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Let's Duel!

"I made a wish on that puzzle... for friends I could count on... friends who could count on me! No matter what!"

IT'S TIME TO D-D-D-D—D-D-D-D-D-D-DESCRIBE!

One of the tentpoles of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (or simply, Yu-Gi-Oh! outside of Japan) is the second anime adaptation of the manga series by Kazuki Takahashi. Adapting the manga's story from volume 8 onwards, the series was produced by NAS and animated by Studio Gallop, airing from 2000 to 2004 for 224 episodes.

In addition to disambiguating itself from the previous anime series produced by Toei Animation (nicknamed "Season Zero" by some fans), the "Duel Monsters" subtitle was also used to demonstrate the elevated prominence of the card game.note  The series is sponsored by Konami as a successful attempt to retain the license to the card game, stripping it away from Bandai, which failed to capitalize on the manga's card game with Toei's adaptation.

In addition to spawning a metaseries of anime spinoffs, Duel Monsters also inspired the anime-exclusive Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie: Pyramid of Light and Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bonds Beyond Time films. The third movie, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, was written to take place six months after the manga continuity and was the first anime adaptation with direct involvement from Takahashi.

Duel Monsters in particular is responsible for the creation of The Abridged Series genre of internet videos, with the very first one, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series being created as a parody of 4Kids Entertainment's English adaptation.

The dub is available on Hulu, the official Yu-Gi-Oh website, and is now starting to appear on Netflix while the subtitled version is available on Crunchyroll.

It's time to trope!:

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    #–D 
  • 10-Minute Retirement: In the wake of his defeat to Kaiba towards the end of the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yugi suffers a Heroic BSoD and vows never to duel again, saying he is afraid of the way Dark Yugi was prepared to win the duel even if Kaiba was killed as a result. He snaps out of it by the end of the following episode, though the dub has him take longer to recover, only snapping out of it during the duel with Mai.
  • Abandoned Warehouse: Bandit Keith duels Yugi in an abandoned warehouse that has its own Duel Monsters arena.
  • Aborted Arc: Beginning in Season 2 of the anime, the stone tablet that continues to be a plot point for the rest of the series shows Kaiba and Yugi dueling in ancient Egypt. Ishizu shows Kaiba a vision of the battle. Later, in Season 3 another vision of this battle is shown, but it's completely different from the vision showed before. The battle is seen first-hand in Season 5, and is rather underplayed given the amount of foreshadowing and importance given to it before. Furthermore, though they differ greatly, both visions show Kaiba is quite clearly the Pharaoh's enemy, but in Season 5 he's mostly loyal and the only reason the battle occurs is because he gets possessed. This is attributed to Kazuki Takahashi never getting to flesh out the story with Seto and Kisara the way he wanted. Seto rebelling against the Pharaoh on his own was intended to be a larger plot point that didn't end up happening, so he ended up brainwashed. It can be excused by the fact that the season 5 arc ended up being an RPG and the betrayal did occur in the real past.
  • Absurdly High-Stakes Game: Shadow Games plus Duel Monsters means the world is frequently at stake. Also, the Doma arc has the characters losing their soul if they lose while the Seal of Orichalcos is in play, meaning the loser is left with an empty shell of a body.
  • Abusive Parents: Gozaburo Kaiba, and Marik and Ishizu's father. Aknadin also becomes this once Zorc's corruption sets in.
  • Accent Adaptation: In the 4Kids dub, Joey was given a Brooklyn accent to represent his plain speech patterns in the original. Bakura was given a British accent to reflect his politeness.
  • Accents Aren't Hereditary: Zigfried has a noticeable accent, but his younger brother Leon, doesn't.
  • Acting Unnatural: Since Tristan and Téa are stowaways on the ship to Duelist Kingdom, and Joey isn't really supposed to be there either, Tristan advises everyone to "act casual" going past the guards... and then marches past looking ridiculously uncomfortable and suspicious.
  • Actionized Adaptation: Zig-zagged. The manga had many action sequences that were removed from its anime adaptations, but the anime has more action during original arcs as well as in several sequences adapted from manga chapters to fill out an episode's runtime, such as a scene where Tristan and Duke nearly fall off a blimp and have to be rescued.
  • Adaptational Context Change:
    • Pegasus has a painting of a mysterious egyptian man with Ankh around his neck. When the characters see it in the manga they react with shock: it's Shadi, the owner of a millenium item who challenged Yugi to a deadly Shadow Game. This arc was never adapted for the anime, so here they instead speculate on who it could be.
    • The scene where Mai asks Joey if she was in the dream where his friends helped him wake up from his brief coma is retained almost word for word from the manga, with Joey awkwardly telling her that she wasn't. He tries to play it off as a joke by pointing out that they were in a classroom and she is too old to be there, which only ends up hurting her feelings. There is one crucial difference in the anime though: this time Mai really was in the dream and Joey is just too embarrassed to admit it. This was likely changed to ramp up the Ship Tease. Later, Joey admitting the truth snaps her out of her Laser-Guided Amnesia (again, this was added to the anime).
    • In both manga and anime, Marik's penalty game for Mai involves being transported to a beach while trapped in an hourglass. In the manga, this is because the beach is actually her soul room, a concept fully explored in earlier volumes of the manga (aspects of Mai's psyche can be seen floating in the background). In the anime, the beach is instead part of the punishment, with Mai being Forced to Watch illusions of her friends having a beach party without her.
  • Adaptation Amalgamation: Many of the video games take elements from the manga and the anime and blend them together, ranging from eye and hair colors to characters and plot points.
  • Adaptation Dye-Job: The Blue-Eyes White Dragon is more blue than white, and the Dark Magician went from green skin and blond hair to fair skin, and purple hair. In addition, the dub changed the borders on Flame Swordsman, Giltia the D. Knight and Labyrinth Tank to the purple border of Fusion Monsters and changed several Quick-Play Spell Cards such as Negate Attack, Skull Dice and Interdimensional Matter Transporter to Trap Cards which is what they were in the real card game.
  • Adaptation Expansion:
    • The Big 5. In the manga they are just faceless goons in the shadows who cooperate with Pegasus, but in the anime each is given a name and a clear personality, primarily during the Virtual World arc.
    • Pandora/Arkana's lover is expanded on; in the manga she was never named and was a secondary reason for him joining Marik (the first was grief over the death of his mother). In the anime she's given the name Cadeline/Catherine, and his reason for joining Marik revolves around trying to win her back.
    • The official championship battle of Duelist Kingdom, Yugi vs. Joey, doesn't happen in the manga. Yugi says that the point of the tournament to him is beating Pegasus and dueling Joey/Jounouchi in front of him would unnecessarily expose more of his tactics; Pegasus agrees that the duel would be pointless and instead the duel between Yugi and Pegasus proceeds. The anime, of course, has Yugi and Joey duel first.
    • The Dungeon Dice Monsters arc was turned into three unrelated stories, though not adding to the original depiction in any meaningful way. In the manga, a big chunk of Otogi's/Duke's motivation came from his dad (the actual Big Bad of the arc) being an old rival of Yugi's grandpa, which Rebecca took over in the anime. Meanwhile, the whole "Yugi almost dies in a fire" plotline that concluded the arc got shoved into the Yugi vs. Marik/Bandit Keith duel that kicked off the anime version of Battle City. And last, but not least, the anime did its own version of DDM, which featured a completely different take on Otogi/Duke, the only parts that remotely resemble each other being some parts of his DDM battle with Yami Yugi (which, in the manga, was a battle with the normal Yugi). His dad also did not appear in the anime.note 
    • Serenity/Shizuka's character is slightly expanded, as she gets to duel in the Virtual World using a female monster-deck. Her adoration of Jonouchi/Joey and friendship with Mai is given more focus as a result.
    • Bakura's Battle City duel with "Ghost" Kotsuzuka/Bonz, which lasts one page in the manga, is given its own episode in the anime.
    • The Memory World arc expanded Seto and Kisara's role, having them meet as children in backstory. Kisara was also made more assertive, Bakura and Mahad's duel was elaborated on, and Anzu/Téa and Honda/Tristan were able to contribute to the final battle.
  • Adaptation Explanation Extrication:
    • Dark Yugi stops giving his Penalty Games after Duelist Kingdom for no explanation in the anime. In the manga he stops doing this when Pegasus says the items have an evil intelligence, as he does not want to be evil, whereas in the anime he plays a Shadow Game with Shadi right after defeating Pegasus.
    • The Black Clown's clown theme and Otogi/Duke's partial clown make-up makes more sense in the manga, as his father was cursed to have a clown face.
    • Pegasus somehow finds out about Kaiba's defeat at the hands of Yugi during the first episode, in which the only witnesses to the duel are Joey/Jonouchi and Mokuba. It makes more sense in the manga, where there is an entire audience of Kaiba fanboys overlooking its equivalent to the first episode match during the Death-T arc.
    • A minor one from the first episode. In the manga, Kaiba tries to recreate a penalty game Yugi previously subjected him to by making holograms act as if they're attacking Yugi's grandpa following their duel, causing the old man to have a cardiac episode. In the anime the first encounter with Kaiba never happened and he doesn't subsequently doesn't try to deal his own penalty games, but Yugi's grandpa is still found on the ground in need of hospitalization following his duel. No new explanation for why is given.
    • Espa Roba’s posing and pretending to have psychic power can seem unnecessary in the anime, since he’s wearing a headset and could just cheat without making a spectacle of it. In the manga the poses are so that he’ll have an excuse to listen in on the communication device on his wrist.
    • Saruwatari/Kemo is one of Pegasus’s henchmen, but is recognized by Kaiba and is seen working for Gozaburo in flashbacks. This is never elaborated on. In the manga he was Mokuba’s bodyguard during the Death-T arc and later reveals that he was The Mole for Pegasus all along.
  • Adaptation Induced Plothole:
    • The Millennium Items were given powers in Duelist Kingdom that defy the rule of playing games to punish people, such as the Ring being able to summon monsters into reality and the Eye trapping Mokuba's soul without the need for a game. Not only does it make what Pegasus, Yugi, or any Millennium Item wielders do seem pointless if they could bypass it easily, but from Battle City onward, the Items work the way they do in the manga, which is contradictory to how they work in Duelist Kingdom.
    • Jonouchi/Joey discovering Mai's perfume trick makes less sense in the anime. In the manga, they were sitting relatively close to each other, so it would make sense for Jonouchi to pick up on the scents. In the anime, there's quite a distance between them, not to mention that they're outside, so it should be impossible for Jonouchi to smell the perfume.
    • In the manga, Kaiba's dueling rings were exclusive to himself and his company, and Pegasus was only able to produce the smaller Battle Boxes, creating a need for him to want Kaiba's technology to make a lifelike, real-size copy of his wife. In the anime, Pegasus's dueling rings were nearly identical to Kaiba's, making one wonder why he needed Kaiba's technology if he already had an equivalent. The dub fixes this by having him need both the technology and the Millennium Items to bring his wife back to life, which he could only get through beating Yugi and acquiring KaibaCorp.
    • In the manga Dark Yugi used Mind Rape on anybody who cheated or appeared to screw with his friends, which continued in the manga until the end of Duelist Kingdom where he decided to stop, as Pegasus warned him that every Millennium Item was influenced by evil. In the anime, he used a Mind Crush penalty that stopped being used with no explanation.
    • Due to the anime overtaking the manga, Kaiba's reason for holding Battle City—wanting to surpass his stepfather—becomes a plot hole since he already defeated Gozaburo in the Virtual World and got closure.
  • Adaptation Personality Change: Otogi/Duke goes from a serious, somewhat sympathetic character in the manga to a jerkish villain in the anime before mellowing out. He eventually becomes stuck in a comedic love triangle, competing with Tristan for Serenity's affections.
  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
    • In the manga, Yugi's grandpa's soul wasn't really kidnapped by Pegasus; his soul was instead sealed inside a video tape, and Yugi could talk with him through a camcorder whenever he liked. The anime makes it a straight case of Your Soul Is Mine!, and anime Yugi is appropriately angstier about the whole affair.
    • Yugi's guilt and fear over almost killing Kaiba is played up more in the anime, especially in the dub where it continues into his duel with Mai.
    • Marik keeps his Mind Control over Anzu/Téa for the entire pier duel in the manga and she spends most of it off-panel. In the anime he releases his control over her and she is Forced to Watch as Yugi and Jounouchi/Joey duel to the death.
  • Adaptational Modesty: During quite a few scenes characters wear additional layers of clothing compared to the manga. For example, both Yugi and Mai continue to wear their jackets during the Duelist Kingdom finals. In the manga, Yugi just wore a sleeveless shirt while Mai had nothing but a very revealing corset.
  • Adaptational Wimp: Jonouchi/Joey in the anime. In the original manga, when Bandit Keith steals his entry card during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Jonouchi beats him up, claiming that while Keith may be good at card games, he's the best at fighting. In the anime, Keith just catches his punches and blows him off. Joey also had more anime-exclusive losses, usually to a main villain that Yugi or Kaiba had to beat.
  • Aerith and Bob: 4Kids gave new names to only some of the characters, resulting in completely typical sounding names like Joey for Jonouchi, Tristan for Honda, and Duke for Otogi appearing alongside characters like Yugi, Seto, Mokuba, and Bakura.
  • Aloof Big Brother: Seto Kaiba to his brother Mokuba, as a result of having to shoulder an enormous amount of responsibility for Mokuba since they were both orphans. Notably, Mokuba is consistently animated and peppy, whereas Seto is always serious.
  • Alternative Foreign Theme Song: As with all the anime that 4Kids dubs, the English opening is different from the Japanese opening. You can listen to it here.
  • Amulet of Concentrated Awesome: Yugi's Millennium Puzzle, given that it has the soul of a 3000-year-old Pharaoh in it (5000 in the dub) and tends to be generally badass when it takes over Yugi's body. Most of the Millennium Items in general fit this trope.
  • Ancient Egypt: A large chunk of the characters and artifacts come from this time period. It is also the backdrop of the final Shadow Game.
  • Angel Face, Demon Face: The differences between Yugi, Bakura, and Marik's normal appearances and when their Dark sides take over. Though, Yami Yugi isn't the most demonic per se, and normal Marik isn't the most angelic.
  • Animation Bump: As a general rule of thumb, the more important episodes are animated with an art style which is superior to that seen during other episodes. The opening/closing sequences are also animated using a cleaner animation style.
    • All episodes directed by Takahiro Kagami are this, because he's just that good - in fact, it's really saying something when all of the other directors are inferior to him in one way or another, whether it be the art style, the animation or character expressions.
  • Anime Hair: Yugi is a particularly egregious example. All the supporting characters except for Téa/Anzu tend to be trying to outdo each other in outlandish hairstyles, as well.
  • Arc Words:
    • "Something that you can see, but something that can't be seen" gets repeated quite a lot, at least early on. Originally it referred to the Millenium Puzzle, but it's used to refer to many different things by altering the way the line is interpreted.
    • "Heart of the Cards" is played with in terms of pure luck or Screw Destiny. Or maybe both. Believing in it can almost guaruntee a much needed card.
  • Artifact of Doom: Millennium Items tend to give their owners awesome Psychic Powers of some sort. However, more often than not, they will also harbor or lead to the development of their owners' Superpowered Evil Sides, or at least contribute to their Face-Heel Turning.
  • Artifact Title: "Yu-Gi-Oh" means "Game King." The anime rarely featured other games besides Duel Monsters, and non-DM games generally had Duel Monsters inserted anyway.
  • Artistic License – History: Beyond the parts that never would have been accurate to begin with, other Anachronism Stew mistakes crop up, such as people using what seem to be steel or iron swords during what should have been the Bronze Age. Doubly the case for the dubbed version, which changes "3000" to "5000": Five thousand years ago—3000 BCE—would have been before the pyramids were built, and horses weren't introduced to Egypt until around 1700-1550 BCE.
  • Art Shift: Once Yami Yugi defeats Kaiba and performs a mind crush on him, his face becomes less angular and his eyes gain pupils.
  • Ascended Extra: The Big 5, Gozaburo Kaiba, Johnny Steps, and Professor Hawkins were all minor characters in the manga but were given expanded roles in the anime.
  • Ascended Meme: The nicodouga phenomena relating to the "Enemy Controller" scenes from the Virtual Arc is referenced in a minigame on the Duel Terminal arcade game.
  • Asshole Victim: Bandit Keith, Marik's father, and Weevil in the "Waking the Dragons" arc among others.
  • Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: A few of the minor characters.
    • Weevil Underwood, whose bowl-cut hair is described as looking like a blue beetle, and his glasses have a beetle motif to them. He uses an insect-themed deck.
    • The pale and sickly-looking Bonz uses an all-zombie deck.
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: One of the reasons Joey is seen as wildly incompetent and lost so many duels prior to their adventure is that he only ever used monster cards - it takes getting coached by Yugi for him to snap out of this and use actual tactics.
  • Attempted Rape: In a flashback, Téa is lured into a gym hall where a creepy gym teacher with a camera was waiting to blackmail her for going to work at Burger World against school rules. Yugi arrives on time and Yami Yugi emerges to play a "draw the stronger Duel Monster" Shadow Game and gives the pervert a "Mind Crush" Penalty Game. In the dub, the camera and shots of Téa's thighs were edited out, and she's assaulted by a mugger instead.
  • A Villain Named "Z__rg": Zorc Necrophades.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Pretty much every character's deck only works because of The Magic Poker Equation and the fact that the writers can let them get whatever cards they need.
  • Ax-Crazy: Yami Marik and Yami Bakura (the latter is more Wicked Cultured in the dub, but still has shades of this). Even our hero Yami Yugi can become Ax-Crazy if you push the right buttons.
  • Badass Adorable: Yugi, mostly because the anime puts more emphasis on his youthful looks, compared to Atem.
  • Badass Boast: One of the more outstanding ones is during the Memory World RPG which is delivered to ZorcBakura by Atem.
    Atem: What you seem to forget Bakura is that this is a game. And you face The King of Games.
  • Badass Normal:
    • Yugi — the normal one, not the Pharaoh one — manages to take out all three God Cards in one turn against Atem.
    • Joey, as well, who's the most normal of the main duelists.
  • Bait-and-Switch Credits: The final opening for the Millennium World arc is more faithful to the manga than the anime, lacking the diadhanks that the priests had in the anime but didn't have in the manga.
  • Beam of Enlightenment: Any time one of the characters has a sudden revelation. Mostly when Yami Yugi figures out how to beat his opponents. It happens when Yugi collapses during his second duel with Pegasus. Yugi's friends can sense it, despite his isolation in the Shadow Game.
  • Beast in the Maze: The three-part duel with the Paradox Brothers is all about this.
  • Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Serenity, Téa, and Mai.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness:
    • The heroes' ace monsters are drop dead gorgeous, even the Blue-Eyes White Dragon looks noble and majestic. Meanwhile, the villains use monsters that wouldn't look out of place in horror movies.
    • Bakura and Marik are both good-looking, but when their Superpowered Evil Sides take over, they look significantly rougher and are prone to making terrifying faces.
  • Begin with a Finisher: Ryuzaki and Haga bring out their two best cards, Insect Queen and Black Tyranno, on their first turns. They then get outdone at their jobs by Siegfried von Schroeder, who wins the game on the following turn.
  • Belly Dancer: In episode 201, Yami Yugi or Pharaoh Atem, finally time travels back in time to Ancient Egypt just in time for the coronation ceremony of the new Pharaoh. Once the festivities begin in celebration of the new ruler, a couple of dancers, entertainers and musicians are brought out for the party.
  • Between My Legs: This shot is how Rebecca is introduced in her first appearance.
  • Beware the Nice Ones:
    • Bakura is a very sweet, shy, quiet, polite guy with a Superpowered Evil Side that he's only vaguely aware exists.
    • Yugi, later on in the series, shows that he has the ability to kick ass even without his Other Personality, at times.
  • Big Bad: Pegasus, The Big Five, Noah and Gozaburo Kaiba, Marik and Yami Marik, Dartz, Zigfried von Schroeder, and Zorc/Yami Bakura. Subject to the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Seems to happen a lot. Notable because oftentimes the mere presence of the friends of whoever is dueling gives them the strength to win, or at least continue playing into the next episode.
  • Big "SHUT UP!": Pegasus tells Yami Bakura to shut up after the latter reads his past like an open book through Duel Monster cards used as Tarot cards.
  • Bilingual Bonus:
    • Played straight with the Egyptian text. Atem's name is written as "Atemu" and the carvings on Odion's face and Marik's back are genuine hieroglyphs. The author knew what he was doing.
    • The Enochian text on the Orichalcos cards. The card title spells "Orichalcon" and the rim of the seal spells "Oreichalcos" twice, the card text itself seems to be flavor text in transliterated Japanese.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing:
    • The spirit of the Millennium Ring. He uses the innocent Bakura as his "sheep's clothing". One can almost never be sure who is in control, as one second Bakura is smiling innocently, and the next second when the others have turned their backs the spirit smirks.
    • Marik. When he personally meets up with Yugi's friends for the first time, he pretends to have just found Bakura injured. He actually does this to gain their trust. He introduces himself to them as "Namu", acting as a humble beginner who is participating in the Battle City Tournament. Right afterwards Marik's minions attack and Téa and Joey get kidnapped, then brainwashed. He keeps up the innocent act later, too, claiming to having gotten into the finals only because of dumb luck, even as Joey grows suspicious of him.
  • Black Box: The IC chips inside the cards are described as this in the Pyramid of Light novelization.
  • Black Cloak: Marik Ishtar and the other Rare Hunters are garbed like this when they are first introduced.
  • Black Magician Girl: Trope Namer due to the "Dark Magician Girl" card, which is actually named "Black Magician Girl" in the original anime.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation:
    • The card known in Japanese as "Shisha Sosei", literally "Raise Dead", is called "Reborn the Monster" early in the English dub. It's later changed to "Monster Reborn", which makes more sense.
    • ODEX dub is an incompetent mess, one notable example is when Yami Yugi calls two unrelated cards "Gaia the Fierce Knight", and "Saggi the Dark Clown", "the Dark Magician" in the first episode for some reason. "Gaia the Fierce Knight" misnaming is especially weird because Yami Yugi calls the card its actual name before getting it wrong the second time.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Mai is a blond, Téa is a brunette and Serenity is a redhead.
  • Body Surf: Marik causes much grief to the protagonists by doing this during the Battle City arc.
  • Bookends: Yugi's winning card in the last duel of the series is Golden Sarcophagus; it's pointed out that the card looks just like the box the Millennium Puzzle was in, and that the box that brought Yugi and the pharaoh together would be the very thing to bring them apart.
  • Bowdlerise:
    • Many scenes from the manga were toned down:
      • The anime elects to not adapt the first seven volumes of the manga to focus on the card game. This means no Dark Yugi challenging bullies/criminals to Shadow Games and inflicting Penalty Games, disregarding Kaiba's death-themed amusement park, and changing Dark Yugi's Penalty Games into Mind Crushes, among other things.
      • A lot of monster deaths are less graphic; while the manga would show them killing each other rather violently, the anime for the most part has monsters shattering upon defeat.
      • Kaiba attacking Croquet, taking him hostage and threatening to break his neck with a briefcase◊ is omitted, and he just has a brief fight with Kemo.
      • Pandora/Arkana’s buzzsaws actually give him a nasty cut before Yugi is able to free him in the manga, which is omitted in the anime. The implied Psychic-Assisted Suicide that Marik inflicts on him after Yugi escapes is also Adapted Out.
      • The duel between Yugi and Jonouchi/Joey on the pier has the same stakes in the anime, but Mokuba is no longer held at knife-point, possibly because Anime!Kaiba's slightly kinder personality means that Marik threatening Anzu/Tea alone is enough to keep him from interfering. Speaking of which - while the manga has Anzu brainwashed to hold a Cyanide Pill between her teeth, the anime changes this to a less-imitable deathtrap where the Rare Hunters threaten to drop a shipping crate on her head.
      • Mai and Marik's manga duel is similar to the one he has with Jonouchi/Joey later, with the duelists experiencing the same damage as the monsters. This includes beheadings and slashed torsos. The anime replaces the violent illusions with psychological ones, with the duelists’ memories being erased. More specifically, “Viser Des” and “Viser Shock”, two monsters that Marik use to torture Mai, are replaced with the less violent “Holding Arms” and “Holding Legs” who simply restrain her. The hourglass from Mai’s Penalty Game also contains regular sand, rather than the flesh-eating bugs from the manga.
      • Marik's tomb keeper ritual and the death of his father is given the Shadow Discretion Shot-treatment, when they were both shown in all their bloody glory in the manga. Rishid/Odion being whipped by Malik’s father is also a step down from being slashed with a burning hot knife.
      • One of the guides who leads Sugoroku/Solomon into the Pharaoh's Tomb falls into a Bottomless Pit in the anime, rather than being impaled by Spikes of Doom like in the manga.
      • The manga introduces Thief King Bakura robbing the former Pharaoh’s tomb and then dragging the mummy into the throne room in front of the court. In the anime the mummy is still inside its sarcophagus, which is a lot easier on the eyes.
    • The english dub is infamous for it’s Bowdlerization, as the target audience was much younger than in Japan:
      • All fist fights are removed; sometimes punches are just edited so that they happen off-screen and sometimes they are removed entirely. The occasional slap from female characters are also edited out.
      • All guns are edited out. For the most part they’re just erased, making it look like characters are pointing threateningly. In the final season, the gun used by Solomon's guide is changed into a slingshot. Some cards that have weapons are also edited to look like futuristic Ray Guns, such as Barrel Dragon.
      • All references to sex or nudity are edited out, usually by editing cleavages and lengtening skirts on female character. Mai Valentine and Dark Magician Girl get hit particularly hard with this. Some monster cards that wear too little clothing — or, in some cases, nothing at all — are also covered up. Suggestive lines or perverted behaviour from characters are also changed, resulting in at least one outright removed scene where Tristan and Bakura originally had to climb up a rope blindfolded so they couldn't look up Téa's skirt.
      • All blood and gore are edited or removed and sometimes given questionable magical replacements. Most famously, this includes turning deadly situations into Shadow Games that takes the loser's soul, such as Arkana's buzzsaw becoming "Dark Energy Disks" and the skyscraper duel including a portal to the Shadow Realm. The whipping of Odion is similarly changed into implied Mind Rape. Some of the gorier monster deaths are also edited down, usually by adding glowy visual effects.
      • Never Say "Die" is in full effect. Minor characters who died in the original are instead mentioned to have survived off-screen, are "captured" or die in more ambiguous ways. The Shadow Realm, a vague concept that was sort-of present in the original version, is also used to "kill" people in a more non-permanent way. The closest the dub comes to featuring death is Yugi and Joey's pier duel where the loser still drowns, but the dialogue does its best to downplay this by not mentioning death or drowning.
      • Religious references are axed as well. Symbols like hexagrams are edited to look more generic and any appearance of tombstones makes sure to remove ones shaped like crosses. Dialogue that reference real-world religions and mythologies are also changed, like Noah drawing attention to his bible-themed deck and Arkana retelling the story of Pandora's Box.
      • A more subtle variation is the brainwashing of Joey. In the original, Marik brainwashes Joey to hate Yugi, and all his subsequent actions are done "voluntarily" with this new personality. The dub alters it to the usual Grand Theft Me where Marik is speaking through Joey's body. This was likely done to give Joey even less control of his actions and make him less scary, as having the already evil Marik taunt Yugi is a lot less upsetting than seeing Joey repeatedly express how much he wants to hurt Yugi. This may also be why possessed characters are given a Voice of the Legion and even more blatant Mind-Control Eyes in the dub.
  • Breakout Character: The Dark Magician Girl, being the Ms. Fanservice of the franchise, is far more popular than any other duel monster from the original series save for the iconic Blue-Eyes and Dark Magician. She's even playable in some of the video games.
  • Breather Episode:
    • A breather arc, actually. The relatively laid back KC Grand Prix story fits right in between the much more intense Waking the Dragons and Dawn of the Duel storylines.
    • The anime version of the Dungeon Dice Monsters story serves as this as well.
  • Broken Bird: Mai Valentine, whose past has made her an aloof, untrusting loner.
  • Broken Bridge: The only thing that keeps Marik from interfering in the events of Noah's arc is... a locked door. Although, he does manage to blow up Noah's control system.
  • Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Priest Seto and Kisara in Ancient Egypt, Yami Yugi and Téa in the main timeline.
  • But Now I Must Go: Atem has to pass on to the afterlife after he saves the world from the Shadow Games once and for all.
  • Calling Your Attacks: "BLACK MAGICIAN, BLACK MAGIC!" "COUNTERATTACK! BLUE-EYES WHITE DRAGON BURST STREAM OF DESTRUCTION!" and so on ad infinitum. Several of these attacks even have their own cards, which require their monster to be out. Mainly used for important monsters early on, with smaller ones just getting descriptions of what's happening.
  • Calvin Ball: Duel Monsters is closer to this in Duelist Kingdom, since the manga storylines and the related cards were closer to an RPG at the time, leading to Normal monsters having effects, being able to destroy your own spell cards, and field power bonuses affecting both sides.
  • Captured on Purpose: In the Legendary Heroes arc Mokuba switches clothes with Princess Adena to be captured in her stead so he can be taken to Seto and help him escape.
  • CCG Importance Dissonance: Countless examples, the most famous of which are the Dark Magician, Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon. Later releases have done more to keep them viable, but they're still fairly specialized decks.
  • Chained by Fashion:
    • Exodia has chains on his wrists and ankles.
    • Yugi later uses a chain necklace for his Millennium Puzzle.
  • Character Check: In the Waking the Dragons arc, Yami Yugi regresses to a more vengeful persona without Yugi around, much like the earlier manga, and tortures Weevil in a fit of rage until Téa convinces him to stop.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Kaiba can throw cards at someone with such force that it hurts like they're shuriken, Joey can break down a wall, etc. Each of them have almost no visible muscle.
  • Chastity Couple: Mai and Joey. Also Yugi and Téa, though the latter has a crush on the former's superpowered evil side.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In the Duelist Kingdom arc, Joey is seen trading for Sword and Shield, which he later uses against Bonz to pull off a win. He gets Kunai With Chain and Salamandra in the same trade, which he uses to defeat two troublesome monsters in the team duel with the Paradox Brothers, as well as Baby Dragon, which combined with the Time Wizard given to him by Yugi ends up finishing off Mai in his first duel with her.
    • Kuriboh makes a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in episode 5 to diffuse one of Weevil's traps, before Yugi brings it back in episode 24 to hold off Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon.
    • Another, ultra-delayed Chekhov's Gun comes from the first title sequence, where Yugi's shadow splits in two, representing his two sides. 220 episodes later, this happens when Yugi and Yami Yugi face each other in the ceremonial battle.
    • If the camera ever pays particular attention to the cards that players put in the graveyard when they have to discard cards for some reason, it's likely that at least one of those will have an effect that works in the graveyard, or that the player will otherwise get to use that card later on.
  • Cherry Tapping:
    • Yugi manages to stall off Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon with Kuriboh, one of the weakest monsters in the game.
  • Circle of Friendship: One is drawn on the main characters' hands in the first episode, and the symbol comes back into play several times later.
  • Clip Show: Episode 74, "The Rescue," is almost entirely a clip show of everything up to that point. Episode 144, "Looking Back and Moving Ahead", is another one.
  • Cock Fight: Tristan and Duke, over Serenity.
  • Collectible Card Game: Duel Monsters, which the entire series is centered around.
  • Conspicuous Consumption: Zigfried has a fancy castle, an army of maids, private jets, and swimming pools filled with fresh milk... to hide the fact that his life of luxury is in jeopardy since SchroederCorp is going broke.
  • Cooking Duel: Figuratively speaking. The series often stakes the lives of its characters, or even the fate of the world, on a game of Duel Monsters. While normal games often do have over-inflated stakes, the reality is that Duel Monsters is so much more than a children's card game...
  • Cool Big Sis: Mai plays this role to both Téa and (especially) Serenity.
  • The Corruption: Multiple instances with various characters. Some of the Millennium Items have an element of evil in them. The entire Doma arc works on this, with the Orichalcos stones being the catalyst.
  • Cosmic Chess Game: Season 5 has a Cosmic Role-Playing Game between Yami Yugi and Yami Bakura.
  • The Cracker: In an early episode, Seto Kaiba goes through a Batman-esque security system to reach a sentient computer, which he uses to hack into Pegasus's computer system to mess with a duel.
  • Crazy Consumption: Yami Bakura and his steak. Cut from the dub.
  • Creepy Gym Coach: In the anime's (very loose) adaptation of the Burger World chapter, Anzu is blackmailed and filmed by a perverted gym teacher.
  • Crush the Keepsake: Two different bad guys destroyed precious cards from Yugi to prevent him from using it and also just for the sake of being awful persons. The first is Kaiba who ripped Yugi's grandfather's Blue Eyed White Dragon so he would be the only one to have copies of this powerful rare card. So second is Weevil Underwood who threw overboard the even more rare and powerful Exodia the Forbidden One cards before the beginning of a tournament.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Several examples throughout the series, mostly involving a character getting extremely lucky early-game draws, thus being able to wipe out their opponent very quickly, or their opponent being hilariously inept.
    • Getting the five parts of Exodia the Forbbiden One is this. In fact, summoning Exodia is practically an insta-win.
    • Also, the first Yami Yugi/Kaiba VS Rare Hunters battle. Kaiba summons Lord of Dragons and special-summons all three Blue Eyes and a spare dragon in just the first move. He summons Obelisk on Round Two, sacrifices his other remaining monsters to activate Obelisk's Total Party Kill special ability to defeat both opposing players.
  • Dancing Royalty: One episode features Yugi and Anzu going to an arcade, and Anzu's turn on a DDR-esque machine stuns Yugi and eventually gathers crowds of stunned gamers. Since Anzu took dance lessons, it isn't surprising that she's so good.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • In the manga, Yugi's grandpa wasn't really kidnapped by Pegasus; his soul was instead sealed inside a video tape, and Yugi could talk with him through a camcorder whenever he liked. The anime makes it a straight case of Your Soul Is Mine!, and anime!Yugi is appropriately angstier about the whole affair.
    • While the manga makes it clear that receiving the Millennium Eye was not pleasant for Pegasus, the actual insertion was done off-panel. The anime, on the other hand, lets the audience see every second of Shadi painfully jamming it in the poor guy's eye socket.
  • The Dark Side: Many characters in Yu-Gi-Oh! fall into some Dark Side's trap, usually by trying to use an Artifact of Doom. Dark Yugi is not immune to this effect.
  • Dead Man Writing: Subverted with Pegasus in the Doma filler saga. He isn't dead, merely comatose due to his soul being removed.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    • Later in the 4Kids dub, Bakura is quite good at this.
    • Kaiba is another.
      Gozaburo: I treated you better than my own son!
      Seto: Thanks for nothing.
    • And again:
      Seto: Anyone who's late to my tournament will automatically be disqualified. Mokuba, make sure Wheeler's late.
    • From the Waking The Dragons arc:
    Kaiba: So you have a dweeb army. Am I supposed to be scared to attack?
    Dartz: Well, only if destroying an innocent soul concerns you.
    Kaiba: Nah. As the president of a major corporation, I have to do that every day.
  • Death by Childbirth: Marik's mother dies giving birth to him.
  • Debt Detester: Kaiba claims that Téa helping Mokuba escape from the Rare Hunters is the only reason he's helping Yugi find his friends. Then he uses it as his reason for saving Téa's life. Considering all the times he makes a point of explaining how he's only "helping" the gang out of selfish reasons, it's pretty clear that it's a shield for his Hidden Heart of Gold.
  • Defeated and Trophified: Pegasus seals the souls of those he defeats in cards as well as other objects.
  • Defeating the Cheating Opponent:
    • During the climactic duel of the Duelist Kingdom arc, Pegasus uses his Millennium Eye to read Yugi's mind and see what cards he uses. However, Yugi and Atem counter this ability by keeping their plans secret from each other and then swapping out before Pegasus can read their minds. It's played with in that Yugi and Atem ultimately have no choice but to continue in spite of Pegasus clearly cheating.
    • Joey's first opponent in Duelist Kingdom is Mai Valentine, whose supposed psychic powers allow her to predict which card she draws before she actually draws it. However, Joey discovers that Mai marked each of her cards with a certain perfume and committed the scents to memory. Mai is shocked by Joey being able to throw her ruse and is ultimately beaten.
    • Joey's duel against Espa Roba sees Espa's brothers spying on Joey's cards, and tell Espa via hidden comms what's in Joey's hand at any given time. After Joey exposes the truth with a card trick of his own, he proceeds to defeat Espa in a fair duel.
    • During Battle City, Weevil pays off a random kid to steal Joey's deck and slip in the "Parasite Paracide" card, which Weevil uses in tandem with the "Insect Barrier" card to ensure Joey can't attack. Joey, however, still manages to pull a fair victory, winning the Duel and earning Weevil's prized Insect Queen in the process.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Duke in the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc. To an extent, Mokuba Kaiba and Marik Ishtar later on.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen:
    • Mai Valentine for the first few arcs, and then heads back to Arctic levels during most of Season 4 due to her Face–Heel Turn.
    • Kaiba is a male example, at least in the Japanese version. He becomes more amiable and less openly insulting towards the others over time.
  • Demoted to Extra:
    • Bakura in the second anime. In the manga, he appears with the main group most of the time after his initial appearance and has tons of screentime, whereas in the anime he usually only appears whenever it involves Yami Bakura or if it's Yami Bakura pretending to be the real Bakura. This is so bad that on the official Yu-Gi-Oh website, Bakura does not have a character profile but Yami Bakura does. The same goes for the official Japanese websites.
    • Bobasa as well, as his major role in the Millennium World arc from the manga was instead given to Shadi whereas he is mainly reduced to comic relief for the few episodes he appears in, until his final appearance where he takes Yugi and the others to the Pharaoh's temple. In fact, in the manga, Bobasa is an alternate identity of Shadi/Hasan.
  • Depending on the Artist: The first two seasons of the anime follow Kazuki Takahashi's manga style pretty well, but the various animators start to show their specific styles around the end of the Battle City finals and into non-manga material. This causes discrepancies between the proportions of the characters, IE the ever-changing size of Yugi's hair.
  • Determined Expression: A staple of Kaiba, to the point where many a fanfic has waxed eloquent over his "icy death glare". Yami Yugi usually prefers speech-making, but has been known to utilize this effectively as well. Joey doesn't do this as frequently as Kaiba, but when he does, a crowning moment of awesome will ensue.
  • Detonation Moon: Yugi has Giant Soldier of Stone destroy his own Full Moon card. It recedes the ocean from the field, beaching Mako's monsters. Years later it would be ascended into its own card.
  • Deus ex Machina: Whenever one of the heroes is in a hopeless situation, the solution is often them drawing a card we've never seen or heard of (and in many case never will again) that provides the perfect solution.
  • Deus Exit Machina: The three Egyptian God cards, which Yugi worked hard to acquire in Seasons 2 and 3, are stolen in the very first episode of Season 4 by the local Quirky Miniboss Squad and are drained of their power. Yugi manages to regain them in time for the final battle, but up until then only one God is used.
  • Doing In the Wizard: Some moments from the manga where cards are implied to be alive are given more concrete explanations in the anime:
    • When the Mimic of Doom uses Blue-Eyes White Dragon on Yugi it destroys itself rather than attacking, mirroring Kaiba’s original duel with Yugi. In the anime the real Kaiba activates a virus that has a hand in destroying it, heavily downplaying the implied sentience of the card.
    • During Yugi and Joey's duel on the pier, Joey begs Red-Eyes Black Dragon to attack him to activate Yugi's key. Red-Eyes obeys. The anime changes this so that the attack is part of a very convenient and otherwise useless effect of Meteor of Destruction that he just played.
  • Do Not Adjust Your Set: Kaiba appears on every TV screen in the city to announce the Battle City Tournament.
  • Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: The cheerleaders' interactions with Joey, where they repeatedly pummel and demean him, are played as comic relief.
  • Dramatic Thunder: Summoning Slifer the Sky Dragon always results in the sudden appearance of a thunderstorm.
  • Dub-Induced Plot Hole:
    • That fact that Yami Yugi thinks in regular Yugi's voice in the dub is at odds with the reveal that he's a separate person from him rather than just a Super Mode, and the two can even communicate with each other through their thoughts.
    • In the Battle City arc, Yugi defeats a Rare Hunter whose strategy is to have three full copies of Exodia in his deck in order to almost guarantee he draws the full body. Upon winning the duel, Yugi tears up all the Exodia cards after noticing they're marked with invisible ink. While this makes no sense in the English version, as well as being against Yugi's normal code of all cards being sacred regardless of their strength, in the Japanese he destroys them upon realizing they're counterfits.
    • It's a plot point in Season 5 that the Pharaoh has to remember his name, Atem. However, the dub of season 2 has several characters (primarily Ishizu and Marik) referring to the Pharaoh's spirit as "King Yami" as if that were his real name. This plot hole is quietly ignored by the time Season 3 comes around, with everyone simply calling him the Pharaoh.
    • Mokuba, upon waking up when his soul is returned to him, immediately recognizes Bakura in the dub, even though the two have never met before. In the original he says nothing.
    • Inverted: The English dub actually fixed one of the plot holes from the original anime. In the original (including the manga), Yugi says that duelists were only allowed to have exactly 40 cards on hand, but Yugi lost 3 Exodia cards and gave Time Wizard to Joey, meaning that his deck had only 36 cards. This line is absent from the English dub.
    • Gozaburo originally planned to conquer the world using Kaiba Corp's weapons, but the dub changed it into seeking to digitize the world and ruling it. This brings up the question of how he was planning to accomplish such an outrageous goal. Digitalization in Yu-Gi-Oh involves putting a person in a VR machine that creates a virtual avatar they can control in the VR world. The original person still exists in the real world. The same goes for inanimate objects; they're recreated in virtual form, rather than being transported to the virtual world. So was Gozaburo going to drag the whole world populace into his tiny island and shove each person into a VR machine?
    • Yami Bakura's intentions for Mokuba in the dub are to take possession of his body, since Bakura was becoming a difficult host. However, despite being left alone with Mokuba for an extended period of time at the end of Duelist Kingdom, he never does so. This is because he had no such motivation in the sub, so there is no footage of him being in control of Mokuba's body.
  • Dub Name Change:
    • Most of the Japanese names were changed to fit the localization. Jonouchi becomes "Joey," Anzu becomes "Téa," Honda becomes "Tristan," Shizuka becomes "Serenity," Mai's last name changes from Kujaku to Valentine, Dinosaur Ryuzaki becomes "Rex Raptor," etc. Some character kept their original Japanese names, though, resulting in glaringly inconsistent names. Card names and their attacks were also changed in a similar fashion, sometimes for Bowdlerisation purposes.
    • The Swedish dub uses the script of 4Kids, but with the original Japanese names. This led to Jonouchi/Joey getting the In-Series Nickname of "Jono" to fit the Mouth Flaps.
    • In the Viz translation of both the Duelist Kingdom and Yu-Gi-Oh R manga, Bandit Keith calls Jonouchi "Joey".
  • Dude, Not Funny!: invoked
    • Téa replies with this when Joey jokingly suggests that Kaiba died after his soul was stolen by Pegasus at the end of the Duelist Kingdom arc.
    • After everyone gets off of Alcatraz Island, Kaiba tells everyone that he knew the blimp's engines weren't working. All the while, he was smirking when he said that, meaning he thought that it was funny. Joey, reasonably, gets mad at him for almost letting them die.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: Joey says this almost word-for-word upon hearing that Kaiba refused to invite him into the Battle City tournament even though he was the runner-up in Duelist Kingdom.
  • Duels Decide Everything: Apparently, even before Yami Yugi, Duel Monsters games decided a few inane things, but post-Season 2 pretty much every Duel could be a Shadow Game or a Dangerous Bet.
  • Dysfunction Junction: Several characters experienced a tragic and/or depressing past, especially the villains.

    E–M 
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Duelist Kingdom is this writ large compared to later arcs, treating Duel Monsters more like a monster battling RPG than a trading card game. Some of the plays would be feasible in a tabletop game with a game master overseeing things, but not possible to do at all in a trading card game with established rules. A few examples include Time Wizard causing monsters on the field to age, variably destroying them, changing their stats, or giving them new effects; being able to destroy specific parts of a monster and so affect its capabilities while in play; Yugi activating a spell card that puts the moon into play, causing the field to become flooded due to the tides and limiting where he can summon monsters; and more mundane things like Level 5 and higher monsters not needing Tributes to summon, and players starting with 2000 Life Points. This was justified In-Universe by Pegasus mentioning that the tournament will use different, special rules, than the typical game. Later seasons bring the rules in closer with the real-life card game.
    • Speaking of Duelist Kingdom, the dub version of it is this when compared to future seasons. While most other seasons go out of their way to censor deaths and death-related subjects, all deaths, implied deaths, and attempted murders are retained in the dub's first season. While Pegasus' various goons (and Bandit Keith) infamously have their guns censored, the implicit threat they pose is still treated seriously, and no attempt is made to cover up Kaiba's apparent death by leaping off a cliff and his "ghost" coming back from the dead, nor do they change Kaiba threatening to leap from the turrets of Pegasus' castle if he loses to Yugi. At this point the Shadow Realm was used as an explanation for the dark field of Shadow Games, as well as a general punishment implied to be worse than death, but only Pegasus had any power over it and other duels carried the threat of hindering the heroes' progress or physical violence if they lost. Kaiba also believes in and plans for Pegasus's use of magic, while in later seasons he's skeptical of it.
    • The franchise as a whole is Science Fantasy, but the first two series and the first season of 5Ds were much much on the "fantasy" end of the spectrum, with monster designs themed around demons, monsters, and sorcerers, characters had magical powers, and the stories drew from ancient cultures and mythological and religious lore. Later series focus more on the "science" part, with a heavier focus on Machine-type monsters or monsters that had vaguely mechanical designs, and characters and storylines that show how technology can be used for beneficial or malicious purposes. While the series can still be rather fantastical (Zexal implies that the universe was created from an ancient Duel Monsters card), it follows Clarke's Third Law in the implication that these things still have a rational scientific explanation, and/or that what seems like magic is just really advanced technology.
    • This series has a number of major characters who don’t play Duel Monsters. So while Tea, Tristan and Duke are considered important for being in Yugi’s circle of friends, they aren’t very involved in the main plotlines other than acting as emotional support. Mokuba is also mainly used as a kidnapping target and Morality Pet for his brother. The later series have very few characters who don’t actively play the game to some degree. This also ties in with Duel Monsters become far more prominent in society as the franchise goes on, where anyone not involved with the card game is seen as odd.
  • Easily Forgiven: Any villain who undergoes a Heel–Face Turn is almost immediately forgiven by Yugi and his friends, though Joey takes the longest to come around.
  • Entertainment Above Their Age: The first episode sees Seto Kaiba attending the same school Yugi, Jonouchi/Joey, Honda/Tristan, and Anzu/Tea all attend, and a brief shot sees him reading Also sprach Zarathustra while the main group discuss Duel Monsters.
  • Environmental Symbolism: Whenever Shadi goes into someone's Soul Room with his Millennium Key, the environment reflects their personality and mental state.
  • Evil Sounds Deep:
    • Played straight with Yugi/Yami Yugi and Marik/Yami Marik. Both played straight and subverted by Bakura/Dark Bakura in Japanese. Dark Bakura does have a deeper voice than Bakura, but both have a high-pitched squeaky effeminate voice. Played straight in the dub.
    • Also used with Marik when his Superpowered Evil Side isn't in control. When he's pretending to be a protagonist, and after his Heel–Face Turn, his voice is higher and softer.
    • Also inverted with Noah; when he's a villain, his voice is high-pitched and bratty, but when he makes his Heel–Face Turn, it gets lower and more mature.
  • Evil Versus Evil: The duel between Yami Marik and Yami Bakura is a very clear example of this, with neither party holding good intentions.
  • Evolving Credits: Happens during late season one (but not in the dub). After Pegasus has been defeated, the Evil Overlooker-shot of him is replaced by a clip more relevant to the current episode.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: A lot of the cards, like "Red-Eyes Black Dragon," "Man-Eating Treasure Chest," and "Dark Magician," just to name a few.
  • Exposition Already Covered: This sometimes happens when one duelist will start to explain the effect of one of his cards, only for his opponent to interrupt by revealing that he already knows what the card does.
  • Expy: At one point, Yugi and Téa go up against a guy named Johnny Steps at a DanceDanceRevolution clone. Doubly hilarious seeing as DDR is also put out by Konami.
  • Extra Eyes: Pegasus' Thousand-Eyes Restrict somehow has, as the name implies, one-thousand eyes covering its body.
  • Eye-Dentity Giveaway:
    • There are a number of physical differences between Yugi Muto and the entity that resides in the Millennium Puzzle, although he and Yugi look mostly the same. The two most apparent, however, are that the entity's Anime Hair has some additional golden spikes and that his eyes, in contrast to naive Yugi's round and wide eyes◊, are narrow and angular, befitting his colder and more malicious personality.
    • Subverted with Bakura, another character with an alternate personality sealed in a millennium item who sometimes comes out to wreak havoc. Both characters' eyes are angular, but normal Bakura is wide-eyed, and Dark Bakura's are more narrow. This makes it much harder to tell who's in control at a given moment, as Dark Bakura will often pretend flawlessly to be his normal counterpart with no one else being any the wiser.
    • Anyone under the control of Marik Ishtar through the Millennium Rod will gain empty Mind-Control Eyes. Sometimes they also have a glowing Millennium Eye symbol on their heads, such as Strings, Arkana, and the Exodia Hunter, though when Marik wants to be subtle, he can have the eye hidden, as he does with both Bandit Keith and Tea Gardener/Anzu Mazaki.
    • Subverted by Tristan in the Virtual World arc. Even though he falls under the control of the Big 5, his eyes remain exactly the same.
  • Face Framed in Shadow: Every major villain has this going on for them, especially friends who have been made Brainwashed and Crazy.
  • Fade Around the Eyes: Marik does this at the end of his first in-person appearance, as he sends out the Rare Hunters. When he does, he glares at the screen as it fades to black around his purple eyes.
  • Female Gaze: The cut scene from the Japanese version of episode 181. Squee!
  • Fiction 500: Seto Kaiba is the president of a multi-billion-dollar gaming company, which he took from his stepfather while still a kid.
  • Filler Arc: Virtual World, Waking the Dragons, and Kaibacorp Grand Prix.
    • Kaiba hilariously lampshades this directly after the Virtual World Arc, directly after they've all narrowly escaped with their lives.
    Kaiba: Alright, that little detour was a complete waste of my time and effort. So let's move on and pretend that nonsense never happened. It's time for us to continue the Battle City Finals! Set us back on course, to Kaiba Corp Island.
  • Filler Villain: Noah and Gozaburo Kaiba in season 3, Dartz in season 4, and Zigfried von Schroeder in season 5, respectively.
  • Filling the Silence: Compare the Dub to the Japanese version. Some scenes have added dialogue, especially if in the original the characters are silent.
  • Final-Exam Boss: Yugi invokes this during his Duelist Kingdom match against Joey. It's his way of ensuring that the eventual victor will have the best possible preparation before facing Pegasus.
  • First-Episode Twist: Added in to the dub, the second episode has Pegasus revealing to Yugi that Duel Monsters is based on magical duels performed in Ancient Egypt; an important fact to be sure, but in the original version it wasn't revealed until the next arc entirely.
  • Flanderization:
    • Kaiba's rude tendencies in the dub. Compare:
      dub!Kaiba: Mokuba, make sure Wheeler is late.
      Japanese!Kaiba: Mokuba, please show them around.
      dub!Kaiba: Wait and see, you geeks haven't seen the last of me. [paraphrased]
      Japanese!Kaiba: One day, I will invite you [to Kaiba Land].
    • Similarly, his Agent Scully tendencies are more over-emphasized in the dub.
  • Freudian Excuse:
    • The whole reason Thief King Bakura tried to take over the world in the first place is because he saw the Kul Elna massacre first-hand and was its only survivor, thus making a deal with Zorc for power.
    • Also Seto Kaiba, given his orphaned childhood and history with Gozaburo.
    • Marik's Superpowered Evil Side developed as a result of his unwilling upbringing as a tomb keeper with some help from the Millennium Rod, which involved isolation, abuse, and an excruciatingly painful initiation ritual.
  • Freudian Trio: The Waking the Dragons arc, with Yugi/Yami Yugi as The Kirk, his friend Joey as The McCoy, and the aloof on-and-off opponent Kaiba as The Spock.
  • Friendless Background: Yugi had one of these before finishing the puzzle.
  • Friendship Moment: Given the main theme of the series, there's bound to be plenty of this.
    • A really touching one in particular is between Yugi and Yami Yugi. After Yugi is discharged from the hospital after his duel with Bandit Keith, he becomes uncharacteristically quiet and gloomy. Even though he knows something is troubling him, Yami Yugi decides to patiently wait for Yugi to voice his concerns, and only then he realizes that Yugi has been afraid of losing him after his duel with Keith, which made him realize that Yami Yugi might have to leave someday. So, Yami Yugi, knowing full well that he would have to leave his side in the future, tells him that despite what he had to do, he wanted to be with him forever. And Yugi, despite realizing that Yami Yugi would really have to leave, replies that he also wished for them to be together, and that even if the Pharaoh didn't get his memory back, he and Yugi would make new memories together.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water:
    • In the dub, Pegasus is clearly drinking wine, but he refers to it as grape juice or fruit punch. Given Pegasus's character, though, this holds up better than most.
    • Averted in The Movie, wherein Pegasus wakes up from what he thinks is an Acid Reflux Nightmare and says "No more white wine spritzers before bed", and the next day, is drinking a red wine spritzer. This actually isn't too out of character for him, either.
  • Fun Size: Yugi Muto is a shorter version of Yami Yugi with fewer blond streaks in his hair.
  • Game-Breaker: In-universe, Pegasus' Toons and Thousand-Eyes Restrict, the Five-Headed Dragon, the God Cards, the Seal of Orichalcos, and almost all of Dartz's cards are so powerful very few duelists have them or can use them properly.
  • Geo Effects: Field Power Bonuses were emphasized very much earlier in the card game, but die out to only Field Spell Cards by the Duelist Kingdom finals.
  • Genki Girl: Mana, whose introduction consists of her jumping out of a vase to glomp the pharaoh.
  • Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Yami Yugi gets one of these from Joey in the form of a punch to the face.
  • Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Rebecca has a teddy bear that she regularly speaks to in her first appearance. By the time she reappears in the Waking the Dragons arc, however, she's ditched the "cutesy little girl" angle, and Teddy is nowhere to be seen.
  • Goldfish Poop Gang: Weevil and Rex get reduced to this in the last few arcs, acting like they're glued at the hip and have nothing better to do than hang around Yugi's neighborhood all day. In the manga, they didn't even live in the same region of the country.
  • Good Versus Good: Not all of Yugi's opponents are psychotic villains and their mooks. Some, like Mako Tsunami, are genuinely good and honorable people.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: Averted. Even though the show is largely about a collectible card game, the collection aspect is rarely seen, with most characters pulling new cards out of nowhere during duels rather than explicitly obtaining them through booster packs or trades, though Battle City has them winning cards in ante duels.
    • Played straight on the part of the evil version of Bakura, who wants to collect all the Millennium Items so he can rule the world and obtain the power of darkness.
  • Graceful Loser: Pegasus, who after being thoroughly trounced by Yami Yugi, fulfills his promise by releasing the souls trapped in cards and stops causing problems for the protagonists.
    • Averted with Kaiba though.
  • Grade-School C.E.O.: Seto Kaiba won Kaiba Corp from his step-dad when he was a teenager, and turned it from a weapons-manufacturer to a gaming company.
  • Gratuitous English:
    • Pegasus in the Japanese anime.
      Pegasus: UNBELIEVABLE! This is a NIGHTMARE! Bad dream!
    • Most of the cards have names in Gratuitous English too. Red-Eyes Black Dragon and Blue-Eyes White Dragon are completely unchanged from the Japanese version.
    • Also in the Japanese anime, terms like "duel(ist)," "player," "direct attack," "Duel Disk," "deck," "card," "Monster/Magic/Trap Card," "turn," "draw," and the different phases of the duel (i.e., Draw Phase, Standby Phase, Main Phase 1, Battle Phase, Main Phase 2 and End Phase) are said in English. "Reverse card, open!" is another commonly-heard English phrase in the Japanese anime.
    • Rebecca also speaks a lot of English. Her very first line in the series is "Hello, my name is Rebecca." Both Pegasus and Rebecca are American, so it stands to reason that they would speak English. However, Bandit Keith, who is also American, rarely speaks English.
    • The Egyptian God Cards have the names written on them in English in the Japanese version of the anime. The names written on them are completely different from what they're called in both Japanese and English - ＴＨＥ ＳＵＮ ＯＦ ＧＯＤ ＤＲＡＧＯＮ (The Winged God Dragon of Ra), ＴＨＥ ＧＯＤ ＯＦ ＯＢＥＬＩＳＫ (Giant God Soldier of Obelisk) and ＳＡＩＮＴ ＤＲＡＧＯＮ - ＴＨＥ ＧＯＤ ＯＦ ＯＳＩＲＩＳ (Sky Dragon of Osiris).
  • The Great Serpent: Dartz's trump card is the Divine Serpent Geh, which takes the form of an immeasurably large snake, although most of its body is concealed by the dark vortex it emerges from.
  • Hacked by a Pirate: Pegasus does this by showing his favorite cartoon rabbit character when he counter-hacks Kaiba trying to hack into his system.
  • Hacker Cave: There is one owned by Seto Kaiba in episodes 9 and 10.
  • Ham-to-Ham Combat: Although many duels feel this way, the Yugi vs. Kaiba ones are the greatest examples. At some points it feels like their voice actors are competing to see who can do the most over-the-top performance and still keep it in the final cut.
    • The Yami Marik vs. Yami Bakura duel is a fabulous example of this, especially since most of their dialogue consists of them making very enthusiastic death threats to each other.
  • Healthcare Motivation: The reason Joey participates in the Duelist Kingdom tournament is to use the prize money to pay for his sister to have eye surgery.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Pegasus, Marik, Noah, Dartz, Rafael, Valon, Alister, and Zigfried all undergo this by the end of their respective arcs.
  • Hero, Rival, Baddie Team-Up: The three most reliable duelists that end up fighting alongside each other more and more as the series go by are Yugi (The Hero), Joey (The Friendly Rival) and Kaiba (The Anti-Hero).
  • Heroic Willpower: Joey's main strength is this, as he displays in various ways in his confrontations with Marik.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: Yugi and Yami Yugi, Joey and Tristan.
    • Yugi and Joey are like this as well, with Yugi calling Joey his best friend. It gets to the point that, when Joey is brainwashed and they're forced to duel, Yugi does his best to help Joey and, when Yugi thinks he's about to die, he tells Joey that he loves him.
  • Hijacked by Ganon: A Heroic example in the Waking the Dragons arc. Throughout the arc, the three Legendary Dragons Timaeus, Critias and Hermos are built up as the only thing that can defeat the Great Leviathan and the Oricalchos. However, when the Leviathan is revived, the three Dragons, even after being returned to their human forms, are easily defeated. Instead, it's the Egyptian Gods that destroy the Great Leviathan and the Pharaoh uses his own powers to seal the Oricalchos away for good.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: During his duel with Pegasus at Duelist Kingdom, Kaiba tries to use the Crush Card (which makes it impossible for the one infected to play any Monsters with more than 1500 Attack) to cripple Pegasus's deck. However, not only is Pegasus able to counter this move, he later uses his Doppelganger card to copy the Crush Card and infect Kaiba's deck. Since all the Monsters in Kaiba's deck except Saggi the Dark Clown have more than 1500 Attack points, there is now no way he can win and he loses his soul to Pegasus's Millennium Eye.
  • Homage: Duel Monsters was originally intended as an homage to Magic: The Gathering, of which Takahashi is a fan.
  • Hostage for MacGuffin: Mokuba tends to be the usual victim so someone can get KaibaCorp, though Yugi's friends have fallen into this as well.
  • Hot for Teacher: Subject to interpretation, but Mana in the anime is very devoted to Mahad. Her goal through season five is to become a better magician, both because it's his will for her and because she wants to be able to summon and see his spirit. "Prince can summon him from the tablet, right? Please! Bring me and Master together!" She talks or thinks about him in every scene, and her other goal is to always be with and protect him... which she succeeded in, if the existence of the Black Magician Girl in modern times is any indication. One must note that the subtext is only present in the Japanese version — 4Kids rewrote her dialogue and character entirely until she and Mahad have nothing but a classroom relationship.
  • Hot-Blooded:
    • Joey is easily riled up and is the loudest character in the bunch.
    • Bakura, especially as Thief King Bakura in season five. He makes the most arrogant pronoun ever (Ore-sama) sound good in constant use. It's lampshaded in the Japanese anime, wherein during a duel between Yami Bakura and Yami Marik, Bakura shouts "Ore-sama no turn!" and Marik replies "You're no ore-sama."
  • Hybrids Are a Crapshoot: To weaken Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, Yugi fused it with his Mammoth Graveyard. Being fused with a Zombie-type caused Blue-Eyes Ultimate to lose ATK every turn by being rotted from the inside. By the time Yugi was ready to destroy it, Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon was just a pile of goop in the vague shape of a Dragon.
  • Hydro-Electro Combo: Yugi and Joey duel the Paradox Brothers in the special Labyrinth field. Usually monsters can only attack enemies in neighboring tiles, but Yugi is able to get around this by flooding the labyrinth and then summoning his Summoned Skull, who uses electricity attacks. The electricity travels through the water across the maze to the enemy and destroy it.
  • I Have Your Wife: Used by various villains throughout the series. The target is usually Mokuba, who is kidnapped a grand total of 7 times, compared to 3 times in the manga.
  • I Just Want to Have Friends: When Yugi first completes the puzzle, he makes a wish on it to have some true friends.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Yugi has one of these with Joey when Marik takes control of him. Joey has one with Mai in Season 4, the latter having to lose his soul just to snap Mai back to normal.
  • Idiot Ball: In the first duel between Joey and Kaiba, Joey's entire strategy is "summon monster to attack," ignoring field power bonuses and outright stronger monsters. Justified in that he is unfamiliar with the Duel Disk technology and doesn't know how to set monsters in defense mode.
    • From the Waking The Dragons arc, Yami Yugi playing the Seal of Orichalcos that Rafael gave him in order to avoid losing the duel. There was literally nothing at stake until he played that card, since the "loser loses their soul" condition only applies after the Seal has been played.
  • If I Had a Nickel...: This line from the dub of season 4.
    Seto: If I had a dime for every time you said the word "destiny," I'd be even richer.
  • Immortality Field: Bonz from the Duelist Kingdom Story Arc used the "Call of the Haunted" Field Spell Cardnote  against Joey in the Graveyard terrain. It revives his monsters into Zombie-types (if they weren't already) with additional 10% of their original attack power, but with 0 defense, each time that they are killed. Coupled with the effects of the terrain and the anime version of "Pumpking the King of Ghosts," the Zombies' ATK powers kept on increasing each turn. However, Joey defeated Bonz when he played Shield & Sword, a card that switches ATK and DEF powers of all monster cards in the field, then killed one of his Zombie monsters with a rather weak monster and dealt its full Battle Damage.
  • In the End, You Are on Your Own: Seto Kaiba believes in this. He doesn't have any friends, and he doesn't even want any. He thinks depending on no one but yourself is for the strong. From the looks of it, though, it's the "monsters" of Wrath and Envy talking.
  • Inadequate Inheritor: In the Virtual World arc, Gozaburo says he considers Seto this.
  • Indy Escape: Subverted during Duelist Kingdom. The boulder in question was just a balloon with a speaker in it.
  • Ineffectual Loner: Seto Kaiba. As far as he's concerned, the only option is victory. And the only allies... are enemies.
  • Informed Ability:
    • There's a reason why we never see Yugi and Seto play chess. King of games or not, you can't use the "heart of the chess piece(?)" to win a game. And there are no power-ups (other than promoting pawns, which isn't too hard to see coming) or convenient special abilities.
    • Rex and Weevil were in a tournament championship facing each other right before the Duelist Kingdom arc. Yet, from then on out they never pose much of a threat to, well, pretty much anyone, effectively becoming Those Two Butt Monkeys who sure don't look like champions of any level of tournament.
      • Rex is an unfortunate case. Of all the duels he loses in the canon arcs, almost all of them are against opponents who are willing to cheat or against Joey (who wins by dumb luck). Admittedly, we don't see anything to suggest that Weevil cheated in their first duel, but considering that it is Weevil who throws Yugi's cards into the ocean it wouldn't be too surprising. (He also doesn't cheat against Yugi in the original Japanese version; the reason he knows about the new rules ahead of time is because Pegasus told him about them as a prize for winning the Regional Championship.)
      • The same could be said of Weevil, really. Other than that, Weevil went up against Yugi/Yami Yugi twice and did very well both times. Certainly Weevil cheats but he's still shown to have great skill. The cheating only seems to serve as a supplement to his own abilities, or because he enjoys it. Other than Joey, Weevil's only ever lost to exceedingly great duelists. The main reason he becomes a joke character is because he's a Smug Snake who Can't Catch Up as far as powerful cards go.
  • Insane Troll Logic: In the anime, Duke Devlin's evil plan is made up of some pretty epic idiocy. He plans to prove that Yugi must have cheated in his duel with Pegasus... by cheating in his duel with Yugi, by challenging him to a game of Duke's own creation and refusing to explain the rules. Not just cheating, either, but cheating openly and bragging about it. Sure, if he wins he would still get half of what he wanted (forcing Yugi to give up dueling), but even then all he would manage to prove to the world is that he is a liar who can't win without cheating, not Yugi. If his plan works he would lose all credibility, and probably all of his customers and fans, too. Manga Otogi/Duke averts this; not only was his plan more sensible, most of it wasn't even his plan, it was his (legitimately insane) father's.
  • Insult to Rocks: "You know, I'm not quite sure what to call you. I was thinking about 'monster'... but I wouldn't want to insult the cards."
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Big time, between Yugi and the Pharaoh/Yami Yugi.
  • Invincible Incompetent: Joey perpetually comes from behind to win. Granted, everyone does this, but Joey never seems to be picked as a favorite to win anything, despite several finals showings.
  • Ironic Echo: In season one, Kaiba threatens that he'll fall from the castle's battlement if Yugi wins the duel, so Yugi forfeits in fear that Yami Yugi would finish Kaiba off. In season five, Yugi again faces the decision of defeating his opponent in a duel to kill him. In this case, the opponent is Yami Yugi. Yugi hesitates on finishing the duel, but carries it out, as this time, the reason is to send Yami Yugi to the afterlife.
  • I Will Show You X!: Tristan and Duke have an open crush on Joey's sister Serenity, which Joey is none too pleased about. At one point in the English dub, Tristan talks about how he's going to visit Serenity (read: hit on her) in the hospital, to which Joey responds "I'll send you to the hospital!"
  • Jerkass:
    • Kaiba is an Ineffectual Loner with a lot of money and a superiority complex, fond of insutling whoever he comes across.
    • Bandit Keith is a bigger one. He and his Mooks trap Yugi and the gang in a cave, and he also steals Joey's Glory of the King's Hand card while the latter is sleeping.
    • Weevil might just reign supreme in this category, possessing almost no sympathetic traits and having a noteworthy Kick the Dog moment with almost each appearance he makes.
  • Joker Jury: In the dub version of the Virtual World arc, Johnson, whose Deckmaster and appearance is that of Judge Man, claims he is putting Joey on trial for gambling. He then proceeds to make every trial joke imaginable.
  • Karma Houdini: Ushio, compared to the original manga. In the anime, nothing is really mentioned on what happened to him after the flashback to the scene where he beat Yugi and his friends up. The dub does add in a very quick line where school authorities expelled him, but the original version never says anything beyond that, implying he got off completely scot-free for what he did.
  • Keep It Foreign: Several of the main characters (Yugi Muto, Seto and Mokuba Kaiba, Ryo Bakura, Marik Ishtar, etc.) managed to avert the Dub Name Change that westernized a majority of the cast, likely in order to distinguish them as being tied to Ancient Egypt.
  • Kick the Dog: During a duel using the Orichalcos, Weevil makes the mistake of claiming he has Yugi's soul in his hand, then tearing it in front of Yami Yugi (which was really a normal bug monster card, making it much worse as he was using it as a way to mess with the already broken duelist). This does not end well for Weevil.
  • Kill and Replace: While he started as a split personality, Yami Marik eventually ejects Marik out of his own body and takes it over, attempting to kill him in his final Shadow Game.
  • King of Games: Trope Namer. This is the title Yami Yugi has for his mastery of gaming. The dub also changed the title he earned upon defeating Pegasus from "King of Duels" to "King of Games".
  • King of Thieves: Thief King Bakura's self-proclaimed "King of Thieves" title comes from the weight of what he steals, and because he seeks the Millennium Items.
  • Knight's Armor Hideout: In the first season, Tristan hid from Pegasus' guards in one of the suits of armor decorating his castle.
  • Know When to Fold 'Em: Mai does this with Téa at Duelist Kingdom, and later in the Duelist Kingdom finals when facing Yugi. Both times, she says she doesn't have a monster strong enough to take down what the opponent has on the field and surrenders.
  • Lancer vs. Dragon:
    • During the Battle City arc, Joey duels Odion, Marik's right-hand man, who is posing as him during the tournament. Joey is able to progress thanks to being the first to get up after Ra strikes the field but fails to win his duel against Marik himself.
    • During the Virtual World arc, Kaiba duels Lector of the Big Five who serves as the dragon to Noah. Kaiba's duel with Noah is something of an inversion as Noah is serving as the dragon to Gozaburo; Yugi defeats Noah after the latter defeats Kaiba whereas Kaiba goes on to defeat Gozaburo after the latter reveals himself as the true Big Bad.
    • Inverted in the Kaiba Corp Grand Prix arc. The Big Bad Zigfried duels Joey and Kaiba at different points, defeating the former and losing to the latter. His dragon and little brother Leon duels Yugi in the arc's climax and is beaten.
  • Large Ham: Pegasus, in the original manga, anime, and dub versions.
  • Legacy of Service: The Ishtar family has been serving the Pharaoh for thousands of years, most of that living in an underground labyrinth protecting his tomb. Resentment over this is a huge part of what fuels Marik's Start of Darkness.
  • Lethal Joke Item: Some cards are weak or nearly-useless on their own but devastating in the right circumstance.
    • Baby Dragon is the earliest example. It starts with only 1200 ATK, easily destroyed, but with Time Wizard, it becomes Thousand Dragon, with 2400 ATK, stronger than most cards in the game at that point.
  • Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Almost everyone settles disputes via Duel Monsters.
  • Letting the Air out of the Band: Happens during Yugi's final duel with Marik. He uses Obelisk's ability to destroy Ra. The triumphant music starts playing and it seems he won, only for the smoke to clear, revealing Ra to still be on the field, at which point this trope plays out.
  • Lighter and Softer: Compared to the mangas: the original Yu-Gi-Oh series being straight-up horror while the manga adaptation of Duelist is a lot grimmer than the anime, if still your basic Shounen serial. Notably, all of the Penalty Games Yugi inflicts in Duelist Kingdom which were various karmic punishment Mind Rape are changed to the same Mind Crush he used on Kaiba, which is explicitly a rehabilitory punishment that purges the evil from one's heart, which itself is altered from the manga where it originally put Kaiba into a coma until he could put the pieces of his mind back together.
  • Like a Surgeon: Minor duelist Dr. Goat has this as his whole gimmick; when he cuts the opponent's deck, his groupie... err, nurses have to wipe the sweat off his brow. And when he loses, one of them dutifully pronounces his "time of death".
  • Literal Split Personality: Yami Marik started out as Marik's even worse side, but by the end of Battle City he gains a separate soul, kicking his other half out of the body. This comes back to bite him when Marik surrenders their final match, letting him vanish into the shadows while Marik remains unharmed.
  • The Load: Mokuba is pretty much just around to provide moral support to Kaiba and/or Yugi. Serenity, Duke, Téa, and Tristan are lesser examples as they do get to duel now and then, but it's rare.
  • Lovely Assistant: Stage Magician Arkana was in love with his Lovely Assistant, Catherine, and they were engaged—before his disfiguring accident. Although Catherine still loved him, Arkana pushed her away. He later regretted his choice and fell in with Marik when Marik promised he could restore Catherine to Arkana.
  • Love Makes You Evil: Pegasus' motive is to revive his dead lover Cecelia (wife in the dub).
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Aknadin reveals that he is Priest Seto's father to him in the Memory World arc.
  • Luxurious Liquor: Pegasus is occasionally seen sipping a glass of red wine while lounging around in his Big Fancy House. Infamously Bowdlerized by the dub into "fruit juice".
  • Magical Eye: Pegasus' Millennium Eye, possessing the power to read minds and probably do other sinister things. According to Word of God, it also brainwashed Pegasus into creating Duel Monsters, making it a literal evil eye.
  • Magic Is Feminine: One episode has Yami Bakura challenge Yami Yugi to a Shadow Game with Yugi and his friends transformed into their favorite cards. Joey and Tristan are the most traditionally masculine characters, being tough street fighters and former bullies; they are transformed into Flame Swordsman, a warrior-type monster with a sword, and Cyber Commander, a machine-type monster who resembles a muscular human male with a gun, respectively. On the other hand, Téa is the sole female member of the gang for most of the series while Yugi and Bakura are much less macho than Joey and Tristan. Yugi and Téa are transformed into the Dark Magician and Magician of Faith respectively, while the good Bakura is transformed into the spell card, Change of Heart.
  • The Magic Poker Equation: Arguably Yu-Gi-Oh's central trope, as everyone, hero and villain alike, draws the exact cards they need to make a duel challenging but winnable.
    • Episodes 41 and 42 show Yugi and Rebecca's duel, which apparently goes exactly like a duel their grandfathers played decades earlier, turn for turn, card for card.
    • Lampshaded in Waking the Dragons, along with Plot Armor, in the English dub by Rex, when he and Weevil witness Yugi use the Eye of Timaeus with Dark Magician Girl. He mentions how Yugi and company tend to draw the cards they need at the right moment, but he and Weevil don't.
  • Majority-Share Dictator: As part of his backstory, Seto Kaiba was given two percent of the shares to his stepfather's company Kaiba Corp, but had to use them to make 100 times their worth within a year's time. Seto did this by buying 51% of a company and threatening to close it and put everyone out of work unless the original owner agreed to buy it back for five times it value, which he did for the sake of the employees. It's implied Seto repeated this with other companies to work up the needed money to please his stepfather. He later took over Kaiba Corp itself with the same strategy.
  • Male Gaze:
    • The Dark Magician Girl, naturally. Squee!
    • In-Universe when Leon sees the Dark Magician Girl for the first time and she winked at him, which makes him blush at this.
    • Mai also has a few of these. Episode 03 of season 1 has a shot of her legs which is edited out of the US dub.
  • Manipulating the Opponent's Deck:
    • During the Battle City arc, before Joey Wheeler is set to duel Weevil Underwood, the latter pays off a random kid to steal Joey's deck and add the "Parasite Paracide" card to it mid-run. This card makes all of Joey's monsters become Insect-type once he draws it, which Weevil uses in tandem with "Insect Barrier" to ensure Joey cannot attack him. Both cards are in the official TCG with these effects (albeit Parasite Paracide has to be activated from the owner's side of the field first before it goes into the opponent's deck).
    • In one episode, Yugi faces a duelist known as the Rare Hunternote whose deck relies on the Exodia combonote  as an Instant-Win Condition. At one point, Rare Hunter is forced to summon Exodia by itself in order to bolster his defences, but gloats that it doesn't matter as he has multiple copies of the same card in his deck and can just draw another one later - only for Yugi to counter it with Chain Destruction, destroying all cards in Rare Hunter's deck with the same name and rendering his win condition moot.
    • Battle City, when Yugi duels Arkana, a magician, who cheats to give himself a good opening hand. Anticipating this, Yugi activates Card Destruction, a card that forces both players to discard their hands and draw new cards.
    • In Duelist Kingdom, when dueling Bakura, Bakura used several copies of Morphing Jar, a card that forces both players to discard their hands and draw five new cards from their deck.
    • When Yugi and Kaiba duel in Battle City, Kaiba uses Lullaby of Obedience to steal Slifer from Yugi's deck. Yugi then activates Exchange, allowing both players to steal a card from each other's hands and allowing Yugi to steal back Slifer.
    • When Yugi duels Leon, the latter uses a card called Golden Castle of Stromberg. It allows the user to summon monsters from their deck and it destroys opponent's monsters when they attack you, but comes at the steep cost of milling half the user's deck each turn. To compensate for it, Leon's brother cheats by hacking the system and forcing Yugi to pay the card's cost each turn by discarding his cards.
    • During Kaiba's duel with Zigfried he uses Chaos Emperor Dragon, which can send the cards in both players hands and on the field to the Graveyard and deals 300 damage for each card discarded.
    • When Yugi duels Strings, the latter initially sets up a powerful combo of Slifer the Sky Dragon, a card which gets stronger the more cards the user has in their hand, and Revival Jam, which automatically revives itself when destroyed and causes the user to draw three new cards due to Strings' Card of Safe Return. Yugi wins by destroying Revival Jam and activating Brain Control to steal control of it. As Slifer automatically attacks whatever enemy is on the field and Revival Jam keeps reforming, Strings ultimately decks out due to his own Card of Safe Return.
  • Mark of the Beast:
  • Meaningful Name: Happens for a couple of characters, particularly the (ancient) Egyptian ones:
    • If Marik's name were transliterated differently when moving into the English dub, it would be the Arabic name Malik (or "ملك" in Arabic), which is based on the words for "king" or "possessor" in the Arabic language. Incidentally, Marik possesses several people and wants to be the pharaoh/king of Egypt/the world as a Big Bad.
    • Also Odion's name in the Japanese version is Rashid (or "راشد"), meaning "rightly guided" in Arabic. Odion/Rishid is Marik/Malik's older adopted brother and serves as one of his two Morality Pets in the series.
    • Shadi's name is only a phoneme different from the ancient Egyptian word shabti. Shabti are figurines placed in tombs among funerary goods so they can be servants to the tomb's owner in the afterlife. Using representative figurines replaced killing actual servants for this sole purpose. Shadi guards the Millennium Items' original resting place and turns out to be just a ghost since Yami Bakura killed him 5000 years ago when he was one of Atem's priests. And like Marik's and Odion's original names, the name "Shadi" is also Arabic in origin, reflecting that all these characters come from modern Egypt where Arabic is the official language.
    • There's also Ishizu, named after the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis. Isis is the queen of magic, dedicated wife to her murdered and undead husband Osiris, and honored for being a good mother to her son Horus. Ishizu is a Mysterious Waif of a character who can see the future using her Millennium Necklace. One of her major goals is to stop her Face-Heel Turned younger brother Marik from being villainous. She is also another one of Marik's Morality Pets.
    • "Yugi" means "game."
      • Yami means dark or shadow, which means that "Yami Yugi" means "Dark Game."
    • Oh, also, the whole Yu Jou thing. Take the initial syllables of Yugi and Joey's first names and you get the Japanese word for "friendship." (Which manifests itself in real life as the "Yu Jo Friendship" card.)
    • And the fact that Seto Kaiba, the most dragon-obsessed guy in the cast's surname translates to "sea dragon." On a related note, the same guy's first name translates to "shallow man."
    • There's an even weirder couple of meanings behind his name. "Seto" is basically the Japanese pronunciation of "Set." Combine this with Yugi's name ("Game", "Set", Match) for one meaning, but for the other, Set was the Egyptian desert god, a completely appropriate name for a high-ranking ancient Egyptian priest.
    • Possibly unintentional, but the English surnames for Joey, Téa and Tristan are all occupations: Wheeler, Gardner and Taylor.
    • Yami Yugi's real name, Atem, is a variation on Atum, as in Atum-Ra: the creator god, the god of the sun, the first king of the gods, the first pharaoh, etc. Oh, and Atum apparently had a Winged Dragon, too.
  • Mind-Control Eyes: People under Marik's control have their eyes drawn without pupils.
  • Mind Screw: The Memory World arc is a mild version. In general, things make sense and you can follow what's going on, but some really bizarre stuff happens too. The anime-only content/changes doesn't really help things.
  • Minion Manipulated into Villainy: In the climax of the "Waking The Dragons" arc, it's revealed that Dartz was behind the tragedies of his three servants that drove them to join him: he posed as Kaiba's stepfather and used his tanks to kill Alister's brother, he burnt down Valon's home cathedral that led him to spend the majority of his life in prison, and was the one that caused the ship that Rafael's family was on to encounter a storm that resulted in him being stranded on an island and his family drowning. Upon learning the truth, Rafael was naturally and rightfully enraged, which unfortunately was what Dartz wanted as it allowed the Seal of Orichalcos to absorb his soul.
    Rafael: YOU. RUINED. MY. LIFE. YOU MONSTER!!!
  • Model Scam: Happens to Téa, who is promised a chance to be a dancer like she's always wanted.
  • Morality Pet: Mokuba Kaiba is one for his brother Seto. Odion and Ishizu Ishtar are the same for their master/brother Marik.
  • More than Mind Control: Dartz in Season 4, who is only partially possessed by the Orichalcos god (hence just one green eye) while the rest of him has just been driven insane.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Téa provides it regularly with her Shorttank tendencies since around episode 60. Her standout moment has to be the "date" with Yami, during which she wears a tube-top and a pair of hotpants (and which the dub opted not to censor, oddly enough!). Mai and the Dark Magician Girl provide it whenever they appear thanks to their regular designs featuring a corset (Mai) or a skimpy magician's outfit (DMG)
  • Mundane Made Awesome: The whole premise of the show is to make card games into epic duels.
  • Musical Spoiler: As if the Like You Would Really Do It nature of the scene is not enough, the lack of the "Life Points hitting 0" sound effect when Dartz brings Yami Yugi's LP down to 0 makes it very obvious that the duel is not over.
  • My Little Panzer: Played with, as Duel Monsters is perfectly safe by itself. It's duelists like the Ghouls that add in their own, more dangerous, rules or invoke the dark magic of the Millennium Items that make it so dangerous.
  • Mythology Gag: Some anime-only arcs reference the manga obliquely.
    • Episode 11 has a flashback to Joey's days on the streets. The gang members that attack him look like Hirutani's gang from the manga, and have similar styles of uniforms.
    • Yugi getting upset when Earu the virtual fairy died is like when his virtual pet in the manga died.
    • Yami Bakura's soul-eating Morphing Jar card is similar to Imori's soul-eating Dragon Jar.
    • Noah's arc and character design are a reference to the manga's Death-T arc, as well as Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh anime.
    • Zigfried was working on his own holographic dueling arena that looks like the Duel Box from the manga's Duelist Kingdom arc.

    N–R 
  • Necromantic: Pegasus got his Start of Darkness after his beloved wife Cecilia passed away and he vowed to bring her back.
  • Never Say "Die": In the English dub, at least, with the exception of the first season, which include:
    • Episode 8 where Pegasus plots Kaiba's death and says for him to have an accident... which actually works, since that's what a Corrupt Corporate Executive (or a member of The Mafia) would do to a business rival. Kaiba tells Pegasus's men he'd rather die than be captured and promptly leaps to his supposed death, which is mentioned in the next episode where Yugi duels Kaiba's "corpse."
    • Episode 13, when Tristan is first sent to the Graveyard.
      Tristan: According to this tombstone, I'm dead!
    • Episode 15, where the Player Killer of Darkness attempts to "eliminate" Yugi by blasting a giant flamethrower at him.
    • Episodes 17 and 18, which are all about a deck of dead zombie monsters.
    • Episode 24, where Kaiba threatens suicide (though the dub changes it to be a threat of indirect suicide rather than direct).
    • And Pegasus' entire motivation hinging on the fact that his wife had died.
    • One of the rare non-Season 1 points where the dub didn't censor death was in the Season 2 duel between Yugi and brainwashed Joey, in which it was retained that Marik intended on drowning the loser of the duel, and threatened to crush Téa to death if anyone attempted to interfere.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands:
    • Frequently, characters reveal to have cards in their decks that they never used before (and never will use again), but which help them win the current duel.
    • The Winged God Dragon of Ra is especially guilty of this; it seems like every time Dark Marik plays it, Ra just happens to have a previously-unused power that just happens to perfectly counter his opponent's new winning strategy.
  • New Rules as the Plot Demands:
    • Duelist Kingdom is this writ large. Some make at least a bit of sense, like flying monsters having an advantage over land-based monsters, or machine monsters rusting due to a mist over the field. Others just plain have no basis in fact at all, most prominently the infamous Catapult Turtle move Yugi uses to defeat Pani K. However, Duelist Kingdom is stated to use custom rules specific to the tournament.
    • Once the rules were written and pinned down in Battle City, this turned into "New Cards As the Plot Demands," with duelists producing cards never before seen at just the right time. Many of these cards exist for Rule of Cool, as there are other pre-existing cards that do the same thing as the new card but don't fit the theme of the duelist's deck. Change of Heart for example has equivalents with Yugi and Kaiba in the forms of Brain Control and Enemy Controller. And lapses of the random new rules still occurred: Jinzo is supposedly immune to Time Wizard's effect due to being made of special metal, for example, and Flute of Summoning Dragon lets both players summon Dragons from their hand if they want.
    • There's also a ton of cards that were created to allow the duelists to draw cards so the writers can keep their hands filled, such as Card of Last Will, Card of Demise, Nibelung's Ring, and especially Card of Sanctity. Kaiba's "Power Balance" in particular is ridiculously overpowered in this regard, requiring the opponent to discard half their hand and then allowing the user to draw the same number of cards discarded, with no drawbacks.
  • Nietzsche Wannabe:
    • During the duel between Joey and Yugi in the Duelist Kingdom finals, Pegasus's narration, at least in dub town, slips into this. To quote:
      Pegasus: Oh, I know you'd like to think that your friendship would be enough to sustain you through any mishap or misfortune, but that's not the way the world works.

      Pegasus: ... when fate hits you with a cold slap of reality and shows you who's boss. Yes, the world has taught me that only the strong and the ruthless survive.
    • Kaiba is seen reading Nietzsche in his first appearance. (In the Japanese, at least.) No better way to paint yourself a villain immediately, aye?
  • No Kill like Overkill: Numerous times, characters will pointlessly weaken themselves in order to boost their monsters powers or completely clear the field before delivering a final blow so that not only do their opponent's life points drop to 0, but all their monsters are gone too - this being in situations where they could save themselves the trouble and just attack outright and win. A prime example is Atem's fight with Weevil, after the latter pretended to destroy Yugi's soul just to get a rise out of the Pharaoh. Atem used a card that let his monster attack directly every time he drew a monster card, and proceeded to pound Weevil again and again, long after his Life Points ran out. He would've kept going too, if Téa hadn't stopped him. Note that this is during a special duel where you actually feel the pain of attacks.
  • Nominal Villain:
    • Battle City Arc: Rishid only serves Marik to keep the latter's much more ruthless Split Personality from taking over and causing far more havoc. When Rishid is rendered comatose, we see just how much worse Marik is when Rishid isn't around to act as his Morality Chain.
    • Waking The Dragons Arc: Rafael is the only one of Dartz's minions who isn't motivated by some grudge against the heroes and genuinely believes that Dartz's action will make the world a better place. He pulls a Heel–Face Turn after Atem shows him how Dartz is taking advantage of his naivete and idealism.
  • Non-Human Undead: In Duelist Kingdom, Yugi severely weakens Kaiba's Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon by fusing his Mammoth Graveyard into it, which, because both are incompatible types, slowly weakens the resulting fusion and will cause its eventual death.
  • Non-Player Character: NPCs are seen in the Legendary Heroes arc and Virtual World arcs with varying importance. It gets deconstructed in the latter case, as Noah Kaiba was driven insane by the monotony of their repetitive lines.
  • Not a Date: Téa goes on one of these with the Pharaoh in episode 53.
  • Not Disabled In VR: In the Virtual World Filler Arc, Seto Kaiba's adoptive father Gozaburo Kaiba originally had the virtual world created for his biological son Noah after Noah was hit by a car and left permanently disabled.
  • Not Just a Tournament: Virtually every Tournament Arc, to the point where it's commented in-story how refreshing it is to go to a tournament that's only a tournament (it still manages to get hijacked by a villain's scheme, but that wasn't in the host's plans).
  • Not Too Dead to Save the Day: Yugi gets help from all his petrified friends and Kaiba) in his head before playing his last turn in the duel against Noah.
  • Obvious Trap: The point of Odion's deck is to focus on laying tons of trap cards and then wait for the opponent to spring them. Thing is, he makes the point to play almost no monsters thereby leaving him wide open to attack except for his traps, which you know will protect him, he's not stupid. Unless you pack an insane amount of spell/trap destruction or run an unorthodox deck theme, you're gonna have to attack him sooner or later, and when you do, he'll be ready to turn it back on you. Joey found this out the hard way.
    • Joey and Mai later learn Marik also plays a lot of traps, which are even more brutal and painful than anything Odion used.
    • Besides the specific duelists, quite often the characters know the opponent has a dangerous trap waiting, but they acknowledge if they want to win they either need to find a way around it, or trigger it and hope they can come back from whatever it does.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
    • Yugi and Joey duel immediately after Battle City, and it's implied Joey won in both anime and manga, though the duel itself is skipped.
    • After punching Yami Bakura out and throwing away the Ring, Honda carries the unconscious Mokuba and Bakura back to the dueling platform without getting caught by guards while going through a maze with looping flights of stairs and doors to nowhere that even had Yami Bakura confused.
    • The 4Kids dub gave Bakura one, given the properties of the Shadow Realm. According to the lore, the Shadow Realm has very little food, Duel Monsters can be mentally summoned while there, though doing so puts a strain on your mind, running out of energy while there will shred your soul to pieces, and being trapped there increases the power of Millennium Items. It's also implied the bearer of an Item can leech off your soul for extra power. Despite all those obstacles, Bakura made it out okay.
  • Oh, Crap!: Many dueling opponents on the receiving end of a spell, trap, or ability that they didn't see coming have this reaction.
  • Oddly Named Sequel: Yu-Gi-Oh! GX; Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds; Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXALnote , Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS.
  • The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: To the point where Kaiba throws a hissy fit upon learning Yugi has 'allowed' someone else to defeat him in Season 4.
  • Outrun the Fireball: At the end of the Virtual World arc, Kaiba presses a Big Red Button, sacrificing the greater part of his blimp to accomplish this.
  • Parental Abandonment: Mai lost her parents at a young age.
  • Pensieve Flashback: The Kaiba brothers experience these throughout the Virtual Nightmare arc.
  • Phantom Zone: The Millennium Items each can transport the area immediately surrounding the user (and anyone else in it) to the Shadow Realm, an Alternate Dimension full of the Mons that the Duel Monsters cards are based off of, which can be summoned to fight each other. Alternatively, they can trap a person's mind in the Shadow Realm, leaving their body functioning normally (although from the fact that Joey breaks out of it and "wakes up," this is implied to be an illusionary spell cast on the victim) or seal their soul into a Soul Jar. (Yami Marik does the former, Pegasus does the latter.)
  • Phantom-Zone Picture: Pegasus gives Seto and Mokuba Penalty Games, which involve their souls getting trapped into blank cards. In the anime, this also includes Yugi's grandfather.
  • Phlebotinum-Proof Robot:
    • Early in the series, when the rules of the Duel Monsters card game were less defined, Machine monsters were immune to Spell Cards (except ones specifically beneficial to Machines, like 7 Completed) and attacks from Spellcaster monsters. These and other type immunities among monsters were eventually abandoned.
    • Possibly as a reference to this, Ancient Gear, an archetype used by Professor Crowler from Yu Gi Oh GX and Duel Academy agents from Yu Gi Oh Arc V, features many Machine monsters that have effects which prevent the opponent from activating Spell or Trap Cards when they attack.
  • Pinball Scoring: Every card in the anime does base damage/bonuses/etc in increments of 100; the actual card game has a handful that have 50s.
    • In the Duelist Kingdom season, there are a few duels where damage/bonuses are calculated by percentages of other stats, creating some odd prime numbers. From Battle City on, most all the numbers end in even 0s.
    • Unless you're Marik, in which case you can have attack points that end in —99.
    • A few monsters have ATK or DEF stats that aren't divisible by 50. Castle of Dark Illusions has 920 ATK and 1930 DEF, Reaper of the Cards has 1380 ATK and 1930 DEF, King of Yamimakai has 2000 ATK and 1530 DEF, and Seven-Armed Fiend has 666 ATK and 666 DEF (1000/1000 in the Dub). All but the last are the result of the anime fudging the numbers of Pani K's monsters so that they can come close to the stat scores as seen in the manga, after applying the 30% power bonus that the anime establishes.
  • Plot Tumor: Originally, the manga was not about any specific game, much less a single card game. Here non-Duel Monsters games are few and far between. Given that its title is Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, it's no surprise.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Creating the Millennium Items required a sacrifice of 99 human lives.
  • Power Levels: Monster cards have them in the form of Attack (ATK) and Defense (DEF) points.
  • Power Makes Your Hair Grow: When Yugi, Bakura, and Marik become possessed by the spirits of the Millennium Items (or in Marik's case his Superpowered Evil Side), their hair gets even more ridiculous than usual.
  • The Power of Friendship: This is the intended main theme for the series.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: In order to squeeze in more Duel Monsters, a few arcs had to be changed.
    • The Millennium World arc in the anime. Among the many alterations to the plot, the tabletop RPG was simplified, and Seto's battle with the Pharaoh took place just before Zorc awoke rather than after his defeat. In exchange, Kisara and Yugi's friends got more to do, and the consequences of Yugi's wish for friends was brought up as well. However, this resulted in the arc becoming even more of a Mind Screw than it already was.
    • The Dungeon Dice Monsters arc is retooled from a plot-relevant arc regarding Yugi's development with no relation to Duel Monsters to an arc that has a big influence from the card game. The same also applies to Otogi/Duke. In the manga he is a troubled child who is purposely raised by his father to become a Tyke Bomb, having a Heel–Face Turn because he doesn't hate Yugi as much as his father. In the anime, he is a fanboy of Pegasus who challenges Yugi to a duel because he believes Yugi won by cheating, and as a result of the win, his chance of his game going public. He changed his ways because he realized that he was wrong on both accounts, and acted like a dick to Yugi and his friends for no reason.
    • The anime plays it even looser with manga content from before Duelist Kingdom, with some plot beats such as how the main characters became friends simply being referenced as something that happened in the past with loose flashbacks, and introductory arcs like Shadi and Bakura's being completely reworked into single episodes of Duelist Kingdom that only bear a slight resemblence to what actually happened in the original manga.
  • Prestigious Player Title: Duel Monsters players are called "Duelists".
  • Princesses Rule: Princess Adena, ruler of Sin Lau, in Kaiba's virtual world.
  • Product Placement: In one episode, Mai is seen drinking Pepsi. This reference was taken out in the dub due to copyright issues. Starbucks Coffee also appears as well, this was taken out also.
  • Promotion to Parent: Seto Kaiba looks after his little brother after their parents die.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality:
    • Antagonists who use manipulative mind-games are called dishonorable, ones who keep secrets are called liars, ones that go on the defensive are called cowards exposing their own weakness, and ones that use cheap tactics are called cheaters. Of course, when main characters do these things they're simply said to be using intelligent strategy.
      • There have been a number of blatant cheaters in the show, however; Weevil Underwood throws Yugi's Exodia cards into the ocean on the way to Duelist Kingdom, and in Battle City pays a kid to slip an insect card into Joey's deck during a fake robbery. Mai in Duelist Kingdom uses perfume to know which card she's going to draw to psyche her opponent out, and Bandit Keith keeps cards in his wristbands that he switches so he always pulls the card he needs. Pegasus also cheats by using his Millennium Eye to read his opponents' minds.
    • Inverted in Yami Yugi's duel against Raphael, where he was depicted as selfish and cruel for sacrificing his monsters as a part of his strategy to defeat Raphael. The problem is, the rules of the game actually encourage sacrificing, and Yami Yugi had little choice in the matter as he couldn't attack due to Raphael's swords of revealing light. The series often seems to ignore the fact that the monsters are just holographic projections of the cards they're playing and not living creatures. This trope is also frequently played straight in this regard with the protagonists often chastising their opponents for sacrificing their monsters.
  • Psychic Powers: The Millennium Items give their owners a variety of psychic powers, depending on the item. Examples include mind raping, locating and identifying other Millennium Item holders, mind reading, visiting someone's mental landscape, seeing the future, and possessing other people.
  • Pupating Peril: In Yugi's first duel at Duelist Kingdom against Weevil Underwood, Weevil was able to set Larva Moth into the field: upon flip summoning it, he then equipped Cocoon of Evolution so that he could special summon Great Moth within 4 turns. Upon emerging, it was Weevil's strongest card (second to Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth) since it has an effect of scattering poisonous pollens that lower attack and defense (which is exclusive to the manga/anime since it doesn't have that effect in the TCG).
  • Purple Is the New Black: The Shadow Realm is depicted with some swirls of midnight blue or black but mostly purple.
  • Put on a Bus: Multiple:
    • Bakura doesn't appear in any anime-original arc.
    • Bandit Keith, after losing his duel with Yugi, is never mentioned in the story again. This is likely because in the manga, he was killed by Pegasus after losing to Jounouchi/Joey as punishment for cheating.
  • Quest for Identity: The pharaoh is trying to find out who he is and regain his lost memories.
  • Rage Quit: Several times, low-ranking villains will screw the rules and attempt to get their job done directly. This has varying levels of success. This is especially fatal in a Shadow Game, which enforces the rules very strictly and very harshly.
  • Rapid-Fire Typing: Seto Kaiba often utilizes this whenever he's operating or hacking into a computer.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Multiple:
    • Kaiba, most notably, to anyone unfortunate enough to lose to him. Joey is victim to this more often than not.
    • Téa, of all people, turns out to be surprisingly good at these, although she doesn't give them often:
      • She gives one to Kaiba at Duelist Kingdom, although it's more of a "the reason Yugi is better than you" speech. *** She lets Johnny Steps have it for running away when his duel with Yami Yugi gets too difficult.
    • After Noah defeats Kaiba and turns him and Mokuba to stone, Yugi gives one to him before he combines his deck with Kaiba's and resumes the duel, but it's similar to the above and saying why Kaiba is better.
  • Recognizable by Sound: In the Virtual World arc, Noah plays Serenity's screams into the tunnel where the rest of the gang are. Joey instantly recognizes it.
  • Recycled Soundtrack: The track "The Priests" in the Japanese OST is a pastiche of the transformation theme from Cyber Team in Akihabara and in turn both tracks are recycled from Nurse Angel Ririka SOS's transformation theme, it's not too surprising since all three shows share the same composer, Shinkichi Mitsumune.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Sort of. Noah Kaiba gains a body like he originally wanted, then puts himself back Inside a Computer System to save the others out of guilt. So, not dead but close to it.
  • Reincarnation: Kaiba with Priest Seto, Yugi's grandpa with Shimon, and Ishizu with Isis.
  • Road-Sign Reversal: Marik Body Surfing Bandit Keith has set up arrows to lure Yugi into a trap. Yami Bakura flips the arrows around so Yugi's friends can't follow.
  • Rousing Speech: Kaiba gives Yugi his version of one in the Pharaoh's soul room towards the end of the Virtual World arc. It's probably one of the least encouraging rousing speeches ever, especially since his version of, "don't give up," is, "don't screw up or else," but it seemed to do the trick.
  • Rousseau Was Right: Numerous bad guys, including Dartz and his biker henchmen, Marik Ishtar, Pegasus, etc., seem hopelessly callous and evil only to eventually prove to be good at heart, whether by exorcism of an evil side or simple persuasion, usually by Yugi or Pharaoh. Seto Kaiba is also routinely obnoxious and cold yet occasionally proves to have a compassionate side, which is usually related to his love for his little brother Mokuba.
  • Rule of Symbolism: The author intended to have the cards represent the character and personality of their users.
  • Running Gag: For the English dub: "Oh no!" "Oh yes!"

    S–Z 
  • Save Sat: In the English dub, Kaiba sets the Industrial Illusions satellite to crash into their mainframe, bringing down their computer defenses and allowing him to access the data at Duelist Kingdom (in the Japanese version, he's just using the satellite to hack into the mainframe.)
  • Scales of Justice: The Millennium Scale judges peoples souls.
  • Screw Destiny: Multiple:
    • It's revealed in the final arc that one of the Millennium Puzzle's abilities is to "alter fate", which in the context of the Duel Monsters card game allows him to change the card he's going to draw as long as he believes it will happen hard enough, rendering every past example of Yugi drawing the exact card he needed by "Believing in the heart of the cards" more than just good luck.
    • Kaiba manages this rule in the Battle City Arc. Screw Destiny, I have money!
      • He also changes the future itself by following his instincts and sacrificing his ancient god card to summon a Blue Eyes White Dragon to attack and win his game against Ishizu, whereas her clairvoyance had predicted he would attack with the ancient god and fall victim to the clever damage feedback trap she had set up. He wins the game instead of losing as destiny had foretold.
      • It's actually not instinct. The Millennium Rod reaches out to him, recognizing his soul as its true master, and shows him what to do.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Gag Dub is the Trope Namer.
    • Occurs within the series itself. Kaiba does it, of course. Pegasus, however, even makes special cards that never go into circulation just so that it gives him an advantage.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: The Grand Prix tournament has a competitor named "Apdnarg Otum". Joey is the only one who can't figure out who it is.
  • Sealed Evil in a Six Pack:
    • An in-universe fictional example is Exodia, a monster so powerful it takes multiple cards to contain him. The individual pieces are worthless, but a player who reassembles Exodia by getting all five parts in their hand at once wins immediately.
    • The Pharaoh was trapped in the Millennium Pendant, which was then broken up into pieces. They were all kept in one place, but putting it back together was a complicated process (which is why it was then renamed the Millennium Puzzle).
  • Self-Made Orphan: Kaiba has a long history of these kind of tropes. Also Marik.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Yugi and his best friend Joey, respectively.
  • Serious Business: Duel Monsters, to the point that in the subbed Dungeon Dice Monsters arc half of the conflict is about fighting for duelists, seemingly ignoring every other game out there.
  • Sexy Whatever Outfit: The Dark Magician Girl wears a sexy Robe and Wizard Hat.
  • Shackle Seat Trap: In the pier duel Téa is strapped to one of these as part of Marik's latest death trap.
  • Sharing a Body: Yami Yugi and Yugi, and Yami Bakura and Bakura.
  • Shapeshifter Guilt Trip: Dartz, by projecting the voices and faces of Yugi's soul-stolen friends onto his Mirror Knights, intimidates Yugi into not attacking.
  • Ship Tease: Rebecca kisses Yugi early on in Season 4. Cue Luminescent Blush (and he had an awkward expression on his face before she kissed him) and Téa's jealous reaction.
  • Shout-Out: Both the card game and anime series feature cards based on Konami's Gradius and Mystical Ninja series, and even one that references Metal Gear.
    • First episode, take a look at the shelf that Yugi covers up just as he answers the phone call from Kaiba. Even Super Robot Wars can find its way into a show about a children's card game.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! references Dragon Ball on three occasions: the first chapter of the manga references Dragonball by name, when Yugi figures having the Millennium Puzzle grant his wish would be similar to collecting the Dragon Balls. Another instance is that a Dragon Ball poster can be seen in Yugi's room during the Battle City arc. Finally, during the KC Grand Championship, Weevil and Rex's ambush of Fortune Salim and following masquerade a la Totem Pole Trench replicates a similar scene in Dragon Ball Z, where Goten and Trunks use a similar tactic to get into a tournament.
    • Funny Bunny sure loves spinning.
    • In a dub-induced case, Mai irritatingly states in "The Gauntlet Is Thrown" that her sleeping conditions on the ship were "Outrageous! Truly, truly outrageous!", in an unexpected nod to Jem. This may have something to do with the fact that one of the executives was script editor on that show.
    • In the dub for episode 95, a movie Marik sees on TV in the outside world has the line, "Sorry Dottie, I'm a loner. A rebel."
    • In Joey's duel with Zigfried he says, "C'mon, big bucks no Whammy's!"
    • In Joey's duel with Solomon: "Survey Says!".note 
    • In episode 213 Joey references the '80s hit song "Walk Like an Egyptian."
    • In episode 13 Joey as the Flame Swordsman attacks Bakura's monster shouting "HASSAN, CHOP!"
    • It's possible Joey Wheeler is a reference to Captain Planet character Wheeler, a main character from Brooklyn, complete with an accent, who was voiced by Joey Dedio.
  • Shown Their Work: Though occasionally the exact details are fuddled, the mythological concepts explored throughout the franchise show that someone obviously did their homework.
  • Sinister Suffocation: During the Battle City arc, Marik brainwashes Joey and forces him to duel Yugi, with the loser being dragged to the bottom of the ocean—enforced by the also-brainwashed Tea sitting under a cargo crate suspended from a crane. This is one of the few instances where the possibility of death was not censored in the English dub, to the point the other characters' panic is much more pronounced, with Mokuba in particular begging his brother to do something to help Yugi.
  • Social Services Does Not Exist: Story of the Kaiba brothers' life.
  • Solomon Divorce: Joey and Serenity were separated when their parents got divorced.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Kaiba —> Pegasus —> Marik —> Dartz —> Zorc/Bakura. Noah and Zigfried are exceptions, as while formidable, Noah is nowhere close to Marik's level of danger, and Zigfried borders on Harmless Villain (as he just wants to humiliate Kaiba at his own tournament).
  • Soul Jar: Millennium Ring, Millennium Puzzle, various gaming equipment. Taken literally with Mai in season 2 when she loses to Marik and her mind gets put in an hourglass in the Shadow Realm.
  • Spared by the Adaptation: Pegasus and Bandit Keith both died in the manga, but are made to survive in the anime, with Pegasus gaining something of a recurring role.
  • Spell My Name with an S: Marik? Malik? In the Bunkoban series, it's spelled Maric.
    • Also Cyndia, although some spell it as Cynthia or Cindia. Then there's her dub name, Cecelia Pegasus, which becomes Cecilia in subtitles, despite the fact that the proper dub name was shown in episode 40. It gets worse when people assume her original name is Cyndia Crawford, as she does not have a surname in the original.
    • The Big Five consist of Ganzley/Gansley, Crump/Krump, Nezbitt/Nesbitt/Nesbit, Lecter/Lector/Leichter... and Johnson.
  • Split Personality: Yami Marik is this to Marik.
  • Split-Personality Makeover: How do you know who's in control? Well... just look at the page image.
    • Sometimes averted with Bakura, who often seems to be controlled by the spirit even when he looks like his nice self, which the audience usually finds out mere seconds later. Lampshaded by a close-up focusing on the two front locks of hair moving into a more upright position when the spirit reveals himself to be in control before his duel with Yugi in the Battle City finals.
  • Story Arc: Duelist Kingdom, Battle City, Noah's Virtual World, Battle City Finals, Waking the Dragons, the Kaiba Corp Grand Prix, and Dawn of the Duel, with a Myth Arc spanning all of these arcs.
  • Stronger with Age: Some monsters, like Baby Dragon and Dark Magician, gain stronger forms when they age with Time Wizard's effect. Others, like the Harpie Ladies and Red-Eyes Black Dragon, become decrepit or even fossilized and are correspondingly weaker.
  • Straw Nihilist: Alister holds the view that weapons will not disappear and humans will not stop fighting. Thus, this world should be destroyed.
  • Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Season 4 turns Mai Valentine into an angst-ridden member of a villainous biker gang. It turns out she was tricked into Heel–Face Brainwashing by Dartz, and her cameos in season 5 have her back to normal.
  • Suggestive Collision: Happens to Joey and Mai in the episode "Lights, Camera, Duel." Played with, though, in that Mai fell on top of him because he was catching her as she fell from a dangerous height—and instead of going for the pervert-slap, Mai thanks him for saving her and calls him an "action hero."
  • Surveillance as the Plot Demands: In the Japanese version of episode 196, Leon says that he gained an interest in Duel Monsters via watching Yami Yugi's duels in Duelist Kingdom and Battle City...even though in those locations, there was no camera crew to record the events.
  • Sunglasses at Night: Bandit Keith wears his sunglasses even in a dark cave.
  • Superpowered Evil Side: Various characters' Yami versions, including the early appearances of Yami Yugi, who was more like The Unfettered.
  • Synchronization: Between the duelists and their cards, to some extent. Showcased when Yugi's grandfather Solomon actually has a heart attack when he loses.
  • Take Over the World: Both Marik and Yami Bakura want to do this by usurping the pharaoh position from Yami Yugi, mostly as revenge for personal beefs they have with him.
    • This is further complicated by Zorc's entanglement with Bakura, as Zorc has no beef with Yami Yugi, but only uses Bakura's.
    • Averted by both Marik/Yami Marik and Zorc in the Japanese versions. Marik merely wants to torment the Pharaoh's spirit as part of revenge and Yami Marik wishes to torture and kill every living thing on the planet. Zorc is just an evil demon fueled by the rage of the people sacrificed to create him, making him want to destroy everything. Even Yami Bakura's motives are unclear and don't really seem to involve wanting to take over the world in the Japanese version.
  • Taking the Bullet:
    • Kisara dies to save Seto.
    • Earlier in the series, Yami Yugi saves Mai and Joey from Marik's Winged God Dragon Of Ra by diving in front of a fireball and blocking it with his body until it dissipates. He promptly collapses.
  • The Tape Knew You Would Say That: In episode two of the anime, where Pegasus contacts the protagonist. Granted, it's less so a tape and more of an enchanted two way face cam... thing.
  • Tarot Motifs: Inevitable, considering the series-wide obsession with card games.
    • Yugi and Atem are both the Magician. Especially notable, since the Black Magician is their signature card.
    • Joey is The Fool.
    • Ishizu is the High Priestess.
    • Téa is the Empress.
    • Kaiba is The Emperor.
    • Shadi is The Hermit.
    • Marik is The Heirophant.
  • Tattooed Crook: Big Bad Marik Ishtar has a large tattoo covering his back and he is the leader of his own criminal organization. However, it was his reception of the tattoo that originally caused him to turn evil, rather than him getting the tattoo after turning evil. The tattoo was carved into his back in the Japanese version, though it’s similar, and the dub changes it to a tattoo.
  • There Are No Therapists: Several characters would be better off with professional help, most notably the villains.
  • Thinly-Veiled Dub Country Change: There are a few mentions of Domino being in America, with Joey specifically mentioning New York or America a few times. Ishizu is told "Welcome to America, Miss Ishtar" after disembarking from her flight as well. The uncut version drops several of these. They also never do anything to explain away the distinctly Japanese architecture and infrastructure, the frequent use of trains (since America is notorious for lacking reliable public rail), and other "small town Japan" tropes.
  • Third Eye: The card "Goddess with the Third Eye." Also, Millennium Item holders connected to ancient Egypt (i.e., the Pharaoh and Dark Marik) sometimes get a glowing eye symbol on their foreheads when using their item, as do people possessed by Marik.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Joey. As late as the Duelist Kingdom arc, he spams monster after monster without any regard of strategy, because he relies too much on the idea of beating things to death even though the attack stat is too low. It becomes apparent in the second episode of the show that he lost to Téa, probably the least competitive player of all, because she knew a thing or two about magic and traps. It takes a lot of encouragement and guidance on the Pharaoh's part to help him, but by Battle City he grows into a very competent duelist and becomes a finalist, managing to go toe-to-toe against Marik.
  • Too Many Mouths: Sky Dragon of Osiris has two.
  • Toon: Pegasus's Toon Monsters.
  • Toon Town: Pegasus's Toon World card.
  • Tournament Arc: Every arc except the Virtual World, Waking the Dragons, and Dawn of the Duel arcs.
  • Tsundere: Mai and Joey, most frequently toward each other as a form of Ship Tease.
  • Traintop Battle: Or blimp-top, in Battle City. Played straight in Season 4 when Yami Yugi duels Weevil. In Season 5, there's a ferris wheel-top one.
  • Trauma Conga Line: Happens several different times, to several different characters.
  • Truth in Television: Pegasus's Toon cards are said by Yugi to be kept out of circulation for being too powerful, but Pegasus is the creator of the game so he kept them for himself. The Seal of Orichalcos, a Game-Breaker if there ever was one, exists in real life and is limited to a few copies that were used by members of Upper Deck's R&D department in a special tournament until years later, when it got an official, nerfed release to the public.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Kaiba, after several rescues from Yugi and co. He does show some limited thanks for Yugi, and only Yugi, at times, such as freeing him from Pegasus and the Big Five.
  • Unique Moment Ruined: In the Kaibacorp Grand Prix arc of the anime, this trope is why arc villain Zigfried von Schroeder hates Kaiba. He, a rival game developer, was planning to present a gaming system to Maximillion Pegasus that was similar to Kaiba's, but Kaiba beat him to it. If Zigfried had gotten there first, his company would be enjoying the runaway success and fame that Kaibacorp now has; for this reason he wants to destroy and humiliate Kaiba in his own Grand Prix.
  • Unknown Rematch Conclusion: During the Battle City arc, Jonouchi (Joey) loses his Red Eyes Black Dragon card to a Rare Hunter in a duel. Yugi defeats the Hunter and wins back the Red Eyes card for Jonouchi, but Jonouchi insists on Yugi keeping the card until Jonouchi can win it back from him in a duel (the 4Kids dub has Joey insist Yugi keep it as a sign of their friendship). In the arc's finale, Yugi and Jonouchi have a duel to settle an unresolved one they had while Jonouchi was under Marik's control, with the winner getting the Red Eyes as the prize. The duel itself is never shown but Jonouchi is seen using the Red Eyes in subsequent episodes, suggesting that he was the victor.
  • Unstoppable Rage: After Yugi's soul is taken by the Orichalchos, and Weevil taunts the now rather unstable Yami Yugi by tearing up a card in front of him after claiming it contains Yugi's soul, just "as a joke", Yami Yugi defeats Weevil using a card that grants extra attacks by drawing and discarding monsters, and then he continues bashing at him long after Weevil's life points have hit zero. He would've kept going too, if Téa hadn't stopped him.
  • Use Their Own Weapon Against Them:
    • In his duel with Kaiba, Pegasus uses his Millenium Eye to predict Kaiba's moves. In one turn he uses a trap card called Prophecy to "guess" the attack power of a monster in Kaiba's hand, allowing him to take Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Pegasus then uses his Toon World card to summon Kaiba's Blue-Eyes as Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon.
    • Yugi's Brain Control spell card allows him to control his opponent's monster for one turn. He uses this to defeat Marik/Strings's Slifer/Revival Jam strategy by taking control of Revival Jam and using its effects to make Strings draw cards until he decks out.
    • During Joey's duel with Bandit Keith, Keith used his Pillager spell card to take and use Joey's Sword and Shield card, which switched the Attack and Defence points of both monsters on the field. However, in an example of Beat Them at Their Own Game, Joey then plays his Graverobber trap card, which allows him to steal a card from his opponent's graveyard and use it as if it were his own, using it to take Keith's Time Machine card to revive his Red-Eyes Dark Metal Dragon; it lost the previous clash because the Attack/Defence switch left it weaker than Keith's current monster, but since Time Machine brought it back in the state it was in at the start of the turn, the Dragon is now at its peak and easily destroys Keith's monster.
    • In his second duel with Kaiba, Joey uses Graverobber to summon Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Dragon to his side of the field. This only angers Kaiba's and he still beats Joey.
    • Kaiba himself tried to use this tactic on Yugi in their Battle City finals duel by using Lullaby of Obedience to take Yugi's Slifer card from his hand. However, Yugi was counting on Kaiba trying to do this and used Exchange to take Slifer back.
    • Mai tries to do this to Yami Marik but fails. Thanks to her Amazoness Chain Master's effect, she is able to take Yami Marik's Winged Dragon of Ra card from his hand. Unfortunately, she doesn't know how to use it and Yami Marik quickly regains the advantage.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: Dartz's entire motivation. He will do absolutely anything to "cleanse" the world of its problems.
  • Viewers Are Goldfish: Even if the card is used every single duel, its effect will be explained, especially the memetic Pot of Greed, which lets you draw two cards. This continued into Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, right up until Pot of Greed got put on the real-life ban list and the anime suddenly stopped using it.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Joey and Tristan.
  • Virtue Is Weakness: This is the moral position of antagonists (Kaiba, Mai, Marik) in the series until Yugi or Joey, the Embodiments Of Virtue, defeats them.
  • Voice of the Legion: Marik's servants gain a double-voice when he is possessing them, as does Yami Marik in the dub.
  • Waterfall Shower: The first season has this due to the fact that players are camping outdoors at night while they play the tournament.
  • We Can Rule Together: Noah makes this offer to Yugi in the Japanese version of episode 118, after Yugi manages a formidable counterattack and after Noah turns some of Yugi's True Companions to stone.
    Noah: Seriously, though, that was splendid, Yugi! You possess both the skill and judgement necessary to catch your enemies off-guard the second they lose focus. When you think about it, you and I have no reason to be enemies. If you swear your loyalty to me, I'll save all your friends from Hell this very instant!
  • Warrior Therapist: Mai during her duel with Yugi in the Duelist Kingdom finals. She manages to talk Yugi out of his funk so that he can duel her with a clear and focused head. And it works!
  • Welcome to Corneria: Both virtual realities suffer from this, despite how fleshed-out everything else in them is. Deconstructed in the latter, since Noah spent years trapped in his world and was driven mad by everyone saying the same lines.
  • Wham Line: From episode 52:
    Ishizu Ishtar: And the young man who stands behind the pharaoh... Above his head is the Blue Eyes White Dragon.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Gurimo from the first two episodes of the Waking the Dragons arc. Once he's finished being Mr. Exposition, everybody forgets about him, including his cohorts, even when all of the souls are being restored. Only the battle is referenced briefly during Rafael's last fight, prior to his Heel–Face Turn.
    • Also, the last time we saw Bonz and his friends, they were put into the Shadow Realm by Yami Bakura. Nobody ever rescues them, although they may have been freed upon Yami Bakura's own defeat at the hands of Dark Marik. They're dead in the original Japanese version.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Rebecca does this to Yami Yugi when his reckless use of the Seal of Orichalchos results in Yugi losing his soul. Even Weevil does this effectively, pointing out that although he might be an asshole, at least he didn't knowingly endanger his friend simply to win.
  • Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Where exactly Domino is supposed to be located is never really specified beyond being near the coast. It's vaguely implied to be somewhere in or near Tokyo Bay, but only vaguely.
  • The Whole World Is Watching: Seto Kaiba loves giving all his tournaments as much of an audience as possible, even using his satellites to hijack the airwaves so that everyone in Domino City can watch his mastery of Duel Monsters. Of course this is more about his ego than anything else.
  • Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Inverted in Yugi's duel with Mai. After drawing Monster Reborn and playing Swords of Revealing Light (preventing Mai from attacking for 3 turns), Yugi waits a turn before using the former, and then only to revive Gaia the Fierce Knight in order to give him fusion material for the Black Luster Ritual. But Yugi could have simply used Monster Reborn on the same turn as Swords to revive Dark Magician instead and then destroyed Mai's harpies one by one, without undermining his plan to play Black Luster Ritual.
  • Wine Is Classy: In the original, there's a scene where Pegasus is drinking a glass of wine. For the dub, this got changed to "the world's finest fruit juices".note 
  • With Friends Like These...: Joey is often the subject of mistreatment from Téa and Tristan, particularly in filler arcs. It reaches egregious levels in Dungeon Dice Monsters and the KC Grand Prix—though they support him just as often, particularly in the manga-adapted arcs and the Virtual World.
  • With Lyrics: The companion album for the dub, "Music to Duel By," includes such versions for the Yu-Gi-Oh main theme and Seto Kaiba's theme, "Your Move" and "Duel Madness" respectively. These are relatively obscure in the fandom compared to the instrumentals.
  • Wok Fu: Yugi faces off against Vivian Wong inside a Chinese restaurant. His friends get distracted from their usual cheerleading routine by all the food.
  • The Worf Barrage: Kaiba's Crush Card. Number of times he tries to use it: Seven. Number of times it actually works: Three, and of those three times, Yugi found ways to work around it and lost for entirely unrelated reasons and Ishizu made its effect work to her advantage and turned it back on Kaiba. So, really, of the seven times he uses it the Crush Card only works the way he plans it to once. Though, the one time he couldn't get it off normally, he was able to combine it with the Fang of Critias and win that way.
  • The Worf Effect:
    • The anime adds several duels not in the manga for Joey, most of which he loses.
    • Mai Valentine. Top-notch duelist who gets seeded off against the most dangerous opponents, eventually becoming deconstructed in Season 4. Despite being a very skilled duelist, she keeps going up against super-powerful opponents to show the viewers how hard it'll be for the other heroes to win. On top of what Marik does to her, she starts to have a breakdown over it (to the point of destroying a first-place trophy she just won), and Dartz is able to brainwash her over to the villains' side because of it.
  • World of Ham: Especially when two hams duel against each other. The Kaiba/Yami Yugi matches go up a notch compared to others because of their rivalry.
  • Worthy Opponent: Yugi and Kaiba regard each other this way, with Yugi being the only duelist that Kaiba considers worthy of being his rival.
  • Writers Cannot Do Math: While this is averted for the vast majority of the time given the nature of the series, they did make one small slip-up in the Zigfried vs. Rex and Weevil duel. Specifically, Zigfried would only have One-Turn Killed both of them if they were sharing a pool of 8000 LP, rather than the separate pools of 4000 they were shown with.explanation 
  • Xanatos Gambit:
    • Used by Yami Marik during his duel with Dark Yugi. Marik manipulates the game so that when a player takes damage to their life points, normal Yugi and normal Marik suffer the damage as well. If Yami Yugi loses the duel, then Yugi is consumed and Marik walks free. However, if Yugi wins then Dark Marik walks free anyway, seeing as his good half is destroyed instead. It's subverted at the last minute.
    • Used in the final duel between Yugi and Atem. Yugi correctly predicts that his opponent has a Mirror Force trap, used to destroy any attacking monsters. He attacks anyway. Had he been wrong, his attack would have gone through anyway and destroyed Atem's monsters. Had he been right (which he was), then Yugi had a plan in place to immediately counteract it.
  • You Can't Thwart Stage One: Joey almost defeats the Big Bad of the Battle-city arc, Yami Marik, by himself during the tournament's semi-final. He only fails because Marik uses his powers to make Joey pass out before he could order his monster to deal the finishing blow, eliminating Joey from the tournament. Because of this, Yugi, the protagonist, has to beat Yami Marik at the arc's climax.
  • Zeno's Race: Inverted with the pharaoh's backstory, seeing as how more information is revealed from the early manga, to Duelist Kingdom, to Battle City, to the Millennium World.
  • Zerg Rush: At one point, Yugi uses Monster Multiply, which causes Kuriboh to multiply each turn, in conjunction with Kuriboh's special ability that allows it to nullify the damage done by one enemy monster. Due to there being no limit on how many monsters can be summoned with one magic card in the anime's version of the game, this allows him to create a virtually impenetrable barrier of the little guys.
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"Now let me go!"

Yugi begs his partner not to use a mind-corrupting, soul-stealing card, but the Pharoah wrestles control from him and plays it anyway.

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"Where you take...

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"Now let me go!"

Yugi begs his partner not to use a mind-corrupting, soul-stealing card, but the Pharoah wrestles control from him and plays it anyway.

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"Now let me go!"

Zigfried von Sc...

"Where you take...

Kaiba Saves Yugi

Your Victory or...

"Really mature,...

The Kaiba Brothers

Oldest Trick in...

Bakura and the ...

Kaiba finds out...

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Exodia the Forb...