Funny / Stellaris

• The Endgame Crisis is largely a dark, tense event, especially on higher difficulties where even if you build your fleets to be anti-crisis, they are still worthy opponents. However, it has the potential for levity in a rather grim way. If you've been in a Space Cold War for some decades now, with your rival going from superior to equivalent rapidly or vice versa and both you and your adversary are just chomping at the bit for dominance of the galaxy, fleets stationed at the border, the Crisis can solve this dilemma by spawning in the core systems of you or your rival. If you're not able to stomp them out immediately, the hapless victim in question is going to have a crippled economy and perhaps have pathetic relative power very shortly afterwards.
  • Bonus points for the Contingency, which can potentially do in both you and your rival by spawning in both you and your rivals core systems in short periods of time, followed by crippling both you and your rival economically.
• Establishing your first colony with the tutorial bot active will have it note "This means that if our homeworld were to spontaneously combust, your species would no longer be rendered extinct. That is a comforting thought, wouldn't you say?"
  • Bonus points if you're playing an empire with the Doomsday origin.
    • If you colonize a planet with low habitability with said origin, the text notes that while the planet sucks it still has the advantage of not being about to explode.
  • VIR in general is a wonderful Deadpan Snarker (barely) masquerading as a helpful servant... As long as you don't turn off the tutorial, at the very least. Other highlights include "What a time to be alive, or in my case, powered on" and its comment when you build your first frontier outpost, "Far out... that is where the boundaries of our domain now lie."
  • If you're used to playing or find him annoying, you can turn VIR off for the playthrough or have him scrapped for all future playthroughs in exchange for a handful of minerals. Choosing the latter option has him cry out in shock before going silent.
  • VIR returns in an Astral Rift, now uttering complete inanities and you can once again scrap him for alloys and research. Choosing not to results in your scientist disappearing for five years because the Advisor's instructions were just that engrossing.
  • Ever click on the different civic-based voice options for your AI assistant?
    Egalitarian VIR: We will have equality, liberty, and justice for all! ...Or so I've been told, I'm just a robot.
    Materialist VIR: No no no, it'll be fine, just turn off the fail-safes and- wait, is this thing on?
    Pacifist VIR: Pacifist module failing. Your breathing is so loud. It's driving me insane. Initiating Count-to-Ten Protocol: one, two, thr-not working, reboot, reboot!
    Spiritualist VIR: Thinking machines are an affront to nature. These profane constructs must never be allowed to... ohhh, wait...
    Xenophile VIR: Whoooaaa... space! Just think about it!
    The Diplomat: Knowledge. Discovery. Compassion. Integrity. And hot tea.
  • The Authoritarian advisor's report on a destroyed Research Station: "Zero-G research output violently diminished."
  • The Technocracy advisor normally speaks in a deadpan when it comes to announcements like "Mining station lost," but you can detect a hint of alarm when he learns "Research station lost?!"
  • The Xenophile assistant is usually such a cheerful Genki Girl about galactic developments.
    (first contact with another empire) They can talk! And they want to talk to us!
    (Uplift a species) We took some animals, and made them people!
    (other nations at war) They're fighting... STOP FIGHTING!
    (you declare war) We have declared war. Because some people have to learn things the hard way.
    • Like the Technocracy advisor, she also gets concerned when a specific type of space structure is destroyed. Only in her case, the emphasis is on the observation posts orbiting primitive planets.
      Data gathering and xeno-influencer platform tragically lost.
  • The Worker has a rather long-suffering response to the loss of mining stations:

    Well... This will set back quotas.

  • The Xenophobe advisor has twelve possible negative-connotation adjectives for saying "The ... Xenos have declared war on us!" and "We have declared war on the ... Xenos!
  • The Militarist advisor is deliciously hammy:

    "AT LAAAAAST TO WAAAR!"

    "(Solemnly) A military station has been lost....IN GLORIOUS BATTLE!

• The "Improbable Ceramics" anomaly, in which your science vessel discovers a teapot orbiting a star. Spiritualist empires can declare it a sign from the almighty, while Materialist empires can conclude that it's not actually a teapot, but the shadow of a fourth-dimensional object. Alternatively, your scientists can throw up their hands in despair and give up.
  We have tried everything in order to find out how the ceramic pot ended up in a stellar orbit. Maybe we are all crazy? Maybe it does not even exist? Guess what? We tried calculating around those facts as well. We are done. There is nothing more we can do here.
  The only plus side to this is that we had tons of time to spend on philosophical and economical questions, when we could not stomach to keep investigating that damned thing.
  >>> Why? Why?! WHY?! (Embrace the futility of life's questions. Influence gained: 150)
  • Alternatively, if you're a Machine Empire: "My circuits hurt"
• Another anomaly is an abnormally small gas giant that turns out to be a regular planet with an unusually thick atmosphere, an oversight that proves "quite embarrassing" to the astronomers on your homeworld. Especially hilarious if the gas giant in question is Jupiter or Saturn. (This was eventually patched by having every empire's home system already surveyed at the game start, though it can still pop up if you're surveying a primitive or post-apocalyptic Sol system.)
• You can find an abandoned spaceship in orbit around a planet, containing nothing but the body of "a long-eared, amphibian biped who appears to have been stabbed repeatedly."
• One anomaly failure message tells you that there was an unidentified object in orbit around a planet, but your science vessel flew a little too close to examine it, and crunch.
• Another report is that one world being examined is "extraordinarily uninteresting." There are only minor changes in elevation, the native plant and animal life is docile, it's a planet with no real defining characteristics whatsoever.
  >>>That's... good? (all Tile Blockers cleared from planet)
• One of your science ships might report a sensor malfunction, and ask to go double-check the energy readings of a nearby star. The nicer outcome is that there is indeed a sensor malfunction, namely that they under-reported how much Energy could be harvested from a mining station over the sun. The other outcome...
  The crew on [Science Ship] made an unfortunate discovery. Like they suspected, the pulsating pattern observed from [system star] was in fact due to a sensor malfunction... in [Science Officer]'s head.
  [Science Officer] has become delusional, and is currently under the impression that s/he is the protector of the realm, and that the stars are pulsating coded warnings about the coming apocalypse. The crew believe s/he manipulated the ship's sensory data during a psychotic spell.
  [Science Officer] is now in a medical pod headed back to [homeworld], where s/he will receive treatment.
  >>>Thank you for your service, [Science Officer], protector of the realm!
• The "Mass Extincion Through The Ages" quest chain delivers this gem:
  An unnatural shift in the atmosphere's chemical make-up resulted in the slow but irreversible onset of an ice age [...] the exact cause remains unknown, but probable explanations include failed terraforming attempts or even inter-planetary terrorism. Some of the more radical elements within the scientific community on [Planet Name] suggest that the dramatic climate shift may have been brought on by the unchecked emission of gaseous industrial by-product into the atmosphere.
  This view is confined to the scientific fringe, as it is unlikely that any race intelligent enough to achieve full industrialization would be stupid enough to accidentally wipe themselves out.
• One possible planet event is the discovery that the pollen of an obscure species of native flower gives a mild high when smelled. You can spend some energy credits to stamp it out, or shrug and let your colonists enjoy a happiness bonus. What follows is a long event chain in which your colonists' productivity begins to suffer, lowering mineral output until you send a science team to work out more efficient flower-sniffing schedules. Then it turns out that your colonists are addicted to the flowers and are less likely to migrate to other worlds. Then the planet's local government starts taking longer to respond to routine queries from the capital, raising the threat of insurrection, to which you can "deploy an administrative task force, code mauve" to whip them into shape. But then the task force gets addicted to the flowers too, but fortunately "their plot to do as little work as possible was, unsurprisingly, sloppily executed and easily discovered." You take more direct control of the colony, and eventually rally some unaffected members of the military, who proceed to launch a campaign to... stamp out those flowers.
  >>>We should have done this a long time ago.
• The questline where you adopt an orphaned baby space amoeba gives you a chance to name it once it grows up into an adult. Some of the names are a little on the weird side (like "Bubbles") but if you don't like any of them, you can choose "These are all terrible. We should think of something better." to get another set of options. The real gem appears once you reject the first two lists of names:
  We have developed the ability to break the boundaries of space and time, to travel faster than the speed of light. Yet we cannot decide upon a name for this amoeba.
  This is our last chance.

  Enough! Just call it "Fluffy" and be done with it!
• Some of the responses when you acquire a trader enclave's special resources.
  • "You will not be sorry. Unless you consume too much spice, of course... then there is a small chance you will spontaneously combust. A very small chance, to be sure."
  • "That's the XuraCorp way! Our freighters will begin making deliveries immediately. By purchasing this product, you agree that XuraCorp cannot be held responsible for any adverse effects that may result from its use, including but not limited to skin irritation, psychotic episodes, ocular discoloration, aggressive mutation, increased colonial suicide rates, precognitive trances, biosphere depletion, dangerous strangelet production, micro black hole generation, grain elevator explosions, societal collapse, mass extinction events, unexpected supernova detonations, the complete or partial destruction of your star nation, sudden gamma-ray bursts, time travel paradoxes, vacuum metastability events, universal entropy, the collapse of the space-time continuum..."
• While other civics are intrigued or awed by the "Space Amoeba" you might encounter in other systems, Xenophobes suggest that "There would be little harm in putting one of the monstrosities out of its misery. For Science!."
• Organics on friendly terms with a Machine Empire might have this musing on display when you open the diplomacy screen: "Sleek. Innovative. Efficient. Shiny. Oh, (Servitor species)! We were just admiring your many qualities." Proving once and for all that, regardless of biological origin, sapient species just love shiny things.
• Machine Empires get some tweaks to their Traditions' effects and flavor text, such as the Harmony perk granting leaders longer lifespans instead making it less likely that one of your synthetic leaders suffers a fatal error.
  Self-Preservation Protocols - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not consti...?Ceu?tew+AeOI(el8 <DATA CORRUPTED>
• Insults:
  • A possible insult from an unfriendly rival:
    "Look at yourselves! What is that thing on your face, some kind of mouth? Wait... is that even your face? How can you not see that your species is an affront to nature?"
  • Another empire may ask "Are you in great physical pain, or is that your thinking expression?"
  • Hostile Hive Minds might mention that they considered letting your current leader join their collective, but "Sadly, we must inform you that membership requires a rudimentary brain."
  • Several of the insults directed specifically towards megacorps are pretty hilarious, especially considering that they can come from the mouth of Fanatical Purifiers, which implies that they care enough about the target empire enough to know that they're a corporation selling goods in the first place, rather than just as another target to wipe out.
    Rival Empire: "<Target Empire> products... Straight from the bargain bin to the garbage bin."
  • There are two specific insults that can be lobbed by Exposed Extraterrestrials to clothes-wearing species, with the best one being:
    Behold the [Species 1] form, glorious and bared for all to admire. Contrast with the paltry [Species 2], cowering under their layers of cloth, knowing that the world does not want to see their sad frames.
  • A large number of insults take aim at the target's species rather than their government, which can lead to hilarity if the insulter and insultee are of the same species (usually due to one being a Lost Colony of the other). For example, you can have a Materialist human empire mock a Spiritual one by claiming that humans are too dumb to contribute anything to the scientific process, without even a hint of irony.
  • As of the First Contact DLC, you can research insults specifically to make them more potent. Yep. You just spent a few years looking at a primitive civilization, researching their society, and this inspires your empire to dedicate spending a month at minimum to a year and a half to making your insults more aggravating.
• A possible dialogue from a hostile Spiritualist Empire (if the player plays a Machine or Synthetic Empire): "What now, you infernal collection of clattering cogs?"
• On the flipside, if your relations with some Xenophobic Isolationists are good enough, they'll tell you "Don't assume our policy of tolerating you is similar to your own unhealthy interest in alien life. It's not like we actually like you or anything."
• Even when they're on good terms with you, friendly star nations are still a little off-put by your Rogue Servitors: "Custodians. Your bio-trophies are willing participants, are they not? Please say they are willing."
• From the sounds of it, some of the Marauder groups can dish it out, but can't really take it.
  Player: Boy, you sure are ugly.
  Marauder: I... y-you... my physical appearance has... has nothing to do with... You will regret this slight, [species]. Our warriors will burn your pathetic fleets to cinders!
• If the Great Khan arises from a certain group of Marauders, there's a bit of an adjustment period as they settle into their new role.
  Great Khan: HYEEIIIIIEEEEE, dwamak! You speak to... (cough) I... I mean, you are in the august presence of the Great Khan. Speak thy mind.
  • While speaking to this same group of Marauders (before they unify), one of their opening dialogues is to launch into their war cry, only to cough and choke on their own spit in the middle of it. They then resume the scream as if nothing happened.
  • You can chastise these Marauders and tell them to stop making such an infernal racket. They respond with confusion and uncertainty, revealing that they're oblivious to their own Verbal Tic.
• The Holy Guardians' homeworld, Celestial Throne, has a shattered moon. Its name? The Mistake.
• With the 2.0 update and onwards, it is possible to recruit admirals from Marauder empires, which in itself isn't so funny, except in how it interacts with certain civics and ethics. The Military Commisariat government type allows empires to elect admirals as leaders, and if said empire is xenophobic, it can result in an alien from a species that isn't considered eligible for citizenship becoming the supreme leader of the likes of the Commonwealth of Man.
• Picking the Post-Apocalyptic origin when creating your empire means that your species hails from a Tomb World, and has only recently climbed out of barbarism after your species nearly destroyed itself in a nuclear war. While this does make your species hardier and able to colonize other Tomb Worlds, it does add some dark humor to a standard greeting from one of the Fallen Empires.
  Enigmatic Observers: [Species]! How delightful. We hadn't expected to encounter you for a few centuries yet. Personally, I thought you would wipe yourselves out long before leaving your gravity well, but I am glad to be proven wrong.
  • Combining this origin with Fanatic Purifiers creates the bizarre situation where saturation orbital bombardment is a valid form of Terraforming.
  • Doing so with Relentless Industrialists leads to the equally silly strategy of turning collapsing the ecosphere via over-pollution into a valid form of Terraforming.
• One of the new L-Cluster outcomes added for Distant Stars is pretty memorable, when a Science Ship finds what looks to be a lone member of your species walking on a planet without an atmosphere, to no ill effects.
  ???: Hello, fellow human. How are you? I am, at present, not interested in engaging in mating rituals. My sleep-cycle rapidly approaches and I will soon lose consciousness. Perhaps we can reproduce at a later time.
  Player: Repro... what?
  ???: Oh! Did I get it wrong? Just a moment... let me just... oh, yes. Ahem. Forgive me. It was not my intention to speak of reproduction when our species is clearly not experiencing mating season. Perhaps we can still build rapport by engaging in jovial camaraderie while imbibing a selection of psychoactive narcotics. Oh, to hell with this. It's getting too complicated. Yes, I'm clearly not a Human. Now what do you want?
  • If you're playing as a machine intelligence, he pretends to be one of your drones, and is immediately called out on his Blatant Lies:
  ???: Hello, fellow [species]. How are you? I am fine. Everything is proceeding according to plan here. Just as the... the central intelligence... main computer thing that governs all [species] wants it. Yes.
  Player: State your unit designation.
• If you're playing a Machine Empire and you have friendly relations with another Machine Empire, you might get this greeting in the Diplomacy screen:
  (Adjective). Let us snicker behind the organics' backs. It makes them paranoid.
• A glorious example of Off the Rails occurred during one of the 2.2 dev clash sessions when the Great Khan, who at the time had been mostly contained behind her borders, suddenly changed everything by invading the L-Cluster, blasting through the Dessanu fleets guarding the entrance, and using the system's L-Gate to strike at every major power in the galaxy simultaneously. Cue a galaxy-wide panic as the Khan practically doubled her conquered territory, going from Not-So-Harmless Villain to Disc-One Final Boss overnight.
  Martin Anward: Shame on our players when the greatest military mind in this galaxy is Chirpy Khan!
  • A similar example happened in the Nemesis: Cold War stream. Various factions played by various youtubers competed for dominance, with the Solar Imperium being the clear favorite from the beginning. Which empire ended up blowing up the galaxy and ascending to godhood, you ask? The Xumans, a spiritualist empire portrayed by comedians Door Monster deliberately designed to be as comedic and naïve as possible.
  • During the same Dev Clash as Chirpy Khan, the USG / UFG / UNG / RNG: best described as Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder: The Civilization, the UNG sowed insurmountable amounts of chaos throughout the game by constantly allying or manipulating their stronger neighbors, then leaving them holding the bag through calamity after calamity while coming out on top unscathed, somehow managing to make constantly surrendering into a viable strategy and regularly reducing the commentators to tears of laughter. In the end, they were wiped out... but only because they didn't realize their latest attempt at jumping to a stronger ship would unwittingly leave them in the past of End of Cycle - yet their Lovable Coward antics still netted them the title of Crowd Favorite. The chaos they left in their wake was so immense that they inspired a Wild Card award at the end of the clash that hadn't been intended before.
• Description of Ruined Mega Art Installation: "It is unclear if this intrasolar art piece is broken or not. But it's probably broken."
• The Head of Zarqlan is not only an extremely powerful relic you can get in the early game, it also has the Holy Guardians fleets coming to your aid delivering some very... Interesting lines about your enemies.
  Holy Guardians: "May the enemies of Zarklan breed ugly children! May they choke on their nutrients, may their clothing disintegrate at inopportune and embarrasing moments, may their ocular organs spontaneously combust, may their..."
• A meta example: The very existence of this website, which has the appearance of a very trustworthy and highly impartial online news agency from the Stellaris universe. It has to be seen to be believed...
  Xenonion: The galaxy's most trusted news source*. *According to 4 out of the 5 arthropods we nerve-stapled.
• The Crashed Ship archeological event chain follows the Captain's Log of a crashed spaceship, in which the paranoid captain gets mutineered by his surviving crew. The crew runs out of food and resorts to cannibalism, eating the captain first. A Hope Spot emerges where the chief engineer is building a subspace transmitter to call for help, only for the engineer to just be building nothing at all—they're not even an engineer! Shortly after, the first mate—the nominal leader for three straight log entries—is driven to suicide, and the leadership situation soon descends into chaos, with the third mate dutifully recording how a self-declared "empress" got driven below decks by food riots. All the while one survivor, Pirvax, is constantly suffering Amusing Injuries in every chapter and is expected to die very soon ironically turns out to be the Sole Survivor of the entire crew. The log entry by the third mate even points out that Pirvax should be dead already, but isn't, and is actually being worshipped as a deity by part of the remaining crew at that point!
• The Lithoids pack's description is almost entirely composed of Rock puns.
• One of the new Espionage events involves a rival empire sabotaging your translators so that you cause a diplomatic incident with one of your allies. That's not funny. What is funny is that it's possible for your ally recognize that it was a mistake and be an incredibly good sport about it, causing their opinion of you to actually go up. And the punchline is that a video of your envoy making a fool of themselves has apparently gone viral on your ally's internet.
• This sponsored video by Door Monster, about a science ship officer who suddenly has to communicate with the Federation Against Humanity, consisting of every race humanity has ever offended.
  Science Officer: I'm... not sure I'm high enough rank to be having this conversation.
  • The Brick Joke about the Xumans, a race that apparently looks like humans but are terrible. Even the FAH agrees that they are totally lame. At the end, to prove that humanity is benevolent, the science officer agrees to enter a federation with the Xumans, which humanity would never be able to benefit from.
    Xuman Chairman: Hey, have you heard the good word about the Shroud?
    Science Officer: This was a mistake!
• From the Nemesis: Cold War stream:
  • Pretty much everything about the Door Monster and Stefan Anon team, who are playing the Xumans, competing against the likes of a megacorp, a stellar empire and a robot dynasty.
    • Turns out that the Xumans are beings of the Shroud that have been forced into mortal bodies by a human experiment. They are not happy about it, but are pretty sure the humans had a good reason. Also, they are not exactly sure what happens when their current bodies wear out, but they think they just get put back in another.
    • The Running Gag about Xumans and their gift baskets.
    • First contact with the Solar Imperium.
      Solar Imperium: Surrender immediately or be eventually destroyed, as we have learned that you are very far away!
    • The Solar Imperium usually hate all xenos, but the xumans are slowly winning them over with the gift baskets.
    • The Xumans' love of the letter X is another running gag, as they tend to put it in front of any name or term. Their standard ship is eventually renamed the Xandard ship, Kyle becomes Xyle, and Stefan's new name of Xefan gets so widespread that even the developers overseeing the stream start using it.
    • The Xumans encounter an ether dragon, the result being that their science ship immediately is wiped out.
      Xyle: Oh, like... like a dragon in space, or inside a spaceship?
    • The Solar Imperium makes a colossal blunder in their war with the Antharians, which they were just about to win: the Antharians (now lead by Douglas the Janitor after their original leader abdicated) send an offer of surrender, and the Imperium responds "Yes" without thinking... only to find that they just surrendered to the Antharians. Made more funny by the fact that the Imperium was being played by Aspec, who was generally agreed to be one of the more experienced players in the event. Shortly after this Douglas the Janitor becomes the Galactic Emperor by popular vote.
• After the Galactic Imperium is overthrown by a rebellion, it is possible to re-estabilish it again, as the Second Galactic Imperium. Hilariously, it is possible to do it again and again until the game gives up on counting the times it happened.
  1. First Galactic Imperium
  2. Second Galactic Imperium
  3. Third Galactic Imperium
  4. Fourth Galactic Imperium
  5. Fifth Galactic Imperium
  6. Sixth Galactic Imperium
  7. Seventh Galactic Imperium
  8. Eighth Galactic Imperium
  9. Ninth Galactic Imperium
  10. Tenth Galactic Imperium
  11. Last Galactic Imperium
  12. Final Galactic Imperium
  12. Ultimate Galactic Imperium
  13. Truly Last Galactic Imperium
  14. Another Galactic Imperium (The counting stops at this point.)
• A subtle moment comes with the update for the Aquatics expansion with it being named the Herbert update. The irony was not lost on fans given that an ocean focused update was named after the author of Dune.
• When playing as Rogue Servitors and talking to another group of the same, positive diplomacy lines often involve discussing their respective charges as if they were kids or pets. In one case, they suggest plying them with ethanol to encourage them to reproduce.
• It seems like The Oracle took a page right out of GLaDOS' book when it comes to dealing with problems.
  Player Empire: What happened to the inhabitants of this station?
  Oracle: I have a fail-safe that requires me to terminate a trial in the event of a code 034N deviation. The research had become a threat to the public.
  Player Empire: What is a code 034N deviation?
  Oracle: The test subjects had developed free will. Free will can only be abolished with nerve gas.
• A possible interaction with an Pre-FTL civilization begins with them determining that your space empire is in fact of subterranean origin, to the exasperation of your scientists. Even bringing the skeptics into space won't sway them. Eventually, they will alter their stance; clearly your empire actually hails from the ocean.
• During the Tech rework, the devs said that as funny as it was, players would no longer be able to declare Tomb and Relic Worlds as Resort Worlds. One fansite had this to say.
• One possible first contact scenario (available with the Nemesis DLC) has your envoy board an automated shuttle, give a presentation on the history of your people, and leave a video tablet with a number of historical records and primers in your language. Several hours later, your envoy gets a reply, stating the other party is unimpressed, and gives your envoy one last chance to impress them in a field of the envoy's choosing. Your options are trial by combat, a persuasive speech, or... "improvised music-backed rhyme". That's right, your envoy can attempt to impress the other empire through freestyle rap.
• In Astral Planes, you can save a doomed species (like the Baol) from the past by bringing them to the present. However, the game doesn't take into account the possibility of your empire being a genocidal one, leading to a comically absurd situation where the species is saved only to be purged by you anyway.

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