| abstract
| - A group of, yes, thirteen (temporarily fourteen, sort of) villains introduced in Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days. When someone with a strong heart is turned into a Heartless, the discarded body gets up with a life and will of its own as a Nobody. This group of particularly powerful Nobodies, who were able to retain human form on top of "existing" in the first place, seeks to regain their hearts at whatever cost. While the Organization is a pretty varied group, the following tropes are universal throughout the Organization:
* Back From the Dead: Several members of the Organization return in Dream Drop Distance, revived as humans.
* Badass Bookworm: Half of the gang were Mad Scientists before they got their Evil Makeover. Or rather some of them where, while others appeared to be apprenticed to Ansem for other ventures than his scientific ability.
* Beta Test Baddie
* Black Cloak
* Cast Full of Pretty Boys
* Estrogen Brigade Bait
* The Chessmasters
* Chronic Backstabbing Disorder
* Co-Dragons: Saïx and Xigbar. The former is more of an administrator/enforcer, handing out missions and punishing dissenters, while the latter keeps to the background.
* Cursed with Awesome: Congrats on being turned into a Nobody! Even if you lose your heart, you now have access to either one of several unique abilities (energy projectile, polymorphism, super strength) or if you were of strong will before losing your heart you can retain physical and magical ability you had in life.
* Elemental Powers: Each member controls a certain attribute. Some of these are a bit out there: time and space are elements, represented in-game as a timer and teleporting around/changing the layout of the room/defying gravity, respectively. Xemnas has Nothingness as a power, as paradoxical as it may seem, and it is represented, basically, as black and white lightning bolts and red laser swords. Yup. Said laser swords (named "ethereal blades") have been described as "hardened nothingness", whatever that's supposed to mean.
* Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: They will also absorb the element they posses and will receive very heavy damage to the one they are weak too.
* Evil Versus Evil: They got into a hard competition with Maleficent and her allies for the claim of Kingdom Hearts. Since they had more knowledge about the powers of darkness, they were for a time one step ahead, but when Maleficent and Pete allied with Sora, King Mickey, and the rest of the group in the endgame, they eventually lost the game to them.
* Eyes of Gold: Xemnas, Xigbar, and Saïx have them.
* Fan Nickname: Orgy XIII. Take a wild guess why.
* Flanderization: A few of them canonically get it in 358/2 Days.
* May also count as Fridge Brilliance, since Nobodies fake a personality based on strong memories and habits.
* Flat Character: Roughly half of them, since it's kind of hard to make thirteen well-rounded individuals when they're sharing spotlight in a cast of hundreds.
* Flip-Flop of God: Nomura stated in an interview that Nobodies do not age (with the exceptions of Roxas and Namine). However, Birth by Sleep and Dream Drop Distance appear to contradict this with the ages of Braig and Ienzo, though it is revealed that Xigbar was not going grey because of his age, leaving it as a possible case of Immortality Begins At Twenty.
* Grand Theft Me: Xehanort's entire reason for forming the Organization was to gather together 12 new hosts. He's already begun the process of taking over Braig/Xigbar and Isa/Saix, explaining why their eyes turned yellow.
* Humanoid Abomination: They are described as living rifts in the way things work: their existence defy the natural laws of the universe in a way that the Heartless do not. Since the very basis of their lives breaks physics (or whatever passes for it), they gain tremendous power over the arcane and the elemental. Doubles as a Bishonen Line.
* Immortality Begins At Twenty: Based on those we've seen pre-transformation. Aeleus, for instance, looks the same as Lexaeus, but the Nobodies who lost their heart at a young age (Zexion, Axel, Saix) all continue to age normally.
* It Was with You All Along: In Dream Drop Distance, Sora learns that Xemnas purposefully concealed from the Organization the fact that Nobodies can naturally develop a new heart over time. The promise of hearts was to string them all along, while he convinced them all that any emotions they had were fake which isolated them and kept them from maturing a new heart leaving them as potential empty vessels. Sora is suitably outraged by this revelation.
* Joke Weapon: All fourteen have one in 358/2's Mission Mode if they've equipped the Casual Gear; everyone but Roxas, Axel and Xion with the Mystery Gear.
* Lack of Empathy: Or so Xemnas leads them to believe.
* Leitmotif: "Another Side", various remixes of which appear as battle themes and other themes relating to the group.
* Let X Be the Unknown: The "X" theme is a mark of Xehanort's ownership
* Me's a Crowd: They're an integral part of one orchestrated by Xehanort to recreate the thirteen Darknesses needed to forge the χ-blade. Xehanort intends to use his own dark Heart split across all the members to achieve this.
* The Other Darrin: With the interesting exception of Keiji Fujiwara as Axel, every member introduced in Chain of Memories was voiced by a staff member who was replaced by a professional voice actor once Kingdom Hearts II and Re:Chain of Memories came around.
* Named Weapons
* Personality Powers: All of the members have a personality that fits their "Attribute", though a few fit in non-typical ways.
* Red Baron: All of the members except Xion have nicknames to this effect.
* Significant Anagram: Their names are actually scrambled versions of their past names with an X added. However, not all of their past names are known, and Xemnas technically used someone else's name.
* Xion's name is the letter X added to the phrase "No. i", with the number i being an imaginary number. It sheds a lot of light on her.
* The Sociopath: Almost every member except for Roxas, Xion, and Axel. Literally being heartless doesn't leave much room for empathy.
* The Soulless
* Standard Evil Organization Squad
* Tested on Humans: Most of the apprentices Mad Scientist ventures involved human experimentation like turning people into heartless.
* Tragic Monster: A lot of them seemed to be decent people before they became Nobodies.
* Theme Naming: In Days, most character's weapons all follow some sort of named theme Xemnas's are named after terms of authority and negativity, Xaldin's are Religious and Mythological Theme Naming, Vexen's are cold and thinking terminology, Laexeus's are Mineralsand Japanese idioms and literature references, Zexion's are synonyms for books and magic, Saix's are moon related, Axel's all refer to fire, heat and explosions, Demyx has Musical Theme Naming, Luxord's are tarot cards, Marluxia's are all flowers, Larxene's are all in French and Roxas's are light phenomenon and references to the pain of loneliness.)
* Thirteen Is Unlucky
* Uncanny Valley: Alluded to in-universe, although it's rarely apparent to the player.
* Unwitting Pawn: The entire Organization was formed not to regain the members' hearts, but out of a combination of Xemnas wanting to attain the reality-warping potential of Kingdom Hearts and to facilitate a plot that would allow Master Xehanort to clone his heart among thirteen separate bodies, which will give him another shot at forging the χ-Blade.
* Villain Teleportation: Several members get in on the action. The undisputed champion of this trope would be Fragile Speedster Larxene, who even possesses a sleight in Chain of Memories named Teleport Rush.
* You Are Number Six: While it definitely indicates order of joining, its significance to actual rank is debatable. For example, nobody cares that Vexen is number four, but he waves it in everybody's faces as they ignore his whining.
* Also, Marluxia, who is pretty far down at number eleven, still gets to control half the Organization. He and Larxene were also trying to overthrow Xemnas using Sora.
* 358/2 Days reveals that with the exception of Axel, all the members who were sent to Castle Oblivion were were intended to die thanks to Saïx's and Axel's plans to eliminate competition in treachery and rank under the guise of Xemnas's orders.
* Then there's Saïx, who is number seven but acts as Xemnas's number two, and the real number two, Xigbar, who is a bit of a jokester. Though arguably Xigbar is the real number two anyway, given that Birth by Sleep indicates that he and Xemnas have been plotting together this whole time, and some cutscenes from KH2 Final Mix indicate that he knows more about the Organization's true goal than anyone other than the Superior.
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