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"72 hours to kill... thousands of zombies... What would Chuck do?"

The highly successful 2010 sequel to 2006's just-as-successful Dead Rising.

Chuck Greene is a former motorcycle racing champion, whose wife was zombified and bit their daughter, Katey, in an outbreak in Las Vegas some years before. Due to this, now the girl needs daily doses of Zombrex, a medicine that can halt the infection for 24 hours.

Cut to September 2011 (five years after the Willamette Outbreak), Chuck is now a contestant in the game show Terror Is Reality, set in Fortune City, NV, whose crew keeps caged zombies who are released in an arena just so the competitors may mow them down with motorbike-mounted chainsaws.

One day, after another episode of the show, someone releases the captive zombies, and they overrun the city in no time. Having found a shelter, Chuck is informed that the military will raid the city within 72 hours and the shelter isn't stocked with Zombrex, so they only agree to let Katey stay there as long as he can find the medicine to keep her alive.

Eventually, Chuck finds out he's being held responsible for breaking out the horde, and now he's involved in a three-way quest: find Zombrex for Katey, save the survivors left about the city, and clear his name. All the while crushing thousands of zombies with anything he may find - and anything he may make with what he finds.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was released a few weeks before the main game, as a five-dollar "demo" available exclusively on the Xbox Live Arcade. Set immediately after the Las Vegas outbreak mentioned in passing in DR2, Case Zero finds Chuck and Katey stranded in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Chuck has about fourteen hours before the military moves in to quarantine the town, and if he and Katey aren't gone by then, they'll take her away. Chuck has to find at least one dose of Zombrex for Katey and put together a vehicle.

Dead Rising 2: Case West came out in December 2010 on the Xbox Live Arcade. Set after the main game in Phenotrans's facility in Fortune City, Chuck is joined by Frank West (an AI buddy in single-player, and the second player's character in co-op) as they work to clear Chuck's name once and for all.

Dead Rising 2: Off the Record was announced at Captivate '11, and Capcom admits that the new game is basically Fanservice (as in Continuity Nods and stuff). Indeed, the wackiness is up to eleven (Masked Luchador zombies, for example), and even the beloved photos-for-PP mechanic returns. The game is a What If? Frank West had been in Chuck Greene's shoes, and Frank's simple answer to the question, "What would you have done differently?" is EVERYTHING.

In November 2011, IDW began publishing a four-issue Dead Rising comic book series, Road to Fortune, which begins two years after the original game and covers several of the incidents between DR and DR2, including the Vegas outbreak, Katey's infection, and Frank West and Rebecca Chang's first meeting.

In September 2016, both Dead Rising 2 and Off the Record received re-releases on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, alongside the original Dead Rising.

The list of Shout Outs can be found here.

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Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Provides Examples Of:

    Case Zero 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0d7aaaa9_5f83_4641_8715_513af6f78ca2.jpeg
Daddy? There’s a man over there..

  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Justified. It's not a literal Zombie Apocalypse, so money's still useful.
  • The Alcoholic: Fausto Vargas, who refuses to go anywhere until you give him TWO alcoholic beverages. Fortunately, both he and his wife are found inside the local bar.
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Survivors you find along the way will immediately come to you instead of whimpering in fear in a crowd if you press the order button.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Blessedly subverted; although only a few civilians need transportation to safety and always over a small, simply laid out area, their path-finding ability is largely improved over the original Dead Rising. Even when unarmed survivors are mostly competent enough to bull-rush their way through small groups of zombies without any problem.
  • Ascended Meme:
    • The Locksmith achievement dubs Chuck the master of unlocking.
    • Quite a few in Case West, starting with "For a guy who's covered wars..."
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Many of the customized weapons can be considered this. Some are so large you cannot switch inventory items without dropping them, some are meant to do massive damage to single targets (which is overkill on zombies but does not work on bosses,) many can only be used once, etc.
  • Boring, but Practical: And on top of everything that comes before? Guess what's the best weapon to use on the final boss - or for that matter, any boss in any of the games to date? The sniper rifle found on the gas station roof.
  • Chainsaw Good: One of the weapons you can craft is two chainsaws on a canoe paddle.
  • Duct Tape for Everything:
    • No matter what the items being combined are, you will always hear the sound of duct tape.
    • He also uses duct tape to repair his motorbike.
  • Fetch Quest:
    • Five motorcycle parts and a Zombrex syringe before 9 PM (two if you're collecting every survivor).
    • And some jewelry if you're fulfilling Gemini's request.
  • From Bad to Worse: Chuck Greene's wife is infected, bites his daughter and Chuck has to kill his zombie wife. He then escapes infected Las Vegas, constantly injecting Zombrex into said daughter, which costs around $300 a pop. He arrives in a small town, gets his truck (and Zombrex stash) stolen. Then the town is shown to having already been infested by zombies. Then the military plans to show up, giving Chuck twelve hours to figure out a way to get out of the town before the army quarantines his daughter. Then he runs across an Egomaniac Hunter with a shotgun/pitchfork combo who wants to kill his daughter. It's just not a good life for Chuck, no sir. Oh, and then Dead Rising 2 happens.
  • Improbable Weapon User: One of the survivors Chuck finds is using the handlebars he needs for his bike as a weapon! Apparently, the handlebars are working well enough for him that he'll only give them up if given a broadsword.
  • Multiple Endings
  • Your Head A-Splode: One of the new combined weapons you can make with a spray paint can and a traffic cone is an air horn that makes a zombie's head explode.


Dead Rising 2 Provides Examples Of:

    Dead Rising 2 — A-C 
  • Action Figure Justification: Referenced with one side mission, where Chuck has to convince an old lady in a toy store to follow him to the safe house. When he mentions the zombies, she says that she's looking for toys for her granddaughter, who is too young for zombie toys. Chuck replies, "They're not toys," and the lady gives an annoyed, "Fine, action figures." Chuck then explains that he's talking about the real zombies that are infesting the city.
  • Action Girl:
    • Rebecca certainly qualifies after fighting her way across Fortune City just about as much as you do.
    • Also there's Terri, a minor character. Even if you don't help her and her friend out, she'll still manage to somehow fight her way into the safe house and somehow have the strength remaining to help fight off the zombie horde when the main door is sabotaged. All with just a lead pipe.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The guys running the pawn shops are all professional looters. They always have some Zombrex handy for you to buy, but will charge you more and more for it each time. What jerks.
  • Alas, Poor Villain:
    • The twins are manipulative and insidious, but when Chuck kills one of them, the surviving twin is left in complete despair and commits suicide after declaring life to be forever incomplete without her sister.
    • Ted isn’t really a villain despite his status as a Psychopath, he just snapped after Chuck accidentally called him a word that he hates. His death scene, which consists of Ted crawling on the floor while begging for Snowflake to use him as “fresh meat”, is still rather tragic.
    • Similarly, Sgt. Boykin isn’t really a villain; he is rather aggressive and doesn’t hesitate to approach Chuck with the intention of killing him, but he witnessed the deaths of his men due to unexpected circumstances and after Chuck defeats him, he still thinks he got taken down by a zombie and blows himself up with a grenade.
    • Slappy was wrathful and probably not very sane considering that he still bothers wearing the mascot costume in the middle of a zombie outbreak. However, he only snapped because he thought Chuck was responsible for his date’s death, and as he succumbs to his wounds, he talks to the long-dead girl about the date that will now never happen, showing that he never got over the loss of something that meant a lot to him.
  • An Arm and a Leg: When Chuck gets the Hands Off skill, he'll grab a zombie by the arms and start yanking while pushing at their body with his foot. Eventually, he'll rip their arms off for an instant kill.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: TK turns into a zombie in Ending A, which is his canon fate. If Chuck fails to give Katey some Zombrex in time, then she turns off-screen, leading to one of the bad endings.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: Arthur's armor has to be unlocked in four pieces, but it absorbs extra damage (until it breaks, leaving Chuck in his underwear) and improves Chuck's throwing ability.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • One minor quality of life improvement over the first game is that survivors will now display an icon over their heads if they will move to the next room alongside Chuck. No more moving back and forth between loading screens just because one survivor was just slightly outside the eligible area.
    • The redneck snipers have muzzle flashes about one second before they actually fire a shot, giving you time to dodge them with a roll.
  • Anyone Can Die: With more zombies in an even bigger area, the number of causalities will inevitably skyrocket. Just like the first game, only three characters survive the main events: Chuck, Katey, and Stacey. However, if one includes the events of Case West, then there are six survivors, since Frank, Marion, and Isabela also live throughout the entirety of Case West’s events.
  • Armor Is Useless: In the High Noon Shooting range, Chuck can pick up and wear the S.W.A.T. uniform that has a vest. It doesn't do anything, but it does look damn cool. Averted with Arthur's suit of armor. Subverted by the Psycho outfit, which isn't armor, but reduces damage taken.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: On the Zombrex website, possible side effects are read off (quickly, as with drug commercials circa The '90s) including "...bleeding eyes, bleeding anus, occasional terrifying hallucinations, and dry skin."
  • Artificial Brilliance: The developers clearly remembered how everyone who played the first Dead Rising chose to feed survivors to zombies and take pictures for the experience reward instead of escorting them out of sheer rage. Now, give a survivor a decent weapon, even a common one - knife, baseball bat, sledgehammer - and they will not only fend for themselves while following you intelligently, they will swat zombies who are grappling you! Give them shotguns and the only thing you have to keep an eye out for is that little "door" sign is above their icon when transitioning between areas (another innovation) - they'll mow through packs of zombies without pausing for breath.
    • Hell, they can hold their own against psychopaths if you arm them right, making boss fights (including some that are otherwise That One Boss) much, much easier.
      • In fact, you often want armed survivors with you in a boss fight. Not only do you avoid detouring to drop off a survivor, but you save a lot of time against bosses by watching them go down in seconds to a few minutes rather than a drag-out fight where you keep having to play chicken.
    • They'll still hit you and other survivors every so often, and that's only if you stand in their way with a shotgun. But they're still much better than the Survivors from the first game.
  • Ascended Meme: "You have a real knack for showing up at the right time. Have you covered wars or something?" One of the achievements is even called "He hasn't covered wars..."
  • Asshole Victim:
    • TK, the greedy, snide, and callous host of Terror is Reality who planned to rob every casino in Fortune City, either becomes a zombie or falls to his death in a crowd of undead, depending on which ending you get.
    • Sullivan is eventually revealed to be a mole that started the outbreak and framed Chuck. He shows no regrets for his actions. Once his fight is over, he ends up being cut in half.
    • Leon is cocky, juvenile, and treats the outbreak like an expanded version of the game show he competed in, to the point where he casually kills a survivor and simply laments how hard survivors are to kill compared to zombies. He ends up burning to death while taunting Chuck.
    • Randy tries to forcefully marry a random woman after killing his previous “bride”. He also accidentally kills his father with his chainsaw when Chuck enters the chapel, but only passively mentions this in a throwaway line during the fight. He meets his end when the “bride” he killed, now a zombie, approaches him while he’s down and starts eating him.
    • The redneck snipers are trigger-happy bigots that gladly murder other survivors in cold blood for the sake of “saving” America. Like most Psychopaths, they end up dying, and since they lack death scenes, Chuck is most likely going to kill them personally.
    • Seymour is a corrupt security guard with delusions of grandeur that uses the outbreak as an opportunity to put himself in charge and hang anyone that dares to defy his “orders”. After fighting Chuck, he falls on an active saw while bragging about being a better man than Chuck.
    • Reed clearly mistreated his fellow magician Roger in the past, and the only thing he can say when his “sawing in half” trick ends up killing the ‘volunteer’ is “Damn it! Not again!”, implying that other lives were lost because of his failed magic tricks. In the duo’s death scene, Roger stabs Reed multiple times with a dagger for his abuse.
  • Attempted Rape: Randy. See Shotgun Wedding below.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
    • The Knight Armor set. Sure, it may be a reference to Arthur from Ghosts 'n Goblins, and it prevents you from taking damage when you wear it, but once you take enough hits it shatters and you're left in your underwear and you need to return all the way to the safe house if you want to reequip it. Also, until it's patched, it also causes a bug that blanks out the first-floor map when you use the whole set.
    • The Mercenary Assault Rifle is a common weapon to find and its high rate of fire makes it your early version of the LMG. However, it has a small magazine and it's an inaccurate weapon. For Chuck, the Assault Rifle with its larger magazine and greater accuracy is a better choice despite having a lower rate of fire. However, put the Mercenary Assault Rifle in the hands of a survivor...
    • Despite the fact that most of them are DiscOneNukes, the Combo Weapons aren't particularly useful for general use because magazines do not affect their durability. As a result, they break very easily compared to the standard weapons and are more situational weapons, something you pull out to deal with a particularly tough psychopath or Gas zombies and so forth rather than something you use on most everything.
    • Most large weapons qualify as this, especially during the late game when the player gets mobbed by gas zombies - any attack can cause them to drop it. Many of them also have motors that need to be started before you can actually swing them. That means that if the player gets surrounded, they have to choose between clearing the horde out with another weapon or picking it up and dropping it over and over again.
  • Author Avatar:
    • Inverted, Keiji Inafune, the Executive Producer of the Dead Rising series, has dressed up in Chuck's default biker outfit in almost every expo and convention that showcased Dead Rising 2.
    • Literally inverted. Chuck Greene is sponsored by IJIEK.
  • Audible Sharpness: The Twins' swords.
  • Badass Adorable: The Freedom Bear, who is just the cuddly Robot Bear found in toy stores but equipped with an LMG to kill zombies with.
  • Badass Biker: Chuck is a former Motocross champion. The skills he picked up from working on his bike is how he learned to create insane weapons.
  • Bag of Spilling / No-Gear Level: Your entire inventory is taken away just before the True Final Boss fight. This happens somewhat abruptly, and the game doesn't give you full health for the battle, so it's entirely possible to unwittingly start the final battle with almost no health (which will most likely force you to restart from an earlier save).
  • Batter Up!: The wooden baseball bat is naturally this. It can also be made into the Spiked Bat combo weapon by combining it with nails.
    • Averted with the metal baseball bat as Chuck/Frank toss a baseball and hit it with the bat to hit a zombie.
    • In the opening cutscene of Case West, Frank uses a baseball bat to kill a zombified TK and save Chuck.
  • Battle Couple:
    • Doris and Chad, the first survivors you come across with a handgun and shotgun, respectively.
    • Also, Amber & Crystal.
  • The Baroness: The twins are a tag-teaming, nigh-unkillable example.
  • Beef Gate:
    • The appearance of the mutated Gas Zombies. Chuck's been swatting zombies like flies for the past 72 hours, but once these bastards show up, the party is over. If Chuck doesn't have at least six Hit Points and inventory spaces each, quit, start over and grind some more levels. Chuck will not survive a trip across the map unless he can handle repeated consecutive multiple-hitpoint maulings while carrying at least three healing items and weapons. Even at level fifty every trip along the strip without a vehicle is That One Level. Hope you ground some cash to pay for the keys to that SUV...
    • The biggest problem with gas zombies is that the weak point has been switched! Everyone knows a zombie's weak point right? Go for the head, but for gas zombies, it's the legs. Stomp on their legs and the zombie will twitch and then the head will pop (often netting you a queen for your trouble). Still, with them coming at you five at a time it's not easy to knock them over and stomp on their legs.
  • Berserk Button:
    • TED NOT SLOW!
    • Antoine doesn't appreciate Chuck (who he's mistaken for a food critic) insulting his food.
    • Pretty much every Psycho boss in the game will mistake Chuck's speech (more like lack of speech) for some kind of insult, mistake him for someone they hate, or any other possible reason to want to kill him.
    • Chuck, himself, will make your life hell if you hurt his daughter. This extends to a doll that he thinks is his daughter when he becomes a psychopath in Off the Record.
  • Big Eater: One of the survivors, Richard can only be brought along if you give him some food to eat. Any food will do, including rotten burgers straight out of a garbage bin. Once he's safe at the bunker, he'll proceed to eat all the food inside so you can no longer heal yourself at the bunker. But at least he gives you a Zombrex
  • BFG: A literal one, the Blast Frequency Gun, which can be upgraded into a BIGGER BFG with an amplifier.
  • Black Dude Dies First:
    • Inverted. A certain black character does die, but that's at the end of the game. As an added twist? YOU get to be the one that kills him!
    • You can play it somewhat straight if you let one of the survivors you're supposed to help, a black man, die.
  • Blood Knight: Leon Bell, who apparently got into "Terror Is Reality" because he has a craving for killing. He sticks the knife in and twists it in his very first appearance, where he mentions Chuck lost his wife in the Vegas outbreak. "I guess that means you SUCK at killing zombies, otherwise she'd still be around!" And just before his boss fight, he rides his Slicecycle right through an innocent unarmed survivor.
  • Bloody Hilarious: Achieves triumphant levels over its predecessor with the Combo Weapons, where most of them provide a ludicrous and ultra-violent means of killing the undead. The Auger returns in an even more adaptable and horrific incarnation, but the greatest example has to be the Porta-Mower. It truly should be discovered rather than described, but if you're curious, Chuck takes the said mower and plunks it on top of the zombie's head, quickly reducing it to fine red mist.
  • Bond One-Liner: Chuck gets a couple of these.
    • After watching a Psychopath that was forcing women to marry him and then killing them when they resisted, getting his face bitten off by one of his now zombified victims.
      "You may now kiss the Bride."
    • After watching another psycho get cut in half by a large circular saw after proclaiming "I'm twice the man you are!"
      "I saw what you did there."
    • After watching his rival from a game show burn to death while proclaiming he was "number one".
      "Yeah... you're on fire."
  • Bond Villain Stupidity:
    • Sullivan starts monologuing after murdering Rebecca, instead of just killing Chuck and Stacey right then and there.
    • If Sullivan had started shooting people before you told him to his face that you've found out about Phenotrans' plot, you wouldn't have stood a chance.
  • Book Ends:
    • At the beginning of the game, Chuck is participating in a game show hosted by TK to kill as many zombies as possible in order to provide for Katie. In the Overtime ending, TK kidnaps Katie and Stacy and takes them to that same arena so he can force Chuck to see them get eaten alive. The final battle is fought on the walkways hanging over the Terror is Reality arena, just after TK finishes a speech similar to the one he made at the start of the game.
    • Both Chuck’s first and last encounter with Leon Bell have them competing to kill as many zombies as possible with motorbikes. Or at least that's what Leon thinks is happening, but Chuck isn't playing.
  • Boring, but Practical:
    • The first combo weapon you unlock, the Spiked Bat, is rather easy to build and doesn't give much PP, but against crowds of generic zombies, it's a nice little crowd-clearer, and it is readily available (the maintenance room right outside has nails and a bat, and there are nails in the other room and a bat laying next to the fire extinguisher). It does fairly good damage, too, and can be useful against Psychopaths if you don't have any Knife Gloves handy.
    • Another one is the Tenderizers (MMA Gloves + Nails). You get the card by looking at a movie poster near the maintenance area leading to the safehouse, the parts for it are just as close and it's good for clearing out zombies without accidentally hitting anyone you may be escorting. Overall, a good fallback weapon, and a tad more common than the Knife Gloves in a pinch.
    • The Defiler (sledgehammer + fire axe) combo weapon. Just as easy to build as the Spiked Bat with a jump attack that deals substantial damage to psychopaths and will kill gas zombies in one hit.
    • The broadsword and battleaxe for non combo weapons. Both are readily available from the antique store in the Palisades Mall (especially if the player has unlocked the shortcut that connects to Royal Flush Plaza), and the Sports magazine in the nearby bookstore boosts durability to 120 kills from the default 40.
    • Using the "helmet" weapons note  against the twins. The player simply has to use the alternate attack to make Chuck/Frank run laps around the nightclub until either of the twins is defeated. As long as the player doesn't end the attack, the twins won't land a hit.
    • The Drinking magazine allows you to consume alcohol without risk of vomiting. Pretty nifty considering you're in a casino resort that's about 40% casino and thus has lots of liquor strewn all over the place.
  • Boss-Altering Consequence: While you can't do anything to win Ted over, you can tame Snowflake by feeding her steak during their boss fight.
  • Boss Banter: Unlike the first game where the bosses had one or two battle quotes, the bosses in Dead Rising 2 have tons. For example, the redneck snipers taunt you a lot when engaging them in CQC.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: In the game, you can obtain Arthur's full suit of armor, which effectively doubles your health. The first two parts of the armor aren't so bad to obtain (you can get the helmet by playing Strip Poker with Jack and removing his helmet, and you can get the beard by going to the barbershop in the Royal Flush Plaza and looking in the back of the store). However, one of the suit pieces is being sold for $2,000,000 at the shop on the Platinum Strip, which is 80 times the price of Zombrex, requiring you to play at least 10-15 games of Terror Is Reality in order to buy the stupid thing, and the other piece is unlocked for defeating TK. So, in essence, you can't get the suit on your first playthrough, and when you do finally obtain it, it breaks after a few hits, much like Ghosts 'n Goblins. You can still go back to the safe room and equip it again, but there's not much use to it when you obtain it except for going around impaling zombies to death with a lance. Fortunately, you can find magazines around Fortune City which lower the prices of all items in the shop up to 20% off, but it's still a whopping $1,600,000. And alternatively, for making money, you can invest some time on the big slot machine with the gambling magazines since the payouts are big.
  • Bullfight Boss:
    • Leon, who charges at you with a Slicecycle from TIR. Using the bullfight tactic isn't the only one out there, however, but it's recommended.
    • Chuck in Off the Record, when he replaces Leon.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Chuck can be this if you have him killing Zombies with wrestling movies while wearing a Daisy Duke outfit and wearing a homemade beer helmet. Or in an electric wheelchair that he made after strapping several machine guns on it. With Stephen Hawking's voice taunting the zombies.
  • Buxom Beauty Standard: Rebecca, Amber, Crystal, most of the women in the safehouse, and most of the female zombies have busts far above average size, which is played for fanservice.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: After the player defeats TK and destroys the helicopter, TK is brought back to the Safe House. Sullivan is tempted to shoot TK but the player (Chuck or Frank) tells him that TK needs to stay alive to give details. Sullivan remarks that it's a real shame.
  • Canon Discontinuity: Multiplayer TiR makes sure you're not playing as the four that showed up in the single-player, the game doesn't solely consist of Slicecycles, and the ending's different.
  • Caught on Tape: When Rebecca first reports on the Fortune City outbreak, she shows footage of Chuck in his Terror is Reality suit planting a bomb on the zombie pens, which makes Sullivan suspicious of him, as well both Rebecca herself and Stacey, and it's also the reason why Psychopaths Slappy and Carl Schiff attack him. This suspicion causes Chuck to embark on a mission to prove his innocence, and along the way discovers he was framed so that TK could rob the casinos in the confusion, and that it was Sullivan himself who was behind the outbreak so that Phenotrans could keep selling Zombrex.
  • Cavalry Betrayal: Subverted. The government honestly thinks no one is left alive due to the safehouse breach, the military unit being wiped out, and the new mutant zombies. They do, however, put out a Blatant Lies press release stating that they had confirmed that all the survivors were dead, when in fact they were merely guessing based on their loss of contact with the rescue team and the overall severity of the situation.
  • Chain Lightning: A few of the electric weapons such as the Rolling Thunder and Tesla Ball utilize this, making them good for crowd control.
  • Chainsaw Good: Takes this trope to its logical conclusion — Instant Homicide Machines. Just Add Duct Tape for Everything. Chainsaw + canoe paddle + duct tape = Dual Chainsaws On A Stick! Chainsaw + dirt bike + duct tape = Slicecycle.
  • Chekhov's Gun: A set of handcuffs. Sullivan gives them to Chuck to secure TK, and Chuck later uses them to secure Sullivan's belt to a railing as a passing plane snags his skyhook - leaving him Half the Man He Used to Be.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Chuck suffers from this, even more so than Frank was in the first game. In contrast to Frank, who would often be ambushed and forced to defend himself and others that way, Chuck has a tendency to enter situations he could otherwise avoid easily because someone is in trouble. This causes several of the psychopath battles in the game.
  • Clear My Name: Chuck is accused of causing the zombie outbreak in Fortune City in a news report and the military will arrive to capture him in 3 days. If you don't return to the Safehouse when they arrive, you get a Bad Ending.
  • Compensating for Something: Randy. His weapon is a giant pink chainsaw, he revs it when he gets excited about losing his virginity, he occasionally screams "Mine's bigger than yours!" when you fight him... The only way it could be more obvious is if the game told you directly.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
    • When fighting Antoine, Hitbox Dissonance is very obvious. If he is swinging his pan, he will not take any damage, even if you hit him first. When he throws a pan, you can hide around a corner and the pan will swerve and strike you.
    • A lot of the psychopaths seemingly have invincibility frames before or during their attacks. It's especially notable when trying to use Good Old Fisticuffs against Sullivan, as half of your attacks don't even hurt him. You can literally kick his ass and he won't take much damage.
    • During the poker games - on Day Three in the Atlantica, on Day Four in the shelter - the CPU players will often bet large amounts of money on a bad hand, only to abruptly pull out the win when the last card hits the table. The only way their strategy makes any sense at all is if they already know what the cards are going to be.
      • If you bring all three gambling magazines to the poker game with you, Chuck will always draw two high cards at the start of the hand and will often get a pair. This often isn't enough to compensate for the CPU's amazing "luck," but it goes a long way. It will still take hours of whittling away at their cash to beat them, however, as the CPU is still cheating and knows you have those cards. And as the game can only spawn eight survivors/psychopaths at a time, them plus the four Tape It Or Die members will stop mission progression in its tracks. If you want 100% Completion, you'll sometimes have to kill some survivors to permit more compliant ones to appear - either these jerks or the ones who build weapons for you.
  • Continuity Snarl: Capcom has stated in 2013 that Ending S is supposed to be canon. However, Ending A is what leads to Case West, and this ending can only be achieved by not giving TK Zombrex, as Frank saves Chuck from the zombified TK. Ending S has Chuck personally kill TK. The only explanation that can be given is that Ending A takes place directly after Ending S, and TK reanimates after his death.
  • Cooked to Death: Antoine Thomas, one of the game's possible Psychopath encounters, meets his end by falling into his own deep fryer after being defeated.
  • Cowardly Lion: Most of the survivors are found in a state of distress and will not survive without Chuck's help and guidance. However, if they are given a weapon, they can fight very well against the zombies. On that note, most humans could be considered this. The zombies are considerably slower, more fragile, and nowhere near as resourceful as the average human. It's only because of the fear they evoke in humans that they can be considered a threat at all. If the humans could stop themselves from panicking, which is what causes them to make the foolish decisions that lead to their deaths, they would realize that there are countless ways for them to out-fight, out-smart, or at the very least out-maneuver a single zombie or even a small group of them.
  • Cutscene Drop: The first possible occurrence is justified by Chuck being kidnapped. In Off the Record on Day 4, Frank is teleported across Fortune Park upon discovering or destroying the harvesters.
  • Cut Scene Incompetence:
    • Chuck, who is more than capable of punching zombies until they die and performing wrestling/ninja/CQC moves on multitudes of zombies, AND should have plenty of weapons leftover, is subdued by Zombie TK in Ending A.
    • We watch the rest of the struggle at the beginning of Case West. Frank saves him.
    • Chuck chops his way through a tram full of armed mercenaries to confront TK, who pulls out a pistol and fires a few rounds instead of answering Chuck's questions. Chuck dives for cover, despite the fact that getting to that point at all means he's probably been shot forty or fifty times.

    Dead Rising 2 — D-F 
  • Dark Action Girl: Stacey in Off the Record is this, as she tales Sullivan's place as the Phenotrans agent and tries to kill Frank after he catches up to her in Uranus Zone.
  • Deadly Game: The multiplayer mode takes the form of a game show called "Terror is Reality" based around killing zombies. The developers have compared it to American Gladiators.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Chuck is cool as ice, and manages several quite good Bond One Liners after dispatching the various psychopaths.
  • Death by Irony: Many Psychopaths die off in ways truly worthy of a Bond One-Liner:
    • Leon Bell: sets himself on fire from a spark igniting leaked fuel while proclaiming himself "number one".
    • Chef Antonie: Falls face-first into a deep fat fryer.
    • Randy Tugman: Eaten by a past "bride".
    • Brandon Whittaker: Bitten by one of the zombies C.U.R.E. tried to save, slits his own throat.
    • Seymore Redding: Falls onto a rotating saw after proclaiming himself "twice the man you are."
    • Evan MacIntyre: Ice cream salesman frozen solid by a liquid nitrogen canister.
  • Denser and Wackier: Off the Record in general.
  • Depraved Bisexual: The Twins are clearly fooling around with each other and TK, and one of them even fondles Rebecca while holding her hostage.
  • Diabolus ex Machina: The magazine that's inaccessible until the botched military rescue. In 2, it's the "Blades" magazine that boosts the durability of seven weapons that can be stacked with two magazines, five of which can reliably kill gas zombies in one hit note . In Off the Record, its the "Bikes" magazine that boosts the durability of motorcycles. By the time those are accessible, the game is close to its end with only a handful of cases left.
    • Played with for the red Humvee and the underground gate. At a glance, it seems that the Humvee's roof lightbar is conveniently too high to let it fit under the gap. However, driving into the gate at speed will make it squeeze underneath and lets the player indulge in the vehicular carnage.
  • Disc-One Nuke:
    • The Knife Gloves and the Tenderizers can be made in the first area after the Maintenance Room key is received, have common components, do good damage, and give bonus PP. The Knife Gloves are given as an example in the manual, and the Tenderizers' Combo Card is hidden near the Safe Room. Off the Record adds an alternate recipe for the Knife Gloves and additional Maintenance Rooms with them inside.
    • The Mercenary Assault Rifle appears early in the game and it's common to find. For Chuck it's a rather impractical weapon with its limited magazine and poor accuracy. However, if you put it in the hands of a survivor (especially a group of them), they have unlimited ammo and with the rifle's rate of fire, they can throw so much lead that zombies just melt away and Psychos get paralyzed by all those hits until their Mercy Invincibility kicks in - turning boss fights into cakewalks. And unlike the shotgun, it's extremely rare to get hit by the rifle's friendly fire.
  • Disney Villain Death: TK is thrown over by Chuck and falls to his death at the end of Overtime.
  • Double Standard: Not as bad as its predecessor but still pretty apparent that the women in the series need some better writing.
    • The outfits worn by the female employees of the casinos are depicted as skimpy or showing some or a lot of skin. However, some casinos do have this as employee uniform in order to distract the customers or convince them to feed their gambling addiction. Fortune City also has a red light district hence why there's a woman dressed as a playboy bunny. On the other hand, though, survivors have unexplained or strange reasons for wearing skimpy outfits.
      • Terri Glass is unrealistically skimpy for a construction worker and shows no regard for PPE in the workplace.
      • Europa Westinghouse is in her underwear because she was locked out of her apartment during the outbreak. She refuses to move because she believes a movie producer might see her and she wants Chuck to strip down as well so they share the embarrassment of going to the safe house in their underwear. She never asks Chuck to get some clothes for her and she's too vain to realise the logic of her argument.
      • Tammy Blaine is dressed as a mermaid and she forgot her underwear so she can't take off her costume. She asks for a shirt at the safe house but nobody gets her some spare clothes.
    • Rebecca Chang zig-zags this, she's the source of a lot of fan service and she does prove herself to be capable of surviving the outbreak. However, she gets captured twice and she sprains her ankle later in the game which forces her to stay in the bunker for the remainder of the story (she still tries to help but Chuck makes her stay). When she dies in the 3rd act of the game, nobody mentions her again or expresses grief since they are chasing her killer, Sullivan, for being responsible for the outbreak. In Case West, Chuck does finally express grief to Frank when he tells him that Rebecca was killed.
  • Downer Ending: Any ending other than S, especially F. At least Ending A, everyone else survives. Although Case West shows us Chuck did survive in Ending A thanks to Frank.
  • Dragon Their Feet: At the end of the regular game, you defeat Sullivan, the man directly responsible for the zombie outbreak as well as the previous outbreak and the death of Chuck's wife, while also uncovering evidence that will deal a significant blow against the amoral corporation behind the whole mess. Then a revenge-seeking TK shows up to cause some more mayhem, triggering Overtime.
  • Driven to Suicide: Upon defeating Brandon Whittaker, he appears to have a "What Have I Become?" moment shortly before he slits his throat.
  • Dual Boss: There are three instances:
    • Ted Smith and Snowflake, is a trainer who doesn't like hearing the word "slow" paired with a tiger. They're both independent, with Ted being a close attacker and Snowflake performing hit-and-run attacks. As an unusual case, Snowflake can be tamed by giving food, and brought to the safe house.
    • The twins, Amber and Crystal, who both come at you armed with katanas and can easily take you down in a few hits while making sexually suggestive comments. They seemingly attack in coordinated hit-and-run attacks. They subjectively appear as That One Boss, but at least there's no worry about zombies. Unlike typical examples, they have separate health bars and only one of them needs to be killed to activate a cutscene which shows the remaining twin commit suicide by impaling herself.
    • Reed Wallbeck and Roger Withers, one being a ranged specialist with a stunning rocket launcher and the other Dual Wielding swords. They behave typically, trying to fight together, and both needing to be downed.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: TK gets zombie-bit and needs Zombrex to avoid turning. Should you give it to him he mocks Chuck before he's even taken the shot. (And that's not even getting into what happens later. Some people bite the hand that feeds them, this guy bites the hand clean off.)
  • Eagleland: Type 2 again, most notably with the Redneck snipers.
    • You have the right to bear arms... and the ability to arm a giant teddy bear with a cigar, an American flag bandana, and a machine gun.
    • And Phenotrans, one of the Big Bad business corporations in the U.S., instigated and is exploiting the zombie outbreak to create more Zombrex for their own monetary gains; they also control people through lies, much like certain people's view of the United States - very much explains the anti-capitalistic nature of this game.
    • A noticeable, if minor Mixed Flavor example occurs during the side-mission "Barn Burner". You end up running into a pair of survivors who check off every redneck stereotype in the book. But once you save them from nearly burning to death, they are both grateful, the lady of the pair flirts with you and the male says he considers you "as good as kin" to him.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: The S ending. Unlike almost all the other endings, any remaining survivors from the shelter get evacuated and Chuck, Katey, and Stacey manage to escape. And you throw TK to his death.
  • Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: The main threat in the game is the zombies, which are slow-moving and easy to kill. Looters and mercenaries are faster, smarter, and armed, but they still go down after a reasonable amount of damage. The bosses are absolutely superhuman though, requiring several dozen times as much damage as armored cars take and able to unleash absurdly deadly attacks.
  • Elite Mooks:
    • Looters are about twice as tough as zombies, but that just means you need to use Knife Gloves, Defilers, or Laser Swords to drop them with one blow. The Mercenaries are just Looters with machine-guns.
    • The real Elite Mooks are the Gas Zombies which move quicker, absorb more damage (they have the same health as looters), have harder grapple commands and deal about twice as much damage. Plus they do that puking attack... which makes you stand still and puke for a couple of seconds, while another zombie grapples you.
  • Elite Tweak: The Holy Arms are a pretty ordinary weapon, but are mostly identical to the Spiked Bat, which is easier to make and has more range. However, they are maybe the best weapon for taking on Gas Zombies. At Level 50, the Holy Arms kills them in one hit, and their wide attacks are the perfect counter for their tendency to crowd around you, while the range issue with the weapon is solved by the fact that Gas Zombies LOVE to get in your face. While there are other weapons with these qualities, they tend to either require a pull-start (which quickly becomes a liability when the Gas Zombies blood-spit attack makes you drop the weapon repeatedly, forcing another start every time), or damage the zombie's bodies, which can prevent them from spawning Queens. The Holy Arms have neither of these issues.
  • Empty Levels: Once your stats max out and have certain skills like Smash, Chuck is a powerhouse who can cut down almost any psychopath. But for the most part, the benefits you gain when levelling is randomly determined and often you'll just get a combo card which is a recipe for making equipment. While there are two advantages to having a combo card, you can easily make a combo item simply by experimenting with items in a workshop (this'll get you a scratch card that lists components). Sure you don't get as much PP when using the item and it lacks the alternate attacks, but for the most part a scratch card will do.
  • Enemy Posturing: If he knocks you down during his boss fight, Randy Tugman will sometimes celebrate by doing a Pelvic Thrust in your face, leaving himself open to a counterattack.
  • Everything Fades: Killed zombies will disappear in five seconds. Obviously, having a load of corpses around would kill your framerate.
  • Exact Words:
    • At the beginning of the game, TK assures the audience that "the carnage is just beginning" after the Slicecycles event. Shortly afterwards, the TIR zombies break out and all hell breaks loose.
    • Before fighting Ted and Snowflake, Chuck (and Frank in Off the Record) suggests feeding Snowflake steaks. Ted is not on board with the idea. After taking him out, though, Snowflake can be tamed and brought back to the safehouse if you feed her - you guessed it - steaks.
    • When Sullivan starts his escape, Chuck says "Don't worry, he will not get out of here in one piece." As it turns out, Sullivan does escape - after being ripped into two pieces, only one of which actually leaves.
  • Expy: See the Shout-Out page.
  • Fan Disservice:
    • When you find Kristin, she's wearing a bikini and a towering headdress. Then she violently (and repeatedly) pukes on the floor while you're talking to her. Then you have to carry her back to the safehouse. Imagine the smell. You're welcome.
    • Randy's badly-fitting, pig-themed gimp suit.
  • Fanservice:
    • The female survivors are often in a state of undress. One's a Vegas showgirl, another fell asleep in a tanning bed right as the outbreak hit, and a third locked herself out of her hotel room in her underwear. Another three are wearing beach outfits. Another is clad only in a seashell bikini bra and a fake mermaid tail while Going Commando.
    • For the ladies and gaymers, Chuck has to strip to his shorts in order to rescue one survivor, and one of his Terror is Reality co-stars made it into the safe room wearing only a towel (and never thinks to ask for clothes while everyone else is demanding golf clubs and potted plants).
    • If you save the right combination of survivors, it unlocks a Strip Poker minigame in the safe house. If you manage to eliminate Cora, Kristin, or Trixie from the game, they wind up stripped down to their panties, having a Naked Freak-Out and using Hand-or-Object Underwear to cover themselves. And they will stay that way for the rest of the game. Of course, on the flip side, the same is true of Jack, Woodrow, and Chuck himself, although Chuck can just go put more clothes on.
    • And let's not forget how many times that camera focuses on the twins' and/or Rebecca's chest, and the latter's tush.
    Chuck: "Just... enjoying the view."
  • The Farmer and the Viper: Giving TK Zombrex just gives him the opportunity to kidnap Stacey and Katey, waste Chuck's time, and finally attempt to kill him again. The fact that it leads to the S ending is more or less a complete fluke.
  • A Father to His Men: Never said but that's the only real reason that Sgt. Dwight Boykin has a Heroic BSoD when his unit gets eaten.
  • Fetch Quest:
    • Bibi, and Overtime.
    • The game loves these. Enjoy running across the entire game world to fetch a potted plant for 10,000 PP. Not so bad, as there's a shortcut, an air vent just above a toilet.
  • Fisticuffs Boss: The second-to-last boss is intended to be fought this way, but the game still lets you keep your inventory, thus giving you other options of defeating him. The real final fight is this trope, though there is a weak weapon or two that you can find around the boss arena.
  • Foreshadowing:
  • One of the Fortune Whisperer's fortunes is "Not everyone you meet can be trusted. Safety is an illusion," hinting at Sullivan's betrayal.
    • Chuck gives a subtle hint regarding Rebecca. He tells her to "not lose her head", and later, she is shot in the head by Sullivan.

    Dead Rising 2 — G-L 
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Chuck is this with all the Combo Weapons you can make.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: The Play Station 4 remastered version saw many people report that their copies wouldn't even let them start the game. Not all copies were affected, but it was an alarming number of them. The Xbox One version, to its credit, wasn't nearly as widespread with this issue, if any players of that release even bumped into it at all.
  • Game Mod: It should come to no surprise that, for the PC version of the game, game-modifying 'trainers' popped up the first day of the game's release, removing large chunks of the game's Fake Difficulty. Even if you don't use trainers, the PC version of the game has settings for things like Breakable Weapons found in text-editable files.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Mercs with assault rifles during gameplay? Just walk through that, kill them, remember to drink some orange juice when you're done. Someone has a pistol in a cutscene? Watch out, those things can kill people in one shot. Zombie bites infectious? Well, no worries: you only need Zombrex for Katie and one or two other survivors, no matter how many times you yourself are munched.
  • Gangsta Style: The protagonist (Chuck or Frank) investigates the underground tunnels and catches TK on the underground train. When the player catches up to TK, TK detaches the train and aims his pistol at the protagonist sidways.
  • Genius Bruiser: Chuck is a big guy, able to swing a sledgehammer around until it breaks, and can haul quite a bit of heavy gear across the map. But he is also great at creating improvised weapons, works on his own motorbike and can do just about anything with it and if the Freedom Bear is any indication, is also skilled enough in programming to turn a robotic toy bear into an automated sentry turret.
  • Genre Blind: Chuck might be able to avoid some of the boss fights if he played along with the psychopaths' delusions or used a fake name - though he might not be able to save their hostages. Indeed, the one time the player is allowed to do this with Bibi, you can actually avoid the fight altogether.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Just like the first game, most of the bosses intentionally have little to do with the plot and are just random people who have gone mad after the outbreak. It's even more pronounced in this game, however, as several of the bosses here tend to be even more extremely eccentric than in the first game, with less identifiable motives for insanity. Unlike the first game, however, every unavoidable psychopath is connected in some way to the plot/backstory this time.
  • Glass Cannon: Carl Schliff, the psycho mailman. Chuck towers over him, and he can't take as much damage as most psychos either... But good lord, his shotgun packs a punch and his explosive packages can destroy you.
  • Glass Weapon: Brandon, one of the psychopaths, uses a large shard of broken glass as an Improvised Weapon.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: The Soldier outfit includes night vision forehead protectors. They ARE broken, after all.
  • Going Postal: Carl Schliff, already on the verge of going wacko, does it when you ruin any chance of perfect attendance/delivery. Thanks a lot.
  • Golf Clubbing: Played straight when survivors are given the golf club, averted by Chuck/Frank as they use the club to launch golf balls instead.
  • Good Is Dumb:
    • The US Army. Remember in the first game, where they deployed several squads of badass looking Gas Mask Mooks with assault rifles, several UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters, and a tank to mop up the outbreak? Yeah, well since they're good guys in this game, they can't be competent anymore. Instead, they send two squads of about ten men each riding in humvees and armed with nothing but M4 assault rifles. As can be expected, they all die when the new gas zombies Zerg Rush them. Two squad members do have the misfortune to get lost in the fog and end up avoiding the ambush, allowing them to be saved.
    • Honestly, look at how Chuck did with just his bare hands and some duct tape. Assuming the soldiers had enough ammo (let's say the humvees were packed with the stuff), they could have wiped out every zombie in Fortune City. And Boykin's dialogue makes it sound like they have done this a few times before. Just because they didn't have the foresight to realize that Phenotrans was going to make super-zombies doesn't make them dumb.
  • Good Parents: Chuck Greene gets the trophy for this trope. The magnificent bastard is willing to go to hell and back to get Zombrex for his daughter, Katey, even if it means going through zombies, Gas Zombies, chainsaw-wielding gimps, glass-wielding maniacs, overpowered twins with katanas, literally Lethal Chefs, and psychotic mascots with flamethrowers. If that isn't good parenting, then I don't know what is.
  • Goofy Print Underwear: Chuck wears heart boxers, which actually go with his unlockable Arthur costume. (Frank wears them in Off the Record.)
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Surprisingly used more often than you'd think for a game this openly gory - and used to cover up modeling laziness (if you look closely, it's highly obvious that bodies are not sliced in two during cutscenes). There's even a case of Hide Your Children should you fail to get Katey her Zombrex in time. Although the latter is somewhat justified as there are rules against showing children turning into zombies.
    • An example of where this works to the game's detriment would be at the end of Case File 1-3, where Chuck and Rebecca find a security room full of executed security guards. Rebecca draws specific attention to one of the cadavers as she films it, claiming that the victim could not have been killed by zombies. The player has to take her word for it, as the camera angle does not deign to show what kind of injury killed the guard. The important point is that the corpses are completely uneaten. The cutscene implies execution by Pretty Little Headshots, which the player can verify after it ends.
    • While the death of Antoine is quite brutal,Ouch!!  the camera angle used does not show the presumably horrid result.
    • Actually affects the game itself, in other Dead Rising games some of the very nasty one-hit kill moves will work on humans such as Disembowel. In this one, nothing especially brutal will work on any human, psychopath or otherwise. This ranges from failing to clamp a drill bucket on human heads or unable to give someone the Hands Off move to not igniting an enemy human with the flamethrower or any other incendiary weapon.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Phenotrans.
  • Guide Dang It!: Some of the achievements/trophies are impossible to get unless you do very specific things beforehand. For example, in order to get the "Full Deck" achievement/trophy, you have to collect all of the combo cards. The only problem is that there are 3 hidden combo cards (Plate Launcher, Blazing Aces, and the Exsanguinator) you can't get through leveling up or by looking at the various movie posters around the mall. How do you get these hidden cards? You have to find the secret "Tape It Or Die" mission. How do you get this mission? You have to go to the Kokonutz Sports Town store in the Palisades Mall between 6 a.m. and noon on the third day (September 27). But wait there's more! You also have to make sure to not have more than 8 active survivors when you do this because the game will only load a maximum of 8 survivors (Which includes hostages and psychopaths) at any one time. This means that some missions won't come up because you would have other older missions that are currently active. And that's only for the first part, because you have to save them in a later mission. This guide is pretty useful for getting secret items and trying to get 100% Completion.
    • One of the Achievements lampshades this trope after you unlock it, saying, "Did you cheat by looking online?"
    • How do you get the combo card for the Burning Skull? You have to spend 1,200,000 dollars on the Fortune Teller in the Silver Strip.
    • How do you get the achievement "Alpha vs. Omega"? Keep the survivor Denyce Calloway in your party for three days (meaning you have to lock her in a secure room every time you want to enter the safehouse) until she can join you in the battle against Sgt. Boykin and inflict damage on him herself.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be:
    • How Sullivan dies. Do we have a trope for Best Bad Guy Death?
    • Seymour meets a similar end, but only gets a power saw through the abdomen.
    • Also happens to victims Madison Lainey, Emanuel Tugman and Carlos Mertiz.
  • Hand-or-Object Underwear: The female Strip Poker players cover themselves with their hands once they are topless.
  • Hanging Judge: Seymour follows the classic image of one by literally hanging every survivor he deems as felons.
  • Harmless Electrocution: In either version's Overtime Mode, TK uses what is likely a cattle prod against either Chuck or Frank. They both get knocked unconscious before TK shocks them some more. They wake up in whatever the next part is (hanging upside down for Chuck or the wrestling ring for Frank).
  • Healing Boss: The psychopath Antoine Thomas is capable of restoring his health by consuming dishes scattered throughout the restaurant you fight him in.
  • Heroic BSoD: Sgt. Dwight Boykin suffers from this when his squad is wiped out by the mutated zombies. You find him down in the underground tunnels shooting zombies and believing that his squadmates are still alive. He also thinks Chuck is a zombie.
  • Honor Before Reason: Many of the survivors and some of the psychopaths fit the trope.
  • Homemade Flame Thrower: Slappy's main weapon of choice, Chuck can create one of his own after beating the psycho.
  • Hub Under Attack: The emergency shelter is invaded by a large horde of zombies, and the survivors Chuck has rescued, as well as Chuck himself have to kill the zombies, while Chuck also has to secure the gate that was opened by Sullivan. In Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, it's Frank that's doing the saving and has to secure the gate that was opened by Stacy.
  • Human Resources: Phenotrans orchestrated the Fortune City outbreak as a means of extracting queen wasps from the zombies, which are a key component in manufacturing Zombrex.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: Sullivan justifies letting the zombies out in Fortune City and Las Vegas because without Queens, there's no Zombrex. No Zombrex, lots of important people turn into zombies.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Antoine Thomas. Believing himself to be the "King of Cuisine", has been killing and cooking survivors after going insane when his only shot at fortune went down the shitter. When Chuck comes around, Antoine was just about to kill a woman called Cinda as part of his "Ultimate Dish". Oh, and to him, human flesh really does taste like chicken.
  • Improbable Power Discrepancy:
    • The Dead Rising series is all over the place about how tough a normal human is supposed to be. Looters will go down after a couple of slashes from the Knife Gloves or a handful of bullets, whereas survivors can survive much more damage (though how much more depends on the survivor). The mercenaries are a little bit tougher than the looters, but will still go down after a handful of headshots or a couple of knife glove slashes as well. The psychopaths, on the other hand, are absolutely Made of Iron, taking at least a hundred machine-gun rounds before going down (and that's the weaker psychopaths).
    • In a more specific example, there's Sullivan. He's a 52-year-old security guard, but also has tons of health, amazing accuracy, and excellent hand to hand combat skills. Whatever, this could just be because he's a badass. However, what's absolutely inexcusable is his glitched uppercut attack that as this video shows brings Chuck's health bar down to half of a square. Just for reference, if Chuck gets shot with a .50 caliber sniper rifle by, say, one of the redneck snipers, it will only take off one block.
  • Incongruously-Dressed Zombie: One of them wears a wedding dress.
  • Improbable Infant Survival: Part of the game's plot is making sure that this trope stays in effect, by continually giving seven-year-old Katey Zombrex. If you don't, it's an aversion; Katey gets zombified, Chuck has a Heroic BSoD before other zombies kill him, and you get ending F.
  • Interface Spoiler: When you see there are three case files which take place after the 72-hour limit, fair guess that the military "rescue" won't go quite as planned.
  • Item Amplifier: Weapon durability can be extended from obtaining certain magazines.
  • Item Crafting: A large selling point of the sequel is the ability to combine various weapons into even better weapons. Some of them seem like no-brainers, like nail-bats. Others are highly esoteric, like attaching car batteries to a wheelchair to turn them into mobile electric chairs. Some are unnecessarily cruel and impractical, but awesome, like drills in a bucket (to be plopped onto a zombie's head). Some are brilliant, like taping a fire ax to a sledgehammer - fire axes are sharp but light for repeated swinging, sledgehammers are heavy without an edge: combined, they can dismember six zombies in single swing - twenty or more if you keep swinging it in a circle to keep up the momentum.
    • And, as in the first game, you can mix up potions juice smoothies that heal you and give you a boost in various ways.
    • According to Blue Castle games, it was this juice mixing mechanic that inspired the combo card system in the first place.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: The government's plan for dealing with an infested city is to rescue survivors if possible, then firebomb the place.
  • Jump Scare:
    • At the very end of Ending S, when Chuck, Katey, and Stacey leave the Fortune City Arena, a zombie comes out of nowhere and lets out a loud scream.
    • Also used with the death of Slappy. The full-screen headshot of that oversized grinning mask doesn't help either.
  • Karma Houdini: Failing the case files results in this for Sully and Phenotrans. Ending A, despite the massive outrage over Phenotrans' scheme, instead of crashing and burning like Umbrella did before them, has its stock rise. Hey, they control the only treatment that prevents zombification, something which many of the world's power elite depend on. They pretty much define Too Big To Fail.
  • Karmic Death: If you have done perfectly in the game, many of the psychopaths suffer this - most notably, Sullivan and Tyrone King.
  • Kick the Dog: Every single thing TK does. Attempting to feed Katey and Stacey to the zombies, just hours after Chuck saved his life takes the prize though.
  • Knight Templar:
    • Brandon Whittaker, an insane zombie-rights activist who wants to end human oppression of the undead by turning everyone into zombies. Fortunately, his methods are too small-scale to be much of a threat to anyone except his single female hostage.
    • Sullivan also qualifies, in that he caused the Las Vegas Outbreak and the Fortune City outbreaks so that Phenotrans could harvest queens to keep making Zombrex and keep important infected people alive.
  • Large Ham: Many of the psychopaths qualify, but Chef Antoine, Slappy, and Seymour Redding definitely take the cake.
    • HOW DARE YOU?! I AM ANTOINE! I AM THE KING OF CUISINE!!
    • Don't worry, Kids! SLAPPY! Will live forever!
    • Everybody else is dead! I'M THE BIG MAN NOW!!
    • As the announcer for a game show, being a Large Ham is TK's job. Also a fan of laughing manically.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In Overtime, the first thing Chuck hears is Tyrone King announcing that it's time for the game to go into overtime.
    • You ready for OVERTIME, Chuckie?
  • Leitmotif: Might be a coincidence, but the beginning of "Kill the Sound" (the credits music) sounds somewhat similar to the beginning of "Justified" (the first game's credits music).
  • Lethal Chef:
    • Antoine. A unique example of this trope in that it has nothing to do with his cooking.
    • Try eating food made from humans, in the middle of a fight, without getting an upset stomach.
  • Lethal Joke Character: One of the survivors, Dean, has a war wound, and refuses to be carried. Due to this, he will move so slow, you HAVE to use a wheelchair to move him around. However, if you have a Leadership magazine, he becomes one of the fastest survivors in the game (save for Snowflake), running almost as fast as Chuck. Plus, he has a great aim, making him a Lightning Bruiser.
  • Limited Loadout: you are limited to carrying only a certain amount of items in your inventory, as well as certain items you can't keep in your inventory while equipping another item (like the chainsaw). Fortunately, as your level increases, so does the amount of items you could carry.
  • Literally Shattered Lives: Whatever the hell they're putting in those fire extinguishers is strong enough to completely solidify zombies.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Some of the psychopaths aren't just damage resistant, they can also move very fast. If Chuck maxes out his stats, he becomes a lightning bruiser himself with a hefty 12 squares of health, the ability to kill most zombies with a single kick and a foot speed far better than any other survivor save for Snowflake.
  • Loads and Loads of Loading: Every time Chuck travels to a new mall section, a loading screen of about 10-20 seconds occurs. Not counting the safe house, there are roughly twelve different sections, and objectives often have you travel across three or more different sections. That's a lot of loading for one mission! Then you remember that the game has to load your last save after your most recent death, which was all the way on the other end of the map...
  • Loophole Abuse: The one item limit of the LMG, Six Shooter, and Magician Sword can be circumvented by giving it to a survivor, reentering the spawn area, and trading weapons with the survivor. This allows the player to have up to 9 of either weapon, 10 if the LMGs in the Yucatan Casino are taken after the Run for the Money mission has been completed.
  • Lovely Assistant: Sexy twin sisters Crystal and Amber Bailey serve as the assistants of the zombie-killing game show Terror is Reality. They also serve as the Dragons to the Big Bad, TIR host Tyrone "TK" King.

    Dead Rising 2 — M-R 
  • MacGyvering: Chuck is a master of this.
  • Macrogame: To an even greater extent than the first game. It is extremely unlikely you will get the final ending on your first playthrough, and doing that AND saving all of the survivors is nearly impossible, there simply isn't enough time. However, all experience, weapon blueprints, and keys carry over between runs, so every subsequent run will have you in a stronger place than you were before.
  • Made of Iron: The programmers really want Rebecca to survive her in-game sequences, so they gave her a whopping 30,000 health which not even the psychopaths can match. In comparison, the average survivor has 1000.
    • The wooden baseball bat and electric guitar when tripled boosted by magazines. Both have a durability of 810 kills, the second-highest durability of any weapon in the game.
  • Made of Plasticine: Zombies tend to fall apart rather quickly when anything other than bare hands are used on them. Humans (either psychopaths or survivors) are a lot more durable.
  • Male Gaze: This game has tons of it. The television broadcast that introduces Stacey shows us her ass (not unlike another Capcom character).
    • The twins sure do love to strut their stuff.
    "Tonight we are going to witness true American warriors kicking zombie [cut to angle behind Crystal] ass!"
    • Rebecca's assets seem to be catching Chuck's eye, and is actively flirting with Chuck by... lifting her ass during lockpicking. (She doesn't do it after that.)
    • Bibi. Though this probably counts as Fan Disservice for most.
  • Married to the Job: Carl Schliff, a mail carrier with a fanatical devotion to his work...and a mailbag full of explosives...
  • Mascot: Brent Ernst is a mascot for a kids' clothing store who goes insane when his attractive female coworker is killed by zombies moments after agreeing to go out with him.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • What's the perfect name for a morbidly obese pervert who tries to force women to marry him so he can have sex with them? Randy. Randy Tugman to be precise.
    • The last person to be hanged before the fight with Seymour? Justin Tetherford.
  • Mermaiding Swimsuit: Chuck Greene is given an optional side mission to rescue Tammy Blaine, whose job was to dress up as a mermaid in the Atlantica Casino. When Chuck reaches her, she says that she was doing her job of entertaining the gamblers when "Terror is Reality's" zombies got loose and infected Fortune city. Chuck tell her that they can reach the shelter quickly if she takes off tail end of her costume, only for Tammy to say she's "going commando," forcing Chuck to carry her through a zombie horde.
  • Militaries Are Useless: The soldiers are very, very dumb. They send two ten-man teams to clear out the ENTIRE zombie-infested Fortune City... which has tens of thousands of zombies. Surprisingly, they fail. They immediately decide that the 'new' zombies can't possibly be beaten (even though they're only on par with normal, unarmed, stupid humans at best), again, all because those two squads with no air, armor, or artillery support at all failed, and proceed to just firebomb Fortune City rather than send in a properly equipped force.
  • Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Not exactly minor, but:
  • Mocking the Mourner: During the TiR games, Leon Bell decides to talk smack to Chuck by insulting him and his wife who had become zombified prior to the events of Case:Zero. Chuck is by no means amused.
  • Money for Nothing: You can buy assembled combo weapons, Zombrex and car keys from pawnshops. The pointlessness of buying combo weapons should be self-evident. There's more Zombrex just laying around Fortune City than you even need. The car keys are moderately useful, but priced far above their utility.
  • More Dakka: You can strap several machine guns to a wheelchair and just roll around, shooting zombies. Chuck is truly made of awesome.
    • The Soldier of Fortune DLC skill pack doubles the ammo count for bullet based weapons when equipped.
  • Motive Rant: Sullivan goes on one of these right before you fight him.
  • Multiple Endings: As with the first game, this game offers six (and two Non Standard Game Overs linked to the Golden Ending):
    • Ending S: Complete all the cases, and give TK his Zombrex. Chuck goes back into the safe room to find Katey, but only finds her backpack. TK calls him on the walkie-talkie to inform him he has kidnapped Katey and Stacey, and will kill them if Chuck doesn't give him a set of items throughout Fortune City. Upon getting the items and arriving at the arena, TK will promptly knock Chuck out, and force him to fight him without any equipment, whilst keeping Katey and Stacey from dropping into an arena full of zombies.
      • Succeed: Chuck throws TK off the railing into the moshpit of zombies, and raises Katey and Stacey up to safety. The three of them set off for the rescue helicopter, and the credits roll, but not before a zombie gets in one last Jump Scare.
      • Fail (either by not getting the items or failing to keep Katey and Stacey from dropping: Katey and Stacey drop into the arena and get eaten by zombies.
    • Ending A: Complete all the cases, but don't give TK Zombrex. Chuck, Katey and Stacey arrive at the helicopter, but Katey drops her bag on the way. Chuck goes back to get it, but is ambushed by a zombified TK coming out of the elevator. Chuck is unable to sufficiently deal with them in time, and the helicopter has to leave without him. This is the canon ending, leading into Case West.
    • Ending B: Complete all the cases up to The Facts, but don't finish it in time. The military proceeds to drop the firebombs all over Fortune City, wiping it clean of life.
    • Ending C: Fail to complete all of the cases, but remember to give Katey her Zombrex and return to the safe room when the military arrive. Everyone gets ready for rescue to arrive, but not only do the gas zombies begin to invade the safe room, but somebody (likely Sullivan) proceeds to gun down most of the survivors, including Chuck.
    • Ending D: Fail to complete all of the cases, and don't return to the safe room when the military arrive. Chuck wakes up in the back of an APC, and is interrogated by two soldiers. However, when the doors open, the green gas begins to flood in, and it can be assumed the gas zombies kill Chuck and the soldiers.
    • Ending F: Fail to give Katey her Zombrex (which will cause you to fail all the cases), but return to the safe room when the military arrive. Upon returning to the safe room, Chuck will discover Katey had turned, leaving Sullivan with no choice but to kill her. Overrun with guilt, when the zombies begin to flood into the safe room as in Ending C, Chuck will commit suicide by letting himself get eaten by the zombies.
  • Nerf: In the first game, beverages were the best default heals if you didn't have time to cook food or create a mixed drink. In this game, this still applies, but drinking 3 alcoholic beverages in quick succession will result in Chuck getting sick and vomiting repeatedly.
    • Magazines compared to books in the original. Only six can now be triple-stacked with only the baseball bat and electric guitar being usable against normal zombies, but are still ineffective against psychopaths or gas zombies. The weapons that can be double-stacked are similarly nerfed with only the broadsword, battleaxe, and katana still being effective when the gas zombies arrive. The rest are either too large to be stored, too fragile, or too weak.
  • Newbie Immunity: If Chuck loses all his health while attempting to carry Katie to the safehouse during the zombie outbreak in the opening section, Chuck will wake up safe and sound with Katie at the safehouse.
  • Next Sunday A.D.: The game was released on September 28th, 2010, and takes place in September 2011.
  • No Fair Cheating: Bargaining magazines can be duplicated and transferred across online sessions, and their effect stacks: each one in your inventory takes 10% off of items sold in stores. The trope comes into play when you stack more than nine — 90% off is fair game, but 100% causes all the items to vanish from the storefront so you can't get them for free. You still need at least $200,000 for those car keys.
    • However, if you manage to get your hands on an 11th, the prices become negative, making it so you get PAID for buying items. If a player can pull this off, it's a very good way to get a large amount of money very quickly.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If Katey misses her dose, a cutscene shows Katey turn while Chuck, watching, suffers a Heroic BSoD. He maintains the Thousand-Yard Stare while zombies overrun the base and tackle him.
    • During Overtime, if Chuck doesn’t gather all of TK’s items in time, a cutscene shows him musing about how Chuck “had other things to do with his busy schedule” and how he’s “plump out of patience”. With an Evil Laugh, TK lowers Katey and Stacey into the arena to be devoured by zombies.
  • No Healthcare in the Apocalypse: The zombrex required to keep Katie human is ostensibly hard to find in the game, and that's without pawning it from a shop for a large price.
  • No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Gas Zombies will deliver one to you if you fail two escape attempts and get knocked to the ground, you will witness your health go down from 12 squares after a few minutes of getting helplessly chewed on (the third attempt to escape is almost impossible to get). This is one reason why Gas Zombies are so feared. On the other hand, if you have some survivors armed with guns like Merc Assault Rifles and a LMG, you and your gang will be delivering these to psychopaths. Getting pumped full of bullets will eventually stagger a psychopath and if you wail on them if a strong melee weapon, the psychopath sometimes gets confused about what threat to deal with and ends up doing nothing but eat more lead. Don't be surprised if a boss fight ends in seconds.
  • Not Completely Useless: Since skill magazines have no effect on combo weapons, this gives the player a reason to use normal weapons, preventing them from being fully Overshadowed by Awesome. For example, this creates a reason to use the machete instead of combo-ing it into a Pole Weapon, since the "Blades" magazine will only boost the durability of the formernote .
  • Obviously Evil:
    • TK oozes slime, and his henchwomen are obvious Femme Fatales.
    • Subverted by Sgt. Dwight Boykin, a bald, tattooed Drill Sergeant Nasty who may not ooze as much slime as TK, but at least looks a hell of a lot more evil than Sullivan, and he makes sure to always get the first kill on a mission; but he really is there to save the survivors and he at least has enough of a heart to go insane when he sees his men eaten alive by gas zombies. It doesn't help that he comes across as an expy of Brock from the first game when you first see him.
  • Old Save Bonus: Players can import their cleared game save data from the Case: Zero campaign into Dead Rising 2 and resume with their character progress into the latter.
  • One-Hit Kill: Chuck can learn a couple of combat skills that'll automatically kill a zombie and same goes with some of his combo weapons like the Drill Bucket and Porta Mower. Luckily no enemy can do this to you. The closest thing is one looter spray painting you in the face and then you are vulnerable to getting knocked unconscious by the next attack.
  • One-Hit Wonder: In-Universe example. Bibi Love is an aging musician who refuses to let go of her former glory and trying to accomplish her comeback tour even during a zombie outbreak.
  • Only Sane Man:
    • Chuck spends a lot of time trying to talk people out of either homicidal mania or bad personal decisions.
    • Also, if you read their blog, Gretchen is the level-headed one in the "Tape It Or Die" crew, although her posts are extremely melodramatic. Hell, she probably does the right thing, unlike Chuck, and leaves survivors to their well-deserved deaths rather than trying to talk some sense into them.
    • Unlike all the other psychopaths, Mark Bradson and Pearce Stephens are perfectly sane; they only attack Chuck for trespassing.
  • Only Six Faces: Capcom pledges to avert this trope with a system that can make 6000 variants of zombies (gaming sites misunderstood this comment to mean 6000 zombies in an area).
    • The new engine built for the games can apparently handle crowds of zombies ranging in the four-digits however, as opposed to the original game's maximum of 800.
  • One-Steve Limit: Averted, unlike the first game, which makes sure that no character shares their given name or surname with another character. Some of the characters also share their name with characters from the first game.
    • Left-Hand Lance, a member of the Tape It or Die crew, shares his name with Lance Pennington, one of the people that die when the zombies break into Fortune City
    • Another Tape It or Die member, Johnny Pipes, shares his name with Johnny James, one of the redneck snipers.
    • Curtis Ellenton, one of the nerdy roleplayers Chuck encounters, shares his name with one of the soldiers that get killed by the gas zombies.
    • Crystal, one of the Bailey twins, shares her name with one of the first bunker survivors, although that survivor's name is spelled Chrystal.
    • Sullivan's first name is Raymond. The survivor you can save after killing Seymour is called Ray Teller, and another Ray, this time a Mathison, is a survivor in the first game.
    • Both games have cowardly survivors named Gordon (Stalworth in 1, and Dawkins in 2)
    • Jack Ellis, a survivor, shares his name with Jack Hall, a Psychopath from the first game.
    • Mark Bradson, one of the Phenotrans scientists that Chuck encounters, shares his first name with Mark Quemada, a victim in the first game and Marc Cooper, a survivor exclusive to Off the Record.
    • Both the first and second game have a Psychopath named Roger: The patriarch of the Hall family and Reed's assistant.
    • One of the poker players is named Jessica Howe. Jessica is the full name of Jessie, one of the first game's main characters.
  • Papa Wolf: Chuck is competing in the Terror Is Reality games to raise money for Zombrex for his infected daughter, Katey. The man is basically Ogami Itto in the zombie apocalypse. With a Tesla Rake. Except he doesn't carry Katey around in a shopping cart or something.
  • Pet the Dog: If you Give TK Zombrex, he says that Chuck raised Katey right. In the same breath, he mocks Chuck by pointing out that the people behind the outbreak would kill Katey if they could, but then, he's just that much of an asshole.
  • Phlebotinum Dependence: Katey, and all other Zombie Infectees, must have Zombrex on a regular basis to remain human. Phenotrans starts outbreaks simply to maintain their supply of Queens in order to make the drug.
  • Pink Is Erotic:
    • Randall "Randy" Tugman is a psychopath who uses the outbreak in Fortune City to lose his virginity by forcefully marrying his hostage. Randy's arena has pink in the background and Randy wields a Giant Pink Chainsaw that he gives phallic connotations.
    • Amber and Crystal Bailey are the alluring and cruel hostesses of Terror is Reality. They work with the central host, Tyrone King, in robbing Fortune City during a zombie outbreak. They capture Rebecca Chang in the Shoal Nightclub and fight the protagonist with katanas. Their arena is covered in pink lighting and the pair mock the protagonist by making sexual references as part of their insults. Their hostage, Rebecca Chang, has flirtatious interactions with the protagonist in this level.
    • The Silver Strip in Fortune City has some shades of pink due to the "Hot Excitorama", a sex shop decorated with pink.
  • Playboy Bunny: One of the Survivors, Lulu, is one. She's already safe in the bunker, however, so no tag teaming with the bunny for you.
  • The Power of Rock: An electric guitar explodes zombie heads. Not since Brütal Legend have we seen such a powerful guitar!
  • Pretty Little Headshots: The executed security guards and Rebecca.
  • Product Placement:
    • Katey is always seen playing with what looks suspiciously like a PSP. That's not the product placement, the placement is in the game she's playing, it's Mega Man (Classic).
    • At the movie theater, you can also find posters for the movies Mega Man 2 and Proto Man.
    • Not to mention the various Playboy ads, or the Kadoya patch on Chuck's default jacket.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: How the flagship product of Phenotrans is made, it is publicized that a synthetic alternative to the zombie making wasps goes into their product. In truth however, Phenotrans secretly promotes outbreaks so as to procure zombies to produce queens for their profit margins. Killing thousands to millions across the tri-state to make a mint off of fear.
  • Quip to Black: See Bond One-Liner. Even better if Chuck is wearing sunglasses.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Now that survivors can hold their own against zombies, taking them on missions is a viable possibility, leading to situations where, say, a biker attacks a bunch of mercenaries with the aid of construction workers and a punk rock band.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear: The DLC outfits confer status bonuses even when wearing a single item. Players who bought all four may wear one of each to get all of the bonuses. The Ninja outfit is subdued overall, and the Psycho and Soldier boots are black and go with anything, but all pieces of the Sports Fan outfit have garish colors. Averted in Off the Record, where these outfits are unlockables, and bonuses are only given for complete sets.
  • Recycled Set: A few of the store interiors are reused from the first game. This includes In the Closet and Flexin', for two examples.
  • Refuge in Audacity: TK. He even makes you go looking around the city for wine and a gift basket for him before he'll tell you where to go to rescue Katie and Stacey.
  • Rescue Equipment Attack: Fire extinguishers can be used to freeze zombies solid, causing them to shatter if followed up with a melee attack. It can also be used as a component in Item Crafting, combined with a water gun to create a snowball cannon or a dynamite stick to create a freezer bomb.
  • Rolling Attack: Sullivan. It won't hurt you much if he hits you with it (being primarily a dodge roll), but he is utterly invincible while doing it. Punches, bullets, fire axes taped to sledgehammers, and even aerial bombings will not harm him while he is rolling.
  • Rule of Cool: A lot of the combo weapons. Why does Traffic Pylon + Spray Paint = Zombie-Head-Exploding Air Horn? This trope.

    Dead Rising 2 — S-Z 
  • Sassy Black Woman: Lashawndra Dawkins. She even has unique voice clips, and if you give her a gun, she is a force of nature. In case there was any doubt, those voice clips include "Oh HELL naw!", "Oh no you di'nt", and "Mm-hmmm". In the name of fairness, more than one redneck woman spouts "Well, bless my britches!" while you escort her.
  • Saw a Woman in Half: The magicians attempt and fail this trick.
  • Saw It in a Movie Once: Chuck can get combo cards for some of the more outlandish combo weapons by examining movie posters.
  • Sdrawkcab Name: Chuck's sponsor, IJIEK Racing, is lead designer Keiji Inafune's name backwards.
  • Self-Deprecation: Out-of-universe. One of the redneck sniper's taunts is telling Chuck "You fight like a Canadian!" The developers of this game are based in Vancouver, Canada and are seemingly making fun of themselves.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Randy to his father. See below.
  • Sentry Gun: Take one oversized robotic teddy bear, that spouts cutesy sound-bites mix it with an LMG, and you get Freedom Bear! A bandana wielding stuffed animal that, once activated, will fire hundreds of rounds onto oncoming hordes of zombies while spouting patriotic sound-bites, while Chuck takes care of business. "Let's get it on!" indeed.
  • Serial Escalation: We start with modding buckets to have drill bits that send gore flying everywhere, and then it goes from there...
    • From there, it makes stops at "flamethrower supersoaker", "electro-rake", "exploding football", and "pitchfork shotgun".
      • There's also a motorized wheelchair with machine guns attached. That spouts trash talk in Robo Speak. Delivered in a big, exploding gift-wrapped box.
      • The Delivery was only in the demo shown at conventions. You don't get to have it show up that way in the real game instead building it with your own hands.
      • A shotgun made by combining a leaf blower with gems.
      • Or even better, tape together a flashlight with gems, and you get a lightsaber LASER SWORD.
      • And to top it all off? At one point, Chuck can tame A GODDAMN TIGER. AND IT PLOWS DOWN ANY ZOMBIE IT SEES. "This will be fun!" And even crazier still is the fact that Chuck can give Snowflake to Katey as a friggin' pet.
  • Serious Business: Even moreso than the original Dead Rising, the psychopaths tend to be people who take their jobs way too seriously.
  • Smart Bomb: Queen hornets. Throw one down and watch every zombie in the surrounding area die on the spot.
  • The Sheriff: Seymour Redding considers himself to be this. He's even perfected the ability to shoot your gun out of your hands!
  • Shirtless Scene: Chuck can end up stripped to his underwear if he gets captured by looters or loses at strip poker. Chuck can also do this by choice, and Europa Westinghouse refuses to get rescued unless he does.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Unlike the disadvantages of other guns note , shotguns are easily found all over Fortune City and can reliably clear out gas zombies and psychopaths.
  • Shotgun Wedding: Randy Tugman attempts one of these (with a chainsaw instead of a shotgun) in an effort to not die a virgin.
  • Show Within a Show: In addition to the "Terror is Reality" game show, there are posters all over Fortune City advertising fictional movies mostly starring fictional actor Clint Rockfoot, some of which Chuck even gets to watch:
    Tagline: He came from the past to protect the future...from the present.
    • "Revenginator 7", a Terminator parody that also seems to lampoon the series' innumerable amount of sequels. The poster shows the protagonist using a bow-and-arrow, inspiring Chuck to create the Blambow.
    Tagline: Half man. Half machine. All revenge.
    • "Blood Round 4", a boxing movie from which Chuck gets the idea to tape nails to MMA gloves.
    Tagline: He only answers with his fists.
    • "Stop or My Bear Will Shoot". The poster shows Clint Rockfoot wearing and mascot costume and holding an M16, with a small child hiding behind him as some sort of Badass and Child Duo. This inspires Chuck to create the Freedom Bear.
    • "Pit Viking", the spiked weapons seen on the poster are the basis for the Holy Arms.
    Tagline: His enemies are in a whole lot of trouble.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance:
    • Like in the last game, you can slay zombies to mall muzak. The psychopaths once avert this with their heavy metal boss themes.
    • This becomes hilarious when you realize that they're playing a knockoff of a song by an Australian band in an America-themed casino.
  • Start X to Stop X: It is revealed in Dead Rising comic literature, later in the game as well as in prominent downloadable content. To be the ultimate scheme of Phenotrans in order to privatize fear begotten product placement in the long run.
  • Status Buff: Players can mix foods in blenders to yield smoothies that provide these, including:
    • "Energizer": Makes Chuck invincible for 10 seconds.
    • "Nectar": Spawns a queen hornet and makes it easier to find more for 10 minutes.
    • "Pain Killer": Reduces damage Chuck receives by half 60 seconds.
    • "Quick Step": Increases running speed.
    • "Zombait": Attracts zombies, making them ignore everything else (including survivors).
    • "Repulse" Makes zombies ignore Chuck. Overrides Zombait.
    • "Spitfire": Transforms Chuck's spit attack into a flaming breath attack.
    • "Untouchable": Zombies can't grab Chuck (but can still take swipes at him).
    • "Randomizer": Makes Chuck sick to his stomach.
      • You can even grab the Juice Boost magazine to make them last twice as long.
  • The Stoic: In contrast to Frank West's often baffled and shocked reactions to the various insane situations he kept coming across, Chuck Greene consistently reacts to the bizarre hijinks of Psychopaths and loony Survivors with an ice-cold, Eastwood-like stare. Justified in that Chuck by this time has just survived an outbreak and was killing zombies for an event when the new outbreak starts, while Frank was witnessing the initial outbreak for the first time. He's considerably less stoic the first time he runs into a psychopath. When Ted shows up, Chuck actually tries to talk his way out of the fight and is almost successful. Four days later, Chuck doesn't even try to talk to Sgt. Boykin.
  • Strip Poker: You can play it with your fellow survivors. It also counts as Fanservice or Fan Disservice depending on who you play against.
  • Super Wheelchair: Mix a battery with a wheelchair, and you get the Electric Chair weapon. Mix the electric chair with a mercenary assault rifle, and you get the Blitzkrieg, a wheel chair that lets you fire off hundreds of round onto crowds of zombies, or squads of rifle-wielding mercenaries, while spouting Bond One-Liners with the voice of Stephen Hawking. Combine the Blitzkrieg with the four-wheel magazine and it will increase its durability, though not its ammo supply.
  • Super Spit:
    • Queen Zombies and Gas Zombies
    • Returning from the first game is the Spitfire mixed juice, which turns Chuck's spit technique into a fire breathing attack.
  • Take That!:
    • Bibi Love is a barely camouflaged parody of Cher, right down to her outfit.
    • Same with Reed and Roger to Penn & Teller, as well as Siegfried & Roy.
    • Antoine can be seen as this to a number of celebrity chefs. Take your pick.
    • Andy is this to philosophy, with Chuck yelling at him to snap out of his theory-making wangst and follow him. He actually snaps out of it for a bit to say that he's being stupid... only to revert into gibberish later.
    • The four DND players are a giant take that to nerds - turns out, Gretchen tried to get them to follow earlier, but they were more worried about character sheets than zombies, and hit on her with no concern.
    • The hostage you save from the psycho in the arena bathroom is one to environmentalists, being more concerned with a rare plant than saving people from dying horrible deaths.
    • The aforementioned psycho is a take that to extremists. He also looks a whole lot like Zach De La Rocha.
    • "Y'know, Paul, I once heard that zombies sparkle in the sunlight."
    "Now that is the most stupidest retarded thing I've ever heard!"
  • Timed Mission: All missions are timed and many of them happen concurrently. Made worse by missions that show up only when you have don't too many survivors lying about, the missions will have already started according to the clock but they appear only when the survivor total is under limit, so you could end up starting a mission that's already almost over.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • Okay. We can understand not wanting to leave your safe area until the major threat outside has been dealt with (Lenny, Ray), needing to find your missing spouse or mother (Lashawnda, Chad, Lillian), or just being on such an epic bender that you skipped a day and didn't notice the outbreak (Kristin). We'll can even spot you the odd moment of existential horror (Andy). But a good two-thirds of the survivors don't seem to appreciate that they're in danger at all. Europa's much more concerned with being outside underdressed than the fact there are zombies about, and is most likely only using that as an excuse to see Chuck shirtless; three poker players are more interested in finishing their high-stakes tournament than getting to safety; three damned tough bodyguards dressed like call girls won't go with you unless their time is paid for; Stuart is risking both his and his girlfriend's lives in order to loot the casino he works at (and you must hit him over the head with something to get him to listen - and he later tries to start a mutiny, and you call him out on his bullshit); two "kings of comedy" won't leave the store they're in until Chuck gives one of them the comedy trophy of the competition they were supposed to be in (and the loser wants five thousand dollars to follow you); and Bill refuses to leave a casino unless you reimburse him for all the money he gambled away. The further you get into the game, the dumber the survivors seem to get.
    • Also, Bibi. She is shocked- shocked- to learn that her "adoring fans" who want to "eat her up" are zombies. Upon learning this, she is glibbering too hard to even talk to you until you clear the immediate area.
    • Neither Chuck nor any of his friends thought to just have him leave some Zombrex with Katey, and have her apply it herself? Or have Stacey apply it for her? No matter how much Zombrex you had last time you visited the Safe House, if you don't make it back to give Katey her next shot yourself, she'll turn.
    • Angel Lust could possibly be cut some slack. Given the type of music they play, it wouldn't be surprising if their real, living fans looked and acted just like zombies anyway.
    • Actually subverted in Ted's case. The poor fella's obviously slow, but one of the few capable survivors out there. He probably would've even made a good ally if Chuck had ended his dialog one sentence early...
  • Trash Talk: Amber, Crystal and TK never ever miss a single opportunity to insult Chuck; his manhood, his motocross or fighting skills, his genes, whatever, it's all fair game for them. Even if he actually did win the TIR event at the beginning of the game, they never let up on the smugness. Chuck rarely responds to the barbs, though; he's got a thick skin.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: About half the psychopaths can only be beaten via certain tricks that you'll never get on your first try without a walkthrough. Your only option is to keep fighting and dying until you learn their patterns so you can utterly curb stomp them in your next fight. Additionally, learning where all the best weapons or weapon components requires you to run around a bunch before you can figure out the optimal paths through the mall.
  • TV Never Lies: Deconstructed. Chuck gets a lot of trouble from survivors and psychos after being identified in Rebecca's report. One survivor threatens mutiny some time after being rescued.
  • Twincest: Amber and Crystal are clearly in a physical relationship with each other.
  • Uncertain Doom: Chuck's fate in Ending A. This is actually the canon ending, with the Case West follow-up revealing that Frank West immediately showed up and rescued him.
  • Undressing the Unconscious: If Chuck is knocked out by looters, he will awaken in the nearest bathroom wearing only Goofy Print Underwear, having had all his other items taken.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change:
    • The Final Boss fight against Sullivan is drastically different than any other boss, mostly because of the environment and the fact that he can instantly disarm most melee weapons (some, like the Knife Gloves, are immune).
    • In order to get Bibi Love to let go of her hostages, you have to play a rhythm game.
  • Unique Enemy:
    • The zombified bride in the "Swept Away" Wedding Chapel, which pops up after defeating Randy. She's pretty much the only zombie in the game to have a unique model.
    • At the end of a case involving a Phenotrans lab, you encounter two scientists. A cutscene plays and then they pick up pistols and start shooting at you, and in-game they easily die with a handful of shots from a conveniently placed Merc Assault Rifle. While they do have health bars, they're so weak they don't even qualify as an Anticlimax Boss fight.
  • Use Your Head: There are three "helmet" weapons Chuck can use to headbutt zombies with. There's the Moose Head, which uses the moose's antlers to ram into zombies, the Burning Skull which is similar but with bull horns and burns any zombies he runs into and the Super Slicer which combines this trope with Helicopter Blender; slicing zombies with its propeller.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The "BFG" gun will cause "Gas Zombies", which are immune to Queens, to explode in one shot. However, it won't do a thing to humans or regular zombies other than knocking them over. It is a situational weapon at best, but once you have a pack of them chasing you down the strip, you'll probably be thankful you have one. Combine one with an amp. Do it. Trust us on this.
  • Vasquez Always Dies: Rebecca, who's enough of an Action Girl to confidently travel around zombie-infested Fortune City solo without any problems (to the extent that Chuck gets the impression she's covered wars, y'know), ends up getting killed near the end of the game by The Mole. Stacey, who spent the entire game as Mission Control, survives to walk off into the sunset with Chuck and Katey. Inverted with most of the female survivors, who bitchslap every zombie in their way, provided they're not crippled, naked, or drunk.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: You can obtain quite a lot of different gifts to give to Katey, which will remain in her safe room. She's overjoyed each time - and it nets you bonus PP and an Achievement.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • Many players simply cannot stand the stupidest and most callous of the survivors (such as the girl in the Arena bathroom who wants to save some worthless plant species, the fat man in the restaurant in the Fortune City Arena who won't follow you unless you give his fat ass some food, the casino worker who loots a casino in the middle of a zombie apocalypse rather than being concerned with safety, or the group of poker players who won't follow you until you beat them in poker, which not only wastes a ton of time and requires all gambling magazines to have a decent chance of it but also has a ridiculously expensive buy-in and their existence makes another hard-to-find group that much harder to find due to the 8 NPC limit). So instead of rescuing them, they beat them to death with a bat, chop them up with a chainsaw, leave them to the zombies, shoot them full of holes with a Light Machine Gun, light them on fire, blow them up, smash their skulls in with a sledgehammer, chop them up with a machete, blast them to the ground with a shotgun and repeatedly fire on them if they try to get back up, crack their skulls open by repeatedly hitting golf balls into their head, throw knives at them, electrocute them, run them over with a car, pummel them with their bare hands, etc.
    • Quite a few of the Combo Card weapons aren't so much useful and efficient survival weapons as much as they are zombie torture devices. These include things like a bucket with a ring of three power drills on top that you put on a zombie's head, a mask that electrocutes the head of a zombie and an electrically charged wheelchair. Not that they aren't fun, though, and the weapons that kill the zombies in the most over-the-top ways usually give the most PP as well.
  • Vigilante Injustice: Two psychopaths, Brent "Slappy" Ernst and Carl Schliff fight Chuck under the belief he caused the outbreak that killed thousands.
    • Brent is a socially awkward teen whose crush was killed by zombies after he had finally summed up the courage to ask her out on a first date. After learning that Chuck had allegedly caused the outbreak, he began stalking the Palasades Mall to find and kill Chuck in revenge. When he finally meets Chuck, Brent has clearly lost his mind as he refers to himself as Slappy and acts like he and his crush were already in a relationship.
    • Carl Schliff is a diligent mailman who chose to deliver the mail during the outbreak and is introduced trying to deliver Zombrex to someone. When Chuck absent-mindedly gives his identity to Carl so he can get the Zombrex for Katey, Carl identifies him as the terrorist who stopped the postal service and tries to blow him with a parcel bomb, only for Chuck to throw it into his mail cart and destroy it.
  • Villain's Dying Grace: After he defeats Carl Schliff, Chuck takes a box of Zombrex from his mailbag and says he needs it for his daughter. The mortally-wounded Carl signs for it himself, then arms his last mail bomb to make one final delivery...
  • Viva Las Vegas!: The game takes place in a Vegas analogue called Fortune City. Justified in that the real Las Vegas was overrun by zombies shortly before the events of Case Zero.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: Any psychopath the player finds on their first playthrough is bound to rip out their lungs through their butts.
    • Brandon Whittaker. He's the first or second psychopath you will encounter while you have very low level. Brandon is much more resilient than anything else you've fought up to this point in addition to being extremely fast, and uses the bathroom stalls to teleport around the room. If you try to use any ranged weapon he goes berserk and will pounce on you, dealing a large amount of damage. The only way to defeat him safely is to stay close and dodge his swipes until he tires himself out, but if you're low-enough in level you won't have the dodge-roll, making that a tall order indeed. Just to put the cherry on it you might not even mean to fight him; You may accidentally stumble into the fight by trying to save your game in Americana Casino. He's an easy enough fight once you've learned his tells and attack patterns, an essential skill for any Psychopath battle, but until then he's the scariest hippy this side of Charles Manson.
    • The Twins, which attack you at the same time, move around extremely fast, cheat pretty blatantly in regards to hit detection when you melee battle them, and are the first story critical bosses in the game. Needless to say, they're That One Boss to many people... unless you just grab the shotgun and light machine gun in the Yucatan and blow one of them away (the other one will commit suicide).
  • White Is Pure: Chef Antoine is one of the psychopaths in the game, he's a chef who's resorted to using human meat to build the ultimate dish to impress a reviewer. Antoine wears a white chef's uniform that has been stained with blood and it's the first indication that Antoine has lost his mind and that whatever is in his dish is not to be eaten or even looked at.
  • Wolverine Claws: The ever-popular knife gloves.
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Quite a few of Chuck's hand-to-hand moves are wrestling holds, such as a DDT to get a zombie off of him.
  • X on a Stick: Several of the combo weapons.
    • Chainsaw Good x 2 + Double Paddle + Duct Tape
    • The Defiler is a fire-axe-sledgehammer combo. It's decent against bosses and a very effective crowd control weapon.
    • Machete + Broom = Machete on a Stick... er, Pole Weapon. Also very useful for crowd control.
    • The Drill Spear, which is... a drill attached to a spear. Best used against bosses, as it's fast and powerful but has no arc.
  • You Bastard!: Failing to give Katey the Zombrex in time will cause her to die and give you Ending F once the military arrives and you're in the safe house, in which Chuck goes into a Heroic BSoD and allows the invading zombies to eat him. But hey, at least you get Free Roam until the military arrives!note 
  • Your Head Asplode: There are several custom weapons that do this, such as an airhorn so loud it destroys zombie heads, a guitar so strong it blows up multiple zombies, and, late in the game, a sonic gun that has almost no effect on normal humans and regular zombies but makes "special" zombies explode after one shot. If you tape an amplifier to the BFG, you get a crowd-control weapon that puts the shotgun to shame and racks up gas zombie kills insanely easily.
  • Zombie Infectee:
    • If you don't get enough medicine for your seven-year-old daughter, she'll turn into a zombie.
    • Unlike the usual for this trope, it's in the infectee's best interest to NOT hide it, because there's a temporary vaccine they can take to keep them from turning.
    • They are also a huge issue in the post-Williamette society. They need daily injections of expensive Zombrex in order to keep from turning and known infected are discriminated against. C.U.R.E, in addition to fighting for the rights of the already-turned is lobbying for better treatment for the infected as well. Stacey's sister was an infected who essentially committed suicide by refusing to take her Zombrex and turned. Its all very much like the issues surrounding the AIDS pandemic.


Dead Rising 2: Case West Provides Examples Of:

    Case West 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/c805d0d3_8c28_4487_aa1f_0462aa268d29.jpeg
The world needs Frank West.

  • Ascended Meme: "You're a little high-strung for a guy who's covered wars."
    • His description in the notebook is "He's covered wars, you know."
  • Bag of Spilling: Played straight and averted. Chuck starts at Lv. 40 and must work his way back to Lv. 50, as well as relearn the moves he would have had, assuming you maxed our your level. Frank, on the other hand, is packing every technique he learned from the first game.
  • Bilingual Bonus: For those of you who don't know what the word Commander Singh says means, "kuti" is actually Punjabi for "bitch".
  • Bittersweet Ending: Marion escapes, taunts both Chuck and Frank with the possibility of a cure as well as the promise of another outbreak, and has Isabella captured. Chunk and Frank manage to escape from the facility themselves, evidence in hand, but without the cure or even proof it exists.
  • Boss in Mook's Clothing: Hazard Units (security officers wearing bomb suits and armed with Impact Hammers). There are only several of them in the entire game, and they serve as sort of mini-bosses.
  • Energy Weapon: The Laser Gun, made by combining a Laser Sword with a Lightning Gun. Later re-introduced in Off the Record.
  • Escort Mission: Averted for the first time in the series. The surviving Phenotrans scientists know their way around the facility, so all you have to do is fulfill whatever request they might have (usually a Fetch Quest), and they head off for safety on their own.
  • Foreshadowing: "The world needs Frank West," said Chuck in the ending, foreshadowing Capcom's intent of giving Frank a Wolverine Publicity.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Near the end of the game, you confront Marion, the leader of Phenotrans, have a couple exchanges with her, and then a giant, muscular Sikh commando busts through the wall wielding an impact hammer in either hand. He's also apparently Made of Iron, as he has THREE HEALTH BARS.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars:
    • Marion, despite never having turned, and in fact having cured her zombism a long time ago, has a giant rotting lesion completely covering her left cheek. Needless to say, neither Frank nor Katey, who are actively fighting their infections, have anything so grotesque on them.
    • As it turns out, that's actually the spot where a zombie had bit and infected her. While you can't see Frank's mark, Katey has a slightly less grotesque bite mark on her left wrist where her mother bit her, which implies the bites themselves are pretty horrible.
  • Human Resources: Late into their mission, Chuck and Frank discover that the Fortune City outbreak, as well as the Las Vegas outbreak that claimed the life of Chuck's wife, was orchestrated by Phenotrans as way to keep breeding more queens. Prior to that, Phenotrans used zombified anonymous runaways, missing persons, and convicted felons to produce queens that would be processed into "synthetic " Zombrex.
  • Lightning Gun: Made by combining a Blast Frequency Gun with an Electric Prod.
  • Misanthrope Supreme: The Director of Phenotrans tells Frank and Chuck that humanity deserves the zombies when explaining why she's withholding the cure for zombification (the other obvious reason being the money, of course, as a mandatory regular treatment is much more profitable than a permanent cure).
  • Red Herring: Saving one of the survivors gives you access to the tunnel keys informing that one of the scientists went insane, causing you to think that you get to face a Psychopath... It's only minor insanity from chemical exposure, and it's not a fight. You just punch some sense back into him, then he escapes.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Chuck and Frank, respectively.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • Phenotrans had a synthetic cure the whole time.
    • "There will need to be another harvest now." Oh boy...
  • Suddenly Ethnicity: Just after Isabella rescues Chuck and Frank, the towering figure of the final boss appears behind her. He's huge, armed with dual impact hammers, and wearing a... turban? Then some perky Indian music starts playing in the background for good measure.
    • His one and only word spoken in the game? Kuti, Punjabi for "bitch". Especially odd because in the Dead Rising 2 prequel comic, he speaks perfect English.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: One of Chuck's main objectives in Dead Rising 2 is to clear his name from being framed of starting the Zombie Outbreak in Fortune City, later in the game he finds enough clues and the real cuprits of the mess, calls the news media and everything to start cleaning his record, but as the trailer for Case West was shown before the orginal game release date, it shows Chuck in a quest not only to bring down the people responsible for the many zombie outbreaks around the country but he still says he gotta clean his name up.
    • Funny thing is that one of the PS3 trophies/X360 achievements for DR2 is "Clean Record" after completing enough cases to deserve said award, but as Case West suggests Chuck can't really brag about receiving such award.
    • Because although he has proven himself innocent, Chuck is still to find the ultimate real culprit of this entire disaster.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: You're going to wind up killing a lot of security guards and zombie wranglers over the course of Case West. Maybe they know about Phenotrans's duplicity. Maybe they don't.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: First, read the entry for Values Dissonance in ''DR2.'' Now imagine what's going through Chuck's mind when he's told there's been a cure for the Zombie infection this whole time, and in the end, the only reason it isn't available really has been money. To top it off, Frank rightly warns Chuck the whole thing may have been a lie. Which means even the Zombie Infectee himself doubts there's a true cure, even after being taunted with the possibility.
  • Zombie Infectee: Frank is one of the several people who has to take Zombrex in order to surpress the zombie larva inside him.

You gotta be willing to risk it all if you're ever really gonna...WIN BIG!

 
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A southern mall security guard gone mad. Redding believes he's a sheriff and uses his badge as an excuse to start hanging innocent people like it's the Old West.

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