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The main character of this tale is Cecil, a [[Black Knight|Dark Knight]] in the service of the King of Baron. After questioning the recent warmongering of his king, he is demoted to errand boy and sent to a village called Mist in order to deliver a package and slay a dragon menacing its borders. He is joined by his best friend and [[The Rival|rival]], a Dragoon named Kain. Once they reach the village, they discover that nothing is quite what they have been told: they have been used as disposable pawns in Baron's ongoing crusade to capture the [[Power Crystal|Power Crystals]] that exist around the world. Cecil vows to stop the evil intentions of Baron, but first he must [[The Atoner|atone for the sins that he committed in its service and overcome his own inner darkness.]]
 
Have you noticed something strange already? Yes, this was the first ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' game to have an actual ''plot'' beyond a generic "[[An Adventurer Is You|you are heroes]], [[Saving the World|go save world]] [[Card -Carrying Villain|from evil]]" story that was pretty much the standard for most RPGs at the time. As strange as it may seem to be to people who are used to the idea of an RPG [[Story to Gameplay Ratio|beginning with twenty hours of real-time cutscenes]], this was ''huge'' at the time of release.
 
Since the [[Final Fantasy II (Video Game)|second]] and [[Final Fantasy III (Video Game)|third]] ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' games hadn't been released in the US when ''Final Fantasy IV'' came out, the US release of ''FFIV'' was titled ''Final Fantasy II''. The US ''FFII'' was easier than the Japanese version; before the US version was released, it spawned another Japanese version, "''Final Fantasy IV Easytype''", whose difficulty level was scaled down even farther. (Thus, the US version was less difficult than the original Japanese version, but significantly harder than ''Easytype''.) The US ''Final Fantasy II'' also suffered from severe [[Bowdlerise|censorship]]. ("[[Spoony Bard|You spoony bard!]]", anyone?) Many of the [[Good Bad Translation|fan-favorite lines]] were kept in the re-translated re-releases.
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''Final Fantasy IV'' is considered by many to be one of the best of the series, partly because it was first released before the series developed an [[Unpleasable Fanbase]]. It's been remade/ported numerous times; this has garnered some distaste for the game as [[Seinfeld Is Unfunny|its story and battle system haven't aged well]]. In addition to being half of the ''Final Fantasy [[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chronicles]]'' compilation on the [[PS 1]], ''FFIV'' has been ported to the GBA, and was the second game (after [[Final Fantasy III (Video Game)|Final Fantasy III]], [[No Export for You|which didn't make it over beforehand]]) to be remade with 3D graphics on the Nintendo DS. It's also the first remake to add voice acting, if only for key scenes.
{{tropelist}}
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=== This game provides examples of: ===
* [[Advancing Wall of Doom]]: The Demon Wall in the [[Scrappy Level|Sealed Cave]].
* [[Alien Sky]]: Two moons.
* [[All Myths Are True]]: The Mysidian Legend, naturally, turns out to not only be dead-on accurate, but the basis for the entire game.
* [[Always Check Behind the Chair]]: Many areas have hidden goods or passageways, but [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja|Eblan]] Castle deserves special mention due to the sheer prevalence of this trope. In summary, there are: secret corridors on basically every floor; a Sutra hidden behind the throne; a pit that you have to edge your way across to reach a chest; and then, just to confuse you, a ''different'' pit that you'll only fall through if you try to cross it. That's not even getting into [[The Very Definitely Final Dungeon|The Very Definitely Final Dungeon's]] obsession with paths under paths under paths, all obscured by the top-view.
* [[Anti -Villain]]: Rubicante is an [[Affably Evil]] Type I variant. He might even be a [[Punch Clock Villain]].
* [[Anyone Can Die]]: The game makes it looks like this, {{spoiler|but only one playable character is dead for good toward the end.}}
* [[Arbitrary Headcount Limit]]: You can only have five people in your party. This game's method of dealing with it? Killing off the spares. {{spoiler|Though only one stays dead, which makes it all the more obvious.}} Seemingly averted when Baigan joins your party (who would have been a sixth party member), but Palom and Porom reveal him to be a monster on Golbez' side before you even have a chance to go to the menu screen.
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* [[Dope Slap]]: Porom, to Palom, many times.
* [[Drop the Hammer]]: Cid wields large two-handed hammers as his weapon of choice.
* [[Dual -Wielding]]: Yang and Edge can do this.
* [[Dummied Out]]: Many commands, status-ailment-healing items, and one-use spell-casting items were removed from the original North American version of the game.
** One was Cecil's Dark Wave, but his mirror image can cast that without a problem. This led to a lot of confusion and a bit of resentment on the part of SNES players when their shadow-self attacked exclusively with a power they themselves never had access to. It also made the resulting puzzle (ie, letting him attack with the HP-depleting spell and defeat himself without you attacking) more difficult to figure out.
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* [[An Economy Is You]]: Played perfectly straight, but especially notable in that the weapon/armor shop in the first town is ''locked'' until you return there later in the game and obtain the key. Not exactly the best business model...
* [[Elemental Embodiment]]: The 4 Fiends of the Elements.
* [[Elemental Rock -Paper -Scissors]]: A ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' staple.
* [[Eleventh Hour Superpower]]: When you first meet Rydia, she can only summon Chocobo (and Whyt in the DS remake). Enraged at Cecil and Kain for the death of her mother, she summons ''[[Oh Crap|Titan]]'', creating a huge fissure in the landscape.
* [[The Empire]]: Baron sort of becomes one early in the game. It does attack and ruin various nations to steal their Crystals, but it doesn't expand its borders.
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* [[Fighting From the Inside]]: Edge's Parents.
* [[Fission Mailed]]: At least thrice. It happens {{spoiler|in the fight with the Dark Elf.}} And again {{spoiler|in the fight with Golbez}}. And again {{spoiler|in the one with Zeromus}}. The game just loves this trope.
* [[Five -Man Band]]
** [[The Hero]]: Cecil
** [[The Lancer]]: Kain [[Incredibly Lame Pun|(duh)]]
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** The more blatant example are the Archfiends.
* [[Fragile Speedster]]: Edge. He's the fastest character in the game, bar none (and in the DS version, he's almost absurdly quick). However, he only has an average amount of HP, and he takes far more damage than Cecil or Kain do.
* [[FrankensteinsFrankenstein's Monster]]: Barnabas.
* [[Gameplay and Story Integration]]: Edward, who is established as a wimpy musician, not a talented fighter, and a bit of a coward, has the Hide command, which even happens automatically if his HP run low.
* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: Rydia doesn't learn Fire until a plot event, because she gained a phobia of fire when Cecil burned down her village. Of course, with excessive [[Level Grinding]], it's possible to have her learn Fire 3 before said plot event.
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*** [[Fridge Brilliance|Because Rydia isn't skilled enough to summon him without hurting herself or her environment yet.]]
** Speaking of the Tower of Bab-il, it appears on the Overworld map surrounded by a large black hole. You'd think it'd be possible to fly an airship through, much like the hole that's sometimes open near Agart, but you'd be wrong.
* [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]]: Cecil, to Edward, {{spoiler|after the Red Wings firebomb Damcyan into oblivion and Edward is in [[Heroic BSOD]] mode}}.
* [[Giant Space Flea From Nowhere]]: {{spoiler|Zemus/Zeromus pre-Crystal use}} is exactly this, right down to being giant and in space and looking a little bit like a flea.
* [[Glass Cannon]]: Rydia. Nice spells, but with 30HP it's hard work keeping her alive long enough to level up in the beginning. Even later on, {{spoiler|when she comes back in Dwarven Castle and saves the party from Golbez}}, depending on how leveled you are, she's got about a third of Cecil's HP.
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* [[Good Costume Switch]]: Cecil.
* [[Guide Dang It]]: The DS port never tells you that A) Augment distribution is used to unlock other augments from characters who leave the party and B) Augments will eventually affect the stat growths of the characters who have them. You'd need a guide anyway to put those growths to proper use, because there's no way guesswork alone would let you figure out how to use them to max the stats of your final party!
* [[Half -Human Hybrid]]: {{spoiler|1=Cecil and Golbez are Half-Lunarian; their father, KluYa, was FuSoYa's brother.}}
* [[Harp of Femininity]]: Edward the feminine Prince of Damcyan is a [[Improbable Weapon User|master harpist]].
* [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose]]: The battle of Fabul. Even though your party wins every fight with no casualties, you keep getting pushed back.
* [[Healing Spring]]: Although the water is contained in pots in this installment.
* [[Heel Realization]]: In the opening sequence, when Cecil tries to tell the King about his men's (and his own) doubts regarding their latest missions -- he is promptly relieved from command and sent out to a nearby village to deliver an item that {{spoiler|sets it ablaze}}. This is what ''really'' starts his path of redemption.
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* [[Lady Land]]: Troia Castle. This is also a major case of [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]] since Troia is Irish for {{spoiler|whore}}.
* [[The Lancer]]: Kain, naturally. It's even his class name on the SNES.
* [[Laser -Guided Amnesia]]: Yang, briefly.
* [[Laser -Guided Karma]]: After the ship sinks, Cecil washes up right next to the city he razed and plundered at the beginning of the game.
* [[Last of His Kind|Last of Her Kind]]: Thanks to Cecil and Kain, Rydia is the only summoner left alive.
* [[Leitmotif]]: This was the first ''Final Fantasy'' game to make extensive use of the technique. Almost every major character has one, including some of the villains and other NPCs.
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* [[Love Makes You Evil]]: This trope sort of comes into play. Kain's jealousy of Cecil as a result of his unrequited feelings for Rosa make him a lot easier to be [[Brainwashed and Crazy|controlled by Golbez]].
* [[Love Triangle]]: Kain has feelings for Rosa, but she has feelings for Cecil instead.
* [[Luck Based Mission]]: In the DS version, the battle versus the CPU. It pretty much boils down to how quickly the Attack Node begins to attack...its only attack, Laser Barrage, is ''guaranteed'' to two-shot your entire party (and it'll usually one-shot Edge and Fusoya). If you can off it before it fires the lasers twice, you have the battle in the bag...{{spoiler|unless you kill off the Defense Node. Prepare for the carnage of [[One -Hit Kill|Object 199]] if you do.}}
** The fact that [[Fu So Ya]]'s "instructions" were not redone and ''still'' describe the original battle better than the redone one doesn't help. In fact, if you do what [[Fu So Ya]] says, you're ''screwed''.
* [[Luke, I Am Your Father]]: {{spoiler|Golbez is Cecil's brother, Theodor.}}
* [[MacGuffin Delivery Service]]: More than once with the crystals.
* [[Mad Scientist]]: Dr. Lugae.
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** The Tower of Bab-il and Kain are names that should ring a bell for anyone at least mildly familiar with [[The Bible (Literature)|The Bible]]. Kain even gets Abel's Lance in the GBA remake [[Incredibly Lame Pun|to drive the point home]].
* [[Monster Town]]: Feymarch and the town of Mythril. The former hosts various enemies you fight in the game and several Eidolons, while the latter features townsfolk based off the Toad, Pig, and Mini status effects.
* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: Cecil and possibly Kain, after the massacre at Mist.
* [[Near Villain Victory]]: Right before the final battle.
* [[Never Say Die]]: This trope is in full effect in the SNES translation, to the point of [[Bowdlerise|bowdlerization]]. However, in a [[SturgeonsSturgeon's Tropes|rare]] [[Tropes Are Not Bad]] way, this actually makes the game's many [[Disney Death|Disney Deaths]] more believable. After all, why should the player believe that such-and-such is dead if the characters don't believe it either?
** Also manifests in spells like "Fatal" instead of "Death," or "Swoon" for "dead" characters.
*** Even before the translation, this was the first Final Fantasy to have the loss of all HP count as a [[Non -Lethal KO]] instead of actual death. [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|Otherwise]] the cast's now-frequent cutscene performances [[Our Zombies Are Different|would be awkward]]. Especially if you were planning on giving them [[Revive Kills Zombie|phoenix downs]].
* [[New Game Plus]]: In the DS version, after defeating {{spoiler|Zeromus}}, you can play the game again, inheriting all those augments you gave to your characters. And If you gave the previous game augments to characters that weren't going to be in your final party, you will be rewarded with these characters' abilities as augments. You can play [[New Game Plus]] only three times in a row though.
* [[Ninja]]: Edge.
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* [[Oh Wait]]: Golbez insults Kain this way at one point.
* [[Ominous Floating Castle]]: The Tower of Zot, which seems to be well outside of Earth's atmosphere.
* [[One Steve Limit]]: Averted. First, you meet the [[Spoony Bard]] Edward Chris von Muir. Later, you meet the [[Highly -Visible Ninja]] Edward Geraldine. To make sure the player doesn't get confused with this, '''Ed'''ward '''Ge'''raldine goes by the alias Edge.
** Actually an unintended result of the translation. Edward was originally named Gilbert (with his [[Anne of Green Gables (Literature)|red-haired love interest Anna]]), while Edge was still Edward "Edge".
* [[One -Time Dungeon]]: The Tower of Zot which collapses once finished with.
* [[Omniscient Morality License]]: Leviathan shows up to crash your entire ship in order to abduct your summoner, destroying the mission to stop [[The Empire]], and possibly jeopardizing the fate of the world. The aftermath leaves one party member an amnesiac pawn of said empire, another bedridden until the very end of the game, [[The Hero]] stranded alone on a continent that [[Humiliation Conga|hates]] [[Karma|him]], and presumably [[Red Shirt|all the ship's crew]] dead. Everything [[All According to Plan|works out uncannily]] in the end, despite (or even [[In Mysterious Ways|because of]]) debilitating injuries to plot-important characters. Nobody ever brings up the whole, murderous [[Sea Monster]] thing.
* [[Outside Context Villain]]: The Lunarians: Zemus, Golbez, and their [[Lost Technology]] like the Giant of Bab-Il.
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* [[Randomly Drops]]: The Pink Tail. It is dropped by Pink Puff/Flan Princesses. In the room where you can find those monsters (which is a very small room with only one uninteresting treasure), you have an 1/64 chance of encountering a formation of five of those things. Each of those things have a 5/98 rate of dropping ANY items at all, and a further 1/64 chance that the dropped item will be a Pink Tail. If you just run around that room, you have a 0.006% chance of getting a pink tail (or you'll on average get 1 tail every 10056 battles). In some versions you can use an item that guarantees the encounter with five Flan Princesses, increasing the odds to 0.3% per battle, or 1 tail every 251 battles on average. Good luck, you'll need it.
** The Rainbow Pudding in the DS version, which is necessary for finishing the Namingway quest and earning all the augments, has a drop rate of ''0.4%''. You can only get it from the various Flans. And the Treasure Hunter augment only boosts this drop rate to 0.8%. The DS version also adds ''numerous'' other types of Tails necessary for getting the only equipment that can be carried into New Game +. They all have the same horrible drop rate as the Pink Tail.
** Pink Tails are by no means the ONLY really rare drop in the game, just the most famous one. There are a lot of other things in the game, like the hidden summons (Goblin, Mind Flayer, Cockatrice and Bomb), that are randomly dropped and every bit as rare as the Rainbow Pudding. To add insult to injury, the Goblin summon is pretty much useless, despite being as rare as Mind Flayer (damage, sap, and paralyze), Cockatrice (Multitarget Petrification), and Bomb (Damage equal to Rydia's health, without harming her). Equipments ranging from [[Disc One Nuke|mid-game destroying equipments]] like Rune Staves and Lilith Rods, and other [[Infinity Plus One+1 Sword|ultimate equipments]] like Crystal Rings, extra Protect Rings, extra Ribbons, Dragon Whips and so on are all [[Random Drop|randomly dropped]] and at least nearly as, if not just as rare as the Pink Tail, just that the monsters that drop them tend to be commoner encounters.
* [[Rare Candy]]: The Golden and Silver Apples, which will increase the max HP of the character they are used on by 100 or 50 HP, respectively. There is also the Soma Drop which increases the selected character's maximum MP by 10.
* [[Sequel Difficulty Spike|Remake Difficulty Spike]]: The DS Release is ''a lot'' harder than other releases. Enemies have more HP and better AI and attacks, and a lot of them are upgraded to [[Demonic Spiders]] as a result--the Flame Beasts in the Tower of Zot can kill your entire party except maybe Cecil in one attack. As for the bosses, take Golbez--in all other releases he's an [[Anticlimax Boss]] that can be killed in about two turns, not counting you reviving your party. In the DS release he's a [[Barrier Change Boss]] that some consider [[That One Boss]]. Several bosses were redesigned so that trying whatever strategy worked wonders on them in the original result in horrible, horrible death if you try them in the remake.
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'''Cecil:''' "But why? ...'''''WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!!'''''" }}
* [[Slapstick]]: Yang's wife and her... unorthodox method of dealing with enemy soldiers and amnesiac husbands. {{spoiler|All get bashed over the head with her frying pan.}}
* [[Small Name, Big Ego]]: Edge, he's the first ladies' man to ever appear in the series!
* [[So Long and Thanks For All The Gear]]: A frequent occurrence on one's first playthrough, thanks to all the party members that leave your party or (apparently) meet their demise without much advance warning.
* [[Space Whale]]: Doubles as a spacecraft, capable of flying the heroes to the moon.
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* [[Technicolor Death]]
* [[That's No Moon]]: {{spoiler|The Red Moon is eventually revealed to be a giant spacecraft constructed by the Lunarians, a race of highly-advanced aliens.}}
* [[This Cannot Be!]]: Golbez's reaction to {{spoiler|Tellah casting Meteor}} in the Tower of Zot.
* [[Time Limit Boss]]: Odin, and the Demon Wall.
* [[Time Skip]]: ''Final Fantasy IV: The After Years''
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** That is because, upon walking up to their petrified forms and attempting to talk to them, an item menu comes up. In every other instance of this menu in the game, you are expected to select a [[Plot Coupon]] from your inventory, usually a key to unlock a door. In their case, however, there is no such item. In the original Japanese, however, attempting to use a Gold Needle (removes petrification), gave [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|a message saying that it doesn't work.]]
* [[Useless Item]]: The Fire Bomb in the SNES version. It wasn't completely [[Dummied Out]] - it's just only dropped by Red Dragons in the Lunar Subterranean. By that point, their damage is a pittance compared to what any of the characters can do in a single round.
* [[Useless Useful Spell]]: Averted the DS remake. While the bosses are still immune to the really bad statuses ([[One -Hit Kill|Death]], [[Taken for Granite|Stone]], etc.), casting Slow is practically required to make some of them manageable. Additionally, the Stop and Paralyze effects are damn near required for the later dungeons, or else the ''random encounters'' will chew you up and spit you out.
** Healing magic is horrible outside of battle. This finally gets fixed in the DS version.
** Averted in the Japanese original and the Playstation 1 remake. Most enemies are vulnerable to at least one status ailment, and some of the trickier fights (or fights above your characters' current level) become much more manageable with judicious use. Virus/Bio and Stop in particular were extremely effective in handling fights. Played straight in the American original and Easytype, where the difficulty level was reduced to the point that hammering basic attacks was sufficient. Played straight in a different fashion in the GBA remake, in which various bugs made the game the easiest of all versions.
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* [[The Walls Are Closing In]]: One bad guy traps the heroes in one of these during a [[Cutscene]] as they try to escape his lair after taking him out. Palom and Porom, the two cute kid mages, [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrifice themselves to save the others]] by turning themselves to stone and stopping the walls.
** The sequence where you actually have to fight [[Advancing Wall of Doom|the Demon Wall]] to the death as it advanced counts, too. If the wall advances all the way, your party members start dying instantly one by one.
* [[Weak -Willed]]: Kain.
* [[We Buy Anything]]: Unremarkable standard use of the trope, but it does become amusing in Mysidia where the merchants will happily buy Cecil's dark/evil equipment that the townspeople curse so much.
* [[Welcome Back Traitor]]: Kain again, and it happens ''[[Heel Face Revolving Door|twice]]'' no less.
** The second time he comes back, Edge actually defies the trope by calling him out on it, asking Kain what he expects them to do if he gets brainwashed again. Kain's response is succinct: [[I Die Free|Kill him.]]
* [[We Used to Be Friends]]: Cecil and Kain. Obviously.
* [[What Does This Button Do?]]: Dr. Lugae, while he's manually operating Barnabas. It turns out that it's Barnabas's {{spoiler|self-destruct}} button.
** [[Too Dumb to Live]]: He built the damn thing.
* [[When Elders Attack]]: Tellah does this to Edward in a scripted battle, hitting him with his cane and calling him a [[Spoony Bard]].
* [[Whip It Good]]: Rydia.
* [[White -Haired Pretty Boy]]: Subverted with Cecil, who is [[The Hero]].
** Golbez has an [[Zig Zagging Trope|odd relationship with this trope]]--in the original version, there was no way to know for sure if he fit the archetype, since [[The Faceless|he never took his helm off.]] Since he's {{spoiler|Cecil's brother}}, though, it was a reasonable assumption. The DS version seemingly averted it, as he clearly has brown hair in flashbacks, but on the other hand, we only ever see Golbez's face in flashbacks from when he was a child, so that could have changed in the intervening years. ''[[Final Fantasy IV the After Years|The After Years]]'' confirms this impression, as Golbez appears without his armor in that game, and definitely has white hair. Of course, by then, it's subverted, as he too has reformed, and his role throughout the entirety of ''The After Years'' is decidedly non-villainous.
* [[White Magician Girl]]: Rosa is the prototypical example of the personality, even though she's better off using a bow. Porom also fits the character type, both in personality and skillset.
* [[Whole -Plot Reference]]: {{spoiler|To [[War of the Worlds]], if you examine Zemus's motives closely.}}
* [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]: Rydia's initial aversion to Fire stems from Cecil and Kain "accidentally" burning down her home village and killing nearly everything in it.
* [[With This Herring]]: Averted, Cecil is an experienced soldier. You start at level 10 with your black knight gear (and in most versions, a [[Cast From HP]] multi-targeting damage ability) and easily cleaving your way through level 1 imps.
* [[Wizard Beard]]: Fusoya.
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** As explained in other tropes, Rubicante is a sort of [[Noble Demon]]. He fights you with your whole strength (healing the party before the fight every time), spares Edge life once, tries to explain Edge how one should fight, apologies for the bad deeds of his subordinates and doesn't try to kill once he knows he has lost. (other bosses do that often)
* [[Written Sound Effect]]: Either a "POW!" or a *whack* on several occasions where Porom gives Palom a well-deserved hit.
* [[Year Inside, Hour Outside]]: Rydia's [[Plot Relevant Age Up]] after her journey to the Land of the Summoned Beasts.
* [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]]: By about halfway through, the good guys should just be going "Here, take the damn crystal" as soon as Golbez appears.
* [[You Kill It You Bought It]]: If you kill enough Goblins, Bombs, Cockatrice, and Mindflayers; they have [[Randomly Drops]] of their own summon that Rydia can use. This must mean their own souls are intact enough for her to control.
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