaptation: The only similarities were the monsters involved.
 * An Ice Person: Crossbowmen get Ice skills in the third job. Ice/Lightning wizards are partly this.
 * Aran, in addition to his combination attacks, uses many powerful ice elemental attacks later on.
 * Annoying Arrows: Played with in the Bowman path: Initially, due to the wide damage range, they play this straight one moment, and horribly, horribly avert it the next. Finally averted later when skills narrowing the damage gap become available.
 * Anti-Poopsocking: "You have played MapleStory for X hours." (If X is greater than 3) "We suggest you take a break from Mapling." However, aside from the warning, the game does nothing else.
 * Except in the Chinese version, where the game boots you off.
 * Subverted, as well. Many of the Marathon Boss enemies require several hours to finish, and there are actual awards (in the Global version, at least) for actually being on consistently for 3 hours or more.
 * Art Evolution: While the graphics have remained pretty much unchanged since it's first release, if you compare the first soundtracks with the most recent ones, you'll notice big differences.
 * Though recently, Athena Pierce was given a new sprite.
 * Dark Lord got a totally new character sprite as well. Though while both of them use the new sprites in their respective maps, the original sprites still appear on Maple Island.
 * Maple Administrator got a new sprite in January 2012, only to revery back to the original in February. Then in March 2012, was given yet another new character sprite which was different from their previous updated artwork.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Androids. They follow you around, they look human... but they literally do nothing else. They can only wear clothing from the Cash Shop and do not attack or even pick up items. To make it worse, the hearts that operate them expire, requiring players to either buy replacements or find recipes and craft replacements quite often.
 * Giant potions. These can be gained through alchemy. While it sounds fun to grow giant and step on foes, the fact you take the same damage as you would normally by touching the enemies makes it useless.
 * Badass Grandma: Female Boss/Anego in Showa. To top it all off, she has one mother of an Armor-Piercing Slap.
 * Though as with most enemies in the game, pre-Big Bang she was much more powerful than she is right now. It used to require a team of high leveled players to kill her, now it only takes a 4th job player a few minutes.
 * Beef Gate: Leaving Victoria Island before your second job advancement isn't a very good idea. Especially after the Big Bang, which drastically increased the levels of almost every monster outside of Victoria Island, the World Tour areas and the various Noob Caves.
 * Beehive Barrier: The Battle Mage class has a Beehive Barrier that shields anyone in your party that stays inside it.
 * Big Bad: After years without one, it finally got one with the Black Mage.
 * Actually; the Black Magician has been there since Orbis was released; but because of the majority of the players not giving a crap about the questline no one really knew about him.
 * Big Fancy Castle: Lion King's Castle.
 * Bilingual Bonus / Meaningful Name: Ludibrium is Latin for "plaything".
 * Bland-Name Product: Just look at the Kerning Square.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: Poor, poor Athena (or most other clearly female NPCs for that matter). She is constantly referred to either as 'him', 'it', or 'they' by other NPCs.
 * Blown Across the Room: The Dragon's Breath skill. Also, several boss monsters are capable of this.
 * Boring but Practical: Fighters and Pages used their basic Power Strike and Slash Blast skills all the way until level 120, at least before the Big Bang patch. Assassins use Lucky 7 until level 120, and possibly later if they don't have the Triple Throw skill book.While they get additional attacks, those are entirely situational.
 * The ultimate version of this is the Magician's Magic Guard, which is used for life.
 * Bowdlerize: Until the Big Bang, when the Bowlderization was reversed, Global version's Showa Town had human monsters turning into animals when they died (to show that you weren't really killing humans) and all guns were turned into hammers. It was feared this would happen to Pirates, but it didn't.
 * Removal of Gachapon (slot machines) and introduction of Pigmy (egg-hatching pig, with prizes in the eggs) could also count, since it's Pigmy in Europe among others and gambling can get a + 12 on otherwise innocent game under Pegi.
 * Boss Rush: The entire point of the Mu Lung Dojo.
 * Bottomless Magazines: Mechanics cannot use bullets like their Gunslinger cousins, but they have gatling guns that do not use bullets.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: There is a quest where you give a guard named Mike three different HP healing potions. When you complete the quest, he says ""Maybe the effects will kick in later. That's usually how medicine works, right? It's supposed to Heal me right away? Haha! I don't know about that... It's not like this is a video game ore something.
 * Bribing Your Way to Victory: The Cash Shop used to only sell items (for real money) that were purely aesthetic. With the introduction of the Gachapon "coin op" machines, real money can buy items that can change gameplay.
 * A few examples are items that: Double EXP gained (granted, it's for everyone), ignore EXP penalties upon death, and allow the user to teleport anywhere. Sayonara, ships.
 * Even that can be beaten. Two words: EXP Gachapon. You can buy your way all the way up to level 50.
 * With the recent introduction of Evan (in the Global version), buying special skillbooks from the Cash Shop is currently required to increase the level of essential skills such as Magic Guard. Cue many justified cries of Nexon (at least the branch running the Global version, as the original Korean version didn't do any of this) crossing the line and making the game no longer be truly Free-to-Play.
 * Also in Global with the release of the Dual Blade, like Evan there's mastery books in the cash shop for several skills. The people angry about the Evan mastery books are in a state of blistering fury about these ones as well.
 * Miracle Cubes in the cash shop allow you to reset an item's Potential trait. Using enough of them with the in-game purchasable Magnifying Glass can give you Infinity Plus One Equipment.
 * Shielding Wards that allows you to use Equipment Enhancement Scrolls without penalty on an item up to 8 (12 in Korean Maple) stars.
 * Butt Monkey: The game balance was never really kind to Archers. Their HP is among the lowest, have average DPM, and in general the buggiest class in the history of the game. The release of Wild Hunters also made this worse as they're basically Archers with superior mobility, DPM, and HP. Thought this was finally changed in a later patch.
 * On the hand, before Big Bang, Archers could actually win against boss enemies several levels above them. Post BB, there is a accuracy equation based on level difference that creates an automatic miss after 20 levels.
 * Calling Your Attacks: A toggleable feature when setting up macros. Sadly, it's less awesome in practice than in theory for various reasons.
 * Captain Ersatz: Several. This is a game which features a lot of lawyer-friendly cameos and such-
 * Athena Pierce is likely based on Elwing from Shining Wind
 * Grendel The Really Old is Gandalf.
 * Marco, an agent in a black suit and holding a big gun in Omega Sector, is based on Agent J (Will Smith) from Men in Black
 * and as of the Big Bang patch, Nexon America renamed the character to "Agent M" in the Global version which makes it even more obvious
 * Stirgeman, a costumed character in New Leaf City, is based on Batman
 * Of the equip items he gives out, some are black and red, based on Batman Beyond
 * Icebird Slymm, mayor of New Leaf City, looks a lot like Mayor Tilton from The Mask.
 * though he's supposedly based on governor David Paterson, but Paterson is a rather skinny guy with some hair whereas Mayor Tilton and Icebyrd Slimm are rather overweight and balding
 * Lita Lawless seems to be based on Xena (hence the similar name to Lucy Lawless) though she wears armor more inspired by futuristic anime.
 * Bell, conductor of the subway to and from New Leaf City, looks a lot like another conductor of a rail vehicle.
 * Spiegelmann, the man who runs the Monster Carnival, is only a pointy nose off from being Batman's enemy Penguin.
 * Tigun, the guard at Ariant castle (not Tigun The Advisor from Ludibrium) looks like a very overweight parody of Jonathan Frakes. No coincidence this character was created at a time Frakes was being hit with jokes about weight gain.
 * The Mesorangers in Omega Sector are basically the Power Rangers, specifically based on the earlier years of the show. There are also Chury, Hoony and Gunny, three characters which wear Power Rangers costumes but not the helmets.
 * A non character example would be many of the shops in Kerning Square, which often look so much like the real businesses that it's skirting very close to the legal line.
 * Cake Boss Daniel, of the Cake VS Pie event, looks almost exactly like Hell's Kitchen host Gordon Ramsey
 * Pie Lord Tiara, of the same event, may be based on Rachel Ray but the visual likeless is not as strong
 * Ghosthunter Bob of Ludibrium is probably based on the Ghostbusters, but he looks more like the Filmation Ghostbusters than the more well-known Dan Akroyd film/Real Ghostbusters series.
 * Cast from Hit Points: Many of the Demon Slayer's skills use HP instead of MP, in addition to his character specific Demon Force. Also just about all the Dragonknight's skills.
 * Charged Attack: The Crusader's Combo Attack is a Collect type that's charged by hitting the enemy. On the 4th job, most classes get a Hold type.
 * Don't forget the Brawler class tree, considering you pretty much rely on a skill that charges up to access half of your other skills.
 * Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: The Maple World has a modern force of secret agents that are supposed to patrol the world. They were first seen in a massive event in version .72, and again in the alien invasion event prior to Big Bang, as well as one lone agent who was seen around the haunted mansion during a Halloween event. These agents are connected to the Omega Sector. But as of Big Bang, they've all but vanished, with only the original Agent Marco in Omega Sector remaining, as well as Gaga, who has had his role in the story changed since then. The rest of the agents have vanished with no trace or hint of showing up again, and their role in the world seems to have been replaced by the Edelstein Resistance and Silent Crusade with some possible retconning happening to the overall plot.
 * Classic Video Game "Screw You"s:
 * When taking the ship between Orbis and Victoria Island in either direction there is a 50% chance two Crimson Balrogs will show up and kill everyone on the ship (unless at least one person onboard is around level 100 or higher, which is around the level the Balrogs are at, and able to defeat them or if you spend the trip safely inside the cabin), making you go back to where you were.
 * To get to Crimsonwood Keep, or just to the training maps before it, one has to go through two maps where a monster that does 10k or so damage randomly spawns. After that one has to do a jump quest which involves dodging giant totem poles that will OHKO you if you touch them. When one gets to Lower Ascent and the next few maps it's possible to fall off the map, forcing you to do the second part of the jump quest again.
 * This game just looooooooooooooves to spawn monsters right where you're standing. This is especially frustrating as a Mechanic since the mech has no knockback and can block out quite a few enemy sprites. You suddenly take damage for no apparent reason until you move or the enemy comes into view.
 * When you're trying to fight a mob one by one, your character either locks on one mook you hit first, regardless of where it is as long as it is within your attack range, while ignoring other mooks which are about to crash onto you, or locks on random mooks in the mob, usually the furthest ones, even after you hit the one on your face, while ignoring other mooks which are about to crash onto you. This is why multi-target attacks/crowd control are extremely useful, and Wizet indeed seems to acknowledge this by giving most new classes some crowd control skills; when you can smack multiple mooks at once, it doesn't really matter which ones are almost out of reach and which ones are about to crash onto you
 * Clothes Make the Superman: Some armors can have extremely powerful bonuses (e.g. up to 21% to your main damage stat)additionally before the Big Bang patch physical defense was entirely dependent on armor.
 * Collectible Card Game: The Monster Book. Doing this is beneficial, as once you collect enough cards of a specific monster, you can view basic background information about the monster, see everything that it Randomly Drops, and be able to gain bonus experience from that specific monster for an hour after collecting their final card. This was reworked in a later patch after being temporarily removed.
 * Also, the Spin-Off game Maple Story ITCG.
 * Conspiracy Redemption: The Evan.
 * Continuing Is Painful: All classes lose 10% exp when dieing, which isn't good considering the amount of Level Grinding needed to level up at later levels.
 * Having a higher LUK statistic used to reduce the penalty. In the past, mages that went "LU Kless" would lose over 30% of their EXP if they died.
 * As of Chaos and professions, building up the Ambition trait reduces EXP loss at death by a small bit every 5 levels it's raised.
 * Critical Hit: All Archers, all Pirates (except Mechanics), Assassins, Cleric, Evans, and Battle Mages have skills that boost critical rate on all attacks. Other classes have only a 5% but some have skills that have separate critical hit chances. 4th advancement Archers can boost their entire party's critical rate and raise critical damage. Before the Big Bang only these classes (minus Clerics,Pirates and the classes that didn't exist at the time.) could critical hit at all.
 * Darker and Edgier: The beginning of the Demon Slayer storyline
 * Dark Is Not Evil: A lot of the Battle Mage's skills involve some very "dark" themes (ex: "Dark Genesis", "Summon Reaper"), but the backstory of the Resistance faction puts them as the good guys. Additionally, the Knights of Cygnus' "Night Walker" class, and the Adventurers' "Night Lord", "Shadower", and "Dark Knight" classes - all involve some form of manipulation of shadows, darkness, or otherwise normally "sinister" skills. Also the Demon Slayer is a half-Demon good guy with very edgy, dark, spiky attacks. Even though he was a commander in the Black Mage's army, he
 * Dem Bones: A lot of monsters, from humans to dogs to fish.
 * Disc One Nuke: Before you even make your second job advancement, a quest is available that requires you to kill one of five relatively easy bosses depending on your class, and the reward for said quest is a mask of that boss that boosts your class' main stat by 12, and even the defense of these masks is greater than many higher-leveled hats.
 * Eldritch Location - The further down you get in the Ludibrium Clock Tower, the more the whole place seems off. It doesn't exactly help that a good portion of the monsters down there are technically ghosts, as well.
 * Although that's only the right side the left side suffers from Musical Dissonce.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Fire hurts plant-based and ice-based monsters. Ice hurts fire-based and many fish. Holy hurts undead and dark. This is not true in all cases however; which tends to annoy the elemental-users because of how most of the game is biased towards those who specialize in non-elemental offensive methods.
 * This is ironically enough one of the biggest reasons why Mages were nerfed retroactively after the Big Bang patch. Almost every area added after that patch contains neutral weak monsters making the Mages ability to exploit elemental weakness completely useless (it borders an Informed Ablity.)
 * Emotionless Girl: Lilin, according to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZM-jB855aM
 * Engagement Challenge: In order to make an Engagement Ring, the male must acquire "Proofs of Love" from the various towns which are given by collecting certain amounts of items, as well as the materials to actually make the ring out of. The female has to get a blessing from her parents (Who are an in-game NPC), which also requires collecting "Proofs of Love". Of course, to actually get married, you have to buy a reservation from the Cash Shop.
 * Built With Lego: The world Ludibrium, complete with toy monsters.
 * Evolution: The monsters around . They turn back to their original selves on death though.
 * Explosive Overclocking: Dark Scrolls work more often than their regular counterparts, but can potentially destroy the item they're used on if they fail. Potenial and Equipment Enhancement Scrolls are like this too, but they WILL destroy the item they're used on if they fail.
 * Extreme Omnivore: A Wild Hunter's jaguar. At their second advancement, their mount can swallow a monster to grant its user a random buff. It works on any non-boss monster that is in an area that is not version specific. This ends up including monsters ranging from wooden signs, street lights, killer teddy bears, robots, possessed grandfather clocks and Animated Armor.
 * The size of the monster isn't an issue for these Jaguars either.
 * Fake Difficulty: Leveling took several times longer than the current EXP curve brought by the Big Bang. It could take 10 straight hours of dedication to gain even a single level.
 * One of the biggest problems with jump quests is that the game has this tendency to lock up for really short split seconds. This doesn’t interfere with most aspects of play. But it totally interferes with your ability to make precisely-timed jumps.
 * Fake Ultimate Mook: The stone golems have become this as a result of the Big Bang.
 * Fantastic Foxes: An enemy.
 * Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Half the planet seems to be based on medieval times and ancient myths of magic and wizardry, with a strong emphasis on swords and knights. The other half? American Indian culture, an inner city slum, a town made of building blocks, a futuristic military base, ancient Japan, modern Japan, Japan in the future, pirates... you get the idea. It can be jarring walking from a town that looks like it came from a Tolkein book to a town that looks like Compton.
 * Fantastic Racism: The fairies in Ellinia and Orbis usually consider humans to be selfish, inferior, or sometimes just plain destructive. While some of the humans they talk about really are such things, and a few do have human friends, some will still talk down to the player without provocation, or make an offhand remark about how said friend is good for a human.
 * Fluffy Cloud Heaven: Orbis looks like one, complete with heavenly music and angels. However, there are still monsters that will can kill you. Very fast if you aren't of high level.
 * Fluffy the Terrible: Bob the Snail. And Pink Bean. Dear GOD, PINK BEAN.
 * Foe-Tossing Charge: All warriors except the Dawn Warrior will have this skill one time. Useful for grouping monsters together to kill them all at once, or shoving mobile bosses to a more convenient location or for some of their squishier friends. Notably this is the only movement skill the adventurer warriors get.
 * Future Imperfect: Going through the Door of the Future in the Temple of Time shows you that.
 * The Alien Invasion event, prior to Big Bang, saw the Maple World in ruins,
 * Game Favored Gender: Engagement ring quests for males involve collecting gold, diamond or other precious materials and gems, followed by the cost to make the ring. For females? Collecting Proofs of Love (which the males also do), and talking to your parents.
 * Also in terms of hair and clothing options, the females choice is better.
 * Gatling Good: Mechanics get a skill like this.
 * Gender Blender Name: Evan, like any other class, can be either gender, but will still be called Evan even if she's female.
 * Get on the Boat: With literal boats that take you places! Also comes in varieties such as airships, subway trains, random tour guides, and a cloth pouch carried by a crane.
 * And even one that gets invaded by monsters while you're traveling.
 * Notably, a flying boat made to resemble a brightly-colored plastic toy train.
 * Aaaaand a giant genie. And a bird that has a platform to stand on that's rather loosely attached...
 * Glass Cannon: Gunslingers. Near the endgame, they have the strongest attacks of all the classes. The problem is that they can't take hits like Warriors (massive HP), don't have workarounds like Magicians (Magic Guard), and can't dodge as well as Thieves (Evasion), although Evasion tends not to fare very well at the areas where you would be taking such high damages anyway. Archers are also like this; except they don't compare to Gunslingers.
 * Also applies to most ranged classes with higher damage their hp tends to be lower than average.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: Ariant Queen Areda. Also,  Arguably the mook perspective on a high leveled Mercedes.
 * Goggles Do Nothing: Lampshaded, on the item Spectrum Goggles there is a description saying "Allows vision in multiple dimensions. Who says the goggles do nothing?"
 * Good Bad Translation: At places in English version. One of the most outrageous ones is the case of Horny Mushrooms in MapleStory Europe. Originally "Horny Mushrooms" in Global (mushrooms with horns. What did you think?), they were changed into "Horn-shape mushrooms". And no, no typo there. However, they recently made them "Horny Mushroom" in Europe too, but forgot to rename the ETC-drop, which is still called "Horn-shape Mushroom Cap". Also, they couldn't decide how to translate the Knights of Cygnus; SEA and Global have different names for them and Europe (which takes most of stuff straight from Global) uses SEA names.
 * And the "Wind Breaker" class, as mentioned above.
 * There is a quest given by The Rememberer that requires you to kill a certain number of Horny Mushrooms. It's called "Raging Horny Mushrooms."
 * Graffiti Town: Kerning City
 * Gratuitous Greek: The signs in Orbis and at the Victoria island airship port are English written with Greek Letters. Among other things, they say "Cloud", and "Welcome to Orbis" Especially gratuitous is the fact that they simply typed the words in Greek mode on an English keyboard, which meant that some English letters were interpreted as completely different Greek ones, leading to a sign that's supposed to say "Victoria" saying "ςΙΧΤΟΡΙΑ", which would be pronounced "Sixtoria." Oh and if it looks weird that the first letter is lower case and the rest is upper case, they even tried to cover that up by scooting the ς at the start up a bit so it would match the height of the others.
 * But because they moved the ς up, it appears to say "Sixtopia" to an unknowing observer, which is oddly fitting with six city-states on the surface of the island.
 * The Greys: Monsters in Omega Sector, which are even called Grays. Also includes purple octopus-like aliens (Mateons, their derivatives, and the appropriately-named Octopus).
 * Ground Pound: So many monsters do this, it's probably taught at monster school.
 * Grumpy Bear: Played with, with a bear. Edelstein's Checky, a man in a bear suit, is constantly picked on by kids trying to get a look at his real face under the hood, even going so far as to task the player into throwing snakes into his costume to try and make him take it off. He also sometimes has trouble breathing and must occasionally use a special respirator with a mask cast to fit the bear's face. He's not grumpy, really, and stays cheerful but he's always being annoyed about the bear mask despite his insistence that the only thing under the mask are "hopes and dreams"..
 * Handguns: Every weapon a Gunslinger utilizes is a handgun resembling dated flintlock pistols.
 * To put this in perspective, modern weaponry exists in the Maple World, but all job classes are expected to use medieval swords, bows and blunt weapons with Pirates being the most modern, but still quite outdated, in terms of equipment.
 * Haunted Castle: The haunted Prendergast Mansion, and it has many, many ghosts and ghouls.
 * Headless Horseman: One of the boss monsters.
 * Heel Face Brainwashing: Subverted. This happens to
 * Heel Face Turn: The Demon Slayer does this when his house is burned with his brother inside.
 * Heroic Comedic Sociopath
 * Heroic BSOD: Mercedes has one of these after finding out that the Black Mage cursed Eurel and the rest of the elves along with her she during her battle. The elf counsel breaks her out of it quickly, though.
 * Hollywood Density: The strongest of the Mechanic mech equips are made of pure gold and the second strongest are still made primarily of gold. Hopefully the Maple World's version of "gold" is not the same as ours because if it were, these engines and other pieces would literally mangle themselves upon use, as gold is one of the softest metals in existence.
 * Homing Boulders: All projectiles home towards enemies when applicable.
 * Horse of a Different Color: At level 70 or higher, adventurers can tame a pig for riding, Arans get a wolf, Evans learn to ride their own dragons. Cygnus Knights can get a bird at level 50 instead. A Wild Hunter can earn a mount at level 10 with the ability to tame a jaguar.
 * Hub Level: Victoria Island during the first and second job. Orbis becomes this from the third job onward, due to being able to get to almost any region from there.
 * Victoria Island gets the Six Path Crossway from Big Bang; Instead of having to walk around the perimeter of the island to get from town to town, facing stronger monsters the further away from a town you got, all the towns are connected to the Crossway, with the monsters getting weaker the closer to it you get. The Crossway also holds the entrance to Sleepywood as well as the Airports.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: At any given time a player is usually carrying hundreds of potions, twenty or so different armors and weapons (ranging from suits of armor to two handed weapons (The Berzerker)), Hundreds thousands of etc. items, and don't forget the equipment that they already may be wearing! Those poor mounts.
 * Immune to Flinching: Various class abilities can protect the player from flinching when struck by an attack (at varying rates, depending on the ability); these are often high-level abilities, but some classes like the Mechanic and Demon Slayer can learn them earlier than others.
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes: The Cash Shop has this in spades. There's even an outfit that can literally turn your character into a Centuar.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Pike (fish) on a pike (spear), snowballs, teddy bears, fans, lanterns, crazed pet cats jumping after catnip mice.. etc.
 * And some of the non-NX Joke Items are even more effective than normal weapons.
 * Permanent Beginners get stuff like Frozen Tuna and giant Sake Bottles with almost twice the base power of an equivalent regular weapon to make up for their lack of skills.
 * Immortality: Ever since Maya took the Weird Medicine, she hasn't aged a day up to the point in the Future.
 * Infinity+1 Sword: The potential scrolls and equipment enhancement scrolls turn your equipment into this. However if the scroll fails, severe penalties are incurred. (see Explosive Overclocking above)
 * Thanks to Nebulites from the March 2012 Alien event, it's now possible to have "infinity +2" equipment as nebulites stack with potential.
 * Jack of All Stats: Archers qualify, which is why they aren't really picked over Thieves and Magicians for parties that need ranged attackers.
 * The Jimmy Hart Version: Battlefield, the tune that plays in the Showa hideout sounds a lot like Battle Without Honor Or Humanity from Kill Bill.
 * The Alien map music, NLC Kidnap, from the March 2012 Alien event sounds quite a bit like Phantasmagoria from Gun Girl 2.
 * Joke Item: Various holiday/seasonal items, like V-day roses, summer inner tubes, and Independence Day US flags.
 * Lethal Joke Item: Snowboards and surfboards are generally seen as the best weapons to use as an Aran, due to their attack speed being faster than most actual polearms. Although one would think that they would break after a combo of 100 or so...
 * Just Like Robin Hood: You get tricked into thinking you're doing this in the Sand Bandits storyline, before doing it for real.
 * Killer Rabbit: One of the strongest bosses in the game looks like this.
 * Kill It with Fire: Along with the Fire/Poision Wizards, Bowmen get fire-based skills and eventually even a fire-elemental bird to summon.
 * King Mook: A lot of bosses.
 * Lethal Lava Land: Deep within the El Nath mines.
 * Level Grinding: And how. This game is famed for its level grinding, although in recent years its become much easier due to addition of party quests, experience needed to level up reduced by 25%, and the family system which lets even non-payers get 2x exp for 15-30min. However, its still near impossible to level up at much higher levels. Of course, in the end, it all depends on your mileage.
 * The game changing Big Bang patch dealt with this issue somewhat by greatly lowering the exp curve though it's still in effect at higher levels.
 * The insane amount of level grinding makes priests extremely valuable in parties. In addition to healing and buffs, priests have a skill called Holy Symbol, which gives 150% exp. It also stacks on top of family buffs and 2x exp events.
 * Limit Break: Possible in the Mu Lung Dojo, but very unlikely to happen unless you are really sucking against a boss and somehow still managing to survive, in which case it won't make a difference anyway.
 * However some classes with self healing skills can exploit this.
 * Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Pre Big Bang Maplestory was built on this. Mage!Beginners are weaker than the others because they don't added stat points to dexterity or strength (which affect weapons), while Warrior!Beginners add to strength so they out damage everyone else. The Mages advance to the first job earlier but in order to be optimal have to spend several levels building up passive skills before they could start building up their attacking skills while the other classes just raise their skill damage from the beginning. In the end of the first job thanks to built in mastery mages are the most powerful class. But when mages move to the next job they have to build up their mastery for every new spell while the rest of the classes only have to build but mastery for their weapon type (and they only have to do this once). So at the beginning of every job mages are the weakest while near the end they end up the strongest thanks to Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors.
 * And of course the Big Bang changed this by giving mages a mastery skill and changing spells from having their own formula to multipliers which retroactively nerfed them. But later patches brought them back up to speed.
 * Literal Strawman: Prior to Big Bang, these were used for just suck a purpose, common but weak enemies that could be mass kill while being overlevel, to gain a lot of easy experience. With Big Bang, they changed the level of Mu Lung enemies, so this wasn't the case.
 * Lost Marbles Quest: A lot of the "tutorial" quests on Maple Island.
 * The Lost Woods: Ellinia, home of magicians.
 * Luck Stat: Much like STR is to a warrior/brawler, DEX to an archer/gunslinger, and INT to a mage, LUK is to thieves. LUK used to influence the amount of EXP lost when a player dies. Now, it only influences accuracy, avoidability, and a vague stat called 'hands' (Which was later removed).
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Korean Folk Town, Mu Lung (China), Ariant (generic Middle East), Zipangu (Japan), and well; alot of other places.
 * Machinima/Fan Vid: A growing number of these are on youtube, amazingly. Very subject to Sturgeon's Law, and varies from animated music videos and home made series to movie versions of romance movies.
 * Magikarp Power: The Gunslinger class embodies this trope. Due to a wonky damage formula, and generally weak abilities, they do abysmal damage in first and second job even if they go a statless or low-stat build. Come third job they begin to catch up in damage thanks to a more powerful main attack and various abilities that increase their damage, and in fourth job they receive insanely powerful abilities, giving them top-tier DPM, rivaling Arans and Night Lords.
 * Back when there were no other classes besides the original four, Archers suffered heavily from this. Compared to the Assassins (the closest other class in terms of general mechanics), Archers in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd job were underpowered and generally unwanted in training parties and the then current end game content. Cue 4th job which included More Dakka (bow users only however) and the ability to give the entire party the ability to Critical Hit and they're suddenly they're a hot commodity.
 * Marathon Boss: Many of them but Pink Bean is very notable, with his 2 BILLION health, 5 Statues (with a couple million to their names that MUST be destroyed) and Attacks that can one shot anyone. Oh and you gotta do it in a time limit. Did I mention that the statues can nullify your Magic or Physical Attacks?
 * Mascot Mook: Orange Mushrooms are featured prominently on the official website and the game's login screen. Ribbon Pigs and Iron Hogs show up a lot, too.
 * Mass Monster Slaughter Sidequest: Either you're committing genocide on the order of hundreds of creatures a quest, or you're collecting random drops at the same rate.
 * Mayfly-December Romance: In Magatia,
 * Mighty Glacier: Warriors. Brawlers and Thunder Breakers as well to a lesser extent.
 * Min-Maxing: Putting all EXP towards the few stats crucial to the specific job class. EVERY class has some sort of formula for stat allocation. Typically, secondary stats should be some function of the player's level, while the rest goes into the primary stat. Don't even THINK about putting anything in HP or MP, let alone any other stats.
 * Nowadays, the game will automatically optimize your character correctly, although you can allocate the stats yourself if you're doing something different, such as...
 * HP warriors. They're a warrior who doesn't level their stats up until the second job at lvl 30. All they do is add to HP. By lvl 30, it's something like 10,000. Furthermore, the second job grants the Power Guard ability, which deals damage back whenever you get hit.
 * Modesty Towel: Surprisingly, one of the best items to have while Min-Maxing.
 * Money Sink: Getting the class mounts costs ridiculous amounts of money. Taxi and Cabs can transport you to various maps and dungeons for a((n) ever increasing) fee. Also there's a quest when an Npc straight up asks for 5 million mesos for very little justification.
 * Money Spider: Possibly every monster save for the leprechaun, who actually has reason to carry money.
 * Monster Is a Mommy: Mushmom, Zombie Mushmom, and Mushdad/Blue Mushmom.
 * More Dakka: All ranged classes except Cannon shooters with various degrees.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Kyrin is perhaps the closest example, given the chibi style of the graphics. She wears a tube top, leather skirt with a slit up the side, and thigh-high black boots.
 * Nice Hat: The GMs's hat not only identifies them as GMs, but is also what gives them their insane stats. Also the extremely high statistic hats such as the Zakum helmet; although arguably they don't look very nice depending on the person.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: According to the stories on the official website, the Cygnus Knights do this twice. First, they invaded Von Leon's castle, causing him to turn to the Black Mage for vengeance. In the future, Cygnus also steps right into the Black Mage's trap because she wants to find the Tree of Life for her knights.
 * The pre-Big Bang Alien Invasion event focused on The end result relied on time travel and changing history to avoid the entire mess.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Zombie mushrooms, giant zombie mushrooms, ghost pirates, toy octopi riding LEGO generic block golems, just to list a few.
 * The transportation from one continent to another continent. There's a boat-plane-train with candy paint and swirly propellers!
 * Papulatus, a ghost vegetable thing riding a robotic clock that casts magic. That's pretty crazy.
 * No Arc in Archery: The Archer class. Arrows only ever bend to show that the shot is flying towards a monster, and even then they're more likely to just show the arrows inexplicably come out at an angle without the player actually aiming at that angle.
 * No Ending: How does them original Silent Crusade questline end after the final boss?
 * No Export for You: The Korean version gets updates first, natch, and then it goes the order of formation, but not always exactly. Some lands or monsters are country-exclusive.
 * No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Right before the Black Magician was sealed, he punished the heroes who fought him by casting a curse on them.
 * Non-Human Sidekick: The purchasable Pets. They can do various tricks when given verbal commands, and level up, learning more tricks and gaining the ability to talk. They're fundamentally all the same, though, with specific tricks they can do at certain levels, and after enough grinding, typically gain the ability to speak English. For extra money, you can deck your pet out in accessories which can make them more functional, allowing them to pick up items and gold for you, and even automatically use potions for you when your HP or MP get low. Handy!
 * Cannoneer palls around with a handy monkey in a propeller cap who helps the character perform skills.
 * Noob Cave: Maple Island for the Adventurers, Ereve for Cygnus Knights, Rien for Aran, and Utah's Pig Farm for Evan. Subverted with Edelstein, the Resistance starting area, which is a very large city that still has quests and training locations available well into a character's third job, presumably due to there not being enough room on the map to put it anywhere near Victoria Island.
 * Not So Harmless: A lot of monsters.
 * One-Winged Angel: Von Leon of the Lion King's Castle.
 * Organ Drops: Some monsters have particuallry greusome drops, like the Evil Eyes who sometimes drop their tails and their eyeballs upon death.
 * Orgasmic Combat:
 * Palette Swap: Pretty much played straight with older monsters but there are subversions. But it's not avoided with many equip items- some armors and weapons can have up to 4 different color versions, each with specialized stats.
 * Equips added after pirates were reslesed come in one uniform color which includes all pirate equipment and most items beyond level 100.
 * Pirates Debuted As Cygnus Knights: In Europe, at least, the update order created a situation where Thunder Breakers were in the game before Pirates, the class they were based on.
 * Player Party: Encouraged with EXP boosts while partying.
 * Player Versus Player: After years of bickering about the lack of this trope, it finally gets introduced in the Chaos Update.
 * Prestige Class: For example, magicians. They start as Magicians, then can become a Fire/Poison Wizard, Ice/Lightning Wizard, or a Cleric. The next job advancement goes onto Mages or Priests, then Arch Mages or Bishop. And that's just for Magicians.
 * Purely Aesthetic Gender: Anyone can do any job. Gender-specific armor for females tends to be cheaper due to lower demand.
 * This is partly because all players use the exact same base body sprites. Gender features are usually added by the face and hair overlays, and details such as breasts are hinted at by the way armor or clothing is drawn.
 * Rainbow Pimp Gear: Someone who's truly Min-Maxing will probably be wearing a bathrobe, a Zakum Helmet (Complete with glow), some white gloves (with or without lightning bolt), shoes, earrings, and cape. Needless to say, NX items are recommended.
 * Big stone helmet with flashy glow, towel around the waist, pink cape. The standard adventuring gear amongst funded users. Animal mask optional.
 * This has been somewhat averted with the advent of the potential system, which gives bigger stat bonuses on higher-leveled gear.
 * Rain of Arrows: Played straight with the Ranger's Arrow Rain skill. Inverted with the Sniper's Arrow Eruption skill (which has arrows shooting upwards from the ground instead).
 * Random Encounter: . Escape is recommended if you aren't trying to fight it.
 * Randomly Drops: See entry on that page for details.
 * There seems to be a serious case of Not Available in Stores going on for all weapons and armor, past about level 35, making the game particularly painful in the case of item hacks.
 * Recurring Character: Athena Pierce (also known as Helena), the main Bowman job instructor, has been frequently appearing as a plot-important character in recent Korean time travel expansions. Odd considering how the main job instructors for the other four classes are not featured as often, but not surprising since Athena is an elf who appears to have spent her entire life fighting the Dark Magician.
 * Athena Pierce is said to be over 1000 years old. By contrast, Dark Lord is a title, not a name. It's been mentioned in-game that the current one is the ninth to hold the title. The previous one was killed. The other two may have had their lives extended by magic but are showing their ages. Kyrin is rather young, having only recently founded the Pirates and was raised from childhood by Athena Pierce until running away as a teenager.
 * The Mercedes patch plot revealed that Athena Pierce is not only old, but she's the only elf(besides her late father) that was not frozen solid with everyone else in Eurel. Not only is she ancient but she's been the only one of her kind that's been around for centuries.
 * Dances With Balrog DOES show up in the Ellin Forest area... although he's named Crawls With Balrog because he's only an infant.
 * Repeatable Quest: They did not introduce these until later versions despite growing and rather vocal demand for them in the early days.
 * Retcon: Done several times, mostly with the expanding story of the Black Mage. Mercedes used a bow in Aran's flashback, before it was revealed that she used Dual Bowguns. Freud/Freed was also having stated to have fled the battle to protect Afrien's egg, which eventually became Mir, Evan's dragon. However, in the new Silent Crusade quest line he and his dragon Afrien shown to have left early to
 * Cassandra, the fortune telling NPC used in various event quests, was originally a middle-aged woman with gray hair... now she's a young woman with blonde hair. No explanation, of course.
 * Hey, remember the Silent Crusade quest chain? The one where your character falls in love with a member of the Silent Crusade? As of the Alliance Rising patch of February 2012... well, none of it happened. They've reset the entire Silent Crusade story with a new quest series.
 * Revive Kills Zombie: Heal and Holy/Light attacks damage undead types more. Also the only way holy magicians can mob monsters until they reach third job.
 * Romeo and Juliet: Plot used as a party quest in Magatia, where two alchemist groups (debating about the use of machinery in alchemy) are having a bitter rivalry.
 * Scunthorpe Problem: Ever tried matching wits with MapleStory's swear filter?
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: Some people choose to remain as a Beginner even after Level 10.
 * Shamu Fu: The Thunder Breakers throw sharks made of lightning at enemies in their later levels.
 * Shifting Sand Land: Ariant.
 * Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: The Bows, Crossbows, Guns, and Gloves (used for Throwing Stars), when compared in scale to characters, seem to only fly a few feet before the relevant projectile simply vanishes from existence. Justified overall in that there's no way to usefully have arrows and bullets fly the tens/hundreds of feet they could travel (like in real life), and further justified with the Throwing Stars and Gloves in that those are meant to be used at similar ranges in real life to their in-game counterpart.
 * Pirates hold their handguns with one hand, and don't aim, so they probably only could reasonably hit monsters from that distance. Bow-wielding Hunters and Wind Archers seem to pull the bowstring back for only a little, so an arrow would be able to only fly a couple dozen feet at best anyway. Played straight for crossbowman, though.
 * Shout-Out: Some ninja gear and attacks bring to mind Naruto. Cash Shop items have referenced anything from Korean mythology to recent movies to a certain anime about "befriending" others (Check the Cash Shop, and you will find Fate's Bardiche and Signum's Sword... somewhat.) Monsters have been anywhere from Shout Outs to affectionate parodies to "isn't this from another game?"
 * The look of the game is very similar to the Wonder Boy series (especially the Monster World games).
 * The Evan class is highly reminiscent of the Eragon series. Everything from the character starting out as a farmer, to the symbol appearing on the character's hand, to finding the Egg in the woods which hatches a Blue Dragon basically screams ERAGON. (In the first Eragon book, the main character even uses the alias of "Evan" at one point.)
 * What's odd is that some Korean players theorized that the class was based on some Korean indie fantasy novel/comic book/whatever.
 * In the Omega Sector, we have the Mesorangers and an NPC who is a Will Smith look-alike that oddly enough sports a black suit and sunglasses. Not to mention that you find these NPCs in a level where you fight aliens...
 * There is a place called the Mushroom Kingdom which has sentient mushrooms who want you to save their princess from their castle which is under the control of a tyrannical penguin.
 * Not to mention the area's story is the the same as Luigi's side story in Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door.
 * A tyrannical penguin, you say?
 * Also, the Wild Hunters get a panther mount, who at higher levels gain the ability to hold enemies in their mouth, swallow them for buffs, or spit them out for offensive projectiles. The skill's name is Jaguar-oshi.
 * Someone in the Nautilus says "This message brought to you by the letter ARRRRR!"
 * While it's not as tight a fit as the Evan/Eragon connection, Aran awakening in the trailer is very reminiscent of Aang's awakening in Avatar: The Last Airbender.
 * There is also an item in the Cash Shop called the Alchemist Overall. It consists of a red jacket, black pants and black shirt.
 * There is also an outfit that resembles Winry's work outfit, and headgear that looks like Alphonse's helmet.
 * Starling and Crow, the two NPCs of the Silent Crusade, were name Sheryl and Crow in Tespia prior to the public release. No doubt this was changed to avoid some legal hassles with the singer.
 * A robot NPC in New Leaf City is named T-1337
 * It may be a coincidence, but both adamantium ore and plates are orange. An episode of the old 1990s Fox X-Men cartoon showed off a solid bar of adamantium as a scientist was showing off to Wolverine prior to his infusion. It was orange. Though the inclusion of adamantium as a metal could also count as a shout out.
 * Also, the concept art for Mercedes looks like every elf in Lord of the Rings. And did I mention that she's an archer and the Elf Queen. Here and here . Definitely a Shout-Out to Legolas.
 * The various anime crossover projects between Nexon and Aniplex... Here's an example.
 * Ignoring the fact that the homes are meant for humans, almost every house in Henesys looks like the homes of the Smurfs.
 * The Silent Crusade storyline(2012 version) centers around portals opening across the land that the player must enter and fight monsters, a secretive group of heroes that recruits the player to fight an evil threatening the land, and an ancient wizard who has returned and plans to release an unstoppable villain onto the world, said villain being the wizard's close mentor and leader.
 * Shows Damage: The boss Zakum slowly breaks down and falls apart as its health drops.
 * Slippy-Slidey Ice World: El Nath. Sliding can be prevented by buying and equipping snow boots.
 * There is a scroll that can also add "spikes" to any pair of shoes as well as a scroll that adds cold protection to capes(regardless of available slots). During the Maker skill, they had to be crafted. Now they merely drop from monsters and Maker was removed in favor of Professions. Though it's only a 10% scroll, so good luck with that.
 * Arans can exploit the sliding. The ice carries momentum and the Arans can use a quick jump boost to make them slide really fast. When it wears off... they're still sliding pretty fast.
 * Though with a bit of practice, almost anyone can use the sliding to their advantage.
 * Outlaws (3rd job Gunlsingers) get this as well in the form of Recoil Shot, though its a backwards leap and deals damage to enemies.
 * Solo Class: The Clerics and their Prestige Classes are the best solo classes after a certain level, as their heals damage undead enemies while affecting themselves as well.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: From the cheery (and catchy!) music of the Swamp of Despair to calming underwater cave music while bone fish kill you horribly.
 * Most places have this, mostly because the music in the game is so beautiful. There are a few exceptions, like for Zakum and Horntail. Otherwise, feel free to listen to the music as you spam your HP pots because you're dying horribly.
 * Spam Attack: Some classes get a few skills that can do quite a few hits to one (or multiple) targets. Most prominently, the Dual Blade's attack pattern is all about this especially the 4th job move Phantom Blow.
 * Spell My Name with an "S": Erev/Ereve/Ereb.
 * Spikes of Doom: Spikes, thorns, and bramble slow players down.
 * Unless you exploit the damage recoil to make yourself go faster.
 * Squishy Wizard: Magician class. Subverted in two ways: First, they have Magic Guard, which converts the majority of their HP damage into MP damage (and they get a LOT of MP). And second, they can learn the MP Eater skill which allows them to syphon MP from magical enemies. With those two abilities active (okay, the second one is a passive ability, but the first one is an activatable buff), a Magician technically has a Life Drain combo going. It reached Gamebreaker levels after the big bang patch even though MP regenration was removed, the mp eater skill syphoned so much MP that attacking made your MP bar go up rather than down which combined with the Mages low hp (which means they can use low leveled HP potions much longer than other classes) made them cost nothing to play as and nearly unkillable.
 * Stone Wall: Subverted with the Paladin class after the Big Bang patch. They literally have up to eight different skills that directly affects the amount of damage they don't take, plus a dependable self-recovery skill that instantly heals them.
 * ... And their DPM is surprisingly on par with many others even on neutral-element monsters.
 * Super-Deformed: The graphics in general.
 * Sure Why Not: Bob the Snail. Originally a random level 1 snail spawning in a level 50+ area, fans came up with numerous theories as to why he was there, and now he's an actual boss enemy.
 * Tree-Top Town: Ellinia.
 * Toy Time: Ludibrium.
 * Tsundere: Starling of the Silent Crusade. "Don't you dare treat me like a little girl.", "Do what you want! I don't care!", "Enough smalltalk. Get to the point.", "Me? Worry about you? Ha!"
 * Crow of the Silent Crusade as well, particularly at the Magatia part of the questline.
 * Twenty Bear Asses: More like One Thousand Bear Asses.
 * Underground Monkey: Mushrooms. THE MUSHROOMS. EVERYWHERE.
 * Under the Sea: Aqua Road. Popular for its Goby Houses and especially for Poison users since it's very easy to move around the map and poison everything.
 * Unwitting Pawn: Evan is lured into joining  under the pretense that the organization is doing good for Maple World in the process he not only does their dirty work but
 * Vendor Trash: Pretty much every monster drops one. Or more than one. Some are used for quests; some are just useless other than for selling.
 * And some of them can't even be sold as they have no monetary value, or can't be traded.
 * Virtual Paper Doll: Cash Shop items let players dress up their characters.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome??: The usual argument for making a Thunder Breaker is that they throw sharks made of lightning.
 * You Killed My Father: The Black Mage killed Athena Pierce's father, which drove her insane and led her to form an army to hunt him, and became almost as bad in the process. People began to fear her, until she was finally forced to confront her darker side in combat(which is the "clone" that Bowman players fight for the 3rd job advancement). Since then she's been the Bowman job instructor and a respected member of Henesys, her efforts redirected into teaching others how to fight and to oppose the Black Mage.
 * This happened AGAIN with Kyrin. Both of her parents were killed by the Black Wings, and she was taken in and raised by Athena Pierce... until Kyrin overheard a conversation and learned what happened, then ran off on her own to hunt down the Black Mage. She eventually returned, as the head of the Pirates, though while she primarily serves as the captain of the Nautilus and Pirate job instructor, there are many in-game hints to suggest she's still hell-bent on defeating the Black Mage.
 * You Shouldn't Know This Already: Manually going into the Resistance HQ to make your first job advancement as a Resistance member won't work; you have to use the invitation that the Headmaster gives you.
 * At one point, Mercedes must track down and speak with Athena Pierce. It doesn't matter how many times the player has seen Athena before, or even if Mercedes has already accepted a completely unrelated quest from her; she still has to ask another NPC about her whereabouts.
 * Zettai Ryouiki: Grade B. General Orca of the Black Wings sports this in her full screen shot.
 * Mercedes also sports this.
 * Mercedes also sports this.