For the first game in the series, go here.

F-Zero is a racing game franchise created by Nintendo that began on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990.

The story goes that, in the 26th century, Formula One races have long since given way to F-Zero races: incredibly dangerous, high-speed affairs sponsored by wealthy ex-space merchants who have come to the accurate conclusion that seeing people risk their lives going thousands of kilometers per hour on the most insane race tracks known to man or alien would be a fantastic way to get the masses to gamble. As for the racers themselves? Well, provided they can survive and take first place, they can expect a huge cash payout and gain universal prestige. In this way, the F-Zero Grand Prix attracts a diverse crowd of eccentric individuals from across the galaxy — including cyborgs, evil clones, monkeys, dinosaurs, and the undead — all willing to put their well-being on the line for reasons ranging from paying for their kids' education to funding their newest world domination scheme. And out of the ever-growing cast of colorful characters, the de facto protagonist is Captain Falcon, a legendary racer and renowned bounty hunter.

Pilots race using the titular F-Zero machines: technologically advanced anti-gravity vehicles capable of barreling down courses faster than the speed of sound. One of the core gameplay elements is the single energy bar used for both your ship's shields and boost power. The more damage you take (be it from the course or ramming into fellow racers), the less you can boost, hurting your chances for victory. But the more you boost, the more likely you are to be one stray hit from an early retirement.

While the series itself laid dormant for almost 19 years following the release of Climax, Captain Falcon and other elements of the F-Zero franchise would continue to be represented in other Nintendo titles. The most notable of these being the Super Smash Bros. series, where Captain Falcon has been present as a playable fighter since the first installment, and the Mario Kart games, where Mario Kart Wii and Mario Kart 8 feature the Blue Falcon as a selectable vehicle, with the later game also featuring tracks based on Mute City and Big Blue.

In September 2023, a new entry in the form of a Battle Royale Game titled F-Zero 99 was released for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. Based mostly on the original SNES installment, while incorporating elements from other entries, the game would see multiple updates over its first year, culminating in its first anniversary being celebrated not only with a Version 1.5 Update that added courses from BS F-Zero Grand Prix, but the release of the remaining GBA installments (including the Japan-only Climax) on the NSO game catalog.

YOU GOT BOOST POWER! F-Zero contains examples of the following:

• 10-Minute Retirement:
  • Flirted with thanks to Silver Neelson, who is considering retirement (he is close to 100, after all), but is probably too fickle to go through with it.
  • Possibly Captain Falcon in X, who states that he's now retired if you beat the Grand Prix on Master, yet is back into racing by the sequel.
• Action Girl: Jody and Lily, seeing as they're combat-machine pilot affiliated with the para-militaristic Galactic Space Federation. In particular, Jody has had an eventful and active childhood, while Lily has been training since shortly after her birth and has even seen combat in a few skirmishes. There are hints that Mrs. Arrow is also one of these, particularly of the Action Wife variety.
• Age Lift: Dr. Stewart becomes 10 years older from the original to X. This is nowhere as bad as Pico though, who's nearly four times older than he was in the first game.
• All Amazons Want Hercules: The Arrows are an ambiguous example, as Mrs. Arrow is proven to be more competent than her husband.
• All Bikers Are Hells Angels: They ride around in futuristic machines that float above the ground, but otherwise the Bloody Chain fit this trope.
• All Love Is Unrequited: John Tanaka harbors a crush on Jody Summer, who (if John's bonus movie in GX is anything to go by) is in love with Captain Falcon.
• All There in the Manual: Pretty much the franchise's only source of story or character info before GX.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Somewhat inevitable seeing as aliens are involved, but several characters have alternate colors that give them even weirder skin tones.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield:
  • Rainbow Road from X qualifies, though it’s much less technicolor than the original Mario Kart 64 version.
  • Phantom Road from GX can be considered a twisted version of Rainbow Road, replacing the relaxing night sky and space ambiance with psychedelic backgrounds.
• Amazonian Beauty:
  • Mrs. Arrow, though only in the games and not the anime (and 👁 This example contains a TRIVIA entry. It should be moved to the TRIVIA tab.
    its derivative continuity).
  • Jody and Kate Alen are also pretty muscular in X, but both get their physique scaled down by GX.
• Ambiguously Human:
  • Super Arrow is stated to have actual superpowers, but it's never explained why.
  • Black Shadow just looks like a man in a black devil costume, but he's extremely tall compared to other human characters, and he also exhibits supernatural abilities and is known to have ties with figures from the netherworld.
• Ambiguously Gay: Baba. He wears an outfit with leopard prints and wails like a girl if he falls off the track in X. GX's voice acting gave Baba an effeminate voice and several... questionable comments. And then there's his bonus movie in GX... The less you know, the better.
• Amusing Alien: Octoman, Gomar & Shioh, Draq, Dai-San-Gen and PJ are all pretty comedic.
• Animal Motifs:
  • Captain Falcon... we don't need to spell this one out for you. Super Arrow's seems to be avians, while Beastman's is a dinosaur.
  • Subverted with Octoman. Instead of an octopus, he compares himself with an elephant.
  • Most characters have racing machines named after animals, which could count for this trope (Dr. Stewart = Fox, Goroh = Stingray, Jody = Cat, and so on...). This is not perfect though, as some animalistic characters like Leon (cat), Billy (monkey) and the aforementioned Octoman (octo... you get the idea) have machines named after completely different animals.
• Animal Theme Naming: Most of the racing machines are named after various animals. The rest that aren't either employ Celestial Theme Naming or some other cool concept.
• Animal-Themed Superbeing: Captain Falcon, Beastman, and Phoenix fit types two (Animal Alias), one (Animal Abilities), and three (Mythical Monster Motif) respectively.
• Anime Hair: The front-runners would be James McCloud and Jack Levin in GX, the former's hair being redesigned to make his parallels with that of Fox's father more obvious. James even has white streaks going through them. Antonio Guster reveals in his interviews that he hides a mohawk under his helmet, and it's blue. Kate Alen has a pretty funky afro, but no one ever seems to talk about it.
• Announcer Chatter: From X onward, all games have an announcer that tells you when you can finally activate your boost power, when you reached the final lap, or when you lose a life.
• Arch-Enemy: Captain Falcon and Black Shadow, the Arrows and Zoda, Beastman and Bio Rex.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • According to Bio Rex: "Everyone you meet is food. Eat all the food put in front of you. And brush your teeth properly."
  • Mr. EAD's A.I. testing apparently included combat situations, spying and college exams.
• Artificial Gravity: Many of the tracks are hovering in the skies above the planet's they are on. In later games some tracks actually overlap with themselves with the two tracks being face-to-face.
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • Draq was mostly a rather over-enthusiastic F-Zero fan, until one day his shipping company received two racers with no destination or return address; when this happened, Draq immediately jumped in one of the racers, entered the league, and now he's running to use the prize money to buy his own racer and start an F-Zero museum. His buddy Roger Buster, while also an F-Zero fan, is more the casual fan type (i.e. not an F-Zero nerd like Draq). In fact, the only reason Roger Buster is racing is in the hopes that the intended recipient of the unmarked machines will recognize them and allow him to finish the delivery.
  • Mrs. Arrow, who started as a circuit model and then became a racer herself.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: When Mr. Zero asks Beastman to describe his racing style, these are his exact words.
• Author Avatar: The Creators are symbolic stand-ins for the creators of the game, and not just in a metaphorical sense either: you have to race their staff ghost in what is essentially a glorified Time Trial.
• Ax-Crazy: Zoda. He's piloting a ballistic missile while being constantly pumped full of adrenaline and dopamine. Even in gameplay terms he has one of the fastest machines with some of the worst cornering and body rating, which is kinda nuts by itself.
• Back from the Dead: The Skull (and Deathborn, apparently), according to their profiles.
• Badass Cape: Super Arrow, Phoenix, Black Shadow, and Deathborn.
• Badass Driver: Virtually everyone.
• Badass Normal:
  • Dr. Stewart is the only non-combatant racer of the original game.
  • Kate Alen and Jack Levin are literally just pop stars among a roster of aliens, warriors, scientists and supervillains. Roger Buster is also nothing more than a truck delivery man.
• Battle Couple: The Arrows. Mrs. Arrow's comments in GX imply that the two routinely fight crime on and off the track.
• Blood Knight:
  • Several times, Pico has been called one of the more violent and bloodthirsty racers. He's also widely believed to be responsible for the big accident several years ago that caused the races to amp up its safety measure solely for his aggressive nature on the track, regardless of whether or not he was guilty.
  • The Skull is an in-game example, as he defied death itself to race in F-Zero.
  • It's hinted that Black Shadow and Blood Falcon love to destroy other machines at a whim.
• Blood Sport: A relatively tame example. There are crashes, but no one actually dies during races. Not on screen anyway.
• Bounty Hunter: Captain Falcon and Samurai Goroh double as these outside of the races. The only time Falcon is ever seen on the job is in a short comic👁 Image
  included with the original F-Zero. This comic, to date, is the only time that Falcon uses his gun. Ever.
• Bowdlerise: Several, but the more prominent ones are changing the name of Blood Falcon's Hell Hawk to the Blood Hawk and renaming Miss Killer as Luna Ryder. The latter actually works to a degree, considering that Miss Killer drives the Moon Shadow, but it's also a case of Never Say "Die".
• Boy Band: Jack Levin was once a part of one before joining the F-Zero races.
• Broad Strokes: The Legend of Falcon sub-series is an exceptional case that's very different from the rest of the franchise. It's especially confusing because the anime and games in this series both compliment each other and seem to contradict each other at the same time. Maximum Velocity is the only entry that doesn't contradict another game in the series, as it takes place in the immediate future of at least one of the three core games (original, X or GX/AX), but is rarely acknowledged.
• But Not Too Foreign: Samurai Goroh is Japanese-American. Presumably, his son is also mixed.
• The Cameo: A giant-sized R.O.B. appears on the Port Town courses, most notably Port Town: Aero Drive.
• Camp: GX embraces the series' ridiculous characters, making them hammy, flashy and bouncy.
• Car Fu: First introduced in F-Zero X.
  • The Spin Attack is an offensive (and defensiive) technique that is used to damage and destroy other racers. It's very useful for thinning out the pack when things get crowded and pushing opponents out of the way or off your tail.
  • There's also a simpler shunt attack that can force opponents into walls or even off tracks.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Whoever is labeled a "villain" in the games will carry not a card, but a poster. Just check out the interviews Deathborn and Black Shadow give to Mr. Zero in GX.
• Cast from Hit Points: The boost feature from X onward.
• Clothing Damage: A male example comes from Captain Falcon's GX ending movie. After saving Mrs. Arrow's baby from a speeding locomotive, his pants rip, revealing his Goofy Print Underwear. This leaves Falcon in an awkward and compromising position as Mrs. Arrow chuckles at his misfortune.
• Collision Damage: And it shows on your vehicle. Sorta.
• Color Animal Codename: The vehicles are mostly named after animals or animal appendages, and many of them also combine it with a color. This includes the Blue Falcon (piloted by none other than Captain Falcon himself), the Golden Fox, the Red Gazelle, the White Cat, the Green Panther, and the Black Bull (piloted by Black Shadow himself). GX also includes the Silver Rat, the Pink Spider and the Rainbow Phoenix.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: F-Zero has the reputation to be extremely antagonistic towards the player.
• Cool Car: Pretty much every vehicle, although some are cooler than others. They are all capable of traveling at incredible speeds and hovering slightly above the ground. In the manual to the original F-Zero, it states that the machine uses magnetic repulsion to hover above the track, not unlike modern day Maglev trains. In later games the machines instead used G-Diffusors, sophisticated anti-gravity devices.
• Cool Helmet: A good deal of characters have 'em.
• Cool Mask: Several characters have one, but the prime example would have to be Super Arrow, a bona-fide superhero.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Despite being a bit cranky in his old age, Silver Neelson is considered a great mentor. With just the aid of a few drinks, racers could get a year's worth of racing advice in a single evening.
  • Dr. Clash, who is a F-Zero machine engineer, is less old and an Insufferable Genius, but is certainly a badass for participating F-Zero races.
• Cool Shades: James McCloud, Samurai Goroh, Antonio Guster, Mrs. Arrow, and Michael Chain all have them. James, Mrs. Arrow, and Michael Chain lose 'em in their X endings, and Mrs. Arrow's are missing completely in GX save for her bonus movie.
• Critical Annoyance: The ranking system in the original F-Zero: Fall below a certain position and the game's beeping will blare in your ear 'til you make it back to an acceptable spot. Or fail to do so and explode.
• Critical Existence Failure: If you so much as rub paint with another machine when you're at critically low health, your machine a splode.
• Cursed with Awesome: In 3D games, machines with E-ranked grip aren't as bad as the vehicle parameter system tells you. In fact, these machines are able to exploit several 👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  Game Breakers, allowing them to take massive shortcuts and gain ridiculous bursts of speed.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In the pseudo-3D games, including the original, holding down while airborne reduces your vertical descent speed and allows your machine to land softly, as opposed to smacking back down on the track with a considerable loss in speed. Making these longer glides and softer landings allows you to take shortcuts at corners and gain speed boosts In the 3D games F-Zero X, GX, and AX, it's the complete opposite; staying airborne and pointing your machine's nose up causes you to lose speed instead, so you are advised instead to land your machine as quickly as possible.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being undead and using black magic to steer his machine, which is itself powered by drawing the energy of living things, there's no real evidence that The Skull is evil. Mr. Zero isn't afraid of him, and his only motive appears to be a desire to race forever.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • X utilizes an artstyle that's more reminiscent of The Dark Age of Comic Books in contrast to the more old-school style used in the original SNES entry, and its soundtrack almost entirely consists of rock and heavy metal. GX subverts this with a Campier approach, employing more color and techno.
  • The earlier tie-in novel And Then, to the Gods of Speed is a Deconstruction of the setting, showing the physical toll that racing in these machines can cause in a myriad of ways to the body, and it's set in a world where the resident MegaCorp uses F-Zero to manipulate the populace.
• Death Mountain: Red Canyon, especially the track that you race Samurai Goroh on during GX's Story Mode.
• Dem Bones: The Skull, with added technological and necromantic flair.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: This can happen to the player if they're not careful; one wrong move while attacking the CPU-controlled racers, and you could find yourself careening off of the track.
• Difficult, but Awesome: It goes both ways: in-universe, the racers must be extremely skilled to be able to place well in the circuits without crashing. In-game, players must be able to handle the extreme speeds the game wants you to race at. However, if you're good enough, the challenge and thrill will make it all worth the skill required.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Not actually necessary, because Captain Falcon clone Blood Falcon already plays entirely different from him. The scientists working for Black Shadow realized that they wouldn't be able to beat Captain Falcon using an identical machine.
• Dogged Nice Guy: John Tanaka to Jody Summer. May also cross over with Stalker with a Crush, considering that he's at F-Zero solely in order to protect her (and propose to her if he wins).
• Down to the Last Play: In X and onward, there can be some pretty thrilling moments in the last straightaway as everyone who is playing to win uses up every last drop of their energy to boost past the competition, knowing full well that one scratch = dead after doing that (in some games, your blown-up machine can still drift past the finish line).
• The Dragon: Blood Falcon to Black Shadow, and Black Shadow to Deathborn.
• Drives Like Crazy: Go fast enough, and you will be doing this.
• Drugs Are Bad: Zoda, whose body is pumped full of adrenaline and dopamine. It's part of the reason he's so darned unhinged.
• Duels Decide Everything: In GX, both Samurai Goroh and Deathborn force Falcon to race against them one-on-one for the Blue Falcon/fate of the universe. The Creators also do the same. Black Shadow somewhat attempts to kill Falcon before the Grand Prix, but his trap ends up failing, leading to a race anyway.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: From the very first game in particular:
  • Only four playable racers with not much personality to go on besides the manual's mini-comic.
  • The machines are noticably slower than in later games, with top speeds of only 438-478 km/h without boost. Later games push top speeds to around 700 km/h at the minimum.
  • CPU racers are portrayed as generic recoloured vehicles.
  • The tracks are all flat with no loops to speak of.
  • The boost feature here rewards a boost each time you finished a lap instead of being Cast from Hit Points.
  • The game also has every race set at 5 laps since the tracks are pretty small and quick to complete.
  • Vehicular combat, while implied in the manual/story, isn't encouraged; you'd cause more harm to yourself trying to ram other racers and the CPUs have infinite health anyway (save for the few that are rigged to explode on contact).
  • There is no multiplayer.
  • There is a Practice mode that serves as the game's Time Trial mode, but it still puts one opponent (of your choosing) on the track and only certain courses are available.
  • There is no option to let players set their preferred balance between maximum speed and acceleration.
  • Unlike the other games in the series, the first game requires you to be at a "safe" rank per lap (up to third in the final lap) and failing to meet that safe rank (or even falling too far behind) will disqualify you.
  • CPU opponents do not necessarily have an absolute position on the track. Notably, the opponent immediately behind you is never more than a few seconds behind, no matter how fast you're going. This is most notable when exploiting (shortcuts: Take the normal route and the CPU will follow closely and not take the shortcut, but take the shortcut and the CPU will follow suit.
  • You earn an extra life literally Every 10,000 Points, and points are earned based on your position at the end of each lap. In later games, you earn extra lives by destroying opponents and the arcade-style scoring system was dropped in favor of points awarded towards cumulative standings.
  • In Grand Prix mode, there's no concept of overall standings. As long as you finish each race (which requires meeting the Safe Rank at the end of each lap and not crashing out), the game counts it as a win.
  • The "You Lost" jingle only plays if you Rank Out, not if you Crash Out. Subsequent games play the failure jingle or theme if you are retired out through circumstances besides restarting or quitting, including in the game's battle royale remake F-Zero 99.
  • In the instruction manual comic, the Blue Falcon's entrant number is 111, whereas X changes it to 7 and GX reformats it to 07 (and similarly so with the other one-digit machines from X). Three digit machine numbers don't even exist at all in those later games; all of the machines are sequentially numbered.
  • Interestingly, Maximum Velocity temporarily brought the series back to this gameplay scheme - presumably due to the impracticality of implementing all of the new features into the GBA (the GP Legend games found a middle ground by making tracks with more complicated layouts in lieu of X and GX's rollercoasters).
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Not quite. Several planets in the game are of good importance, but Mute City is regarded as the most advanced and sophisticated city in the universe, thus making it a very populated center of trade and commerce. All of GX's Story Mode appears to transpire on Earth.
• Emergency Transformation: How Mighty Gazelle came to be.
• Eternal Engine: Lightning, coupled up with perpetual thunderstorms as Epileptic Flashing Lights!
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Yes, even in the future; Cars explode upon being destroyed from either losing all of their health or falling off a track onto the ground below.
• Every 10,000 Points:
  • F-Zero has an unusual racing game example: As you cross the checkpoint, you gain points in proportion to your standing. You get an extra life every 10,000 points.
  • F-Zero X changed this so that you got an extra life for every five kills you score in a single race. GX changes this again to only the first five kills per race.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: Samurai Goroh, the samurai racing pilot.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Skull, the skeleton racing pilot.
• Evil Knockoff: Blood Falcon. Obviously, he's the Shadow Archetype to Captain Falcon.
• Evil Is Hammy: Subverted in that the the heroes are just as capable at chewing the scenery as the villains are.
• Evil Gloating: Black Shadow, Blood Falcon, and Deathborn love this trope.
• Evil Laugh: The villains and dregs of society.
• Excuse Plot:
  • There is a big race going down and your character aims to win it. Everything else is just flavor text.
  • GX subverts it a bit by featuring a slightly more elaborate story, although far from groundbreaking.
• Expansion Pack: X had one exclusive to Japan on the failed Nintendo 64DD add-on, which included 2 new GP cups, 5 new music tracks, a track editor, a car editor, and expanded time trial ghost storage.
• Eyes Always Shut: Dr. Stewart and John Tanaka from X onward (John has the excuse of being Asian at least, whereas Stewart only has those as a nod to his fox theme). Dai San Gen in GX also count since they're Chinese caricatures.
• The Faceless: Several characters hide their real faces behind a mask or helmet. Captain Falcon is a subversion since we do see how he looks like in X.
• Fake Difficulty: Usually because The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • There is some of this in the original, at Master Level. The CPU Golden Fox cruises at 478 kph. The player controlled Golden Fox maxes out at 438 kph.
  • There are generic cars in the original that are below the top four 'unique' racers; they're just there to get blown up. They do have positions (4-30), but unless you're aiming to lose, you only see them when you're far enough ahead to start lapping them. Was it also mentioned that the opponents slip right through them?
• Fanservice: Beating the Grand Prix on Master difficulty in X or beating Story Mode in GX nets you a quick shot of Captain Falcon without his helmet. Several of the mini-movies unlocked by beating the GP on Master in GX count as well, of both the sexual and non-sexual varieties.
• Fat Bastard: Samurai Goroh and Don Genie. The latter is definitely much worse whereas the former is just unpleasant at worst.
• The Federation: The Galactic Federation, of which Jody Summer and John Tanaka are members. There's also a Milky Way Federation, who aren't the nicest people judging from Octoman's backstory. A third group called the Galactic Space Allies are mentioned solely in Antonio Guster's profile.
• Fictional Sport: F-Zero is floating rally racing, or perhaps Formula 1.
• Floating Head Syndrome: The Japanese covers for the first game👁 Image
  and X👁 Image
  , which is particularly intense.
• Form-Fitting Wardrobe: Given all of that spandex and latex, it applies to almost all of the racers. In most cases, it could be seen as Fanservice given how fit just about everyone is, but a handful of racers go in the 👁 This example contains a YMMV entry. It should be moved to the YMMV tab.
  opposite direction. Considering the sort of outfits NASCAR racers wear today, though, this may be justified.
• Fragile Speedster: Many vehicles are not very solid and don't show a great top speed, but are quite easy to use and have great boosts to compensate.
• Fun Personified: Billy is probably the closest fit, although Gomar and Shioh are also somewhat like this.
• Future Spandex: Played with. While a large percentage of the cast is decked out in skin-tight spandex and latex, more than a handful of characters are instead shown wearing sleek armor (if not both). Others sport attire not too different from present-day fashion trends.
• Gadgeteer Genius:
  • Dr. Clash, who's responsible for a great deal of the technology that is seen in the present-day F-Zero machines.
  • Digi-Boy claims that he can use any modern piece of technology adeptly and has even created a few gizmos of his own. Suffice to say, he's extremely arrogant.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: X has a hidden "rival" system that supplements the Rival marker you see on the racer who places closest to you. Each racer has about three to five other characters who all start near the back where the player is and who possess better than normal A.I. and skill for that Grand Prix. Often, the characters have some sort of adversarial relationship, or at least a friendly rivalry. Examples include:
  • Captain Falcon and each of his nemeses, Black Shadow, Blood Falcon and Samurai Goroh.
  • Goroh, in addition to Captain Falcon, has Antonio Guster, on account of betraying him in the past.
  • Both of the Arrows are rivals with each other and Zoda.
  • Jody is scared of octopi, so the usually lackluster Octoman will do perform far better than normal if you play as her.
  • Between the three female characters (Jody Summer, Mrs. Arrow, Kate Alen), the other female characters act as rivals to the player's character.
  • Beastman has the most, as every non-human or human-like racer plus Baba will try their hardest to go after you.
  • Black Shadow, naturally, will have every explicitly heroic racer attempting to ensure he can't win (especially Captain Falcon).
  • Aside from of the rival system examples, fitting with his personality, Billy will always do a quick spin every time he gets air.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The story for F-Zero X says that F-Zero was discontinued for years after a huge near-fatal crash involving 14 racers. In-game, particularly aggressive players will take out more than that many machines in a single race. Now, if we're looking for a way to explain this, the crashes are never fatal in-game despite blowing up the machine, so in the future, it's really hard to die. Evidently the big crash somehow caused an even more spectacular explosion than you can cause in-game. (Normal) crashes in the game must be non-fatal, since if you blow up an opponent's machine, they come back next race.
  • Captain Falcon is regularly said to be the best F-Zero pilot in the universe, but in the Grand Prix, if he's not the player character he is rarely better than the other CPU racers, and constantly places in excess of 10th out of 30.
• Gangbangers: Michael Chain's gang, the Bloody Chain.
• Genius Bruiser: Bio Rex, mainly because he was genetically engineered to be one. The "Genius" part usually doesn't show.
• Glass Cannon: Many vehicles actually have a good, if not exceptional, top speed, but frail bodies. The degrees of control and boost power varies.
• Global Currency: In the comic that came in the original F-Zero manual, Falcon states a bounty is worth 500,000 "Galactic Credits". However, in one of GX's Story Mode cutscenes, the currency seems to be "space credits", and the prize for winning an expert class grand prix is one billion space credits.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Captain Falcon has a single scar located above his left eye. Leon has a scar running over his left eye, giving him a passing resemblance to Wolf. Don Genie's right eye (the one with the monocle) also has a vertical scar. He's evil, or at least highly greedy.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Several characters wear goggles for no reason other than Rule of Cool.
• Gratuitous Katana: Samurai Goroh is obviously a standout here. Dai Goroh too, as his profile even states that he takes after his father and loves to take out his katana and whip it around.
• Green Hill Zone: Green Plant: Mobius Hill, despite being the third course of the second cup.
• Grumpy Old Man: "Ironman" Silver Neelson is this with added "crotchediness." Despite his years and years of experience, he seems to be a bit loopy when it comes to new-fangled machines. Most of the other racers try to ignore him. Falcon isn't so lucky in Chapter 3 of GX's Story Mode.
• Gusty Glade: The Death Wind courses, where winds keep your machine drifting in one direction so long as you're moving.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Implied with Bio Rex since his physiology is rather humanoid for a supposed dinosaur.
• Handsome Lech:
  • Jack, who says that all of his female fans are his girlfriends. Surprisingly, he doesn't pursue the handful of single ladies in the games.
  • The comic included with the manual of F-Zero paints Dr. Stewart in this light. This element of his personality was either subsequently dropped, retconned out of existence, or Stewart simply mellowed out (the Huge Accident and/or the death of his father may have had something to do with it).
• Happily Married: The Arrows, as well as Octoman. Octoman has several children, and the Arrows may have a child if GX's bonus endings are indeed canon. Ditto with James, who has a wife and son.
• Have a Nice Death:
  • In X: "TOO BAD! YOU LOST YOUR MACHINE."
  • In GX: "OFF COURSE! RETIRE" and "BROKEN DOWN! RETIRE."
• Hero of Another Story: Almost everyone in the cast qualifies. Each racer gets an extensive biography in the manual, but the actual story centers around the series' mascot, Captain Falcon, and his circle of friends and enemies. There are genetic experiments, sorcerers, superheroes, detectives, assassins, monsters, and all kinds of cool characters that are relegated to the sidelines in every game.
• Heroic Build: About 80% of the cast falls into this trope.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners:
  • Gomar and Shioh are from an alien race who all live this way. Their backstory in GX even points out that they are close to retirement since they're about to get married (and thus, leave each other's side).
  • Presumably, the same could be said about Roger Buster and Draq. At the very least, it's an Odd Friendship between a straight-laced intergalactic delivery man and his F-Zero fanatic of an alien buddy. Bonus points: their friendship doubles as an Intergenerational Friendship, considering that Roger is 41 while Draq is 137.
• Hired Guns: Pico is a hitman. Captain Falcon and Samurai Goroh are bounty hunters, while Beastman is the beast-hunting equivalent of that.
• Homage:
  • Captain Falcon's costume rather resembles that of Judge Dredd.
  • Black Shadow is clearly designed after Batman, which is unsurprising since Tim Burton's Batman was the primary inspiration for the series.
  • The designer of James McCloud's Little Wvyern? Space Dynamics, the same corporation that created the Arwings from Star Fox. In turn, James is the leader of Galaxy Dog, a group of mercenaries, and races to support his wife and child.
    • James McCloud's name obviously comes from the name of Fox's father, and he even sports sunglasses. Also, in X he had a simple haircut, but in GX he has fox-ear style hair, and has white hair down the middle like the headpiece Fox and his father had in Star Fox 64.
  • Mr. EAD vaguely resembles a certain Italian plumber, wears a Starman on his belt, calls his vehicle his brother, eats lots of cake in his movie, and was created by Shiggs Mapone. Hmm...
• Idol Singer: Kate Alen was one (or at least the American pop star/diva equivalent of it) before striking out into F-Zero. Jack Levin is a male version of this trope.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Mrs. Arrow (who somehow has a six-pack too) and Princia.
• Inertial Dampening: The G-Diffusor System found on every vehicle. This system is vital for the safety of the drivers.
• Informed Ability: The top speeds of the machines, possibly. In-game, 1,000 km/h seems more like about 300-350. This may be because of the relative scale of the machines and the track. Even Cosmo Terminal's freakishly narrow-feeling split ribbons are actually fairly wide if you compare them to the vehicles.
• Irisless Eye Mask of Mystery: All over the place, what with the cast largely being one great big homage to comic book superheroes. Captain Falcon, Baba, Beastman, Super Arrow, Phoenix, Black Shadow and Blood Falcon all feature it. Deathborn may too, although it's unknown if he's even wearing a mask in the first place.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • In the original game, the Blue Falcon was this (although overlapping with Fragile Speedster) alongside Wild Goose (which was close to being a Mighty Glacier).
  • Following installments change the competitive balance between the four original vehicles, making them standards for the many kinds of vehicles: Golden Fox for light machines with strong boosts and low grip, Wild Goose for slow but heavy and destructive machines, Fire Stingray for heavy and fast machines, and Blue Falcon for... balanced machines (to be precise, easy to control machines with varying all-around stats).
  • The Deep Claw is the biggest example of this in GX, as it supposedly possesses medium stats for every single one of its attributes.
• Joke Character: Mr. EAD, who's not only the most ridiculous design in the cast, but also possesses the strangest vehicle settings. Also a case of Self-Deprecation since this EAD appears to be the future/alternate version of EAD, which is (was) Nintendo's largest division.
• Justice Will Prevail:
  • This is essentially Super Arrow's Catchphrase (at least by X's standards), although he does put a spin on it by saying, "Justice ALWAYS prevails." Mrs. Arrow is pretty much the same as her husband, despite the fact that she has no inherent superpowers.
    • In GX, one of his post-race interviews has him say, "Justice always wins in the end."
  • Both Captain Falcon and Phoenix are also big followers of this mindset.
• Leitmotif: There's a reason the themes for Mute City and Big Blue are so well-known, as they double as Bootstrapped Theme and Recurring Riff, appearing many times and having many different variation across the series.
• Lethal Lava Land: Fire Field. GX takes this to the logical extreme, where you actually race inside the outer crust of the planet.
• Level 1 Music Represents: The Mute City's theme, which is the first track in the original game, is largely iconic as a representation of the theme, and is featured in most F-Zero and related installments (including Super Smash Bros. series). And to a lesser extent, Big Blue's theme is the second most popular music theme in the series and is also featured both in and out of franchise much like Mute City.
• The Lost Woods: The Devil's Forest in X. Possibly Green Plant in GX, even though that's more of a greenhouse.
• Ludicrous Speed: The speeds can exceed 2,000kph. If you're not careful, you may even hit escape velocity and go soaring off the track.
• May–December Romance:
  • The Arrows, possibly. He's eight years her senior (as of GX, he's 35 and she's 27), but it's unknown when they first met. (So, May-September Romance?)
  • Judging by GX, Princia is trying to attempt this with Goroh of all people. Keep in mind that she's 16 and he's 28 years older than her.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The title itself might be one, considering that the series is a futuristic version of Formula One, and may in fact be that sport's successor (think "Formula Zero").
  • Mr. EAD's machine stats are graded E-A-D. Even more meaningful when you realize his name was the name of Nintendo's main in-house development studio, headed by Shigeru Miyamoto at the time. Mr. EAD's creator's name? Shiggs Mapone.
  • Octoman is a humanoid octopus. Bio Rex is a bioengineered dinosaur man.
• Metropolis Level: Mute City, which is usually the first venue raced on in the games. Aeropolis is another example, being more akin to a Skyscraper City.
• Mighty Glacier: Some heavy machines tend to be as good to bully opponents as they are to beat time records. As is standard with racing games, the heavier machines do tend to have worse acceleration, but once they get going, watch out.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules:
  • In the original F-Zero, Master difficulty ramps the top speed of every machine to 478km/h and gives them insane cornering ability.
  • Also in the Original F-Zero, there is a lap elimination system. Anyone below 15th is eliminated at the end of lap 1, then 10th for lap 2, 7th for lap 3, 5th for lap 4, and finally only the top 3 can finish. Except it only works on the player. You can easily stop on any lap other than the first and let AI that should've been eliminated keep passing you.
  • In games after the first one, if a CPU opponent is eliminated in GP mode, they come back for the next round just fine (assuming it is not the final round of the cup), with the only penalty being that they take 0 points for the round they crashed in. If you get eliminated, you have to use up one of your spare machines and try again, or retire out of the cup completely if you have no spares left.
• Mysterious Protector: Subverted. Captain Falcon is veiled in mystery and appears to aid those in need, but he's also The Hero of the series.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • In order of ascending villainy: Blood Falcon, Black Shadow, Deathborn.
  • If you are an evil villain/lawbreaker, then you'd most certainly want to run away from Captain Falcon himself.
  • Some of the vehicles. Do you think you can take on the "Big Fang"? Or the "Death Anchor"? Or the "Dark Schneider"?
• Nebulous Evil Organisation: Black Shadow's eponymous "Black Shadow Group". Zoda may also be part of one ("Deathriddle"), although there's barely any info about it.
• Never Say "Die": Zigzagged. You've got straight examples like "Miss Killer" becoming "Luna Ryder" and Blood Falcon's machine "Hell Hawk" being renamed to "Blood Hawk", but even at the height of Nintendo's censorship policies, the first game's Death Wind courses made it through localization unscathed. And then there's GX and Deathborn...
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: To be honest, everyone (to some degree or another) falls under this trope since they're all F-Zero pilots that have some other occupation or are an alien.
  • Captain Falcon is part racecar driver, part bounty hunter, 100% badass.
  • Samurai Goroh is a samurai bounty hunter who leads a group of bandits and partakes in the F-Zero GP.
  • Bio-Rex is a beer-drinking dinosaur racecar driver. Billy is a money-obsessed chimpanzee racecar driver.
• Nitro Boost:
  • "You got boost power!" This was changed from the SNES version, where the boost was a separate item. You got one at the start of every lap after the first, but you could only store 3 at a time. On the other hand, the item boost effect lasted for about 5 seconds per boost, instead of the "however long you hold the boost button" that happens with the Cast from HP version.
  • Climax introduced the Boost Fire technique, inspired by the technique seen in the GP Legend anime. By using a Boost during a Boost, you will activate Boost Fire (Black Fire for villain characters), where the aura around your machine turns orange/black and the speed boost and duration of your Boost is increased. A Boost Fire can only be performed when you have a Booster stock, which is earned once per lap like the Boost in the original game and in Maximum Velocity. This game also introduced the ability to use your Boost while using a Spin Attack, also like the Boost Fire from the anime, and you can combine that with a Boost Fire as well.
• No Fair Cheating: Taking a huge shortcut in F-Zero causes a UFO to pop up and drag you back to an earlier part of the course. Taking such a shortcut in GX simply blows your machine up.
• No One Could Survive That!: In the GP mode of later games, CPU racers whose machine got wrecked always come back in the next race. This is despite the fact that machines explode when they lose all of their health/fall off of the track.
• Non-Action Guy: John Tanaka. He's a mechanic, not a fighter.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Only in non-GP modes if retiring is disabled.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The great accident in GX is mentioned in a number of character profiles and apparently has a role in Blood Falcon's creation, but is never explained in any more detail.
  • There's mention of a previous racing tournament, F-Max. All we know is that The Skull was its greatest driver.
• Offscreen Teleportation: Happens a lot in the original F-Zero, courtesy of the Rubber-Band A.I..
• Old Maid: Jody Summer and Kate Alen. As of GX, they are respectively 25 and 30; both are single. In contrast, the 27-year-old Mrs. Arrow is Happily Married. That said, the game's Western-inspired theme doesn't make a big deal of their status as bachelorettes.
• Ominous Fog: The Mist Flow tracks in GP Legend and Climax are raced under heavy fog, drastically reducing your line of sight and making corner entrances much more difficult.
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Two machines share the word "Wild": The Wild Goose (Pico's) and the Wild Boar (Michael Chain's). Unlike the King/Queen Meteor and the Mighty Typhoon/Hurricane, those two have no relation each other.
  • Maximum Velocity features a vehicle called "The Stingray", which has no relation to Goroh's "Fire Stingray".
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Terry "Digi-Boy" Getter. Dr. Clash may also qualify if he doesn't fit into Cool Shades above.
• Parental Abandonment: The backstory of Leon. Leon's parents died in a planetary war and was adopted by a rebel soldier named Fable (according to GX).
• Playing Card Motifs: The name of the main playable cups in X are named after playing cards: Jack, Queen, King, and Joker. Additionally, the fourth added league from the Japanese Satellaview version of the original F-Zero has the fourth Grand Prix course, the Ace League, to follow this instead of the Chess Motifs that was established.
• Port Town: Trope Namer, although it's a space port, not a sea port.
• Professional Killer: Pico, a former mercenary, doubles as a hitman outside of the races.
• Psycho for Hire: Pico. Once a member of a special assassination unit and one of the bloodthristiest racers around. He still takes hits on the side and is shown to be a badass Cold Sniper in his clip from GX.
• Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Blood Falcon's profile in GX mentions that he is technically only four, but is a clone of the 37-year-old Captain Falcon.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Captain Falcon and his evil clone Blood Falcon. Not only do they fit the bill in terms of personality, but they wear blue and red, too.
• Revenge:
  • Antonio Guster's entire reason for being at F-Zero is to enact this upon Goroh, who majorly screwed him over during a heist gone bad.
  • Black Shadow is there to deal with Captain Falcon, whose heroic acts majorly screwed up their plans; in fact, one of Black Shadow's trusted confidants was imprisoned and later executed thanks to Falcon, and in X, Black Shadow's reason for entering is to "kill Captain Falcon in front of billions of viewers". Whether he actually filled this out on an official form is left to the imagination of the player.
• The Rival:
  • Samurai Goroh, to Captain Falcon. Falcon may or may not take it seriously.
  • Samurai Goroh himself has Antonio Guster, his former right-hand man.
  • Jody and Octoman, due to the former being scared of octopi.
  • This even uses a bit of Gameplay and Story Integration in regards to X. Usually, your rival starting in the second race and at least one of the other characters high up on the leaderboard will have strong ties to the pilot you're racing as (for example, Falcon almost always has to tangle with Black Shadow and Blood Falcon, with Samurai Goroh frequently in the mix as well). If you're playing as one of the three women (Jody, Kate, or Mrs. Arrow), however, your main rivals will most likely end up being... the other two female pilots.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: The CPU will always be on your tail, no matter how fast you drive.
• Scarf of Asskicking:
  • Both Captain and Blood Falcon have one.
  • So does James McCloud. Given his source inspiration, it was a no-brainer.
  • Subverted with Dr. Stewart, who wears a Scarf of Friendship to symbolize his special bonds.
  • Princia, Gomar, and Shioh do have scarves... but they're probably not ones of asskicking (in fact, Gomar and Shioh's scarves may be related to Stewart's).
• Scary Black Man: Michael Chain would appear to be this at first, but he's not that great at leading an intergalactic gang. Inverted with Black Shadow, who is a Scary Man in Black.
• Scenery Porn:
  • The original F-Zero might look vanilla by today's standards, but when it was released, it definitely qualified — the backgrounds were that big of a step up from 8-bit systems.
  • All the tracks in GX display a beautiful scenery and the game still runs at 60 FPS.
• Sequel Escalation: With each main sequel, the speed is bumped several notches. By the time of GX, it's reached ridiculous levels... and it's awesome.
• Shifting Sand Land: Sand Ocean. GX adds a Sand Worm, but it can't get to you.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Shioh values his shorter companion Gomar for his apt decision-making abilities. "Digi-Boy" is also rather short since he's just a kid.
• Shout-Out:
  • Many, most of the characters are "living" shout outs with recipients including Nintendo's EAD group (Mr. EAD), Star Fox (James McCloud), and Crazy Taxi (PJ). F-Zero X also has Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road as a track.
  • The Star Fox series from its original inception seemed to be more subtle shout out to F-Zero. The two most prominent characters were a golden fox and a blue falcon, anthropomorphized.
    • In one of the endings of Star Fox Command, Fox and Falco blatantly turn their Arwings into F-Zero racecars (it's called G-Zero in Command, but we all know what it's referring to).
• Shows Damage: In the original F-Zero and in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, your vehicle starts smoking and sparking when it has taken enough damage for its top speed to go down. In the original F-Zero, backmarkers that have taken enough damage to explode if your vehicle touches them flash pink. In F-Zero X and F-Zero GX, critically damaged vehicles flash red.
• Show Within a Show: F-Zero TV. It was mentioned in passing on billboards located in some of the courses in X, but was expanded into a prime time, post-race interview Talk Show in GX in order to flesh out and add more depth to the cast.
• Signature Team Transport: Every character has one, the most iconic being Captain Falcon's Blue Falcon.
• Single-Biome Planet: Most planets not named Earth.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The perpetually snowy White Land.
• Spin Attack:
  • One of the two basic combat abilities in the series introduced in X, next to the Side Attack. By using a Spin Attack, the vehicle rotates while moving, defending itself while smashing other machines in its path. Practicality varies by game; in X, it is Awesome, but Impractical since you sacrifice a lot of velocity to perform it, while in GX you lose temporary control of your vehicle, making it Difficult, but Awesome.
  • Taken to the max with "BOOSTO FAIYAA!", the awesomely awesome fusion of a boost and a spin👁 Image
    . Ryu then outdoes himself again with a full-powered Boost Fire. Words fail us.👁 Image
    This technique was later made playable in Climax, where you can in fact Boost while Spin Attacking just like in the anime.
• The Stoic: Captain Falcon (among several others), although he somehow also manages to be a Large Ham (also among several others) in GX at the same time.
• Stone Wall: Some machines may be heavy, but a top speed that doesn't go above average at best, though their acceleration and boost may vary.
• Stout Strength:
  • Though he's depicted as blatantly overweight in the first game, Samurai Goroh would slowly shift into being muscular with a large frame by GX, as his abs would become sharply defined.
  • Mr. EAD looks fat, but is an android and so doesn't have any fat in his mechanical body.
  • Draq is pudgy, but also has strong arms and legs, as he was a delivery guy driving heavy trucks before F-Zero racing.
  • Downplayed with Dr. Clash: he has defined biceps, but he needs Artificial Limbs to help him drive his machine.
  • Don Genie is very tall and fat, but has no trouble piloting his extremely heavy and fast machine.
• Stuff Blowing Up: If you lose your energy meter by crashing into a wall or running over a drain strip, your vehicle will explode in an overly dramatic fashion.
• Subsystem Damage: In the original F-Zero and in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, your vehicle's top speed drops significantly if you take enough damage. In this state, your vehicle starts smoking and sparking, an alarm sounds, and your Life Meter flashes. You need to get to the pit area quickly in this state in order to get repaired enough to get out of this state. In 99, this state also renders you vulnerable to getting blown up by any opponent Spin Attacking or Boosting into your machine, killing you instantly.
• Team Pet: The Arrows get one in the form of Speed Bird, a robotic bird that was presented to Super Arrow by one of his sponsors.
• Token Minority: Played with. We have several species of aliens with only one member representing them (i.e. Pico, Octoman, Draq, Leon, PJ, etc.; both Gomar & Shioh and Dai San Gen are exceptions, but this is justified), cyborgs, robots, androids, and genetically-enhanced animals. Most of the humans are presumably Caucasian, but Goroh is Japanese-American (therefore meaning that his son Dai Goroh is also mixed), Baba and Kate appears to be of African descent, Michael Chain and Alexander O'Neil (of Maximum Velocity) are black, Nichi (also from Maximum Velocity) is a Magical Native American, and characters like John Tanaka and Kumiko (again from Maximum Velocity) have names indicative of Asian ancestry.
• Twin Telepathy: The ultimate Fragile Speedster is a pair of linked aliens who say "Two drivers are better than one!". The same applies to Dai San Gen, a trio of telepathic siblings.
• Underwear of Power: Most of the female racers, and a few of the men.
• Unending End Card: F-Zero X hangs on a screen of two identical scantily-clad women with their backs turned looking and waving their hands at the player, with text saying "SEE YOU AGAIN!!" between them in the center.
• Vehicular Combat: Destroying other vehicles through ramming is as legitimate a victory strategy as beating them to the finish line.
• Violence Is the Only Option: There are some missions where you must disable a target vehicle with spin attacks and high-speed ramming maneuvers.
• Wacky Racing: Fairly tame from the racers themselves, as actions unrelated to course progression are rather limited. Most of the wackiness comes from the courses themselves, ranging from ramps to pools of lava right on the track.
• We Are as Mayflies: Several of the alien racers (i.e. Pico, Octoman, Draq, Gomar & Shioh) have a life expectancy exceeding that of their human contemporaries. For example, Dai San Gen look like children, but are 64 and their species has an average lifespan of 200 years.
• Wearing a Flag on Your Head: Samurai Goroh and his son Dai Goroh wear a flag very reminiscent of the Japanese Rising Sun on their heads.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Mighty Gazelle after the Big Accident. According to the backstory, this happened to Deathborn on three occasions.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future: In the comic that came in the original F-Zero manual, Falcon states a bounty is worth 500,000 "Galactic Credits." However, in one of GX's story mode cutscenes, the currency seems to be "space credits," and the prize for winning an expert class grand prix is one billion space credits.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Jody doesn't even seem to be fazed by the fact that Black Shadow tried to kill her by stranding her in an exploding complex. Yet, she cannot stand octopi. Naturally, Jody doesn't take a shine to Octoman, who in turn believes that she should really just get over it.
• A Winner Is You: Beating any league on Master Class in the first game nets you a overhead view of your racer driving through Silence, White land 2, or Fire Field depending on the league with a text scroll, which gives you a commendation as a masterful F-Zero racer and then bids you goodbye.
• A Wizard Did It: The Skull's backstory states that he was revived by black magic. Moreover, his race car has no turning system; he turns it by using his magic. Regarding GX specifically, it may be notable that said vehicle (the Sonic Phantom) has only one engine, but when it's running it has two exhaust plumes. Also, The Skull himself moves like a marionette, as if something else is animating his corpse. Came Back Wrong, anyone?
• World of Badass: When you can go toe-to-toe with names such as Captain Falcon and Black Shadow without batting so much as an eye, you qualify for the mantle of badassery. Hell, even Mr. Zero, your run-of-the-mill commentator, is seen as a badass simply for having the guts to interview many of the evil/creepy characters in the series. It is should be noted that few characters have superpowers; i.e. a World of Badass Normal.
• World of Buxom: The only girls with flat chests (and justifiably so) are the 14-year-old Lily Flyer and 60+-but-looks-like-a-child San.
• World of Silence: Silence, a planet with no life, thus nothing to produce any noise (except the F-Zero races, obviously).
• Wolverine Publicity: Falcon, Stewart, Goroh, and Pico—the original four F-Zero pilots—will always be unlocked from the start of each game they're in. Promotional art and renders for GX heavily featured all four racers (especially on the box art), as well as Black Shadow and Blood Falcon. The Story Mode also put a moderate amount of focus on Jody Summer (one of the only other racers available from the beginning of X). AX placed the spotlight on the new racers, especially Princia Ramode, Lily Flyer, and Phoenix. In SSB, Falcon, Goroh, Stewart, and Jody all receive Trophies in Melee (as well as a Trophy showcasing the vehicles of all 30 racers from X), while Falcon, Goroh, Stewart, Pico, Jody, Mr. EAD, The Skull, Blood Falcon, Black Shadow, and Zoda receive Trophies in Brawl. The fourth game again features the original four (plus their machines in the 3DS version), Jody, Mr. EAD, Zoda, The Skull, Blood Falcon, and Black Shadow as Trophies, along with James McCloud and Deathborn.
• Writer's Block: In an interview touching on the F-Zero-like aspects of Mario Kart 8, Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted to this being the reason there hasn't been any new game since 2004, as he wasn't sure what new element(s) to add to make it worth bringing the series back.
• Younger Than They Look:
  • Blood Falcon is technically only 4, but only because he's a clone.
  • Pico is an odd mix of this and Older Than They Look: Pico's 124, but is only an adolescent by his planet's standards.
  • "Digi-Boy" is 8, but he's taller and looks more mature than the 10 year old Dai Goroh.
  • Princia Ramode is 16, but she looks like she's in her early twenties.