History Film / FreeGuy

Eventually Keys and Millie realize that Guy has begun to [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming Grow Beyond His Programming]] like they intended for the creatures of ''Life Itself'', and he's becoming a true ArtificialIntelligence. This obviously has massive implications not just for Millie's lawsuit and Antwan's company, but for world philosophy. Their efforts to prove their suspicions are staunchly blocked by Antwan, who is in the process of launching ''Free City 2'' and is infuriated by Millie's lawsuit and Guy's popularity distracting his player base from the sequel and tanking its pre-sales -- and he's prepared to go to extreme lengths to put an end to them, even if it means the destruction of ''Free City'' and the deletion of Guy. Millie begins working with Guy in the game to get him to realize what he is and enlist his help against Antwan, and soon it isn't just Guy that's acting outside his programming.

* TwentyBearAsses: One sidequest in Free City involves finding all the missing cats for a CrazyCatLady. At one point, Guy himself becomes so overly-annoyed by her repetitive dialogue about finding her cats that he just goes off on her and tells her to stop leaving her door open so they can escape. According to the credits, she has ''99'' of them for the players to collect.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Turned on its head, since the AI in question is the main protagonist, who only becomes self-aware since he's built on stolen code that is far more advanced than necessary for the game it's in. While his eventual self-awareness throws a wrench into the game company's plans, he becomes a widely-beloved figure and the catalyst for [[spoiler:Soonami's eventual failure]] instead of an evil rogue.

** After learning that his whole world is just a video game, including ''himself'' and all the people in it, Guy understandably experiences an existential crisis: if nothing is real, what's the point of anything? Guy ultimately comes to the conclusion that [[AndroidsArePeopleToo the other NPC video game characters]] are functionally "real": they're all at least semi-sapient, and their emotions are real to them. Therefore, he sets out to be not just the "good guy" he was programmed to be, but a "great guy": spreading kindness everywhere and protecting his fellow [=NPCs=] from the senseless carnage (defending them from player attacks, foiling bank robbery missions and returning money to stores, etc.) This makes him a global phenomenon in the real world, as his altruism becomes infectious, and people start rooting for "Blue Shirt Guy" and his good-hearted philosophy of protecting the world instead of blowing it up -- much to the ire of the game creator, because the entire point of the game is to blow things up guilt-free.

* ApologeticAttacker: While defending himself from a cowboy, Guy ends up breaking the cowboy's arm. He is noticeably horrified, and apologizes before knocking him out.
* ArtificialBrilliance: To such an extent that Guy is presumed to be a human player by anyone that encounters him. Even before he starts joining in the game's missions, he has fairly interesting discussions with his fellow [=NPCs=] that fall outside the range of canned lines an actor would record for the part (or that a dev would even write); Millie even first takes notice when Guy comments on her singing Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" to herself ("Love that song!") instead of reciting his catch phrase, calling it "a new one".

** Free City is depicted as a MegaCity with a dense amount of missions to try, but is depicted as ''one'' location to manage the entire playerbase and there is only one version of the City and by extension over version of Guy. While dedicated servers allow for ease of access to multiplayer environments, game code is still locally installed to personal computer. And even the most ambitious MMORPG relies on split client servers to create identical maps and [=NPC=]s so that player logins aren't overtaxing the network, with some being able to top out with several thousand only by creating a ''massive'' world map to ease network stress for isolated locations. At the climax of the film, [[spoiler: Antwan starts taking an ax to the Free City servers]] and sections of the city are disappearing as though each server tower is only managing a couple square blocks at a time, and [[spoiler: Guy in the Life Itself island is located on one last server]] when again the code should be on every computer.
** Relatedly, Millie's lawsuit against Soonami hinges on being able to find the repurposed code being used without attribution. This would realistically be more of a time-consuming scanning of the game files one at a time, also known as data mining and would turn up content that has been DummiedOut. Instead Millie is searching for evidence within the game world itself as a player character, and her attempts at a heist is locating in-game saved video files from a noted streamer who accidentally found evidence. If she knew who the streamer was she could contact him outside the context of the game for help.

* AuthorTract: In-game, the newly sentient Ms. Fanservice Bombshell writes a memoir which Keys describes as "a searing indictment of gender roles", if a bit "preachy". He's nonetheless extremely proud of her for demonstrating not only self-awareness but actual self-reflection.

* BadIsGoodAndGoodIsBad: While at first Antwan sees Guy as free advertising due to his popularity, it is when the VideoGameCaringPotential Guy's actions encourage in the ''Free City'' community starts cutting into preorder sales for the sequel does he start trying to eradicate him.

*** Creator/JohnKrasinski is the voice of the silhouetted gamer in the first real world montage about Guy.

** Every morning, Guy gets a medium coffee, one cream, two sugars. Barista later confirms everyone gets that coffee. [[spoiler:Millie also says that's her favorite drink in an interview from when she and Keys were promoting their indie game, an early hint that Millie is the inspiration for Guy's Lovelorn love interest.]]

** When trying to get [[spoiler:Guy to remember after a server reboot resets him]], Millie is sent a video by Keys detailing that she is the key to doing so, as Guy's "dream girl" was based on Millie. She stops the video early, but later continues playing it after Guy says he was [[spoiler:written by somebody who loved Millie. The part of the video she skipped is essentially a love confession, allowing the two to finally connect]].
* ChekhovsGunman: The first character we see is a regular player (Creator/ChanningTatum) dropping in to ''Free City'' for [[DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster a regular day of copious consumption and carnage.]] Turns out he's more significant to the plot than that -- [[spoiler:he's the one who owns the safehouse where the proof of Antwan's code theft is stashed]].

* DoubleMeaningTitle: A "free guy" is a somewhat outdated colloquial term for a OneUp, referencing ''Free City'' being a video game and Guy an NPC therein. It also refers to Guy being "free" in the sense that he has abandoned his NPC routines and is actively engaging with the players. Finally, there's a straightforward interpretation of the story being about Guy, and he's in '''Free''' City, thus a Free Guy. Finally, there's the interpretation of the game's title from the perspective of its in-universe audience, a city in which they are "free" to do whatever they want.

* EasilyForgiven: Mouser. He does every single slimy, illegal, or immoral thing Antwan tells him to do, then [[spoiler:FINALLY draws the line when he learns Antwan DID steal Millie and Keys' work. He shows up at the end, completely buddy-buddy with Millie and Keys, as if he hadn't been 100% behind Antwan until the MoralEventHorizon. He doesn't even apologize to them, at least that we see on-screen.]]

* {{Foil}}: Firstly, Keys and Guy. [[spoiler: Both are in love with Millie, and both are trapped in a 'life' that keeps them going in a constant loop at the mercy of Antwan]]. Secondly, Buddy and Mouser, though you have to think a bit. Both are men of color who are best friends to the blue shirt wearing characters; [[spoiler: Buddy's fear of putting on the glasses, choosing to remain trapped in his NPC cycle, is a mirror to Mouser obeying Antwan's orders. The day Buddy overcomes his fear and joins Guy in his fight, helping him cross the bridge to ''Life Itself'', is the same day Mouser breaks free of Antwan and declares 'Keys is my boy' and supports him and Millie in their quest to keep the servers from being destroyed.]] In both cases, the AI foils are the ones who [[CharacterDevelopment evolve more quickly and grow further]], especially Buddy in comparison to Mouser, which could reflect how computers have evolved far more quickly than humans.

** Keys spends a lot of the movie wearing blue shirts. In the climax, he's even wearing a short-sleeved light blue dress shirt, identical to Guy's, over a T-shirt, and in the post-climax scene he's wearing a dark blue shirt. [[spoiler: It's because Guy is not only his {{Foil}} but his AuthorAvatar, since his original 'Lovelorn' character was based on Keys' unrequited love for Millie.]]

** After Guy's [[spoiler:been reset after the server reboot]], Keys sends Millie a video explaining how he thinks Guy's AI developed and talking about a character he programmed for their game he called "Lovelorn". Millie, upon realising that she is the key to Guy's awakened AI, pauses the video of Keys talking while he is partway through a sentence about what he based Lovelorn's basic behaviours on. [[spoiler:This foreshadows the reveal at the end that Keys used the very end of the video to confess that he also had feelings for Millie.]]

** This movie is so packed full of them, the viewer can ''ignore the entire plot and still be entertained.'' Pay attention to the coffeeshop scene when Guy attempts to order a cappuccino -- after Guy goes back on script, the tank in the background slowly swivels its cannon ''away'' from his head. You can even hear the tank rolling up before it's shown on screen, although this blends in with the background music.
** All throughout the film, there are numerous players in the background who are just having fun with their avatars, like randomly jumping or trying to exploit the geometry by finding a way to double jump up a wall while running in place.

* GenreBusting: The film is a science-fiction action comedy with dashes of romantic comedy. It also works as a speculative fiction drama about the possibility of sapience in artificial intelligence, and it's a video game movie that focuses as much on the real life culture of video games as it does what's actually happening in the game itself. ''And'' it touches on existential themes of what it means to be alive and what makes life worth living.

* {{Hammerspace}}: Inside the game, players will reach over their shoulder, and the item they want fizzles into existence. Holstering weapons has the opposite effect. Pumping the hand with the weapon will quickly call another one out.

** The first is PlayedForLaughs early in the film, after Guy accidentally kills a player while taking their glasses, [[ThousandYardStare staring blankly]] and [[BlatantLies insisting that the player is just sleeping]] [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere before he books it.]]

** Mouser and Keys are given ''way'' too many responsibilities for apparently only being content moderators. They are seen coding, testing, debugging, and monitoring the game while it is running live. Mouser has authority to restart the server and kick out all players at the drop of a hat, and even has access to the server room.

* HorribleJudgeOfCharacter: Mouser follows every order Antwan gives him, believing Millie really is just someone filing a faulty lawsuit to get Soonami royalties. It isn't until Antwan flat out confirms that he did steal her game that he commits a HeelFaceTurn.

* ImplausibleDeniability: After Guy accidentally kills a player, the avatar's torso completely vaporized by a shotgun blast, he tries to insist he is just sleeping.

* LaserGuidedKarma: [[spoiler:Antwan agrees to give Millie the remains of the data for ''Free City'' in exchange for dropping the lawsuit and letting Antwan keep the rights to any sequels and spinoffs. Some time later, sales for Antwan's sequels significantly plummet, and the sequels are filled with bugs and malfunctions without Millie and Keys's programming, ruining what remains of Antwan's reputation.]]

* LimitedWardrobe: Guy has one outfit as an NPC: a blue button down and tie, tan slacks, and a blue jacket, with his closet literally filled with that one outfit. Even his pajamas are a blue top and tan bottoms. This changes once he becomes aware of his surroundings and the nature of his world... to a blue Henley shirt.

* TheLonelyDoor: The door to the multiplayer bar is a PortalDoor sitting in the middle of a road with a empty street behind it on the other side of a set train tracks, which run through the middle of the street.

* MadLibsDialogue: [[spoiler:Dude]]'s dialogue consists mainly of this, since his development was highly rushed and not yet complete when he was put into the game.

* TheMasquerade: The [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] aren't aware their world's a video game, and treat everything involving the chaos around them without a comment, which include bank robberies and players shooting at each other. At least, until Guy begins to see the reality...

** There are Pop Tarts, Kellogg's Frosted Flakes, and Lipton tea all on the shelves in the break room after Keys and Mouser deal with Guy.

** When Guy achieves sapience and is told he needs to level up to have a chance with Millie, he's horrified by the idea of committing crimes to do so, and decides to stop ''other'' people from committing crimes instead. He, and all the [=NPCs=] of ''Free City'', are all friendly, personable people that abhor violence and want to do good, and act chummy with each other even when not being observed by players.
** ''Free City'' encourages players to act like violent sociopathic criminals to level up and accrue loot, and gives them a WideOpenSandbox to do it in. But Guy's behavior, which are perceived by the playerbase as another player role-playing as an [=NPC=] fighting back against them, makes them rethink the VideoGameCrueltyPotential in how they treat [=NPCs=], and they love Guy playing the hero.
** The major reason Antwan shelved ''Life Itself'' is because all the test groups and surveys indicated it would bomb, and its implied the industry had little faith in a game that was just about watching animals live and evolve in peace. [[spoiler:At the end of the film, when the [=NPCs=] of ''Free City'' are freed to live their own lives in the game, it remains a huge success while ''Free City 2'' bombs due to being an ObviousBeta.]]
* RPGMechanicsVerse: The story takes place in the game ''Free City'', which features levels, power ups, and healing packs along with all the trappings of a GTA-like multiplayer crime game.

* SaveScumming: Like any other new player, Guy struggles with the gameplay of Free City, and [[EarlyGameHell is killed regularly as he learns what he is capable of doing]]. But every revive gives him another shot to do things right, and in a couple cases like the bank robbery, the [=NPCs=] are locked in such a rigid routine that several characters can use it to their advantage.

* StatusQuoIsGod: Enforced among the [=NPCs=] within ''Free City''. When Guy decides he wants to try a new drink and requests a ''cappucino'' from Barista, everyone in the cafe looks at him in shock, with Officer Johnny slowy readying his gun while Barista insists that she only ever serves medium coffee, one cream, two sugars to ''everyone''. Guy reluctantly takes the coffee, resumes his usual StockPhrase, and claims he was just kidding, calming everyone down. [[spoiler:This incident does [[GrewBeyondTheirProgramming trigger]] Barista to experiment and create a cappucino later on, however.]]

** Throughout half the movie, the protagonists have trouble trying to get a video clip from someone's safehouse, and it looks like they're not going to get it without a big fight... only for the "antagonist" in question to [[spoiler: just give them the item when he finds out who wants it]] because, hey, he's actually just a player in a video game and not one of Antwan's {{mook}}s, so he has no reason to not want that video clip to fall into the wrong hands.

** [[spoiler: Antwan thinks he's getting the better end of the deal by receiving any and all exclusive rights to the ''Free City'' franchise. But without Millie and Keys' source code, and because of a ChristmasRushed production, the sequels are buggy and unplayable, tarnishing both the franchise as a whole, and his reputation.]] [[invoked]]

* TechBro: Antwan, the hammy, self-centered boss of a gaming company, has little regard for the quality of his games or the wellbeing of his employees as long as his games sell. He turns up at Soonami in the middle of the film in an outrageous outfit, having just returned from Burning Man.
* TeleportGun: Millie and later Guy wield portal guns similar to the ones in ''VideoGame/{{Portal}}'' -- although the visuals of the guns themselves don't match the games, they do make the characteristic blue and orange portals.

** Guy has this reaction when he tries to throw a hot grenade back to sender, only for it to bounce off a poorly timed truck in front of him and land in his hands again.

** Buddy[[note]]played by the African-American Lil Rel Howery[[/note]] is the black best friend to the white Guy. Because he refuses to join Guy's quest, he stays out of the action for much of the film until the climax, but gives advice that turns Guy into TheAntiNihilist. In the end, [[spoiler:Guy is overjoyed to see Buddy alive, and the two go on to Free Life together.]]

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: [[spoiler:After Millie begins to trust Guy, she gives him her real name. Guy later goes back to a gamer's hideout to find the encrypted file that she failed to secure the first time, and directly interacts with the gamer himself. The gamer is ecstatic to meet such a famous character as Guy, and willingly gives the file after Guy innocently namedrops Millie. This gaming clip ends up making the rounds on the internet, and clues Antwan to go after Millie and Keys. If Millie hadn't revealed her name, she could've achieved her goals without Antwan being any the wiser]].
%%* UpTheRealRabbitHole: Millie has difficulty explaing to Guy his predicament in a tactful manner.

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: This is a major theme of the film. As people start to learn that Guy is a free-willed, sentient program (rather than just a rogue player), they reconsider what they think about him and their actions with the [=NPCs=] of Free City, and to video games in general. Many players admit they never stopped to think if an NPC could have their own life to live because they just took them for granted.

* WideOpenSandbox: ''Free City'' is an online multiplayer sandbox game in the vein of ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'', ''VideoGame/WatchDogs'', and the rest of that ilk. Before it released, Millie and Keys worked on an indie title called ''Life Itself'', which was also sandbox in style but didn't have violent goals, resembling an advanced version of ''VideoGame/TheSims'', but this resulted in it not performing well with focus groups. [[spoiler:Their work on it was stolen by Soonami and became the basis of ''Free City''.]]

According to Reynolds, Disney has expressed interest in a sequel. Until then, Reynolds and Levy have collaborated a second time on ''Film/TheAdamProject'' and will do a third time on ''Film/DeadpoolAndWolverine''.

** After Guy's [[spoiler:been reset after the server reboot]], Keys sends Millie a video explaining how he thinks Guy's AI developed and talking about a character he programmed for their game he called "Lovelorn". Millie, upon realising that she is the key to Guy's awakened AI, pauses the video of Keys talking while he is partway through a sentence about what he based Lovelorn's basic behaviours on. [[spoiler:This foreshadows the reveal at the end that Keys used the very end of the video to confess that he also had feelings for Millie]].

* {{Foil}}: Firstly, Keys and Guy. [[spoiler: Both are in love with Millie, and both are trapped in a 'life' that keeps them going in a constant loop at the mercy of Antwan]]. Secondly, Buddy and Mouser, though you have to think a bit. Both are men of color who are best friends to the blue shirt wearing characters; [[spoiler: Buddy's fear of putting on the glasses, choosing to remain trapped in his NPC cycle, is a mirror to Mouser obeying Antwan's orders. The day Buddy overcomes his fear and joins Guy in his fight, helping him cross the bridge to ''Life Itself'', is the same day Mouser breaks free of Antwan and declares 'Keys is my boy' and supports him and Millie in their quest to keep the servers from being destroyed.]] In both cases, the AI foils are the ones who [[CharacterDevelopment evolve more quickly and grow further]], especially Buddy in comparison to Mouser, which could reflect how computers have evolved far more quickly than humans.
* TheForeignSubtitle: It goes by the name ''Free Guy: Tomando el Control'' in Spanish Latin America and ''Free Guy -- Assumindo o Controle'' in Brazil. The subtitle in both cases translates to "taking control".

* GirlOfMyDreams: Guy starts the film happy in every way, except that he's longing hopelessly for the girl of his dreams. Millie seems to fit everything in his dreams, having all the same quirks and interests, and his desire to be with her drives his actions throughout the movie. [[spoiler:Guy was written by Keys as a tragic character who would always long for the girl he could never find, and based said girl on his own unrequited love, Millie]].

* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Guy was just a background NPC until he saw Millie, and soon evolved well beyond his programming. [[spoiler:This was a key part of the ''Life Itself'' AI design, which inadvertently allows Guy to become the first true AI in the world. And many other [=NPCs=] follow in his wake. By the end of the movie, Guy's AI has grown advanced enough to understand the concept of a creator and that he was created by someone who is in love with Millie. He's actually the one who points out his own purpose to Millie]].

** Some player characters carry the alien rifles from ''Literature/IAmNumberFour''

** Soonami and Antwan is an astute look at the perils and errors of AAA game development. Antwan has lied about features promised in ''Free City 2'', including that players will be able to retain some of their progress and collectables from the original ''Free City'' and they'll actually have to start from scratch. [[invoked]]] The game is also incredibly buggy and is practically being ChristmasRushed without Christmas, and Soonami is banking on the power of the IP to make the game successful regardless of its unfinished state. As Guy becomes popular and ''Free City'' starts seeing a new influx of players, Antwan gets worried that pre-orders for ''Free City 2'' have slowed, and decides to take the original off-line once the sequel launches to force players to migrate.

* WeirdlyUnderpoweredAdmins: Played with; the admins are certainly powerful, but the problem is that Guy is not a player but a NonPlayerCharacter that became self aware. Thus, most of the usual tools the admins have to deal with rogue players (like banishing them from the game's servers) [[OutsideContextProblem simply don't work on Guy]]. It's still strange that they have no tools for dealing with malfunctioning [=NPCs=].

* WhamShot: In-universe for Keys: he and Mouser just took down Guy - who they presumed to be a player character - and the number of total players online (looking at log-ins and log-outs) at the moment *doesn't go down*. This is what starts Keys looking into just what Guy is.

* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Guy and Millie rally the [=NPCs=] and convince them to abandon their roles in Free City.* UnsportsmanlikeGloating: Free City being an online shooter, you can bet on seeing some players engage in teabagging.

* RecycledSoundtrack: During the above-mentioned RaceForYourLove scene, as well as the scene where Millie [[spoiler: kisses Guy to restore his memories]], composer Music/ChristopheBeck reuses his own score from the climax of ''WesternAnimation/{{Paperman}}''.

** During [=MolotovGirl=]l's first onscreen interactions with other game characters, the theme music is reminiscent of the scene when Sam Flynn enters the grid in ''Film/TronLegacy''.