It is often easier to list the characters whose parents were not abusive. If you count well-meaning but still harmful parenting, your options grow even more limited, if not non-existent.
In one of the support conversations between Hubert and the professor, Hubert is shown to have been secretly tailing him or her, potentially plotting to assassinate them on suspicion of their perceived treachery.
Hubert is implied to be watching numerous other characters from the shadows in a number of his support conversations, such as Bernadetta's.
There is quite a lot of manipulation in this game-- lies, conflicting stories, propaganda, and self-serving narratives abound. However, there are no instances of gaslighting as a specific manipulation tactic being used against any of the characters in the game.
Lysithea, Bernadetta, Sylvain, and Edelgard all experience some type of abuse in their childhoods. They never show anything, but they do end up discussing it as the game progresses. It takes more effort/time to learn about some of the characters’ stories compared to others.
Throughout the course of the game, you may choose to make certain units cavalry classes, and several enemies ride horses as well. If these units die, so do their horses, but no gore is shown at any point.
Like with horses, you may choose to make certain characters ride dragons, or run into dragon-riding enemies. Also like with horses, dragons die with their rider, but in a suitable-for-work fashion.
There are dragons for sure. Lots of them. The missions in the desert do include worm/snake-like creatures. So if you're scared of snakes, I would avoid these battles (they're additional battles). 'Monsters in the desert' is one of them.
Not blatantly so, however some of the romantic options for the protagonist include students who were once underage before the timeskip. These are optional, but are worth mentioning.
Not explicitly so, but it's referred to. Jeritza and Mercedes's father planned on inbreeding with his own daughter for the purpose of eugenics. He meets his end for this.
Characters can be killed with fire spells, but nothing is graphically shown. A platform a named character is standing on is also deliberately set on fire if they aren't recruited, and they can die from this.
Yes, though not explicitly shown, during a cutscene a character grabs a soldier's head and lowers it below the sight of the camera. The soldier is then implied to have died from the blood spatters on the character's face.
Not onscreen, but it's implied that if Marianne is not recruited, she hangs herself. There's an extra chair in her room, and she doesn't show up after the timeskip.
Manuela, Byleth, Flayn and Monica are all shown unconscious during Act 1. Additionally, Bernadetta passes out fairly frequently in her support conversations. This is usually treated as comedy.
(Spoiler Warning) It’s implied that someone’s skull / spine was broken. In one of the animated cutscenes, the character Dimitri is seen holding someone up by the head, the camera cuts away to Dimitri’s face as an audible crunch can be heard.
Sothis isn't as bad as Nowi from FE:Awakening ,but there's still rather "sus" shots of her bare feet and you're only able to ship her with the MC who physically looks much older than her.
There is a cutscene in which a parent is explicitly killed in front of their child and shares their dying moments with them. In the Blue Lion's route only, a parent's dying words can be heard in a scene and another parent dies while sharing their dying moments with a character they view as their child. Many other parental figures die off screen or are mentioned to have died in the past through supports or throughout the story.
There is a plot point where one of the characters goes missing and the player character and their class are tasked with finding them. When said character is found, it is in the context of finding out they were kidnapped.
The supporting villain Kronya has a clown-like appearance. Additionally, two of the characters have a paired ending where they become clowns, but this is not shown.
Nobody is possessed but the main character, Byleth, has some sort of entity inside of them/in their mind. However, this entity never wishes any harm towards them and always acts in ways to help them. They are friendly with each other (despite the being having a scolding nature) and grow to be fond of one another.
The player is placed in a position of enforcing the central authority of an organisation and made to fight people with legitimate grievances against the central authority, but the medieval setting distances this authority from modern police structures, and no equivalences are drawn through metaphor.
Dimitri suffers from severe PTSD from traumatic events in his past, manifesting as the voices of his dead loved ones crying out to him. When his PTSD is triggered, he becomes very violent and aggressive, committing acts of murder and torture both on and off screen.
In Caspar’s C Support with Byleth, it is mentioned that a potential enemy took his own life upon seeing he was being approached. No details are given. [SPOILER] If you did not choose Golden Deer/did not recruit Marianne, it is heavily implied she kills herself sometime during the timeskip because of her Crest.
A great majority of the playable cast, but special mention goes to Edelgard and Dimitri, who's severe PTSD motivates their role in the story. While she's not playable, Rhea is in a similar situation.
A character's mental illness is ofter played for laughs during their support conversations, and they are often forced out of their comfort zone while explicitly not consenting to it. Their backstory also involves having been abused for not fitting someone's idea of who they should be (it's not entirely clear if this abuse took place on the basis of their mental health problems or if it was the cause).
Yes. There are six explicitly bisexual characters - Edelgard, Dorothea, Mercedes, Rhea, Sothis, and Linhardt. Of those six, two of them have unavoidable story deaths in certain paths, three of them can die if permadeath is on or if the player doesn't recruit them on certain paths, and one of them is complicated, to say the least. There are other characters who cannot marry a player character of the same gender, but have paired endings with same-gender characters that are heavily implied to be romantic. Those characters are, again, a mix of "unavoidable story death on certain paths" and "only dies to permadeath or not being recruited."
In one of the routes, a major dark-skinned character is said to have been killed off-screen, and only survives if you meet requirements (completing a bonus quest on one of their missions) beforehand. This is the only story-related (aka, not based on running out of HP) death to the main playable characters in your group.
The fictional "Duscar" race of people face heavy discrimination from other ethnic groups. Several characters erroneously accuse them of being responsible for a tragedy, and verbally express their disgust with them. Duscars are portrayed as looking like black people while the dominant group which hates them is white. The depictions of racism in the game are supposed to be negative and wrong, and it fully acknowledges that racial bias is bad.
You can also date fellow faculty members, but even then they are in their forties (at least implied in Manuela's case, it's not really clear otherwise) and sixties respectively and the MC is 20 at the start of the game. Also at Jaywell...your comment is still mostly true ,but it accidentally implies that Blyeth is much older than they actually are. Like your point on the student-teacher dynamic still stands ,but it's a bit more complicated than that
Oh very much yes. This is a definite skip if that's a trigger for you, although the religion in question is fictional it has parallels to several real life ones.
Technically, yes. There are 3 routes (Blue Lions, Golden Deer, Black Eagles, and the Church route (last two can be grouped under “Black Eagles”)). The route you choose will always have a happy ending for your house (group) but the other houses (groups) will not. Unless you recruit characters from other houses (have them join you early on), then most of them will have to die.
There are several mentions of blood, the first cutscene of the game shows Seiros holding a bloody sword which proceeds to smear onto her face. The cutscene after the first half of the boss battle in chapter 5 has body horror with visuals of a character turning into a beast.
There is a massive explosion in the Golden Deer route at some point, but it is because of magic. The magic they use looks similar to missiles, though, especially since it comes from the sky and has a thin cylinder shape