Yes, you’re seeing it right; a crossover between family-friendly cartoons and a VERY dark and mature TV show.
Previews and trailers:
- Let's just start by mentioning how the whole reason the game exists is because WB heard about the Ultra Instinct Shaggy meme and thought it was funny enough to do it for real.
- How the heck did Shaggy become so powerful? His backstory explains that he somehow found a crystal and ate it, thinking it was rock candy.
- From the cinematic trailer
:- Batman arrives in a strange terrain and Shaggy follows. Shaggy then proceeds to leap into Batman's arms in a panic. This, as shown in the image above, is then followed by Bugs and Arya arriving and Bugs introduces himself to Arya with his trademark, "What's up, doc?"
- Then Batman throws a Batarang just as Bugs is about to get his trademark carrot. After Arya slices it away, Bugs throws a pie which Shaggy catches (presumably more for himself than to save Batman). And then Arya slices his pie-sandwich into pieces. This causes Ultra Instinct Shaggy to awaken, who winds up punching Bugs Bunny right in the kisser.Shaggy: ZOINKS! What'd I do to you?! HRRRRGGHH!
- Bugs Bunny, Arya Stark, Batman, and Shaggy riding a giant rocket in the sky. Bonus points for Arya fighting off Shaggy — who is pathetically slapping her on top of the head and thus no longer Ultra Instinct — with utmost seriousness.
- Both this and heartwarming, but Harley immediately takes a shine to Taz and decides to call him "Slobber". This makes sense when you remember that she has two pet hyenas who are very reminiscent of Taz.
- Jake defeats Taz by growing big and swallowing him, only for Harley to launch a boxing glove to punch Jake in the gut and spit Taz out.
- And despite all this madness going on, Tom and Jerry are just chasing each other like it's another Tuesday. Doubly funny if you interpret that they were likely teleported to Trophy's E.D.G.E. too, and didn't care in the slightest and just kept attacking each other.
- The final shot has all of the playable roster appearing...and then Reindog just hops from the side and licks Finn.
- While everyone else is posing dramatically, Tom and Jerry are just looking around in confusion, as if wondering who the heck all these people are.
- One promo poster has Batman and Shaggy about to kick ass. Shaggy has Batman's batarang. Batman has Shaggy's sandwich. The unamused expression on the latter's face just sells it.
- The mere presence of Arya, a serious character who is from the very mature and gritty Game of Thrones, in a vibrant, cartoony setting featuring colorful kid-friendly characters is pretty amusing in of itself. And it being official rather than fan-made — as crossovers like these usually are — is even better. The trope image for this page says it all.
- On the website, LeBron James's debut isn't listed as Space Jam: A New Legacy like one would expect, but rather his actual birth date of December 30, 1984.
- In LeBron's reveal trailer, his first opponent is Finn who taunts the former with "Can't dunk this bedonk!". Cue Finn getting spiked.
- Really, just the sheer fact that LeBron James, a real life person and massive celebrity, is in a fighting game where he can fight Bugs Bunny, Superman, and Arya Stark is bound to get some laughs due to how surreal and absurd it is.
- Really, the entire 90s-style commercial counts but some highlights:
- "Hop into 2v2 mode and fight alongside your friends! Don't have any friends?" [long beat] "JINKIES!"
- The highlighted "made-up, make-believe characters" that you can play are Shaggy, Bugs Bunny, and Le Bron James (announced with the voice of the "LeBron James" kid no less!).
- The super fast disclaimer at the end:MultiVersus is a game and a work of fiction. Jump in and play now. Comes with everything you see here and more! Multi-players, multi-moves, multi-combos, multi-skins, multi-maps, multi-universes, multi-EVERYTHING. The representation of the game is not reflective of the final 4K product. Friends not included. Play now!
Game:
- Tom and Jerry's unique concept leads to a lot of funny moments between them:
- On the loading screen, Tom and Jerry's animation is them shaking hands... while Tom holds a club behind his back, and Jerry holds a lit bomb behind his, giving a wink to the player.
- Tom's multiple KO screams are archived sound footage from the old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shorts, which makes for a hilarious experience whenever he's in a fight.
- Their intro has Tom simply napping until Jerry wakes him right up with an uppercut, making many of their attacks involving Jerry getting assaulted even more hilarious in a karmic sense.
- The nature of their attacks, and hell, their mere Idle Animation makes it clear that the duo are more focused on attacking each other than their opposition, making any fights using them as an extreme case of Collateral Damage. In fact, if Jerry gets KO'd, Tom gets weaker, because he loses his will to keep fighting.
- Velma has, hands-down, one of the funniest concepts in the game:
- Fighting with speech bubbles reading things like "Jinkies!", "EEK!", and "Sass!"...
- Having a move where she carries allies/opponents around like she would often do for the entire Scooby gang in the original show...
- She can even do this to the Iron Giant.
- Her crouch/crawl animation involving her trying to grab her lost glasses while the screen blurs...
- And finally, spending the match collecting clues until she reveals an opponent to be "Old Man Jenkins" and calling a police car to cart them off.
- One of Velma's phrases when getting ringed out is "MY GLASSES!"
- Velma gets pretty snarky at Shaggy whenever she's fighting him, with some rather cutting remarks."I'll forgive you someday, Shaggy."
"Give it a rest, Norville." - The police car was later replaced with the Mystery Machine, in the 1.02 patch update that added Gizmo. Which means that it can be destroyed by anyone, continuing the tried-and-true Running Gag of it suffering from misfortune.
- Velma understandably gets annoyed with Rick at times, especially during this intro line that echoes the sentiment an individual might have about some of the playerbase:"I am sick and tired of fighting all these Ricks!"
- Batman's victory line, if only because he uses terminology that is very unlike him."Computer, log that one under 'Very Badass'."
- As one might expect, some of Batman's intro lines when played in the Batcave stage have him show consternation over random people dropping in his hideout with no issues.
- There's something hilariously dark about Arya's passive, which has her spawn an oversized, cartoony pie when she knocks out an enemy, in reference to the infamous Frey pie from Game of Thrones. The pie can heal foes, but also causes them to slow down after eating it. It's so baffling to see such a violent moment referenced in the same game where Shaggy goes Super Saiyan and can punch cartoons in the face.
- Doubly funny when you stop and think about how she's probably making the pie out of the person she just KO'd. Due to respawn mechanics, Arya may very well (and always will in a 1v1) feed her opponents themselves. It loops right back around to being perfectly cartoonish.
- Taz's losing animation has him confused for a while before realizing that he lost and only then getting angry.
- Bugs Bunny has many quips that are at least chuckle-worthy."Never trust a clown in pigtails, or a pig in a clown wig for that matter."
"You know, they say the Tazmanian Devil is in the Tazmanian details." - Arya's quote when winning against Shaggy:
- She may also suggest that the second match should be them pitching their dogs against each other. Now wouldn't that be a fight to watch?
- Was she talking about Nymeria or Sandor "The Hound" Clegane? Against a regular ol' great dane like Scooby-Doo? Now that would be overkill.
- One of the Iron Giant's skins is him with swim trunks, sunglasses, a flamingo inner tube with matching swim fins, sandals, and an umbrella hat.
- One of the game's ringout VFX is the splash from his cannonball dive into the lake from the film, including showing Dean and Hogarth caught in the wave.
- One of Superman's lines when winning against Bugs Bunny, which is a pretty potent Ironic Echo:
- One of Black Lantern Wonder Woman’s lines is also this against Bugs:"That's all, folks!"
- One of LeBron's victory lines shows that not even he is above doing against Bugs:
- Shaggy's passive notes he starts with a sandwich. Why? "Because he's Shaggy."
- The 1.0 patch update added a new audio soundbite for one of Finn's ringouts: his signature scream.
- One of Gizmo's specials has him drive a car. This is comical by itself, but when he leaves the car, anyone else can use it. This ranges from characters that are logically small enough to fit (e.g. Tom and Jerry) to ones that are far too big (e.g. Garnet, Superman, the Iron Giant).
- What are some of the Pre Asskicking One Liners that Arya Stark says against Superman if you choose to pit them against each other? Insulting his costume. A wolf of House Stark is not afraid, indeed. Not that Superman would make a big deal of it."That's the uniform you've chosen to fight in?"
"I will bury you in those red bloomers."- Arya is bewildered over the entire concept of Christmas."In your world they celebrate when winter comes? Madness."
- The above is made even funnier by the fact that a Christmas-themed variant she received for the first Winter event has her wear an ugly sweater. Said variant also includes a Winter hat with direwolf ears and hanging pom poms, a design of a direwolf pup on the sweater, and slippers shaped like direwolf pup heads.
- Arya is bewildered over the entire concept of Christmas.
- Stripe's unlockable taunt involves pulling out...dolls of himself and Reindog, to ram them against each other.
- The losing animation for Stripe's Combat variant has Stripe struggle to catch one of his active bombs before accidentally swallowing it. The face he gives to the camera before it explodes inside his stomach is absolutely priceless.
- Reindog's default taunt has him do an adorable little dance... which if you think about it, kind of resembles the dancing dog vine. This game really leans into the memes, huh?
- One of Marvin's interactions when fighting against Velma:"I will steal your glasses in the name of Mars!"
- When paired up with Rick, Marvin will sometimes asks Rick where he keeps his Kalaxian Crystals. But he's only asking for a friend.
- The first Christmas event for the game added ugly sweater skins for a few of the characters. Of particular note is Batman, who looks as nonplussed as you would expect despite wearing reindeer antler earmuffs, mittens, a red nose and a sweater design for the Batmobile having lost a wheel.
- Remember Garnet's original losing animation where she panics as she poofs? Well, her current losing animation has her looking at her hands in a similar style, seemingly about to do the same, until she suddenly goes into a "get it together, Garnet" gesture and starts meditating. That's right, Garnet just prevented herself from dying after being defeated!
- The first Valentine's Day event introduced pink/red love-themed costumes covered in hearts for many of the characters, including Black Adam. The idea of someone like Black Adam wearing such a costume in of itself is hilarious already, but the clincher is that the official artwork of him in the costume has him looking at the colors of his costume with an expression of pure disgust◊.
