Zenless Zone Zero (Video Game)

Welcome to New Eridu -- Where Humanity Rises Anew!^note

Swear, I will run until I run out of air in my lungs
Fighting for the ones that are lost in the hollow
I know it's hard to see the end
We're gonna make it out, my friend!

— Lyrics of "Come Alive," opening theme

Zenless Zone Zero (绝区零, Jué Qū Líng), otherwise known as simply ZZZ, is a Urban Fantasy Action RPG Gacha Game developed by miHoYo, launched on July 4, 2024 for the PC (via their in-house HoYoPlay launcher and Epic Games Store), mobile devices (iOS and Android), and the PlayStation 5, with an Xbox Series X|S version released on June 6, 2025.

The game is set in New Eridu, the last known bastion of civilization in a world ravaged by Hollows, black spherical dimensions that appear out of thin air and corrupt anyone caught within into monstrous beings known as Ethereals. Despite their dangers, they also contain a wellspring of untold riches and are a plentiful source of Ether, the dangerous yet potent substance which serves as the energy source for much of New Eridu's technology. As such, they're a treasure trove of opportunities for anyone brave enough to handle the hostile environments within.

However, the Hollows are subject to frequent spatial distortions, so making permanent maps of them is impossible, and even those with a high Ether aptitude will eventually succumb to corruption if they get lost and can't find an exit. Furthermore, access to the Hollows is heavily regulated by New Eridu's city administration, and many prospective Hollow divers aren't licensed to explore them legally. This is where Proxies come in. These individuals work outside the law and specialize in guiding clients through the confusing layouts of the Hollows, typically with the help of temporary map data carried by bunny-like robot helpers known as Bangboos, making them highly sought after by those who wish to partake in unauthorized Hollow exploration.

The story follows Phaethon, a legendary Proxy composed of siblings Wise and Belle, who conduct their operations behind a legitimate cover as proprietors of the Random Play video rental shop on Sixth Street, in the Janus Quarter of New Eridu. After a string of jobs with the Cunning Hares, one of their most frequent clients, leads to a mysterious A.I. named Fairy being installed in their Hollow-diving equipment and their discovery of a conspiracy involving the fall of old Eridu, the siblings set out to investigate further in the hopes of also learning the truth about certain, more personal matters. Along the way, they become acquainted with a variety of factions around the city, all of whom have some business with the Hollows and thus would stand to benefit from working with them.

Returning to the Stylish Action Hack and Slash gameplay of miHoYo's first major title, Honkai Impact 3rd, as well as integrating elements from Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, players assemble teams of up to three playable Hollow divers, known as "Agents" (as well as, in some areas, Bangboos which provide various offensive or support effects) to take on various commissions in the Hollows and reap the rewards, with modes of presentation ranging from branching Roguelike stages to open-world Dungeon Crawling. The game's combat features Tag Team and Break Meter mechanics that encourage players to constantly switch characters and keep attacking enemies until they suffer Daze, which temporarily stuns them and increases their damage intake, as well as allows the party to perform "Chain Attacks," or Attribute Anomalies, which inflict various debuffs; time their dodges and parries (through switching) to trigger, respectively, a Bullet Time counterattack ("Dodge Counter") and a dynamic Combination Attack ("Assist Follow-Up"); and build their Decibels (which are also the game's Gameplay Grading) through the aforementioned actions, which are then consumed to activate powerful Ultimates. Like the three earlier miHoYo titles, character progression also follows traditional RPG staples such as upgrading levels, skills, equipment (i.e., W-Engines and Drive Discs, which respectively perform similar functions to Weapons from the first two games/Light Cones and Stigmatas/Artifacts/Relics, which provide random status buffs and Set Bonuses), and Bangboos. The game's gacha mechanics come in the form of Signal Search, from which players can get new potentially rare W-Engines and Agents (with duplicates converted into upgrades to their Mindscape Cinemas, which provide additional buffs and effects) by spending Master Tapes or Encrypted Master Tapes, as well as Bangboos (with duplicates converted into Cores that increase their skill levels) through Boopons, all of which can be acquired slowly or bought by Polychromes, the in-game currency that can be acquired through completing game content or bought with real-world money.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Please refrain from adding leaked content on any and all sub-pages. While it's understandable that a sub-set of the Zenless Zone Zero community relies on leaks to prepare for upcoming characters and other future content, troping the leaks themselves is against TV Tropes policy and any entries involving leaks will be removed. For more information, visit the Content Leak and Creating a Work Page for an Unreleased Work pages.

"Here are the trope examples we request of you, Phaethon!"

open/close all folders

A-D

Aborted Arc: During Season 1 Epilogue (A), Anby - in her Silver Soldier outfit - tags along the impromptu team trying to bring Hartman down, who was heavily implied to be the financial backer who had bought Twiggy's cloned internal organs to finance her research (as shown in Anby's Agent Story, which the game actually goes out of its way to tell the player about when she and Trigger suddenly appear in the middle of the first half). However, Anby and her plot completely disappear in the second half (B), getting no more mentions from either sides.
Ace Custom: Every personal W-Engine has been crafted directly by an Agent or to their exact specs by professional craftsmen to fit their exact needs, with several like Orphie/Magus' Bellicose Blaze and Koleda's Hellfire Gears, being pushed to the absolute limits of their tolerances
Achievement Mockery: A few achievements are earned through unfortunate circumstances, such as earning the worst possible reward from the lottery scratch cards two days in a row or triggering a trust decrease during an Agent Trust event.
Actually, I Am Him: Vivian spends a considerable amount of time fangirling over 'Lord Phaethon' to the Player only for them to reveal that "they" are Phaethon.
Aerith and Bob: Just to name a few — Susie, Belle, Ellen, Ben, Chop (and Chop Jr.), Roland, Zhu Yuan, Howl, Belf... suffice to say, New Eridu's population certainly has a... colorful roster of names.
After the End: The game's events take place an unspecified amount of time after the Hollows first appeared and decimated civilization, and eleven years after the Old Capital, Eridu, was consumed by Hollow Zero.
Air-Vent Passageway: A few sections of Season 2, Chapter 2's story involve Phaethon leading the members of Spook Shack through the ventilation ducts of a Porcelumex research facility, eavesdropping on conversations all the while.
All Just a Dream: This was the big twist of the "A Dream Come True At Last" event, which saw Belle and Wise solve a big cancellation crisis that struck an upcoming get-together they arranged with several of the Agents. At the end, after helping out everyone with the matters that were keeping them from attending, it's revealed that the entire thing was a dream the two had after falling asleep from exhaustion in the middle of sorting videotapes, and none of the Agents they invited ever flaked out in the first place.
An Adventurer Is You: All Agents have a Specialization which defines their role in combat:
- Attack: Characters who focus on damaging the enemy directly, with some of them focusing on getting huge critical hit damage.
- Stun: Characters with naturally high Impact and Daze multipliers. Their raw DPS tends to be less than those with the Attack or Rupture specialties, but they can very rapidly stun enemies and enable other characters to swap in for massive damage. They also tend to be The Debuffer or The Buffer by applying some kind of effect that improves the damage done by themselves and allies.
- Support: Characters who focus on buffing, creating field effects, and/or applying debuffs to enemies. Tend to have the lowest DPS, but have a wide variety of effects that make them useful in teams.
- Anomaly: Damage-dealing characters who, instead of simply attacking directly, focus on rapid Anomaly Buildup for occasional bursts of high damage coinciding with the activation of Status Effects.
- Defense: Characters who focus on mitigating or nullifying damage, providing allies an Immune to Flinching effect, and/or some buffing effects.
- Rupture: Characters who focus on dealing DEF-ignoring damage and having high survivability.
Alice Allusion: With the existence of Hollows, falling down a hole into a supernatural realm is a common danger in New Eridu. There's also the rabbit shaped Bangboos, who often hold Carrot data vital for navigating Hollows, and some Bangboo like Eous happen to be white so Hollow Explorers often find themselves having to Follow the White Rabbit.
Alliterative Title: Zenless Zone Zero.
Ambiguous Situation: In Burnice's Agent Story, Burnice and Piper rescue an old lady with the assistance of the Proxy from a strange Ethereal. She then offers them a lottery ticket. Piper and the Proxy are suspicious, but are unable to dissuade Burnice from taking it. In a seemingly Million to One Chance, it turns out it's the winning number. Later on, the three of them encounter the same Ethereal again along with an old man who claims to be the old lady's spouse, who offers them another lottery ticket. It appears to be the winning number again until the Proxy realizes that the newspaper they're looking at is a month out of date. A Genre Savvy player can express suspicion before accepting the latter ticket, but Burnice and Piper are both swept up in the excitement, and there are no consequences to accepting the ticket in either case outside disappointment. Why exactly the lottery ticket turns out to be right both times (albeit outdated in the latter case), what exactly the deal with the Ethereal is, and the old couple's connection to it will likely remain a mystery.
Americasia: New Eridu is primarily based on many modern East Asian cities such as in China or Japan, (evidenced by its city architecture and infrastructure, clothing and uniform styles, and store designs), but it also features a lot of Western influences, and most of the characters have Western names. Given New Eridu's status as one of the last inhabitable cities left (if not the only inhabitable city), the cultural melting pot is most likely a result of survivors flocking to it and bringing their customs and aesthetics with them.
- The Outer Ring seems largely based on the Southwestern United States, being a huge desert dotted with oil fields and Saguaro cacti^note and featuring folksy background music with guitars and harmonicas. The mayor of Blazewood, Kasa, looks like she could be of Native American descent and the locals have a tradition of crafting sunflints, which resemble dreamcatchers. The signs in the Outer Ring have text written in both English and Chinese.
And Now for Someone Completely Different:
- If you’ve picked Belle as your Player Character, you’re forced to play as Wise near the end of the first chapter as Belle gets stuck in a hollow on her way to pick up movies.
- Special Episodes primarily have you play as other Agents rather than the Phaethon siblings, such as Jane Doe in Undercover R&B or Yanagi in Virtual Revenge, both in combat and in the overworld.
Anti-Frustration Features:
- Every chapter and Agent Story episode has a "Trial Mode" that allows players to test out chapter-relevant Agents whose levels and equipment fit the chapter's difficulty, though the player can opt to field their own team instead until in update version 1.4 and above where Trial Agents are now mandatory in Story Mode.
- The Signal Search screen directly displays how many pulls are remaining before the player receives a guaranteed A-Rank or S-Rank Signal from the banners, similar to Honkai Impact 3rd's Supply screen, saving the player from needing to go to their pull history and physically count from there. It is of course still very possible to draw A-Rank or S-Ranks before the displayed numbers with the count down just being for the 100% drop rate also known as Hard Pity.
- A small one, but in lieu of a dedicated "Newbie Banner" for new players that was used in Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, the "Standard Banner" of ZZZ (called "Star-Studded Cast") performs double-duty as a "Newbie Banner", where the first five 10-pulls cost only eight Master Tapes instead of ten; an S-rank character is also guaranteed within 50 pulls. These factors simultaneously help build progress towards the 300 standard banner pull threshold needed to pick a single standard S-rank character of your choice, a step up from Star Rail's own 300 pull freebie.
- The fast travel navigation screen features a section that tells you how many quests are available in a given area at a time, along with any Agent Trust events that are available.
- Skipping a dialogue cutscene still gives you a quick summary of what happened in that scene.
- The Music Shop in general is an anti-frustration feature - by obtaining fragments by doing various activities (primarily Notorious Hunts and minibosses) or dismantling Drive Discs, you can 'roll' for Drive Discs without spending Energy doing Routine Cleanups - on top of that, you can choose specifically which type, slot, and even main stat (for slots 4, 5 and 6), significantly lessening the pain of bad RNG when you're trying to optimize your team loadout.
  - Additionally, you can also obtain materials to guarantee a Drive Discs main stat and up to 2 sub stats, almost completely eliminating any RNG.
- During battle, while battling mobs of enemies, there is a chance an enemy you don't see will attack. If so, the Agent you're using will suddenly warn you so that you can stop attacking and defend.
- Characters' stat sheets highlight which ones each Agent benefits from the most in yellow. This provides a basic direction as to what sort of Drive Discs will serve them best, rather than leave players running blind, or worse, too indecisive about what "build" suits the large cast, their varied kits, and their synergy with each other in combat. A few updates to the interface includes guides on upgrades to prioritize and aim for, on top of seeing community picks for disc sets for a character.
- The Twin Marionettes, a tough Dual Boss which are fought in the Ballet Twins tileset, have a rather annoying habit of reviving each other if one of them is defeated while the other is still active. Fortunately, the revival process will only heal them for half their HP — that is, half of the max HP they were previously at, establishing diminishing returns since every revival cycle will yield less and less HP restored, preventing players from getting stuck in an endless loop of killing one Twin only for the other to revive over and over.
- v1.2 adds the Fairy Auto-Explore function to completed Story or Exploration missions, letting you gather any chests you missed without needing to replay a level you've already completed.
- For players who are not a fan of the TV Mode for Hollow Zero but still need to clear it, the v1.2 update adds a Blitz Mode to the Withering Garden stage, which distills the Hollow Zero mode into a prolonged combat-only stage that takes less time to complete.
- There are two different types of character-swap Counter-Attack. As long as you press any swap button with the right timing, the character with the right counter will jump in regardless of which button was pressed.
- A certain variety of Play Every Day incentive can be bought from the shop. On one hand this means sinking some real money into the play incentive and still having to actually log in to claim the valuable polychromes with no buffer; on the other, the purchase comes with the equivalent price of monochromes upfront and four days of checking in (out of thirty) is enough to make that much back on polychromes too.
- Up to ten days' worth of battery charge for VR training (a primary source of upgrade materials) can be passively banked, and these are used after the primary supply.
- For those who want to grind VR training missions without being interrupted at the end of each in-game day, Immersive Mode (an in-universe feature of the VR simulators which speeds up the user's perception of the virtual world) will prevent these missions from advancing the in-game clock. This option was eventually removed, however, in favor of having the effect enabled at all times.
- Burnout Mode, a feature added to the Expert Challenge missions in v1.6, doubles the Battery Charge usage and drop quantity for Core Skill materials corresponding to the Agents currently available via Signal Search.
- Certain limited-time events with significant lore implications, such as "Overlord's Feast" and "Into That Pale Wasteland", can be accessed from the Ridu Chronicles tab of the Events menu even after they've ended, albeit without their time-sensitive rewards.
- v2.5 adds an shop where if you’ve obtained an S-Rank Agent you not only already have but have all their mindscapes, you can get a currency that lets you exchange not only for another standard S-Rank, but a few normally limited S-Ranks^noteJane, Qingyi, and Burnice, lessening the pain of losing a 50/50 or constantly getting only one Agent on the standard banner.
Apocalypse How: Class 2. Most of the planet has been rendered uninhabitable by the uncontrolled spread of Hollows, with the remnants of civilization taking refuge in and around New Eridu, the only city with the technology to minimize the proliferation of Hollows within its borders. That said, conditions in New Eridu are far cozier than the average apocalypse of this class, and its citizens get to live out fairly average urban lifestyles.
Apocalyptic Log: During Hollow Zero raids, there are small chances to find unique events with a mysterious raider handing over recordings of people who have gone into Hollow Zero. Some of these recordings show tragic moments of people breathing their last before turning into the Corrupted.
Applied Phlebotinum: Ether, which the founders of New Eridu discovered how to extract from Hollows, is the reason for the city's prosperity and unique technologies. However, it's also highly toxic, with overexposure causing people to lose their ability for conscious thought, eventually transforming into the Corrupted.
Appropriate Animal Attire: Looking at NPCs will show that most of them wear clothing with a hole in their backsides for a Thiren to put their tails through.
Arc Words: "Students of the guilty", which starts appearing in Chapter 5. It's used to refer to Belle and Wise, who are former Helios Academy students under Carole Arna, whom was blamed for the disaster that destroyed the old city, and whom the siblings are trying to prove her innocence.
Arrange Mode: Hollow Zero allows you to, at higher difficulty levels, take on a mixture of additional handicaps for increased rewards.
Art Evolution: Compared to miHoYo's previous titles, Zenless Zone Zero's animation quality is considerably better with how fluidly and expressively each character moves in cutscenes.
Art-Shifted Sequel: The strong Noughties punk-rock era setting, frutiger metro aesthetic and cubic minimalistic cartoons distinguish Zenless from the more traditional anime-esque style of the Honkai series and Genshin. Even in terms of character designs - because of its Urban Fantasy - Zenless usually respects the Period Piece urban streetwear it pays homage to.
Ascended Meme: An Inter-Knot thread which appears at the start of Season 2 tells the story of someone seeking to join Mockingbird, posting daily about how they're researching the group and training to become one of their members, only to reveal they changed their mind after 283 days and started looking into joining Yunkui Summit instead. This was added in reference to a Chinese player who became famous for posting daily on Bilibili about the polychromes he was saving to obtain Vivian and max out her Mindscapes, only to swivel towards saving for Yixuan instead after her formal reveal in the Season 2 trailer. The video in which he announced his decision, titled "Change of plan, we will be pulling for Yixuan instead!", is referenced in the achievement rewarded for viewing the Inter-Knot thread, "Change of plans".
Aside Glance: Almost every playable Agent at least glances straight down the barrel of the camera during their battle intro.
Assist Character: Certain Agents, particularly ones who appear prior to their playable debut, will serve as one of these during story missions where they're relevant, during which they'll briefly jump in to do some damage whenever the player performs a heavy attack.
Awesome, but Impractical: As cool and capable as the HDD System is, even before Fairy supercharged it, it's a huge risk for Phaethon to have. Even with the storefront disguise, there's no practical way to hide it; it takes up an entire back wall in the Archives section, and pretty much anyone who just so happens to stumble into the backroom without permission is going to see it. The only real defenses to stop that from happening being a few "Employees only" signs plastered around, for all the good they do, a heavy steel door (which itself would probably gather a heap of suspicion), and a single Bangboo (and suffice to say a Bangboo isn't going to be able to do much if someone presses the issue and tries to force their way in). It's also a massive target on the siblings' backs; it's the kind of technology people would kill for, criminal or government, and the siblings' fame/infamy as Phaethon doesn't exactly help there. Having to dump the main Phaethon account at the beginning of the story did buy Belle and Wise some breathing room and throw both authorities and criminals off their scent, but it's unknown if or how long that will last for them, especially since they're still hard at work as Proxies and quickly rebuilding their lost reputation. Finally, and as pointed out by Wise specifically, the HDD System, especially after Fairy got comfy in it and started doing its thing, is a massive electricity vampire; not only does this mean that Belle and Wise are now barely breaking even to pay for the power bill, but anyone who so much as glances at the local energy grid would likely notice the massive draw the store has, like a black hole in the middle of the street. Suffice to say that for any Proxy but Phaethon, the HDD would almost be more trouble than it's worth.
- The HDD System was also revealed at the end of Season 1 to be massively kneecapping the siblings' Ether resistance and affinity, preventing them from entering Hollows like any other Proxy would need to as part of their job. This has prevented them from developing any combat abilities in the 11 years since the fall of Eridu, making it extremely risky for them to venture into Hollows even though they now can thanks to a gift from the Mayor.^note
Awful Truth: The Corrupted-like Sacrifices are people who willingly (or not) turned themselves into monsters using a special kind of serum who still retain their consciences (up to a point), as shown with Bringer pulling it off. Furthermore, these Sacrifices are following "the Creator;" an unknown entity who appears to be a god who "refines" the Sacrifices. Season 1's Epilogue reveals that Sacrifices are extremely dangerous because they're capable of leaving the Hollows, unlike how Ethereals cannot leave them on their own. The Exaltists are also planning to destroy New Eridu by releasing dozens of them.
Badass Normal:
- In contrast to the Semi-Divine Allogenes/Vision Wielders and the Touched by Vorlons Pathstriders, none of the Agents are particularly supernatural, instead simply being skilled fighters with high Ether resistance. Any elemental effects are caused by technology such as the W-Engines.
- The Phaethon siblings; several comments made imply their Ether resistance is as low as or possibly lower than even the average citizen's, meaning they can't spend too much time in a Hollow without risking corruption. Despite this, they're both ace Proxies who are just as important to exploring the Hollows as Agents are. Possibly even moreso; given that they are able to run the insane amount of mental calculations required to form a rudimentary "carrot" (A.K.A. a path out of a Hollow using raw observation data) in their own heads, and that they can apparently No-Sell a point-blank explosion.
Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Some of the Beast Man-type Thirens eschew any form of footwear while otherwise being fully-clothed, whether it's because their feet aren't well-designed for wearing them or just to add a more beastly feel, the most notable examples being Ben Bigger, Pan Yinhu, and Zhao.
Beach Episode: Version 2.1's flagship event, "Tales of Midsummer Dreams", which occurs after the patch's main story quest. Spook Shack wants to wind down after the emotional hurdles they encountered while dealing with Porcelumex, so they decide to take a load off at Fantasy Resort, a beach resort in the Throne Quarter, and invite Phaethon to tag along. Upon discovering that the resort is in a state of disrepair and hardly attracting any visitors, however, they accept an offer from the resort's management to help breathe new life into the place, all the while dealing with a corrupt Three Gates Corp manager's attempts to plunge the resort into bankruptcy. The event introduces a few beach-themed minigames as well as swimsuit skins for Yuzuha, Alice, and the Phaethon siblings.
Big Bad Ensemble: So far, the worst of the past and current events happening in New Eridu can be traced back to either the Exaltists, TOPS, or the shadier side of the New Eridu Defense Force.
Big Good: The mayor of New Eridu is revealed to be the master of Victoria's Housekeeping and is (politically) the most powerful ally the Proxies currently have. He's aware of (and against) the Sacrifices and Exalists, was an old friend of Carole, and even helps the siblings by upgrading the H.D.D system and allowing them to enter the Hollows without risking cardiac arrest.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
- Vision Corporation seems to be an honest and competent company to the public eye. The Proxies and the Cunning Hares discover to their horror that Vision intends to blow up the old metro along with many of its citizens to cut costs. Worse, when the Cunning Hares get the citizens out of the old metro, Vision would've massacred them had the police not shown up.
- Within Vision Corp itself, Sarah comes across as just a pretty but talented secretary to the CEO Perlman, who is more of a Smug Snake than anything. Turns out, Sarah's the mastermind behind the old metro incident, and is part of the Exaltists, who are trying to bring about the "Age of Hollows" — and she's legions worse than Perlman could ever be.
- For a given value of "sheep", but Inspector Bringer initally seems to just be a somewhat incompetent police inspector who can put up a good facade of bravado for the cameras but is actually scared shitless of Etherals, to the point that he's reduced to a quivering wreck at the mere mention of them. He's also one of the Exaltists, and is a lot more conniving and cold than he lets on, to the point that his "cowardly" persona was just an act.
Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Downplayed. Among the initial cast, all the male Thiren Agents were full on anthropomorphic animals while the female Thirens were only a Little Bit Beastly. There have, however, been several notable instances of slightly beastly men (e.g. Seth and Manato) and fully beastly women (e.g. Pulchra and Zhao) who have shown up in the game in subsequent patches, to say nothing of the various background extras who also subvert the concept.
Boats into Buildings: One of the more prominent setpieces featured at the Fantasy Resort (introduced in patch 2.1) is a large bar made out of a beached ship. The prescence of similar ships seen during the surfing minigame give the implication that it really is a former oceangoing vessel that was placed on land and turned into a social venue rather than simply a building shaped like a boat.
Body Armor as Hit Points: Shield is a HP bar that takes damage before the standard health, usually showing as a blue HP appended on the right of the standard green HP. Shield is provided by most Defense Agents or buffs in Hollow Zero.
Blackout Basement: Levels situated in the Ballet Twins conceal your surroundings except your immediate vicinity, and are filled with spectral field enemies that are chased off by light sources.
Black Comedy: Many of the Agents' funny quirks are the result of very tragic pasts that caused them all to develop some... unique traits. Nicole's Money Fetish? Caused by the one time she and other orphans tried to help a dying friend from his sickness by getting funds that ultimately failed but managed to make his day before passing, teaching her that money was a necessary thing to have around. Anby's strange monotone attitude and obsession with movies? She's the oldest of a series of clone soldiers who's doing her best to adjust to civilian life, and movies are her go-to method for learning about it. Soldier 11's inability to stick to one nickname for the Proxy? She's from the same line of clones as Anby and has to deal with the memory problems inherent to their lineage. Ben's worries for finances? Everyone else at Belobog would be hopeless without him doing accounting. Miyabi's fixation on turning everything into training? Her mother put her through all kinds of mundane "training" exercises when she was little to distract her from taking up the blade and becoming a Void Hunter, and ultimately forced her daughter to Mercy Kill her when she became corrupted in Hollow Zero as a final test. Pan Yinhu's obsession for getting bargains? He used to be a dangerous Hollow Raider barely scraping by who changed his ways when Yixuan beat the tar out of him. Alice's obsession with all things symmetrical? As a child she lost one of a pair of hairclips she wore symmetrically and her father died trying to retrieve it, causing her to develop a complex towards asymmetry. But all this is okay because you get to see them being... themselves anyway.
Bloodier and Gorier: While previous miHoYo products have adhered to the concept of Bloodless Carnage, this game hasn't shied away from graphic depictions of blood when characters are stabbed or shot. Such depictions were initially limited to supplementary animated shorts and CG illustrations, but Season 2, Chapter 3 prominently features two 3D cutscenes which respectively show off a character being shot in the chest and killed, complete with a visible bullet wound and blood pooling on the ground around him, and another character taking a blade to the heart and likewise bleeding out.
Body Horror:
- Hollow corruption's physical symptoms include green crystals growing through the skin and the eventual mutation into an Ethereal itself involves, as demonstrated by Miguel Silver's transformation◊, a small black hole forming and literally consuming the victim's head, with heavy implication that the victim is still conscious and aware during this ordeal. Then there's Pompey's terminal corruption and transformation, which includes an Ethereal core bursting out of the chest in addition to the crystal growths. Suffice to say it ain't a pretty sight to see.
- The Corrupted are a grotesque human-Ethereal hybrid subspecies that are created when the subject's Ether aptitude is high enough to actively prevent the corruption from fully enveloping them, giving them enhanced mutant limbs and increased physical abilities alongside retained fighting skills that can make them more dangerous than most regular Ethereals.
Boss Rush: The "Avenger's Hospitality" mode of the Lost Void Hollow Zero mode starts you off with a collection of Resonia already on hand, but you're forced to fight through several Lost Void bosses back-to-back, culminating in the Training Dummy robot, furious over being used as a punching bag.
Breaking Old Trends:
- Meta-wise, this is the first game made by Hoyoverse to include Beast Man and Amazing Technicolour Population characters who are playable as opposed to being relegated to enemies or historical characters.
- Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night is notable for being the first main story mission that doesn’t update the newspaper you receive from Howl.
Break Meter: Enemies have two types of Break Meters.
- Enemies have a Daze meter which builds up when they are attacked. When the meter is full, the enemy is stunned and takes at least 1.5× more damage than normal.
- Inflicting damage that matches the Agent's Attribute to an enemy will accumulate the corresponding Anomaly Buildup, which, if full, inflicts them with an Attribute Anomaly debuff that corresponds to the Attribute used.
Bribing Your Way to Victory:
- While in-game content can be cleared without spending anything, it slowly becomes tedious to get enough resources for your Agents and keep up with the increasing difficulty. There is also the fact that the game won't hand over enough Agents whose elemental affinities don't cover certain roles (for example, while Nicole is a free Ether support, you don't get other Ether roles for free without using Signal Search). On top of all this, Agents shine better when they get their exclusive W-Engines and upgrade their Mindscapes. Then there's the drive discs that need specific stats for the right Agents to exploit (such as Stun Agents needing Impact main stats to stun faster), which may drain money and other resources fast.
- Version 2.5 introduces a menu in the in-game store where Special Invitation Letters and W-Engine Microcontroller Units can be exchanged for certain S-rank Agents and their W-Engines. These items can technically be obtained through a sufficient number of Signal Searches, but the amount of Signal Searching one would need to do just to obtain one Agent and W-Engine is fairly hefty^note. The "Filmgoer Thank-You Gift" event that accompanied the same patch provided an alternate means of obtaining them in the form of a spending event where Monochrome purchases corresponded to different tiers of rewards, with tiers for the required number of Microcontroller Units and Invitation Letters placed at 7,000 and 10,000 Monochromes respectively.
But Thou Must!: Very frequently, the dialogue options you're offered essentially say the same thing. Sometimes, no matter what you pick, the Proxy will end up saying both things in their next line, or the Proxy's saying something lengthy that is split up across all your dialogue options.
Option 1: Uh, hello.
Option 2: It's not morning right now.
Proxy: Uh, hello, but it's not morning right now.
Call-Back: A couple of time-limited events see Eous piloting a mech to combat enemies, culminating in a duel with a rival Bangboo with his own mech. The concept of a Bangboo piloting a mech for combat would be reprised at the end of Chapter 2.6 as Lockspring calls in his own mech to fight the party.
Casting a Shadow: The Ether element is the closest thing the game has to a Darkness element, as its attacks often involve black holes and/or dark purple energy.
Central Theme:
- Double lives and masks. The nature of New Eridu society means a lot of people are hiding a secret and/or have another life they can’t show to other people. This is best exemplified by the Phaethon siblings, who front as video rental shop proprietors to hide the fact that they are none other than the legendary Proxy themselves.
- Trust. The relationship between the Phaethon siblings and their Agents grows over the course the game when they begin to place trust over one another, a trait that is almost a rare commodity in a city as cutthroat like New Eridu. Even the law-abiding officers of Criminal Investigation Special Response Team and H.S.O Section Six choose to forgo arresting Phaethon siblings after they reveal their secret of being illegal proxies to them as they see the siblings as good-natured people rather than deceitful and heartless criminals.
Cerebus Rollercoaster: The emotional feel of the story goes all over the place, fitting a Crapsaccharine World where everybody has been Conditioned to Accept Horror. One moment the story will be focused on light-hearted comedy and fun, the next it will delve into heart-pounding action, dramatic horror, or depressing tragedy, only to shortly after return to the humor and happiness. It's especially notable when looking at the character promo's which often create Mood Whiplash when seeing them back-to-back, such as Yanagi's promos going from the silly and heartwarming demo, to the dark and depressing teaser, to the soothing and relaxing EP.
Chain of Deals: At first, the "Don't Get Lost in the Night" commission requires you to find a lady's lost child. Find that child and he'll ask you to find his missing doll, find that missing doll (a Bangboo) and it will ask you to find an alarm clock. Later subverted when you pick up the alarm clock; it emits a piercing sound and the narration ends with an eerie "Time to wake up." message which implies the entire commission is All Just a Dream or a creepy event.
Chekhov's Gun: Early in Chapter 3, Billy complains about a faulty module he installed that won't let him re-open his air intakes. This comes back to help him in a pinch when the airship he's boarded gets gassed and his jammed intakes keep him from breathing in the gas.
China Takes Over the World: In the cultural mix that resulted in the chaos of Eridu being established, Chinese culture went pretty far. The setting of the game, New Eridu, is named after a river from Ancient Greek myth. However, most of the signs and displays around the city are in Chinese, though despite Hoyoverse being a Chinese company, actual Chinese text is notably absent from their other games (the Fantasy Counterpart Culture of China in both Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail has its text rendered in Foreign-Looking Font). Waifei Peninsula in particular heavily adheres to Chinese-inspired traditions and boasts an architectural style similar to that of Hong Kong, and some of its residents can be heard speaking Cantonese (regardless of dub) as a "local dialect". The city as a whole also celebrates an analogue to Chinese New Year known as Gilded Carrot Day. It's also downplayed, since as mentioned, this was only culturally, and New Eridu follows western political structures, it's implied that the game takes place somewhere in the deserts of North America, so the cultural flow comes from China towns in American cities instead of mainland China.
Color-Coded Elements: The various elemental attributes assigned to characters are also associated with certain color palettes, which is also reflected in their damage numbers:
- Electric - blue
- Physical - yellow
- Ice and Frost - cyan
- Fire - orange
- Ether - red-purple gradient
- Auric Ink - dull gold
- Honed Edge - blueish-silver
Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: In addition to damage numbers being colored by their element, the damage numbers that appear when you get hurt are colored red, while the damage numbers that appear when an enemy resists an elemental attack is colored gray instead of the element's color.
Color-Coded Item Tiers: An item or character's rarity (referred to as "rank") is not only denoted by its letter, but by its color as well, with gray-green (C-rank), blue (B-rank), purple (A-rank), and yellow (S-rank).
Combat and Support: Role-wise, Attack, Anomaly and Rupture Agents are Combat, and Support (duh), Stun and Defense are Supports.
Combat Stilettos: While many of the female Agents sport practical footwear for moving through and fighting in the Hollows, a fair few of them, including the highly agile Miyabi and Soldier 0 Anby, wear heels of some sort instead, with no adverse effects on their combat capabilities in doing so.
Combination Attack: Some Agents can perform Aftershock attacks, which mostly consist of attacks that they can perform from off-field at the same time as the active Agent. In a similar vein, Mobile-type Gear in Hollow Zero: Lost Void enables Agents to perform Tag Assists, allowing for their Quick Assists or Chain Attacks to be triggered while they're off-field.
Company Cross-References: Several exist with regards to Genshin Impact:
- In one of the Ridu Weekly errands, you collect medicinal herbs for a HAND employee named Qiqi.
- In Seed's Character Demo "White Scooter Demon", after noticing some Hollow Raiders that "bumped" into Seed Sr. with their truck, Seed says Paimon's infamous "How about we explore the area ahead of us later?" line.
- One of the fortunes that can be drawn at Suibian Temple is "Overload Reaction", which is made by rolling two lightning die faces and one sun or star, while in Genshin, the Overload combo is done with Electro and Pyro.
Connected All Along: All major Agent factions from numbered chapters are connected one way or another:
- The Cunning Hares: They're hired by an unknown contractor to retrieve the strongbox containing Fairy from the Red Fang, who themselves have another unknown contractor. However, separate from these two Driving Question, they get involved with Vision Corporation when it tried to kill a whole bunch of people past a Hollow rather than simply relocating them away from their construction plans. Driven to force the corporation to face justice (and get clout for it), Nicole decides to testify against Charles Perlman, who was tricked into being The Scapegoat by the mysterious Sarah.
- Belobog Heavy Industries: Koleda's past with her Disappeared Dad Khors Belobog: the night that he had allegedly embezzled his company and disappeared hid the Awful Truth of a bizarre monster at Monument Square he personally wanted to seal off with a prototype machine. Before the fight against the monster, Koleda finds out in the cockpit of the prototype that there's bullet holes all over the seat, which all but imply that her father was killed by an unknown party who was pressuring him into handing over the money and keep quiet about the monster. As it turns out, Monument Square was slated to be part of Vision's demolitions, implying whoever murdered Khors also was attempting to permanently erase all evidence of what happened there and potentially the monster itself without anyone knowing it existed. The murder was confirmed later by a decoded audio file from the prototype machine that Khors used to seal the monster away with, and he managed to trick his murderer into revealing the name of the monster - a "Sacrifice".
- Criminal Investigation Special Response Team: Zhu Yuan and Qingyi realize that the monster's remains being handed in-transit to HAND are being stolen by Hollow Raiders hired by a mysterious individual, and there's the big implication that someone within Public Security is acting as The Mole who alerted the Hollow Raiders from any sudden threats to their operation.
- Victoria Housekeeping Co.: Though its members aren't in league with any shady individuals, their master is in the know about the Sacrifice monster; which the Phaethon siblings, Koleda, and Grace find out through Rain cracking the audio file found in the prototype machine at Monument Square. It's implied through Lycaon's dialogue that their master instructed them to eliminate anyone who ever found out about Sacrifice, but thankfully, said master decided that Phaethon and their associates are too valuable as potential allies to remove from the picture.
- Sons of Calydon: Averted for the most part. Their only connection to the plot is detaining Perlman after the blimp he was piloting crashed at the Outer Ring. And even though Lucius is the Arc Villain, he's not working for the Vision Corporation, but rather just generic Ether companies wanting to move into the Outer Ring if he were to succeed in destroying Cinder Lake to stop all oil reserves. Though, they are connected to the Cunning Hares by way of Billy Kid, who used to be the Champion of the Sons of Calydon and is still on very good terms with them. And then Chapter 5 reveals that Lucius' attempted takeover was at the behest of Sarah and her employers.
- HSO Section Six: Perhaps the most ties so far; Miyabi knows Nicole from when the former was still a rookie agent and Zhu Yuan from when they went to school together, her father sometimes hires Victoria Housekeeping, and Section Six's primary connection to the Exaltists is that Sarah guns for Miyabi's sword to create a serum that creates Sacrifices after Null_Face delivers the data they gathered during "Virtual Revenge"... something Inspector Bringer uses in one defiant last stand at Port Elpis that forces every story-focused faction so far to team up.
- Stars of Lyra: Averted. The actual only faction of Season 1 that has zero ties to either the Big Bad's plot or the rest of the Agents.
- Mockingbird: Zigzagged. Although the plot puts both Hugo and Vivian on equal footing, it's ultimately Vivian who has the most ties to the Exaltists due to being the adopted daughter of a Mad Scientist whose machinations were inherited by his blood daughter being the leading branch of Janus Quarter. Hugo, however, doesn't have as many personal ties (past his obvious past with Lycaon, though Lycaon himself has no personal goals other than simply serving the mayor and protecting the Proxies in his stead while ensuring Hugo doesn't do anything shady), simply trying to exploit Hartman and his family caught in the plot.
The Conspiracy: There are at least a couple of lines of conspiracy going on, how much they overlap is currently unknown:
- The mysterious individuals connected to Fairy and the other advanced A.I.s, whom have nefarious designs on New Eridu, and have actively been hacking into and manipulating the city's archives.
- The effort by the Exaltists to either secure or destroy the "Sacrifice", the monster sealed into the monument by Khors Belobog right before the collapse of the old capital. Their efforts have involved the murder of Khors to ensure his silence, attempting to use the Vision Corporation to destroy Monument Square using explosives meant for the metro demolition, hiring a gang of Hollow Raiders to try and discreetly steal the remains of the monster mid-transit before HAND can secure it, and attempting to have Charles Perlman killed in order to silence him after he attempted to blackmail "Sarah". So far all of these efforts have been foiled by Phaethon and their various associates.
- On the more silly side of things, there is an actual "Cat Thief" syndicate made up of ordinary, domestic cats who steal items from New Eridu’s populace and sell them to Out Ringers for cat treats or other cat commodities. And no, this seems to have been started by the cats themselves rather than having been trained by someone else.
Content Warnings: Just like the previous modern miHoYo games, Zenless Zone Zero opens with a lengthy disclaimer stating the game has scenes and Epileptic Flashing Lights that may trigger those with photosensitive epilepsy.
Contrived Coincidence: As more timed events release, the chances that the playable Proxy will bump into the Agents they've met during the story will keep on increasing. They, of course, start to realize the weird coincidences.
The Corruption: Miasma, an Ether-derivative substance originating from the Lemnian Hollow, can infect and transform people into Ethereals much like Ether, in addition to causing hallucinations within those corrupted by it. It's also highly empowering, hence why the Exaltists resort to horrifying methods of gathering as much of it as they can during Season 2, and various enemy types introduced during this season are able to draw energy from Miasma to shield themselves, greatly increasing their defense and preventing them from being stunned.
Cozy Catastrophe: Civilization has been almost completely wiped out by the proliferation of the Hollows. New Eridu, the only known city with the technology to prevent their spread, still has to put up with them appearing within its limits, while the world outside the city is a wasteland that's only beginning to rebuild. Despite this, life goes on like normal for New Eridu's citizens, who continue to go to work and school, keep up with the newest trends, and view Hollows as a regular natural disaster rather than a sign of the apocalypse, with the only consistent threat to this being the Exaltists' (repeatedly foiled) plans to propagate the Hollows and transform themselves into Sacrifices in their twisted vision of survival against them. This is justified as the game takes place at least a century and a half after the Hollows started appearing, so the time period is after civilization has adapted to a new status quo (though it's still a shadow of its former self).
Crapsaccharine World: At first glance, New Eridu looks way too colorful and lively for what is essentially a post-apocalyptic city, but it doesn't take long for the game to show that it's not a great place to live.
- It's already become commonplace to see the many Hollows at various locations spread around the city like it's another normal day until someone accidentally wanders or is taken inside of one. At one point, during Koleda's Agent Story, a Companion Hollow happened to appear at a kindergarten's parking lot, and yet the kids there didn't seem disturbed much about it.
- Hollow Disasters are very commonplace and unpredictable, making swathes of the city unlivable and transforming people into Ether mutants, and this has fundamentally affected the culture of New Eridu — turning Ether into a valuable resource and encouraging people to go Hollow-diving to gain profits.
- Likely due to the above, the city has more orphans than a Dickens novel with not only the player siblings but the majority of the Agents having been orphaned. If you haven't heard your Agents make a mention about their families, always assume they're orphans. Prior to version 2.0, it's much faster to bring up which Agents have been stated to have living blood families (Zhu Yuan, Seth, and Miyabi (to a lesser extent due to losing her mother)...that's it).
- Thirens themselves aren't safe from avoiding suffering next to humanity. Pan Yinhu is a rare type of Panda Thiren in New Eridu, which has caused people to see him as sort of an attraction to take photos with, though it isn't stated if his kin suffered massive losses to the Hollows...but Ju Fufu, on the other hand, is a Racial Remnant of the only largest clan of tiger Thirens decimated by a Companion Hollow being spawned by Hollow Zero, of which there are only 20 surviving tiger Thirens left in all of New Eridu.
- On top of that, there is a massive wealth disparity, and in Chapter 1 the Vision Corporation attempts to bomb an entire slum because it's in the way of their construction project, simply because relocating the people there - mostly made up of the poor, old and/or disabled - would be too expensive in comparison to just killing them all and covering it up from the media (this plan was hatched by the the Exaltists to get the Sacrifice Corruption Complex with Vision being a front, but considering what’s been shown of TOPS, this wouldn’t be out of the realm of their playbook).
- There's also an ongoing armed uprising between the New Eridu Defense Force and the Rebel Forces (soldiers who left the NEDF for various reasons), which is best showcased in Soldier 11's Character Teaser.
- Lumina Square is a beautiful riverside section of New Eridu teeming with storefronts, as well as a popular shopping district. It borders on being a very downplayed Wretched Hive as listening to ambient dialogue will tell you many (though not all) of the stores there use unethical business practices, employees are left traumatized dealing with rowdy shoppers and bad hours, and the people who criticize or complain about the corruption and willingly take action by gaining evidence prove themselves Straw Hypocrites as they’d rather blackmail the store managers to get in on the profits. Public Security’s inability to deal with this seems to be less out of incompetence or corruption and more people not going to them out of greed.
- Limited resources has killed Fast Fashion. Clothing is limited to simple and generic clothing or high-end hand-crafted designer clothing with no middle ground. Despite working (albeit part-time) for among the richest clientele in New Eridu, Ellen has to spend an entire month of wages to afford a hoodie in the latter category. This could also tie in to how Nicole is Money Dumb, as she has a penchant of buying costly clothes.
- And let's not forget the lottery tax rate being an atrocious 70%.
Create Your Own Villain: The top brass of Hollow Special Operations, through their own corruption and incompetence, inadvertantly drove one of the main antagonists to villainy. Specifically, Sarah Floren, who used to be part of HSO's Special Investigation Squad, only for her team to be slaughtered by a powerful Ethereal. When she returned to headquarters after being saved by the Exaltist Overseer at the time, she discovered that she and her entire team had been officially erased, with the possibility that her team had meant to be wiped out from the start. Being an orphan with no other place to go, this drove her right into the arms of the Exaltists, and she would prove to be an extremely cunning and dangerous cultist who would cause a lot of bloodshed and tragedy, and cause massive problems for HSO themselves, especially Section 6.
Cult: The Exaltists, a Hollow-worshipping movement which has existed as early as the fall of the old capital, collectively worship a being only known as the Creator and seek to transform themselves into Sacrifices in their own twisted vision of survival against a world ravaged by Hollows and make sure what's left of humanity is wiped out by searching for a way to bring out Sacrifices out from the Hollows. They serve as the game's overarching antagonists, and are first brought to the forefront when Sarah and Bringer are revealed to be a part of the group in Chapter 5.
Damsel in Distress:
- Belle surprisingly gets this a few times. First is when she gets trapped in a Hollow and Wise has to rescue her, even taking over as the playable character if you chose Belle. And second is when she gets nearly run over by a car but Zhu Yuan and Qingyi save her in time.
- A well-known hacker named Rain gets kidnapped by a group of mercenaries who wants her to hack into the airship and crash it into a Hollow. Thankfully, Rain is able to send a message for help leading the Phaethon Siblings and Victoria Housekeeping Co. to come rescue her.
Decon-Recon Switch: Chapter Five does this to Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!. Nicole is confident that her connection with Miyabi will be enough to get Section 6 on their side to even the odds against Bringer, only for Miyabi to just take Perlman into their custody and arrest Phaethon for being illegal legendary Proxies. To Section 6 the Cunning Hares are at best consultants or informants, at worst street punks who may not have New Eridu’s best interests in mind, pretty much the furthest thing from equals. ^note Where it becomes Reconstructed is when Fairy sends a distress call to Qingyi with her and Zhu Yuan protecting Phaethon from being arrested because they know them personally and trust them in spite of the siblings being Proxies.
Developer's Foresight: An update to the game post-launch adds a feature in the overworld where Agents react awkwardly to the player if they stand idly looking in the former's direction.
Dialog During Gameplay: Swapping between teammates in battle sometimes results in a few generic lines, but if you swap between teammates who are a part of the same faction you will get more unique dialogue where the characters acknowledge who they were swapped with. There are also unique dialogues with characters that have history or strong bonds, such as Billy with Lighter or Caesar, and Miyabi with Zhu Yuan.
Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
- Belle can be heard humming "60% Fantasy - Passion", one of the Sixth Street BGM tracks, during a cutscene at the start of the Chapter 2 Interlude.
- In the non-English dubs of her Agent Story, Ellen hums the melody of her EP, "Shark's Gotta Bite".
- Harumasa hums his own EP, "Picture Book", during his stage of the Gravitational Attraction event, this time in the English dub as well.
Difficulty Levels: Stages are assigned a difficulty level on a scale of 1 to 6. In addition to serving as a guide to how difficult the stage is to complete for the player, this also appears to be an In-Universe ranking of the overall threat level of the commission by the Hollow Deep Dive system.
- 1 (Easy): Stages of this difficulty level almost never involve combat. Most of them are assigned by AAATierFreelance and BBBTierPartTime, a duo of ordinary Proxies who came up with the idea of assigning commissions which seemed too good to be true so that only the other would take it, allowing them to farm experience. Outside that, "Easy" stages are generally non-combat oriented commissions which for whatever reason must take place inside a Hollow, necessitating a Proxy's assistance despite the fact that under normal circumstances anyone could handle it.
- 2 (Normal): Stages of Normal difficulty, while generally involving combat, are typically assigned by ordinary people who need help with something relatively low-key. Often, the first stages in a series of commissions will be of this difficulty level or Hard, reflecting increasing stakes. Gameplay-wise, enemies in these stages are weak and relatively easy to deal with. It's practically impossible to fail a stage of Normal difficulty level with a team that's not horribly underleveled.
- 3 (Hard): Narratively, Hard stages are higher stakes with genuine danger involved, albeit still often involving civilian clients, and not reaching the heights of High-Risk stages. Gameplay-wise, Hard stages can potentially pose a challenge with a team that's not up to snuff, but once you have an on-level team, they shouldn't pose any issue.
- 4 (High-Risk): Aptly named, High-Risk stages are typically the most difficult stages to involve civilian clients, and often the climax of a series of commissions. These stages are also the highest to not be considered "challenge" stages. This is the lowest difficulty level for which failure is plausible even for an on-level team, particularly if you don't target enemy weaknesses or are up against enemies with particularly difficult attack patterns.
- 5 (Disaster): One of the two difficulty levels to be considered "challenge" stages, stages of Disaster difficulty level are typically offered not by civilian clients but by Knowledge Brokers, high-level criminals, or even government agents on the downlow. These stages seriously test both the skill level of the player and the viability of their team.
- 6 (Nightmare): Nightmare difficulty stages are aptly named, being endgame-level stages which, even for a moderately skilled player with an on level team, can be difficult to clear without the right team composition. As with Disaster difficulty stages, Nightmare difficulty stages are almost never offered by civilian clients, and most series of story commissions don't include a stage of this difficulty level.
Disappeared Dad: Koleda's father seemingly abandoned her, along with taking Belobog's finances, which not only became a big stain on the company's reputation but also jaded Koleda. It's revealed years later to her that her father was using the money to build the prototype construction machine to seal away a powerful Ethereal-like being called a "Sacrifice", and that he was murdered because he was a threat to TheConspiracy surrounding it.
Dramatic Irony: After you unlock Hollow Zero, others begin turning to the siblings for help with training Bangboo due to the very skilled, intelligent Bangboo investigator they employ. While Belle and Wise do work with many different Bangboo in both their day job and as a Proxy, Eous only appears so smart because the HDD system allows them to take control of its body remotely. As the HDD system is illegal, they'd much rather pretend to be expert Bangboo trainers than correct this.
Driving Question: After the Prologue, the Phaethon siblings wonder who hired the Red Fang to steal the strongbox containing Fairy, and who hired the Cunning Hares to steal it back from them.
Dub Name Change:
- In the Spanish localization, Thiren is translated as "Semihumano" (Semihuman).
- Proxies are referred to as 绳匠 (Shéngjiàng, "rope makers") in the Chinese script, befitting how they act as the metaphorical rescue rope which pulls Hollow divers toward safety. The network through which Proxy commissions are posted being called the Inter-Knot is an orphaned reference to this concept, as in Chinese it's similarly known as 绳网 (Shéngwǎng, "rope net/network").
Dub Pronunciation Change: The "Tour de Inferno" game version and in-universe event is consistently pronounced in the EN dub as the more French grammatically correct "Tour d'Inferno."
Dump Stat: Agents that are the Rupture specialty have no need for PEN Ratio (a stat that determines the percentage of enemy DEF ignored), as their Core Passive causes all of their elemental damage to be considered Sheer Damage, which completely ignores enemy DEF. Tellingly, the PEN Ratio stat does not show up on a Rupture Agent's Base Stats page, being replaced with the Sheer Force stat.

E-M

Early-Installment Weirdness:
- In lieu of the Specialties we know today, the first beta of the game had "Attack Types", also known as "Fighting Styles" and "Hit Types". An Agent belonged to one of three Attack Types—Slash, Strike, or Pierce—which determined how quickly they staggered an enemy; Attack Types were also more effective against a certain type of enemy than others (Ethereals, machines, and organics respectively). Later beta builds and the final game effectively replaced this system with Specialties, and while Attack Types still exist and new Agents are assigned one, they have no practical effect on gameplay anymore.
- When it came to exploring what would count as a dungeon, the game play shifted to going around in a tile-based map, where tiles could have events that play out. The action portions were limited to combat in single arenas. Slowly towards the latter half of Season One, this was abandoned in favor of the player exploring actual locations. This was due to the tile-based exploration not being received well in player feedback.
EgoCorp: The Belobog Heavy Industries, a construction company, was founded by Khors Belobog and is now run by his daughter, Koleda.
Eldritch Location: Hollows are extradimensional spaces that look from the outside like giant black bubbles swallowing everything they touch. Inside Hollows, while they heavily resemble the locales that they swallowed up, spacetime is distorted, monsters called the Ethereal attack anything that moves, and those trapped within eventually become Corrupted. The "spacetime is distorted" bit is especially important, since this means that even if you enter the Hollow without issue, exiting it is a whole other ordeal, and unless you're lucky enough to stumble across the exit yourself, you'd better hope to have an updated "carrot" (essentially a map of the current Hollow layout, which typically expires within a few hours or even minutes of being formed) or happen to know a capable Proxy who can guide you out — otherwise, you're doomed to join the Hollow's corrupted denizens.
Elemental Powers: There are five elements in the game: Physical, Fire, Ice, Electric, and Ether. Hollow Investigators, Raiders, and others who interact with the Hollow (or otherwise get into frequent fights) use W-Engines and specialized weapons or equipment to convert Ether, emanate these elements, and boost their attacks.
The End of the World as We Know It: Being modeled after the Noughties, it is expected to see ZZZ be set in a classic 2000s post-apocalyptic world. Hollows are supernatural dimensions of space-time that act as Monster Spawn Points known as Ethereals. New Eridu is one of the few civilizations that survived and industrialized in this new age.
Engineered Public Confession: Not quite "public", but Khors deliberately tricked his murderer into revealing that the monster sealed in the monument is a "Sacrifice", knowing that the audio would be recorded in his prototype machine's encrypted data storage unit. This information makes its way into the hands of Phaethon and Koleda as a result, giving them a new lead into the conspiracy surrounding said monster.
EX Special Attack: All characters have an EX Special Skill that uses part of their Energy bar to execute. The function changes from character to character: such as significantly power up the normal Special Skill, enter a Super Mode or even changing the attack entirely.
Fantastic Racism: Downplayed when it comes to Thiren population, for the most part they are treated the same as a regular human, but there are a few instances sprinkled throughout the story. A common one that actually pops up a lot due to the player character doing it is applying common Animal Stereotypes to their Thiren counterpart; Nekomata hates people assuming she likes fish just because she's a cat Thiren^note and Rina will get offended, to the point you will lose trust points with her, if you compare Lycaon to a dog like Howl. Ben by far gets it the worst as, despite his Gentle Giant nature, people (especially children) find his status as a big burly bear absolutely terrifying and assume he is going to eat them before they even say hello.^note This is played straight however, as seen in Encore for an Old Dream, people started blaming and questioning humans' relationship with Intelligent Constructs in a gossip post because of Youkai infecting the constructs.
Fashion Dissonance: Deliberately evoked. ZZZ is a period piece, so some fashion worn by some characters would be considered dated by today's standards.
Fictional Currency: New Eridu’s currency is the Denny. Notably, Dennies seem to circulate mainly through coins, with bills being rarely seen; their flavor text insists it's because people enjoy the novelty of carrying such denominations around with them.
Filler: The Special Episodes, such as "Undercover R&B" and "Astra-nomical Moment", fulfill this purpose. They don't have any relation to the ongoing conspiracy or any other plot threads from the main story at large; instead, they switch the focus from Phaethon to one of the Agents as they deal with a relatively lower-stakes conflict that arises in their line of work. "Virtual Revenge" is a notable subversion, as Null_Face's acquisiton of Miyabi's combat data at the end of the episode tips the Exaltists off to the Hoshimi family's secrets, kickstarting Chapter 5's events as they try to acquire Tailless for their own ends.
Fishing Minigame: Introduced in the second half of v1.5 with the "Elpis Ultimate Angler Championship" event, the Phaethon siblings are able to fish in various parts of Port Elpis. A revamped version of the minigame appears in the "Tales of Midsummer Dreams" event from v2.1, with caught fish becoming available for showcase at the Fantasy Resort aquarium.
Floating Continent: In Season 2, Chapter 6, Lockspring alludes to the existence of a "utopian island" in the skies above New Eridu dubbed Roscaelifer, where the devout followers of Sunbringer, one of the original Void Hunters, reside.
Forced Level-Grinding: The game will intermittently halt story progress until the player reaches a certain Inter-Knot level. This is downplayed, though, as there are usually enough side commissions that award enough Inter-Knot experience to hit the thresholds. When the commissions dry up, though, it crosses into an Anti Poop-Socking feature, as the remaining sources of Inter-Knot EXP will come from daily activities.
Foreshadowing:
- In Chapter 5, Phaethon is able to walk into the foxfire caused by the rampaging Tailless without suffering any wounds or scorches at all, something that surprises Miyabi. Then, the siblings tank a kamikaze explosion caused by Sacrifice Bringer to kill them and suffer no injuries at all, with their eyes glowing indicating that they are a lot more capable than initially thought.
- During the Scene One, Shot One event, Phaethon is asked to take a picture of someone who can be used as inspiration for a "thug in a suit" character in a movie. They ultimately decide Lycaon is the best fit, and wonder afterwards if he could have had a past life as a thug. The end of his Agent Story reveals that he did in fact work with a guild of thieves in the past. It serves instead as Dramatic Irony if you finished his Agent Story beforehand.
- Probably the longest-running moment to date comes from Anby of all people; as early as Mission 0, she comments on the existence of Ethereals who can survive outside of Hollows, and thus could be lurking among the local populace ready to strike. The epilogue of Season 1 reveals this is one of the major reasons why "Sacrifices" are so dangerous: they do not draw their power from Hollows, which indeed allows them to survive outside of them — meaning that the Exaltists could unleash one upon the city itself at any given moment.
Funetik Aksent: An Avocaboo you meet at Lumina Square, Bangboonie, has their Bagbooglish translated like they're speaking with a Scottish accent, showing they're not from whatever country New Eridu is in.^note
Furry Confusion: Despite there being Wolf and Cat Thirens, normal dogs and cats exist as well. Sometimes, both humanoid and animal species end up interacting with each other.
Gadgeteer Genius: Downplayed to an extent, but all of the personal W-Engines were created or customised by their owners to better outfit their combat capabilities. The age range doesn't seem to be an issue either, as young people like Corin or Yuzuha (the latter who is in college) effortlessly fiddle with their equipment; certain professionals and government workers, like Obol Squad, get dedicated support staff to create their W-Engines to spec instead.
Gainaxing: Technically speaking, the game's "Jiggle Physics" are all pre-baked parts of each character's animations.
Gameplay and Story Integration:
- The ever-shifting nature of the Hollows justifies the Roguelike presentation of Hollow Zero, as well as the constantly rotating enemy lineups and player buffs for the other endgame modes.
- During certain commisions in the Season 1 Epilogue, you won’t be able to use Lycaon on your team due to him being elsewhere.
- Similarly, during one point of Season 2 Chapter 1, Yixuan is temporarily taken out of commission after a corruption outbreak in Failume Heights forces her to absorb Ether from a large group of people all at once, which consequently removes her from your team lineup.
Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Trial Mode can be disabled in favor of using a team of your own choosing during story missions and Agent Stories, but in-mission cutscenes and dialogue will still feature the original, plot-relevant Agents.
- Version 1.2 adds the ability to switch between the two Phaethon siblings as well as any obtained Agent^note while in the overworld. The presence of these characters as NPCs doesn't change to account for this, however, meaning it's possible to have two Belles, Wises, or other characters in the same place at once.
- The aforementioned scenario is also possible during event missions, many of which display no regard for Agents being in your squad even if they technically shouldn't be. Certain missions in the "Overlord's Feast" event, for instance, have Piper and Lucy appear as NPCs without placing restrictions on your ability to play as them at the same time, while a few of the side missions in "Into That Pale Wasteland" feature the Agents of Section Six as NPCs who hang back at HSO's base camp in the Melinoe Hollow while you're out completing the mission tasks, yet said Agents will still be thrown into your squad via Trial Mode.
- Certain combat missions, particularly those in Agent Stories or limited-time events, are meant to feature a single Agent acting without any sort of backup. Oftentimes, however, these missions will either allow you to deploy them alongside a full team, force you to deploy with at least one extra Agent, or provide an extra Agent through Trial Mode.
- A character's assigned rarity has no bearings on their capabilities, their standing within their faction, or reflect their actual strength in the story. A notable example of this is Belobog Heavy Industries; while Anton, Ben, and Grace are otherwise considered equal standing employees within the group working under their leader Koleda, Grace is an S-rank, while her co-workers Anton and Ben are A-rank. So far, the only consistent factor that determines who is S-rank or A-rank is that faction leaders are always S-rank, with only Nicole being the sole exception to this, given her nature as a Starter Mon.
- As long as you've obtained an Agent and played through their corresponding story segments, you'll always have access to their Trust events, regardless of their circumstances in the ongoing main plot. Yixuan's Trust events, for example, can still be triggered during chapters 4 and 5 of Season 2, even though she's away on business with the other main members of Yunkui Summit at this point.
- On a similar note, Ye Shiyuan can continue to show up in Trust events as well as the finale of the Suibian Temple restoration event even after the completion of Season 2, Chapter 3, despite him heading off on his own to chase down Sarah at the end of this chapter and ostensibly being indoctrinated by the Exaltists as a result.
Gameplay Automation: As of Version 2.4, reaching Lv. 35 at the Suiban Temple Restoration unlocks an auto-management feature that lets the game do all the business-related functions (e.g. adventuring, crafting, and selling) for up to 20 hours. However, the player can still turn off this feature to regain manual control.
Game Within a Game: The Godfinger arcade is a section of the game dedicated to a growing selection of minigames that you can play separate from the normal Hollow exploration content, such as the Snake-based "Snake Duel" and the Mr. Driller-based "Soul Hounds III"
Good Old Ways: As shown in Miyabi's promotional material, the Hoshimi family's culture and lifestyle directly parallels that of feudal Japan, in stark contrast to the contemporary society of New Eridu and its predecessor. Consequently, they seem to live without most forms of modern technology and convenience, save for a few exceptions like cellphones.
Guilt Repression:
- In Trigger's Agent Story, she's forced to contend with another survivor of the Fall of the Old Capital, who like Trigger herself lost her entire team during the Fall. However, unlike Trigger who focused herself on protecting her new teammates, she instead began hunting people she felt undeservedly enjoyed the peace bought with her comrades' lives. When she's confronted with the fact one of the people she murdered had not only argued against abandoning soldiers during the Fall but had even tried to go back for them, she's initially taken aback but quickly surpresses the feeling, declaring that one good person doesn't make up for everything.
- Thanks to a Freudian Excuse, Pulchra has major trust issues. As a result, she adopts a "if you get tricked, it's your own fault for falling for it" attitude as a defense mechanism. This allows her to trick people all over, and part of the reason she agrees to be drafted into the Sons of Calydon is because they agree to help protect her against any unhappy former comrades, clients or employers. In return, however, they expect her to cut out her more mercenary tendencies, as while they're willing to help her out against old enemies they aren't interested in helping her against new ones. In spite of herself, her Agent Story and other events show that the Sons of Calydon accepting her as one of them despite her past is having an effect on her, though she remains as snarky and scheming as ever.
Hint System: If you haven't collected all HIA Commemorative Coins within an area, the Sage in a Barrel sometimes offers a "Gather Info" dialogue option which provides hints on where to find them.
Horrible Hollywood: One of the themes of the Astra-nomical Moment Special Episode is how poorly artists are treated by the entertainment industry. Much of the episode's plot revolves around the legacy of Joran de Winter, a renowned singer who was Driven to Suicide when corporate disputes kept him from his life's work. Astra herself is faced with the idea that she is nothing but a means to generate profits for New Eridu's entertainment corporations, despite her genuine talent and passion for music, so she's making plans to become an independent artist.
Hotter and Sexier: Compared to other miHoYo games, ZZZ is rated 16+ and it gets away with more suggestive elements.
- The game has already shown to be much more open to sexualized designs for characters than past miHoYo games, on top of very detailed Jiggle Physics. In the Tuning Test, some people had even noticed fully detailed underwear underneath Belle's skirt. While some of those were eventually censored in the full release, the game still retains the heavy fanservice on par with or sometimes even exceeding sister game Honkai Impact 3rd.
- Of particular note is the visuals of Agents' gacha duplicate upgrades, Mindscape Cinema: filling it out is represented with a grayscale image of the Agent in question getting more colorful... but when you manage to fill it out completely, the image suddenly changes so that the character in question is naked (or very near to naked, at the absolute least) and usually in some sort of provocative pose, only covered up by convenient censorship. Grace and Nicole's pic even features them Toplessness from the Back and the latter makes it look like she's taking a nude selfie! In contrast, Star Rail's equivalent portrays most characters naked in the final Eidolon, but they're only depicted from the shoulder up and the purpose is to show them in their purest state. Judging by the poses and clothes, they appear to be merely sleeping, rather than being suggestive.
- Official character teasers do not shy away from playing up the fanservice, including camera shots lingering on Zhu Yuan's rear, Jane Doe's very flirtatious interrogation, the shower scene at the end of Caesar's teaser, and Pulchra getting a naked full-body massage that shows as much of her body as possible while keeping any naughty bits hidden.
Hub Level:
- Sixth Street, where Random Play is located. Players can explore the area and visit various shops to buy and level up equipment for future expeditions into Hollows, meet various NPCs who may provide side quests, and manage Random Play's movie rental service. Even the playable characters may appear at random to comment on various sights.
- Failume Heights becomes the new main hub level at the start of Season 2. It serves a very similar purpose to Sixth Street, housing Phaethon's new home base of Suibian Temple and providing several storefronts where resources needed for the temple's restoration as well as a steady stream of commissions can be found, and the adjacent Lemnian Hollow can quickly be accessed from the district's cable cars.
Idle Game: The Suibian Temple restoration event, introduced parallel to Season 2 Chapter 1, involves a continuous loop of obtaining materials which can be crafted into trinkets and sold to pay for the temple's refurbishment, with the meeting of certain prerequisites enabling the temple's restoration level to increase. The entire process of farming materials and crafting/selling trinkets is handled by Bangboo workers purchased and delegated to tasks by the player, making the only obstacle in this activity the wait times for exploration teams to return with materials or for trinkets to be automatically crafted and sold. Players looking to bypass the timers for material farming can instead set out to collect resources during exploration of the Aerospace City stages, which can then be traded for crafting materials at Good Goods, though there's a daily limit on resource collection and weekly limit on crafting material trades.
Improbably Female Cast:
- The number of female playable characters greatly outnumbers the male ones by a fairly high ratio; at launch, there were thirteen female characters to four males, and of said four, only one of them is an S-rank character. On the topic of limited S-rank characters in particular, the game would not get their first limited S-rank male until Lighter's playable debut in the second half of v1.3; prior to that point, the first seven limited S-rank character were all exclusively females. This was taken up to eleven with Season 2, which only introduced three male playable characters during its entire runtime (the A-rank characters Pan Yinhu and Manato, and the S-rank Banyue), with the rest of the limited and permanent cast introduced being exclusively female.
- None of the playable males use the Ether damage type, or the Support or Anomaly fighting style.
Inconsistent Dub: In earlier chapters, the English script is noticeably inconsistent regarding whether the forum for people to commission Proxies for work is called the Inter-Knot or the Proxy Network, switching between the two randomly, to the point there are occasions where the subtitles say Inter-Knot while the language track has the characters say Proxy Network.
Informed Species: Although Seth is described as being a Lynx Thiren, he doesn't really resemble their real-life counterparts in a lot of ways, with Seth's long, fluffy tail making him resemble a Maine Coon more than an actual lynx.
Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: When exploring New Eridu, you may sometimes come across short obstacles (ranging from small construction fences, a bicycle, or a small pile of rocks) meant to prevent you from wandering out of bounds, even if logically, the Phaethon siblings and Agents should have no issues stepping over them.
Interface Spoiler: In earlier versions, a simple glance at the menus for Notorious Hunt or Deadly Assault, the game's weekly and biweekly boss challenges, would outright spoil the major twists for certain chapters, such as Pompey and Bringer transforming into an Ethereal and Sacrifice respectively. This was rectified in v2.4, which added a feature to render spoiler-laden boss names in these menus as question marks if you haven't encountered the boss in the main story.
Inter-Service Rivalry: There's quite a bit of friction between Public Security and HAND, so the former are somewhat reluctant when handing over investigation of the Unknown Corruption Complex.
Invisible Wall: There are invisible walls that prevent you from wandering off out of the playable areas. While your character cannot pass through them, NPCs on the other hand can do so unhindered. Some of these invisible walls can also be adorned with red or green patterns and text. The invisible walls can also temporarily appear in areas such as the crosswalks in Lumina Square, serving to prevent you from walking into incoming traffic.
Ironic Echo: When, in Chapter 0, the Cunning Hares close in on the strongbox they've been looking for:
Anby: Found it!
Billy: Oh, it's our lucky day!
Nicole: That's my strongbox!
[Anby narrowly ducks out of the way of an ambushing Ethereal boss, who then leaps between the Hares and their prize]
Anby: Found it.
Billy: *sigh* It's our lucky day...
Nicole: [to the Ethereal] That's MY strongbox!
I Surrender, Suckers!: In the introduction to Chapter 1, Nicole is cornered by two Red Fang Mooks who want revenge for Miguel Silver's death. She offers them a deal instead: they can keep half the money in her briefcase (the Cunning Hares' entire savings, according to her) if they pretend not to have encountered her. After tossing the briefcase over to them, Nicole gives them a combination code for its lock. Instead of opening it, the code unleashes a flashbang that knocks the thugs out cold.
Nicole: Street kid rule #1: never trust a stranger~!
Jiggle Physics: Any female character in the game who is even modestly endowed will tend to bounce around like gelatin to the slightest movements. This is especially visible during cutscenes and for characters like Nicole, Grace, or Rina. There's also jiggle physics for Von Lycaon’s shapely legs, most prominently in the character select screen. Additionally, characters like Zhu Yuan, Jane Doe and especially Burnice have very noticeable ass-jiggle.
- That said, as with all the other miHoYo games, the elaborate bouncing is prebaked into animations, making it gratuitous Gainaxing.
Kung-Fu Wizard: Non-Physical damage characters who primarily fight with their fists or kicks (such as Lighter and Lycaon, respectively) can imbue their elements into their martial arts prowess.
Last Episode Theme Reprise: The climax of Chapter 5 where Miyabi uses her newly unleashed extra power from Tailless to beat Sacrifice Bringer has the game's launch day song "Come Alive" playing over it, tying into how said chapter acts as the "season finale" for the first 6 chapters.
Let's Get Dangerous!:
- Because most chapters introduce a new faction of Agents, there's typically two pre-rendered cutscenes in each chapter. One focuses on that faction's quirks and has members stumbling over each other, flubbing introductions, and generally being goofballs. The other reminds you that being an Agent in this setting is a deadly line of work, and that you should never underestimate them, regardless of how silly they may seem.
- A particular example is in Grace's Agent Story. The core conflict in that storyline is that Betty, a former classmate of Grace's, thinks that Grace empathizing so much with machines makes her the worse roboticist and wants to prove it. Grace, for her part, is too impressed by how well-engineered Betty's new AI is to make an effective counterargument. That is, until Grace uses her training protocols to confirm that the AI was based on her Flawed Prototype data. Grace is infuriated not just because of the plagiarism, but because the prototype is much more susceptible to Ether corruption, and despite how Betty thinks that Grace is too empathetic towards machines, when push comes to shove, she's ultimately the one who proves to be pragmatic enough to come up with a plan to stop the corrupted AI. At the time this was happening, Betty was paralyzed by fear.
Level-Up at Intimacy 5: The Trust Rank mechanic isn't just for fun, as you grow closer to characters you can unlock a special individual perk Resonium that can be used in Hollow Zero.
Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Living alongside humans are Thirens, of which there are many that range from wolves, to cats, to bears.
Little Bit Beastly: The average Thiren exclusively displays the tail and ears of their respective species, though there's also a subset of the Thiren race known as Beast Thirens who are full-on anthropomorphic animals.
Logo Joke: Angels of Delusion-related content has the Zenless Zone Zero logo recolored pink, the group's primary color.
Loophole Abuse: As the game progresses it becomes more and more obvious that government agents who directly work with Hollows don't pay much attention to the laws about Proxies. Scott Outpost, which deals with the most dangerous Hollow, is almost ignoring the fact you're a Proxy as you're one of the most effective freelancers they have. And Qingyi at one point literally cites the Pub Sec manual about how officers don't have to question people rendering aid to officers in distress. Even if it's obvious they're Hollow Raiders and Proxies.
Lost in Translation: The Proxy confuses Ben for the Belobog President despite Anton previously referring to the President as "She". This confusion would have made more sense in the original voiceover since third-person pronouns are homophonous in Chinese.
Lower-Deck Episode: Special Episodes lean in this direction, putting Phaethon in the back seat in favor of the featured faction and having little to do with the Hollows.
Luck-Based Mission: Drive Discs provide significant stat boosts and are what define an Agent's overall strengths. While there are straightforward means of choosing the types of discs you earn as well as which slot you earn them for, the individual stats for each disc are random, and the upgrades to the disc's substats are distributed randomly as you increase its level. You can use a Tuning Calibrator to select the Main Stat of discs rolled at the Music Shop, but otherwise you'd better be prepared to spend plenty of stamina, money, and resources to get your desired stats.
Mage Marksman: This is a given for non-Physical damage character who wield guns (or "gun-like" weapons such as Grace's nail gun) or bows (in the case of Harumasa), where they can fire projectiles that deal the damage of their elemental type.
Magic Knight: Non-Physical damage characters who wield melee weapons have attacks that can deal damage matching their elemental type.
Mascot:
- Anby is the face of the game's icon in the app store.
- In a similar vein to Ai-chan, Paimon, DAVIS and Pom-Pom, the Bangboos serve as the secondary mascot for the game.
"May Be X, But Our X" Remark: At the end of chapter 5, when talking to Miyabi - whose mother died as part of the Hollow Zero disaster - the Proxy admits that they were a student of Carole Arna, a scientist who was deemed responsible for the disaster, and clarifies that they are trying to look for the truth to Clear Their Name. Miyabi then responds that they shall seek the truth together, and "even if you are a Proxy, you're my Proxy".
Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Ether in this game blurs the line between Applied Phlebotinum and Magic by Any Other Name. Most often, it's treated as an exotic energy source that is powerful but nonetheless toxic, being studied for its effects, harnessed by corporations, and used as a power source for technology. This gives the game a soft sci-fi feel, unlike Hoyoverse's other games which have more overt fantasy elements. More rarely however, it's referred to and treated as supernatural. One NPC investigating the Ballet Twins defies If Jesus, Then Aliens by suggesting that it would be unbelievable if there was another supernatural event in a Hollow, which is already a hot spot for Ether. Miyabi's Ancestral Weapon, Tailless, is described as both a cursed sword and an Etheric blade, and haunted by the souls of past members of her family. The implication is that, whether magic or "mundane", Ether is paranormal in that it's a Black Box. New Eridu is able to identify its inputs and outputs, but not its origins or the specifics of how it functions. Notably, despite being sometimes described as an Urban Fantasy setting, there aren't any instances of the supernatural in New Eridu outside mild Psychic Powers that aren't connected to Ether somehow.
Meaningful Echo: "Because I am your Proxy."
- In the prologue, a cautious Anby inquires why Phaethon would help them get out of the Hollow, especially since their contract with the Cunning Hares is gone after their account has been deleted. Phaethon simply tells the Cunning Hates that as their Proxy, they swear to help them no matter what.
- Happens again in Chapter 5 where Miyabi asks in confusion on why Phaethon stays back to help her reseal Tailless despite that being the perfect opportunity to escape her attempts to arrest them. Phaethon explains to Miyabi they are her Proxy and promises to help her. At the end of the chapter, Miyabi gives Phaethon her family heirloom to show they are under her family's protection leading to her saying this.
  Miyabi: Even if you're Proxies, you're my Proxies.
Metal Slime: Certain map nodes will notify players that a Golden Bangboo is hidden there. If a player can find it and defeat it, it'll drop tons of currency, but it will constantly try to run away or retaliate with attacks that cause long knockdown periods.
Might Makes Right: The prevailing mindset of the largely lawless Outer Ring is that those who kick the most ass make the rules, thus earning the title of Overlord of the Motor League (the closest thing to a centralized body of power). Fortunately, the reigning Overlord Pompey is a Reasonable Authority Figure who practices a version that seeks to aid those in need. After a spot of soul-searching upon learning just how much Pompey does for the Outer Ring, Caesar decides to take a similar approach. She thus continues to hold herself to Pompey's standards after succeeding him in the position. The smaller gangs who try to start fights with others take a more traditional strong-crushes-weak approach, but they don't tend to get very far.
Modesty Shorts: All the female characters with a modern outfit style (i.e. everyone besides the Victoria maids) wear shorts under their skirts. Most notably Anby, who wears a black pair of bike shorts under her pleated miniskirt. These were only added between the beta and release, when several other characters were "toned down" as well. Before that, her panties were very visible with most of her moves. Interestingly, while there was a big outcry over some of these alterations (like Nicole's bust size), this change has been basically uncontroversial.
Monochrome Past: Flashback events may have a sepia tone filter to distinguish them from the present events. This includes segments where you control playable characters in said flashbacks, such as when Hugo meets Casey in "Bury Your Tears With the Past".
Monster Organ Trafficking: A great irony of the Hollows is that despite having killed off so much of civilization, it's also how Eridu and New Eridu survive in the limited space available to it, providing both energy and raw materials
Mood Whiplash: Miyabi’s first and second trust events revolve around her training antics, being Played for Laughs. Her third and final trust event isn’t, as it shows her very sincerely comforting a woman who lost her son in a Hollow.
Mook Taxonomy: Enemies and bosses are categorized based on their factions, such as Ethereals (Crystalline Creatures that are the result of Ether corruption; the most common enemy type), Thugs (the weakest enemy faction; it is made up of humans and the occasional Thirens and robot Elite Mooks), Rebel Soldiers (former soldiers of New Eridu that have Humongous Mechas in their strongest rankings), Corrupted (Ethereals born from corrupted Ether-resistant people, often stronger than normal Ethereals), and Special (uncategorized enemies/bosses).
Movie-Theater Episode: Starting in v2.0, the "Gravitational Attraction" event introduces the opportunity to visit Gravity Theater in Lumina Square and partake in minigames involving the movies being screened there, whether alone or with one of several NPCs and Agents.
Mundane Utility: W-Engines. While civilians understand them to be the ubiquitous trendy gadget of New Eridu, functioning as a jukebox or walkman with the ability to customize into a wide array of gadgets like a stew pot, kettle, and frappe maker, the true purpose of W-Engines is to control Ether aptitude and create the elemental effects that Hollow Investigators and Raiders use to defend themselves...though even with that known, some W-Engines still get used for their mundane functions (like Ellen's Frappe making Deep Sea Visitor, and Pulchra's Box Cutter being used for...well, box cutting).
Muscles Are Meaningless: The female Agents whose primary fighting style involves physical melee force don't look like they have the build for it. Caesar, for example, does battle with a sword and shield, but her arms are no thicker than those of the other ladies.
My Instincts Are Showing: Played With. There are Thirens who find it embarrassing to have animal like personality traits, neither Nekomata or Zhao like the fact that their taste in food is exactly what you would think a cat and rabbit would like. Then there are Thirens like Pulchra and Ju Fufu who are proud of their animal natures and have no problem reveling in their instincts, in fact it's that she is not very tiger like that Ju Fufu finds embarrassing. Nekomata and Zhao are not above playing up their animal sides if they can get something out of it either. That said the vast majority of Thiren don't seem to really care or don't have any real showing of their animal natures, Seth is a Lynx but never acts like one or has any real cat like tendencies at all. Alice is timid and screams like a rabbit, but it's never really mentioned as a rabbit thing, and is treated as just how Alice is.
Mythical Motifs: Allusions to Classical Mythology are frequent; for example, when Belobog Heavy Industries' intelligent construction equipment starts going haywire, Ben speculates that they may have become sick of their normal work, comparing it to Sisyphus's eternal punishment of rolling a boulder up a hill.

N-Y

Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer for Chapter 5 includes two successive shots framed to make it look like Phaethon have blown their cover, with Belle appearing to stare worriedly at Wise from behind a pair of Public Security officers who have discovered the H.D.D. in Random Play's back room. In the actual scene, the officers never happen upon the H.D.D.; they come close to opening the door to the back room but are stopped by the timely arrival of Zhu Yuan.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: A Storm of Falling Stars sees four instances of this trope.
- Nicole summons Section Six to investigate the Exaltists, which backfires because she forgets that a willingness to cooperate does not equate to the right to give orders. Section Six figures out that Belle and Wise are Proxies and move to arrest them, causing a standoff between them and the Cunning Hares when Nicole tries in vain to call off the deal.
- Perlman is recaptured by Sarah's mercenaries, and the heroes track the chip in his neck to the Ballet Twins. Section Six rush in and find him, but end up playing into the villains' hands; exiting the Hollow alongside a known criminal gives Bringer ample justification for placing them under arrest.
- Yanagi tries to pull a fast one by claiming that Miyabi was working on her own, which Miyabi goes along with since it'll spare everyone else on her squad from being taken in. Their confidence that nobody could truly harm Miyabi is misplaced; Sarah uses her knowledge of the Hoshimi family's secret (plus Miyabi's data which she received from Null_Face during Virtual Revenge) to unlock Miyabi's cursed blade Tailless and cause her to lose control. Only Phaethon and Zhu Yuan's intervention prevents a full-blown massacre of civilians.
- Building on that, Sarah uses Tailless to synthesize a Psycho Serum for the purpose of creating more Sacrifices.
Non-Elemental: The Physical element. Physical can trigger the Assault and Flinch anomaly effects, the former inflicting additional Physical damage and interrupts them, and the latter increasing the amount of Daze taken. Non-Physical characters can still deal Physical damage with their normal attacks, albeit their innately assigned element will always outperform their Physical damage, and their Physical damage cannot trigger or buildup Physical Anomalies.
Non-Lethal K.O.: Implied to be what happens to non-Ethereal opponents that the Agents fight. Going by the game’s story and cutscenes, human and Thiren enemies are either knocked-out, flee, or are arrested after a fight unless noted otherwise.
No OSHA Compliance: The Skyloop tower has an arena at the top which, for absolutely no logical reason, takes flight when a stage performance is taking place in it. The engines for this seem to be solely powered by the performance itself, with no clear evidence of any kind of reliable backup power. Naturally, this leads to a predictable crisis during the intermission chapter that introduced the place.
Nostalgia Filter: Deliberately invoked by ZZZ producer, Zhenyu Li who designed the game's aesthetics to "Capture the spirit of these eras that profoundly influenced our childhood." And when he meant childhood, he is obviously targeting those who was born in the late 90s to early 2000s.
Notice This: Oftentimes, specific objects in town may sparkle to draw the attention of the player and interacting with them can be rewarding. For example, you may find an HIA Commemorative Coin in the Skateboard Bench of Sixth Street.
Ominous Multiple Screens: Phaethon's Hollow Deep Dive (H.D.D.) device setup includes an entire wall of TV screens, and as such, dungeon crawling through the Hollows in TV Mode takes place on a large grid portrayed as a blown-up representation of said screens. Players will move their Bangboo icon from one to the next, with each screen showing what random event will occur when they land.
One Degree of Separation: Given the gacha nature and the setting of the game, always expect every Agent you befriend to be an friend/acquaintance of another past/present/future Agent of another faction. Sometimes, the fact you're friends with one or more Agents will lead you to becoming acquainted with a future Agent's whole faction. Then again, New Eridu being the last bastion against the Hollows, it may be justified; there aren't that many people around, and there's even fewer doing Hollow work as extensively as Phaethon and friends.
Orphan's Ordeal: Unsurprisingly, given the setting, many children end up becoming orphans (or parents end up losing their children) due to the Hollows, though the game isn't shy about pointing out that the orphan rate is much higher than you may think. To drive the point further, just in Season 1, from the plethora of 20+ Agents, about only 3 of them actually have been stated to have living parental relatives while the rest have been said or been heavily implied to be on their own. Not that it stops them from putting aside their bouts of depression to kick ass in the Hollows.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Or...lack of. At one point, the Proxy and Vivian are invited to the Ravenlock estate for a dinner meeting, despite the fact that Hartman - their current enemy - has seen them plenty of times before so he wouldn't have problems alerting his subordinates of their presence getting anywhere near his turf. But not only does the duo manage to infiltrate the place and Hartman's study, but Hartman only chooses to try to look for and kill them right after they infiltrate his office, at which time Hugo arrives and saves them from him. More bewildering is the fact that Vivian, a Phantom Thief, doesn't even bother to suggest putting up some sort of disguise before going in. The pair only manages to make it just far enough because of a weird case of an Idiot Ball switching hands.
Parrying Bullets: An ability shared among certain Agents, namely Solder 11, Anby, Nekomata, Ellen, Qingyi, and Miyabi, who will deflect projectiles coming at them while running. Since this happens automatically, they are able to kill ranged enemies just by rushing toward them unlike other characters who must instead focus on dodging their attack. Seth can also protect himself from projectiles with his shield, while Lighter can use his Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs to the same effect.
Period Piece: The world of Zenless is modelled after the Noughties and it shows. In terms of culture and politics, it borrows a lot from the cultural clash between the anti-government movements and the increase of government surviellence and conspiracy from the after effects of an epochal chaos. The levels of megacorporation corruption and governmental intrusion are juxtaposed by the number of anti-authority gangs, lawless criminal organisations, religious cults and other nefarious non-state actors taking advantage of the chaos. Likewise, various sub-cultures also spawned from this world that mimics the Noughties such as the rise of the Skate Punk genre and idol groups, to say nothing on the retro tech being shown in the game. Even half of the Agent factions mimic a specific style of Noughties aesthetic, this includes:
- Most of the Cunning Hares wore oversized bomber jacket fits that was a trend back in the days. Nicole and Anby, in particular, went one step further by wearing a crop top and a ultrashort denim shorts or miniskirt that was also popular among women in the early 2000s.
- Belobog Heavy Industries are all about that denim. Everyone wears a copious amount of denim clothing and oversized jackets. Koleda follows the backless crop top that was immensly popular in that era, whilst Ben goes full 2000s-era hip hop fashion.
- Members of Victoria Housekeeping Co. looks like they are all cosplaying for Black Butler.
- Vivian from Mockingbird dresses like an Elegant Gothic Lolita which became globalised in popularity during that era.
- The entire team of Angels of Delusion is a pure Shout-Out to not only idols of the 2000s, but a fusion of both the futuristic and minimalistic Y2K aesthetic mixed with the ultra-pink and ultragirly McBling aesthetic which was dominant in the early Noughties.
- Random Play themselves both wore clothing that is very appropriate for that era. Both Wise and Belle wear the double-sleeve shirt combo that was a trend back then, with Belle also opting for a hoodie that was also popular during that time period.
Pineapple Ruins Pizza: A side interaction with a payphone on Sixth Street allows you to try and order a Hawaiian pizza from a local pizzeria, much to the disgust of the person on the other end of the line, who promptly hangs up.
Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The smallest Agents are often the ones wielding the largest weapons that are as big or even bigger than they are. Zhao is one of the more standout examples, being a Rabbit Thiren just under 4' tall wielding a giant sword that's an extra head taller than her.
Play Every Day: As part and parcel of the live-service experience, there are various incentives to log into the game on a regular basis.
- Lottery scratch cards and video store management provide some small rewards for partaking in them daily.
- Battery Charge, which caps out daily, can be expended to grind for Agent upgrade materials in VR Simulation, Expert Challenge, or Routine Cleanup missions, as well as Notorious Hunt missions once the three free weekly runs are used up. Although it overflows into a backup reserve past the cap as of v1.2, it does so at a much slower rate than the standard reserve (one point every 18 minutes as opposed to every 6 minutes), making it more effective to grind daily.
- Once in a while, the drops provided by VR Simulation or Routine Cleanup Missions will be doubled for a certain number of missions each day several days in a row, further enticing players to log on each day to take advantage of the extra rewards while they're available.
- Additional premium incentives are provided in the form of the New Eridu City Fund battle pass, which is leveled up by completing various daily, weekly, and seasonal tasks, and the monthly Inter-Knot Subscription, which rewards 90 polychromes upon each daily log-in.
- Once every patch, the "All-New Program" and "Eh-Nah Into Your Lap" events will respectively reward players with up to ten Encrypted Master Tapes or Boopons for checking into the game on multiple days while the events are active.
Playful Rump Bump: In "A Burnice Special for the Brokenhearted"—a music video for "Burning Desires"—Burnice playfully butt-bumps Lighter while dancing, bowling him over in the process.
Plot Parallel:
- In Chapter 4 "Tour de Inferno", part of the story involves the Sons of Calydon Caesar and Lucy's rocky relationship. This is paralleled with the Vanquishers Pompey and Lucius's relationship. These two plots diverge; Lucy going behind Caesar's back to protect her leader from harm while Lucius tries to usurp Pompey, even poisoning him to do so.
- In Trigger's Agent Story "Out of Sight", Trigger tries to comes to terms with the loss of her squad mates following the Fall of the Old Capital, which is mirrored with Grim Vulture's. Trigger does succeed in this while Grim Vulture suffers a downward spiral that causes her to target anyone that she sees did her harm.
Point-and-Laugh Show: An in-universe example with Sunset Plaza.
This talk show features popular actors, special workers, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens talking and expressing their views on recent events in New Eridu. There's an 80% chance it will develop into a cursing match, and another 20% chance it will just break into an all-out fight.
Pop-Cultural Osmosis: The phrase "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking" got retroactively associated with Honkai: Star Rail after that game released a song titled as such, even though it was a reference to a similarly-titled poem by Emily Dickinson. The game's developer miHoYo would then reuse the phrase as an achievement's title in their next game, Zenless Zone Zero, creating the implication that it's a reference to Star Rail.
Portal Network: Hollows tend to be filled with wormholes of Etheric matter known as fissures, which can easily be located by Proxies and utilized to jump from one area of a Hollow to another (and in some instances, different Hollows altogether). In gameplay, they're a convenient way of transporting players through multiple disconnected combat stages, such as Hollow Zero's arenas, while in the story they're an ever-reliable means for Phaethon and their clients to escape danger in the nick of time thanks to the HDD system.
Powercreep: The Moonlight Lullaby disk drive set is a straight upgrade to the Swing Jazz set, as not only does its 4 piece effect activate on the more accessible EX attacks instead of chain attacks, it also has higher multipliers on the team damage increase and length.
Power Glows: Equipping a character with their signature W-Engine will cause parts of them to glow, like their hair or a scar.
Promoted to Playable:
- Some characters start off as NPCs before becoming released as a playable character in later updates, such as Qingyi, one of the major supporting characters in Chapter 2 Interlude released with the launch of the game, but herself not being playable until v1.1.
- Downplayed as all Agents are playable in the combat parts of the game, but starting in v1.2, the game allows you to play as your obtained Agents in the open world instead of the Phaethon siblings. While initially only Caesar, Burnice, Yanagi, and Lighter had this privilege following their releases in v1.2 and 1.3, the rest of the Agent roster were made available for use in overworld exploration starting in v1.4.
Promotion to Parent: Most Bangboo seem to regard their owners as their adoptive parents of sorts. In fact, said owners dote on their Bangboo so much that it's no different from an actual parent and their child.
Psycho Serum: Elixr P07, a mutagenic serum that transforms those who take it into Sacrifices. Evidently, it appears what sort of Ether-based being one turns into depends on how much of the serum is injected into their bloodstream, as Bringer, who takes two full doses, turns into a Sacrifice powerful enough that almost every single faction is required to team up to defeat him, whereas Twiggy, who ends up taking only half a dose, turns into a bog-standard Thanatos.
Purple Is Impure: The Ether element's icon is a purple star, and its damage numbers are also purple. The element can corrupt living things within Hollows by turning them into hostile creatures known as Ethereals. In gameplay, Corruption is an elemental status effect that causes enemies to take extra Ether damage while disrupting their attacks.
Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Because of the questionable legality of Hollow-diving and the many incentives that drive unlicensed and unauthorized people to go under or around the government's attempts at regulation, trios of Agents can be composed of some very odd allies of convenience. You can have professional soldiers like Miyabi of Hollow Special Operations teaming up with Corin Wickes, a maid from Victoria Housekeeping Co., and Koleda, a violent construction worker from Belobog Industries. Their day jobs usually aren't some secretive cover or a front for financing undercover organizations, either, they're just moonlighting as Agents for the rewards.
Relationship Values: Each Agent has a Trust meter representing their affinity with Phaethon. An Agent's Trust can be leveled up interacting with them whenever they appear in the overworld, either by chance encounter or by proactively inviting them to hang out, provided you select the correct dialogue prompts while doing so. Increasing Trust past specific thresholds will unlock a Resonium that can invoke one of the Agent's Mindscapes during Hollow Zero missions and a dynamic wallpaper featuring them front and center. You can additionally unlock them as a promoter after watching a movie with them at Random Play some time after Trust Level 2 has been obtained.
Religion of Evil: From what little we know, the Exaltists seem to be a mix between this and Evilutionary Biologists. They worship a being they call "the Creator" and are willing to mutate themselves (or hapless victims) into ether-based monsters in order to "refine" themselves.
Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: There are a lot of people, titles, places and groups whose names are derived from Greek Mythology, with only very mild correlations between the person and their namesake, such as Lycaon being a reformed criminal.
Resolved Noodle Incident: In Chapter Prologue, Anby talks about how Ethereals can mimic human forms, and thought the Billy she's seeing is one when they fall down into a Hollow; Billy then points out it's just part of a movie she watched. But later, version 1.2 introduces "Doppelganger" bosses based on various characters (such as Jane Doe, Bellum and Pulchra). HIA's Investigator Training outright says that the Doppelganger is thought to be an urban legend, but to HIA, they do exist.
Retro Universe: The world of ZZZ is clearly modeled on the 2000s, something that is deliberately invoked by Hoyoverse themselves. A lot of the technology present (at least outside of the Lost Technology of Old Eridu) borderlines 21st century Zeerust and the fashion and social culture is a good two decades in the past as of this time of writing.
- Half of the characters wear clothing appropriate for the 2000s (i.e. cargo shorts, double-sleeve shirts, skinny jeans, crop tops, 2000s MP3-esque headphones, hip-hop fashion etc).
- The background and combat music being entirely 2000s-era funk-pop and heavy-synth with punk-rock decals decorating the entire world.
- The game's UI being heavily inspired by the Frutiger Metro aesthetic (A sub-aesthetic of Frutiger Aero which dominated the early-to-mid 2000s).
- Hatsune Miku-esque Gyaru pop girl-bands with Y2K McBling sub-aesthetics and Robot Girls being present.
- The buildings being of the dirtier and grimier brutalist concrete blocks that ground ZZZ away from the usual miHoYo "clean polish architecture", which also characterizes the 2000s Darker and Edgier departure from the 90s.
- Likewise, computers and TVs are CRT monitors with a distinctive "boxy" 2000s look whilst the cars have that identifiable curve-box SUV-style design from the early 2000s and late 90s.
- The official Ridu Stroll Stickers, the various character avatars you can use in your profile, and some of the in-universe cartoons heavily resembles the cubic minimalist artstyle like those of the Powerpuff Girls and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.
- While smartphones do exist in the ZZZ universe, 2000s-style flip-phones seem to be the more popular choice among Eridu citizens.
- DVD and VCR players are clearly present in this universe.
- Moreover, Blockbuster-esque DVD rental stores are present in the setting as well as graffiti art and the Skate Punk sub-culture.
- Even if one discounts the aesthetic, ZZZ has an atmosphere that makes the game feel old or from a different generation. If one looks at the promotional artwork for ZZZ, one can be forgiven for mistaking ZZZ for being released in the mid-2000s.
- While the third minigame added later was based on Vampire Survivors (although it plays more like Brotato) and averts this trope, the two arcade minigames initially available are a multiplayer Snake game and a Mr. Driller clone. These are games that you might actually expect to find in a Japanese game center in the early 2000s, as the former underwent a resurgence after its inclusion on Nokia phones and the latter was released for arcades then.
Revisiting the Roots: A meta example for miHoYo - after releasing an exploration-based Wide-Open Sandbox (Genshin Impact) and a turn-based RPG (Honkai: Star Rail), Zenless Zone Zero marks the return of the 3D Stylish Action games they were known for beforehand.
Robot Police: Qingyi, as well as a few NPCs such as Sandy and Conrad, are robots who work for New Eridu Public Security.
Rubber-Hose Limbs: ZZZ is unique among miHoYo's games for its exaggerated animation, with even characters like the android Billy Kid squishing and stretching as if he's not made of metal, as best demonstrated here.
Rule of Cool: Why do some people have superhuman abilities for no apparent reason? Because they're playable characters, of course! Why can Anton stop a giant rampaging mech with his bare hands? Because he's a real bro! Also probably W-Engines or something. Nobody knows and nobody cares, because it's cool.
Same Power, Different Flavor: Void Hunter Agents and equivalents each possess a unique element, Miyabi herself having Frost, Yixuan (who has the Void Hunter title as an option she keeps declining) having Auric Ink, and Ye Shunguang having Honed Edge. Mechanically, each of them are based on one of the five regular elements, Frost deriving from Ice, Auric Ink from Ether, and Honed Edge from Physical, having all the same effects and benefiting from effects that check for their elemental basis, in addition to having their own unique effects and Anomaly buildup gauges, meaning that they can trigger Disorder with their parent elements.
Season Finale: Chapter 5, "A Storm of Falling Stars" serves as a conclusion for the leg of the story leading up to it, ending with a climax that brings every prior introduced faction Back for the Finale. It even ends on a fake credits sequence to emphasize that this part of the story is over.
Set Bonus:
- Each Agent has an Additional Ability which activates when another party member fulfills certain criteria, such as sharing an Attribute or faction with the user, or having a specified specialty (e.g., Support or Stun).
- Equipping Drive Discs (farmable equipments for Agents) of the same set activate their 2 or 4-piece bonuses.
Shout-Out: Has its own page.
Single Language Planet: New Eridu is noted to be "the last bastion on the planet" capable of fighting the Hollows, in which the remnants of humanity have congregated for survival. As such, the city and its outlying territories are host to a variety of Asian, European, and American-esque cultures, though what's generally agreed upon is that humanity only speaks "the universal language" (i.e. whatever the player chooses for a language). Waifei Peninsula is the one exception thus far—it's heavily based off of the Guangdong province of China as well as Hong Kong, and many individuals from the area can be heard speaking in Cantonese (although it's not referred to as Cantonese, but rather a "local dialect").
Sirens Are Mermaids: The Tales of Midsummer Dreams event reveals that mermaids do indeed exist in the world of ZZZ. Yuzuha encountered one as a child while adrift in Sailume Bay after escaping from Porcelumex. The mermaid's singing is what prevented her from losing consciousness and drowning.
Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: Thirens can appear as anything from Little Bit Beastly cat girls (or boys) to full-on anthropomorphic animals.
Smoke Out:
- In the prologue, when Anby and Billy end up locked into a hopeless fight against a Dullahan, the latter shoots at a fire extingusher to create a cloud of smoke which provides the two of them an opening to flee. Not long after, Phaethon saves them from another overwhelming battle against a group of Ethereals by throwing down some smoke bombs and leading them to safety.
- Jane Doe uses a smoke grenade to this effect during "Undercover R&B" when confronted by the Criminal Investigation team. Zhu Yuan and Qingyi are caught in the ensuing cloud, preventing them from interfering when Jane and the Mountain Lions capture Seth and a nearby group of civilians and make their escape.
- Mors pulls off one of these following his boss battle in Chapter 4, before attempting a getaway via motorcycle.
Splash of Color: In "The Impending Crash of Waves", the flashback scene of Yuzuha and Alice's father is mostly depicted with a sepia tone filter. However, Yuzuha's hair retains its vibrant red color all throughout, completely unaffected by the filter.
Stating the Simple Solution: The "Chronicle of Counseling" event revolves around giving advice to residents with problems, with most of the solutions being simple stuff. Bangboo hasn’t moved for a week? Recharge it. Vandal graffitiing the streets? Call Public Security to deal with it. Dislike having to negotiate prices with customers? Hang up a sign that disallows haggling.
Status Effects: Maxing out a target enemy's Anomaly Buildup of a given element will inflict the element's associated status effect.
- Physical: Assault. Inflicts a massive amount of Physical damage and interrupts the enemy's actions. Target enemy also takes increased Daze.
- Fire: Burn. Inflicts fire Damage Over Time, and can also interrupt actions on Organic enemies.
- Ice: Shatter. Enemy is initially frozen and immobilized, but will take ice damage when the freeze effect expires or enough damage is taken. Also increases the amount of critical damage taken.
- Electric: Shock. The machine counterpart to fire's Burn. Inflicts electric Damage Over Time, while also interrupting actions on Machine enemies.
- Ether: Corrupted. Target enemy takes additional Ether damage, and is also interrupted whenever the effect is triggered.
- Additionally, whenever another anomaly is triggered, the new effect overwrites the previous one and evokes the Disorder effect. Disorder inflicts a massive amount of damage and Daze whenever it's triggered.
Status Infliction Attack: In a mechanic similar to one present in Monster Hunter or Honkai Impact 3rd, attacks of an attribute accumulate "Anomaly Buildup", and when that hits a threshold, the target will be inflicted with the status effect of that element. Agents in the "Anomaly" class specialize in this field; for example, Grace racks up "Zap" with her attacks, which build up to deal massive Electric damage and force the enemy into Shock.
Stylish Action: The main focus of the alternate Battle Tower introduced in version 2.1. It rewards not just a swift victory, but a stylish one that uses multiple combat techniques, between something as simple as a long combo of hits or as complex as a simultaneous Defensive and Dodge Assist.
Super Serum: Implied in Harumasa's Agent Story, that a drug which boosts your Ether Aptitude would be akin to selling super powers. This may explain why some people are capable of super human feats and others are not, if high Ether Aptitude literally makes you stronger.
Superweapon: Stated in a developer interview to be the original source of Hollows. They are the "aftermath" of an ancient war and in time came to be populated by Ethereals.
Takes One to Kill One: The Ether element, which is no less effective on Ethereals and is even stronger on Ionized Ethereals. Ether inflicts the Corruption status effect, which gives bonus damage from Ether attacks.
Talk to Everyone: You can get Commemorative Coins or unlock achievements after you interact with certain NPCs. Many hidden achievements are specifically unlocked by talking to someone even if they're not involved in an active sidequest or don't have an icon above their heads.
A Taste of Power: Newly-introduced characters can be played in their relevant story chapters or event stages as a pre-levelled "Trial" version, and their combat tutorials are available while their banners are running. This lets players get a feel for how a character handles in combat to entice them to pull.
Then Let Me Be Evil: Implied to be the reason Proxies tend to be sketchy. The Inter-Knot (or Proxy Network) doesn't condone any sort of criminal behavior outside unlicensed Hollow investigation, which was only illegalized very recently. Having Proxies around to do that is necessary, as the Hollow Investigative Association doesn't have the manpower to help everyone at once. In a just world, Proxies would be heroes, but since they're criminals, they have nowhere to go but down. This also makes genuinely villainous Proxies who oppose the game's law enforcement and military like Null_Face examples of Create Your Own Villain.
Time Stands Still: Vital View, an effect triggered by performing an Evasive Assist or invoking certain Resonia, greatly slows down the enemy and surrounding environment while the on-field Agent moves and attacks at normal speed.
Title Drop: Not in full, but a "Zenless Limit" is defined within the setting as a crucial part of Hollow mechanics—essentially, it's the threshold of etheric actvity within a "Companion Hollow" at which it becomes self-sustaining, allowing it to break off from its source and become an additional fully-formed Hollow itself. This is considered a very bad thing, since not only will the new Hollow immediately begin forming companions, but it can cause the etheric activity of neighboring Hollows to also rise, possibly triggering off a "chain-reaction" scenario if those Hollows breach their Zenless Limit. As an example, when Hollow Zero broke off, this caused nearby Hollows like the Outer Ring Hollow to expand as well. Close to the present time, this has also implied that the vast majority of a Thiren race nearly went extinct with the survivors being 19 tiger Thirens without counting Ju Fufu herself when their land became trapped in an expanding Hollow.
Trailers Always Spoil: Post-launch, the advertisement for the game has used cutscenes from the Belobog arc, especially Koleda riding in on the Prototype Geroy to defeat the Unknown Corruption Complex, aka the Sacrifice.
Translate the Loanwords, Too: The localization team appears to do this intentionally, in a way that is obvious for someone who knows the words that are being substituted but will confuse others. The intent is presumably to make the game more comprehensible for those outside anime fandom, but it really has the opposite effect. Translating Manga/Manhua as "comics" happens most often and sticks out because if you didn't know it was happening you'd assume that unlike in our world comic reading is a standard geek activity that's popular among children, which hasn't been true in the United States since the nineties. It affects the storytelling the most in Lycaon's Agent Story, where the narrative treats being "edgy" as a subculture that died out a while ago, and portrays "edgy" teenagers as not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. No English speaker would identify that as a subculture, and the closest thing (emo) does not have the same connotations. Given that Lycaon pretends he doesn’t know what Chuunibyou is, it would be easy to make him an Audience Surrogate for players who are not familiar with the concept, but that's not what happened.
Triumphant Reprise: When you pull an S-Rank Agent, W-Engine, or Bangboo, the music adds a male or female singer who raps about accepting your luck and taking what you get, which, ironically, sounds like a way to comfort the player if they had their rare S-Rank pull spent on something they didn't want.
Turing Test: Alluded to with the Forbidden Fruit Test. While mentioned a few times it is not until patch 2.6 that we learn that this is a test that is required to be passed by Intelligent Constructs in order to be given citizenship status. What exactly it is, isn't really explained, but going by the name, and Dialyn's dialog when deciding whether or not Banyue is a danger to society, it can be inferred that it is a test to see if a construct is capable of free will and can act against its programming.
Turn of the Millennium: As mentioned above, ZZZ is set in a world similar to ours circa 2003-2005. The technology, fashion and aesthetic present looks both familiar yet dated which, given the quasi-post-apocalyptic 2000s The End of the World as We Know It setting, is completely appropriate.
Unexpected Gameplay Change: The third part of Lighter's Agent Story "The Unsung Champion" briefly turns the game into a 2½D Beat 'em Up brawler where you can't fully control the fixed sideways camera as Lighter fights several mooks. The gameplay shifts back to the usual style when he fights the boss in the end.
Unusual Chapter Numbers: The numbering of the chapters themselves is pretty normal, beginning with Chapter 1 and proceeding linearly from there outside the occasional intermission. However, the game also considers its Story Arcs to be "seasons" and structures its story around that idea. Chapter 5 was the end of Season 1 and ended with a fake credits sequence, with the remaining patches before version 2.0 serving as an epilogue.
Unstable Equilibrium: At Hollow Zero and certain Companion Hollows with high Ether activity, the longer you go deeper into them, the more likely you'll accumulate Corruptions; combat and exploration disadvantages that make it harder to continue. On the other hand, you can also salvage/buy Resonia to augment your combat performance.
Urban Fantasy: While the game's technology level is largely Noughties-retro with a few 'futuristic' inventions like robotic prostheses, highly intelligent AI companions, and extremely powerful inter-dimensional communications devices that allow the Proxy to interact with their clients being extremely commonplace, many of the characters are seemingly ripped straight out of fantasy stories, like Japanese oni and the Little Bit Beastly (and occasionally full-on Beast Man) Thirens. Despite fully automatic assault weapons being available, several characters tend to fight exclusively in melee range with swords and knives or less technologically advanced firearms like double-action revolvers and bows.
Vague Age: None of the Agents' ages are explicity stated. Some have ranges to their possible age like Ellen, who is in high school, but that is still a wide net^noteCorin's age was listed as 16 in a promotional tweet; however, that tweet was deleted, with no mention of why, leaving her age ambiguous. This affects certain characters more than others, namely Nekomata, Lucy, and Piper, whose body types can make them easily interpretable as early teenagers at the least. However, none of them act childlike and Lucy and Piper can both canonically drive; the former is also old enough to drink. It is also lampshaded in Piper's case, several times in fact.
- Complicating matters is that it is shown at least one species, the oni, age differently from the others. Soukaku looks, acts, and is treated like she's at most in her early-to-mid teens, sometimes even younger, with it even being stated she's still growing and some lines implying she may legally be a minor. It is also shown she looked like a child when she first met her adopted older sister/guardian Yanagi, who is human and looks like a fully grown adult, but Soukaku has stated she was born long before Yanagi, who also mentions that Soukaku grows at a different pace than her.
- Manato and Yidhari are the only subversions thus far, as they're mentioned to have been around 8 and 10 years old respectively during the fall of the old capital, which happened 11 years before the game's events, putting them at 19 and 21 years old.
Video Game Settings: Despite the Hollows cropping out at random locations, they essentially turn said settings into their own unique settings:
- Fourteenth Street Hollow: Urban Ruins.
- Dead End Hollow: A second set of Urban Ruins.
- Hollow Zero: The biggest set of Urban Ruins.
- Icedrift Hollow: Construction Zone Calamity (despite its ice-sounding name).
- Ballet Twins Hollow: Twin towers-turned-Haunted Castle-turned-Big Boo's Haunt (at night, conveniently the setting where you meet Victoria Housekeeping Co.) and It's All Upstairs From Here.
- Outer Ring Hollow: The Wild West.
- Port Elpis Hollow: Port Town.
- Melinoe Hollow: White void Gimmick Level.
- Lemnian Hollow: Gaia's Vengeance.
Villainous Gentrification: Implied in the "Sometimes You Gotta Get Out & About" promo, which is a video enticing wealthy investors to take advantage of the Outer Ring's undeveloped land and oil reserves. Thankfully, the Sons of Calydon's antics interfere with the filming.
Caesar: Those scammers shooting ads again?
Lucy: Idiots. Do they even know what kind of place the Outer Ring is?
Weird Moon: There's something seriously wrong with the moon: one part of it is abnormally black-colored like someone threw black paint over it, and the black part's craters have a Sickly Green Glow. Not only that, but there seems to be a Hollow in space next to the Moon◊, which somehow looks like a black fish.
Welcome to Corneria: Parodied in a sidequest in which two friends are in a competition on who can talk more like a videogame NPC than the other, meaning that they deliberately refuse to say anything other than stilted repeating dialog despite the protagonist's prodding.
Wham Episode: Chapter 5 is this in spades thanks to its climax, which has Inspector Bringer, who has been revealed as a member of Sarah's conspiracy, injects himself with a Psycho Serum to transform into another Sacrifice, during which he screams to his "Creator", revealing that the conspiracy is actually the Exaltists.
Wham Shot: At the end of Chapter 5, the siblings enter a Hollow and try to interrogate Bringer’s hand about the whereabouts of their mentor, Carole Arna. Bringer responds by firing a blast at them… and they survive the explosion, with absolutely zero damage done to them.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Averted for the most part with living species like Thiren and Oni, small cases of Fantastic Racism notwithstanding, but played more straight when it comes to Intelligent Constructs, with Bangboo in particular getting the short end of the stick. Despite them displaying human-level intellect, Bangboo are still consumer products and are frequently treated as such — they're ineligible for citizenship unlike Intelligent Constructs, and are liable to being scrapped if they don't have an owner to answer to.
- Zig-Zagged with Bangboo. Whether people see them as fellow people or products tend to be a case-by-case basis. There are several masterless Bangboo wanderers that are allowed to be so, but they regularly need to scrounge for used batteries or open, public recharge stations to survive, lacking any institutional safety nets. Bangboo, such as SecurityBoo Officer KK, are shown capable of applying for jobs outside of what they were initially designed for, but beyond that don’t seem to be offered support in finding them besides others helping out of kindness. Snap is another example of a mostly free roaming Bangboo, with his own car and driver's license. An example of Bangboo not getting a say in anything would be ones decommissioned or leaving White Star Institute as they are mandatorily memory-wiped to ensure none sensitive information leaks.
What the Hell, Hero?: Zhu Yuan gives one to Phaethon in Chapter 5, after they admit to being illegal Proxies. Not because they're illegal Proxies, but because they'd assumed she would immediately arrest them and thus kept their secret from her, even when she and Qingyi already suspected they had something going on. This, Zhu Yuan explains, is why she was hurt, because they thought she would be "blind" and would only follow protocol, rather than trusting that she would do the right thing and hear them out. Suffice to say, the player Proxy is a bit mortified for a good chunk of the rest of the chapter.
Wolverine Publicity: One of the main posters of the game has Ellen and Zhu Yuan displayed prominently on the top (with Von Lycaon and Koleda as focal points as well, although not as prominent), which while both were both featured on the first two banners, they aren't as prominent as the main characters, Wise and Belle (who are also on the poster as well, albeit not as big).
World of Badass: Due to the fact the world is plagued by randomly-spawning Hollows, hordes of bandit-like Hollow Raiders, and various groups vying for power at the expense of regular people's lives, the only people still alive and going about their lives are ones that have developed the skills to deal with them. There are a plethora of people who dive into Hollows just to make a living off the resources they hold, the average joe has developed at least some ability to fight off any criminals that might try to rob them, and if you ever see a child wandering around without close supervision from a guardian then they're guaranteed to at least be an Action Survivor.
World of Buxom: The women in this game have much larger chests on average than in other Mihoyo games. Ellen, someone who is already quite sizable, looks almost petite compared to Nicole or Grace, and she's more or less the "average" size in this game. Even the Player Character sibling Belle is quite endowed, though her loose overcoat hides it well.
World of Muscle Men: The playable male cast of this game is a downplayed example. Very few characters in this game are particularly large (the main exception being Ben Bigger), but most male characters are fit and athletic. Seth, the most "boyish" playable character, has visibly broad shoulders and prominent biceps, as seen in his Mindscape Cinema artwork. Even Billy Kid, a robot, has a six-pack molded into his body.
World of Technicolor Hair: Vibrant hair colors seem to be norm in this setting; Belle and Wise have dark blue and silver hair respectively, Nicole has pink hair, Koleda has bright red hair, Corin has green hair, and so on.
Xanatos Gambit: Sarah is a master at this, combined with a bit of Xanatos Speed Chess. Her sparing Perlman wasn't just to have a Scapegoat to take the fall for Vision Corporations' crimes but also to have him become The Bait to attract the public's attention. Even when her plot to silence people that are tied to Vision's crimes and anything that undermines New Eridu fails, it only makes Perlman a more tantalizing target for those who want to uncover the truth. Ultimately, Section 6 gets involved and uncovers her involvement, which seems like it would spell an end to her machinations. However, this only occurred after her partners uncovered that data from Miyabi's blade can be used to create Sacrifices, which was her true objective all along. Not only that, Tailless would render Miyabi berserk and uncontrollable when used. After that, Sarah pulls some subterfuge and misdirection to have Miyabi framed and be placed under Bringer's custody, allowing her access to the sword. She ultimately manages to escape with her life intact after nearly turning Miyabi on innocent civilians, and in the process she obtained the recipe for another Sacrifice.
You Watch Too Much X: Lucy accuses Caesar of reading too much fighting manga in Chapter 4. What makes this funny is that the chapter, which is centered around Badass Bikers competing in a Tournament Arc for the title of Overlord, is a pastiche of that genre, with Caesar being effectively a Gender Flip of the Stock Shōnen Hero. What makes it relevant is that the position of Overlord involves a lot of politics and desk work, which Caesar is not cut out for quite yet.

WIPEOUT

Zenless Zone Zero

49 Following

IMPORTANT NOTE:

"Here are the trope examples we request of you, Phaethon!"

Video Example(s):

Jacqueline

Previous

Index

Next

Jacqueline

Video Game / Zenless Zone Zero 49 Following

IMPORTANT NOTE:

"Here are the trope examples we request of you, Phaethon!"

Video Example(s):

Jacqueline

Previous

Index

Next

Jacqueline

Zenless Zone Zero

49 Following