Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Americans Love Braig: He's much more popular in the US than in Japan. Maybe his Californian accent in the English dub has something to do with it.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: Was the reaction of some fans about some of the new Disney worlds; especially Lilo and Stitch's.
    • Zack's appearance came pretty much out of nowhere and made tons of people happy.
    • I'm sorry, did you just say Leonard Nimoy and Mark Hamill are on board?!
  • Broken Base: There was a MASSIVE Internet Backdraft after it was revealed that Vanitas looked just like Sora, as at this point many have grown sick of Sora clones or counterparts.
    • Cloud and Leon's appearance being replaced with Lea and Isa caused an uproar amongst fans of the former duo.
  • Complete Monster: Let's see, Master Xehanort uses Ven to combine him with Vanitas in order to allow himself access to Kingdom Hearts, thereby gaining control of all worlds and plunging the multiverse into a second Keyblade War, which was what broke the worlds apart in the first place. The reason? he just wants to see what will happen as a result, and possibly to control it all for himself}. Terra, meanwhile, is manipulated into succumbing to darkness, so he can provide a suitable new vessel for Xehanort to steal. In the end, Master Xehanort turns out to have been personally responsible for pretty much everything that is wrong in the Kingdom Hearts universe as of the present time.
    • From the RPG Fan website review of the game: "It gracefully sidesteps the sympathetic villain trope and makes the antagonist an irredeemable, deplorable monster." Or at least it did until III bafflingly rewrote Xehanort as a misguided Well-Intentioned Extremist.
    • The Evil Queen might also qualify since it's a status she's had since the movie. On the other hand, ordering the removal of someone's heart becomes more mundane in this series' setting.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Vanitas. He may be a sociopathic sadist who lives to hurt others, his attractive voice and musculature, cool factor, and slightly sad death scene have given him a following of fangirls who desperately want to absolve him of the many, many awful things he's done. The non-canon light novels in Japan even run with it.
  • Ear Worm: Disney Town has the old Mickey Mouse Club song playing in the background. One of the rhythm games is "It's A Small World After All." Aaaarrgh!
    • And there's Cinderella's world, Castle of Dreams, whose overworld theme is "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo".
  • 8.8: GameSpot gave the game a 7.5. Cue the angry mob.
  • Even Better Prequel: This game was hailed as an example of this trope when it was first released, thanks to its tragic and more mature story, complex characters, and surprisingly intricate ability-building system. Nowadays, it's sadly slipped into Contested Sequel territory due to its gameplay not aging well as many would expect, but even then sentiment mostly leans positive.
  • Evil Is Cool: Vanitas, Xehanort, and Braig. All three of these guys are competent threats, nefarious evil geniuses, and are total hams to boot.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Vanitas. You don't realize this until the end of Ven's story, when he unmasks himself and reveals that he looks just like Sora... except with a more muscular build, black hair, and gold eyes.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Many fans ship Terra/Aqua. Yep, for once a frequently-shipped pairing in this fandom that ISN'T a yaoi one (though Ven/Vanitas counterbalances this.)
  • Foe Yay: Master Xehanort really wants Terra's body.
    • Vanitas has a bit of it with Ven (and to a lesser extent, Aqua).
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: Pretty much everything Zack says, from proclaiming he's going to be a hero someday to asking Aqua out after he becomes a hero. We do not know what happens to him later, but we have not seen him in games taking place later, and we know what happened to him in his series.
    • The final end credits sequence shows him looking startled and then disappearing, leaving nothing but a single black feather. Three guesses who took him, and the first two don't count.
  • Game Breaker:
    • The Command Board and Mirage Arena are pretty much game-breaking mechanics. You can head to the Mirage Arena right after you complete the character's first world, start playing Command Board there to level up commands quickly without fighting, and use the medals you win to buy Synthesis items for fusing. You can even play the Command Board at your first Save Points, and if you know what to fuse and have the patience to keep playing the board you can get pretty much every high-level command in the game almost when you begin your journey. For example, buy an Abounding Crystal from the Arena and use it in a fusion of Blizzard and Aero. You'll get a Command with the EXP Walker ability, and for the rest of the game you'll now get Exp just by walking around. Level Grinding just became obsolete.
    • As another example, level up three Fires and two Aeros, fuse two of the Fires into Fira, fuse that with the third Fire to get Firaga, fuse the Aeros into Aerora, and then fuse Firaga and Aerora into Fission Firaga. Now repeat the process with the Fires to get a second Firaga (or if you have the cash, just buy one from a Moogle), and fuse that with Slow to get Crawling Fire. Now fuse Crawling Fire with Fission Firaga. Congratulations, you just got Mega Flare before you even got to your second world. Granted, it's totally useless against bosses, but against the game's resident Goddamned Bats and Demonic Spiders? You're practically nuking them.
    • Rhythm Mixer edges on this against bosses, due to its speed a well placed combo can hit nearly a dozen times. The only drawback is how long it takes to activate and you can either eat ice cream or spam Thunder Surge to go around that.Using it against No Heart makes the fight go far faster.
    • Thunder Surge is so hilariously broken it's not even funny. The user is enveloped by lightning, propels themselves forward, and repeatedly smacks anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way for tons of Lightning damage. Oh yeah, and while it's active? You've got invincibility frames out the wazoo. It's one of few commands that are actually, consistently effective against every character's endgame and postgame boss fights to the point that it makes the Mysterious Figure somewhat tolerable to fight!
  • Goddamned Bats: The Mandrake Unversed, small plant-like enemies that shoot projectiles at you from a great distance and tend to spawn in trios, ensuring a constant rain of fire. They'll interrupt your attacks, stun you for other enemies to land hits, and will definitely annoy the hell out of you. They also attack OUTSIDE of combat!
    • Tank Topplers are large red enemies that are very easy to damage, but when you hit them enough they turn red, become invincible, then roll around to distract you and eventually explode to damage you. The only way to prevent this is to hit them from behind, or to kill them so quickly they don't have time to turn red.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Jason Dohring voiced Terra and sadly does so as a case of Dull Surprise. Then Master Xehanort commits Grand Theft Me, resulting in a Xehanort voiced by Richard Epcar, and Terra goes straight up to Large Ham.
  • Idiot Plot:
    • Terra's story is often criticized for being perceived as an example of this. Despite being Obviously Evil to hilarious extents, Terra unfailingly trusts Master Xehanort and once he finally catches on to his wicked nature, it's too late for him, and he gets turned into the old coot's next vessel. He's also criticized for helping every single Disney villain he meets, most of them just as Obviously Evil as Xehanort, and never learning from his mistakes... though that's not actually what happens despite what the fandom might tell you.
    • The entire game can count as one due to the plot only really being kept going because the main heroes are idiots that lack common sense and social skills. Terra and Eraqus are the worst examples, and Eraqus even gets taken out for his role in starting the mess, but Ventus and Aqua are no better. By the time they wise up enough to take on the Big Bad, it turns out to be too late and their stupid decisions catch up to them, leading to a Downer Ending.
    • To single him out, Master Eraqus' stupidity must be elaborated on. As sinister as Master Xehanort may be, Terra, Aqua, and Ven have heard nothing but good things about him and thus have no reason to think he's up to no good (and no, looking creepy is not a justification for immediately assuming the worst about someone). Eraqus has no such excuse though. He knows that Xehanort is crazy enough to start an apocalypse just to see what would happen. He was attacked with dark magic when he confronted him! And yet when Xehanort shows up and dumps a comatose, amnesiac, obviously traumatized boy on his doorstep, he doesn't ask any questions. When the balls of light used in Terra and Aqua's Mark of Mastery Exam suddenly get corrupted by darkness, he doesn't connect the dots despite sitting a few feet away from the darkness-obsessed old loon. In fact, he blames it on Terra! If he had warned someone, anyone, that Xehanort was nuts, Terra, Aqua, and Ven might have had a much happier ending. Maybe even Eraqus himself would survive the events of the game.
  • Iron Woobie: Regardless of the main trio's flaws, hardships or no, they all keep trucking. And while the end result is largely a disaster, they do manage to collectively derail most of Master Xehanort's plans, with the remaining pieces failing into place for Sora & co. to clean up a decade later.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Master Xehanort. He makes Terra run off and fight the Unversed, making his darkness stronger so Xehanort can take his body. He keeps Ven fighting Unversed and Vanitas, gets Terra to help him kill Master Eraqus, and then brings all of his plans together in one place. And they all almost worked!
  • Memetic Badass: Aqua. There's a reason she's given the title "Master" at the beginning. Due to the timeline, Mickey hasn't quite reached this point, but he's getting there. Heck, Aqua's final battle aside from her REAL final one with Terranort has Mickey fighting alongside her. Memetic Badasses fight together!
    • Vanitas has been propelled to this title, alongside being crowned as a Memetic Molester.
  • Memetic Molester: Even. And Master Xehanort. And as mentioned above, Vanitas.
  • Memetic Mutation: Thanks to the secret ending and perceived Narminess, it's become a meme to look up at the sky and say "Sora" as Dearly Beloved plays in the background.
  • Memetic Sex Goddess: Aqua has been declared the sexiest character in the series by many. The fact that she's older and breaks the Damsel in Distress patterns set by previous female protagonists probably helped a lot. Then again, there's all the fetish fuel put into her design too...
  • Misblamed: Yep, a few scenes were changed. Braig's telescopic scope was modified to look less realistic (and he's not shown attaching his guns into a sniper rifle) in the international release. But would you believe that some people are actually thinking that a scene in Dwarf Woodlands was censored? In the Japanese version, the Queen gets mad and grunts at the mirror, while her anger possesses it. In the international releases? She throws a potion (off-screen) at the mirror. The thing is, though, this was less of a censorship and more of a removal of a Narm moment (see below.)
    • But believe it or not, the scene which everyone thought was gonna get censored? It wasn't. You still see Braig's bloody cheek.
      • If the scene where Eraqus got his scars from Xehanort in a similar manner is anything to go by, that's not blood, but rather a burn from darkness. Still, given that it inflicted permanent physical damage, it's about as graphic as the violence in the series can get.
  • Missed Moment of Awesome: For some, not getting to fight The Queen, or even seeing her death scene.
  • Most Annoying Sound:

Louie: "LATER ALLIGATOR!" "LATER ALLIGATOR!"

    • Spend any time at all at the Command Board and pretty much every character's quotes becomes this, since any time they do anything, they speak, and it's always the same one or two phrases.
    • If you decide to fully clear Fruitball, you'll get this:

Dale: "HERE YA GO! CHIPPER!" "HERE YA GO! CHIPPER!"

  • Narm: The scene in the Japanese version where the mirror sucks Terra in. The queen gets mad, grunts, and her anger possesses the mirror. This was changed in the international version where she instead throws a potion on it.
  • Never Live It Down: Terra helped Maleficent by accident, and now he's considered to have helped every single Disney villain in the game as a gullible loon, but really the only other occasion was Captain Hook, which is a bit less forgivable. He was suspicious of the Evil Queen, was considering not even going with Hades's advice, and didn't know enough about Stitch to know that Jumba was (technically) a villain. He's not that trusting of villains on sight.
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Command Board is actually quite fun, working as a peculiar (but workable) combination of Mario Party and Monopoly. Besides being a fun diversion, your commands level up and you can win new abilities, even if you don't win, so it's never a total waste of time.
    • In fact, it's usually better for grinding abilities, and some powerful Commands like Ragnarok can only be attained there, while with luck ones like Firaga can be got there before you enter the first world.
  • That One Attack:
    • When he's possessed by Hades, Zack flips out and gets what is essentially Omnislash. It deals massive damage and stuns Terra for the entire duration once he's hit, requiring constant dodging.
    • Whilst the Mysterious Figure's entire moveset is basically this, one in particular stands out: Collision Magnet, often called the Rape Rope. Simple idea: he jumps high into the air, latches onto you with his laser beams, drags you up into the air and slashes you. The catch? The attack will almost always take you down to 1HP (kill you outright without Second Chance and Once More), and it actually stuns you briefly once you get hit. This means that it's entirely possible for him to follow it up with another Rape Rope, which you'll have no chance of surviving (although he more commonly uses Tornado or his Combos afterwards). To add to that, it has a fairly wide attack radius, and it homes in on you. So yeah, don't get hit, or else you're pretty much dead. Have fun beating him with Terra.
  • That One Boss: Quite a few. Among them is the first boss of Ven's Story: the Mad Treant. He not only has a knee-jerk spin attack that makes getting close to him a dangerous proposition most of the time but he even has an attack where he flings a bunch of fruits shaped like firecrackers at you. There are way more than you'd expect. This is not helped by the fact that it's very unlikely that you'll have a Cure spell at this point. All we can say is thank God for D-Links.
    • Zack, particularly the second time Terra fights him.
    • Vanitas can be quite hard the first few times you fight him.
    • Trinity Armor is quite tricky if you're unprepared, being made up of three parts, each of which has enough HP to be a boss on its own, and it has several attacks that can be a pain to dodge.
    • Master Eraqus hits ridiculously hard.
  • Scrappy Level: The Mirage Arena's "Treasure Trove" mission takes place on a two-tiered battle field where the upper level is quite a ways directly above the lower area. The only way up there is to bounce off one of three bumpers and then steer your character on top (probably wrestling with the camera), and since it has no walls, it's easy to find yourself going off the edge as you bash enemies, necessitating another frustrating trip back up if they aren't nice enough to chase off after you. Did we mention that the enemy waves switch their spawning back and forth between the two levels several times throughout the mission?
  • Ship Tease: There's a surprising amount of Terra x Cinderella.
    • Add to that Zack/Aqua, with the former asking out the latter on a date. It doesn't help that Aqua becomes flustered and needs to compose herself afterwards, with Herc commenting that her face is red. Let's hope the name "Zaqua" catches on.
    • Also, there seemed to be quite a bit of Ventus/Snow White. As well as some minor Ventus/Aurora.
    • And then there's plenty of Terra/Aqua to go around. Plenty.
    • Ventus/Aqua gets some noticeable teasing, especially during Aqua and Ventus's endings and the final chapter.
    • For some reason, there's quite a bit of Aqua/Cinderella.
      • And Zack/Terra -- at one point, the camera takes Zack's perspective and stares at Terra's chest for a good few seconds. It's like Terra and Aqua were given the same romance options or something.
  • That One Sidequest: Some people found it easier to unlock the secret movie from Kingdom Hearts II by playing the game on proud mode. Birth By Sleep is much, much worse.
  • Scenery Gorn: The Keyblade Graveyard.
  • Tear Jerker: The ending of Terra's story. Watch it here. Spoiler Warning. The full ending (available after playing all three story modes) as well.
  • True Art Is Angsty: This is without a doubt the darkest Kingdom Hearts game yet, with Days coming in a close second. The response upon finding out the endings in the Japanese version? That Square Enix and Disney have finally grown up. Never mind that Square-Enix had made darker games in the past; even before they merged into Square-Enix, and that Disney has been plenty dark on many occasions.
  • Uncanny Valley: Final Fantasy VII‍'‍s Zack appears in Olympus Coliseum. He takes cues from Hercules‍'‍s art style while still having a Kingdom Hearts-style head. It doesn't mesh.
    • You think that's bad? That's just a younger, Nomura-style Zack with an |Hercules-meets-Crisis Core-style armor. The real trouble is unmasked Vanitas. Now, the "evil Sora" face can mesh with a bodysuit, but not with a Riku-esque battle stance. It just feels so... unnatural.
  • The Woobie:
    • All three of the main trio count, though Terra can veer toward the "I want to slap the guy!" variety for much of the game.
    • There has been much fan-gushery about Ansem's youngest apprentice, Ienzo, who evidently lost his parents and is now being raised as another scientist in a house of thirty-somethings. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he will grow up into one of the series' biggest fangirl magnets, either... But considering that he is the one who convinced Ansem to pursue their studies on darkness in people's hearts, helped banish his own adoptive father to the Realm of Nothingness, and then became a member of Organization XIII, Ienzo/Zexion is even more of a Jerkass Woobie than Terra, in that you want to slap him for willful malice rather than from stupid naivete.
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