Video Game / inFAMOUS 2

The Beast is Coming. Prepare.

Zeke: Half as long...
Cole: ...twice as bright.

inFAMOUS 2 is a PlayStation 3 Action-Adventure Wide-Open Sandbox Superhero video game and the 2011 sequel to inFAMOUS.

Following the events of the first game, Cole MacGrath travels to the New Orleans Fictional Counterpart of New Marais in search of a scientist who holds the key to defeating the Beast, a super-powered monster leaving a trail of death and destruction down the East Coast. The game refines the Karma Meter from inFAMOUS and gives Cole new abilites, including an electrically charged melee weapon and a choice between additional Ice or Fire powers.

Was followed by the October, 2011 downloadable game inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood. In it, Cole battles vampires in New Marais when a vampire lord named Bloody Mary rises from her grave on Pyre Night.

The heroic ending of inFAMOUS 2 is canon for the sequel, inFAMOUS: Second Son.

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This game provides examples of:

Main Game

• Action Bomb: There are monsters that run up to you and explode in a blast of acid.
• Airplane Arms: Nix does this a lot.
• All There in the Manual: The interquel comic explains why Moya, a major character in the first game, is entirely missing from the second.
• Alternative Foreign Theme Song: 2 uses "Ichioku Bun No Ichi No Shousetsu" by Uverworld as the theme song in Japan.
• Ambiguous Situation: Both the "good" and the "evil" paths have reasonable justifications for going down them.
• And I Must Scream: The Beast tells you he spent an eternity being ripped apart by the Ray Sphere atom by atom, and even after putting himself back together he can still feel it tearing into him.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: In the final battle, the Militia, who have spent the game abusing their power and the people they're ostensibly protecting, are seen freely helping and encouraging Cole in his fight against the Beast in a Hero path.
• Apocalypse How: The Evil Ending has Cole taking The Beast's powers and becomes a walking, talking ray-sphere, activating anyone who has the conduit gene while vaporizing anyone who doesn't. Any non-conduits not destroyed in the explosions he creates die slow, horrible deaths from the ray-field radiation this emits, making it somewhere between a Class 1 to Class 2 apocalypse.
• Art Shift: 2 lost the gritty ink spatter effect◊ from the first game for a more "watercolor" feel, like this. For consistency's sake, the opening flashbacks, in Empire City, use the first game's art style, even when they're all-new. It makes sense, given the settings of the two stories; the first game takes place in a grimy, half-dead city, while the second is in a half-flooded but still living one.
• Ascended Meme: Zeke's Honey Badger jacket.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Behemoth, a Giant Enemy Crab looking thing, and the Beast, a giant Magma Man.
• The Atoner: Zeke wasn't Easily Forgiven for betraying Cole in the last game, and worked his ass off to atone for what he did. Even then, it isn't until he saves Cole from a militia ambush later in the game that he is fully forgiven.
• Badass Boast: Cole delivers one when the Corrupted attack Bertand's Anti-Conduit rally, where he denounces Cole as the "Demon of Empire City," in front of the Saint Ignatius Church early on in the game.
  Cole: Get out of my way... the Devil's comin' through!
• Bag of Spilling: Cole keeps the "alpha" versions of about half of his powers from the first game, but still has to absorb Blast Cores to get the other half back after blowing most of his reserves fighting the Beast.
• Barefoot Poverty: Seems to afflict most of New Marais' pedestrians.
• Betty and Veronica: There are two possible female partners for Cole; the sensible and down to earth ice-using Kuo or the wild fire-using Nix. It's reversed in the final mission when Kuo does a Face–Heel Turn out of fear and Nix does a Heel–Face Turn looking for revenge.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Both Joseph Bertrand III and The Beast serve as the main antagonists of this game.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • In the Hero ending, The Beast is dead, the plague is gone, the world is saved and "The Demon of Empire City" is now hailed as the savior of New Marais. But Nix, Kuo, Cole and every other Conduit on Earth were sacrificed in the process.
  • In the Evil ending: Cole will be able use the powers of the Beast to save the dormant Conduits, but he's forced to kill both Nix and Zeke, as well as billions more humans without the Conduit gene to come.
• Black-and-White Morality: Same as the previous installment:
  • Healing citizens, good, attacking/murdering citizens, bad.
  • Disarming bombs, good, detonating bombs, bad.
  • Fighting The Militia/Vermaak 88, good, fighting the police, bad.
  • Sacrificing yourself to save everyone infected with the plague and stop the Beast, good; siding with the Beast and wiping out most of humanity to save yourself and a handful of others, bad.
• Book Ends: The first thing the player does in inFAMOUS is press Start, which activates the Ray Sphere and makes Cole into a Conduit. The last thing the canon Hero ending of inFAMOUS 2 has you do is let go of all the shoulder buttons, activating the RFI and killing every living Conduit, including Cole.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Ravagers, who burrow, fire homing sludge, will bum rush you, and (in the Hive Lord variant's case) turn out lots of annoying dart-spewing larvae if you don't stay on top of them. Oh, and your normal attack just bounces off their head shields.
  • Once you get Sticky Grenades, Ravagers go from dangerous to mildly annoying (and even that only because they nullify grenades stuck to them when they burrow, so killing them in one barrage is not certain). Particularly as their attack patterns has huge gaps during which Cole can recharge.
  • Vermaak 88's Titans are invulnerable to the bolt attack, need dozens of rockets to the face before you can remove the face shield via Quick Time Event and then another dozen of rockets to the face to finally kill it. They of course don't just stand there and take a beating. They attack you with ice beams, throw several ice boulders at you, can generate ice spikes on the ground which also serve as protective wall, and heal themselves when you leave them alone for a few seconds. The secret is to attack their arms: they're essentially Dust Men conduits with a quick-time event added in, but you don't need to reveal the weak point to kill them; it'll just take longer. Sticky Grenades are incredibly useful in this regard.
• Call-Back: While the game does well to avoid a certain Late-Arrival Spoiler from the first game, it does throw in a few references to it:
  Zeke: Man, this feels like Empire City, when Kessler kicked my ass.
  Cole: I should kick your ass.
  Zeke: Eh, same difference.
• Cape Busters: While the Militia were formed to fight off the Swamp Monsters, they also like to spend their time and resources hunting Conduits, making Cole public enemy number 1 on their list.
• Color-Coded Elements: Kuo has icy blue powers while Nix has red fire powers; meanwhile, the color of Cole's lightning once again depends on his karmic alignment and syncs up nicely with those of his two companions.
• Combination Attack: Cole can do this with Kuo or Nix during missions where they fight together.
• The Corruption:
  • "The Corrupted" is the collective name of the various swamp monsters assaulting New Marais. And to make it worse, all of them used to be human.
  • The plague, which was present in the first game, has become even more of a threat; it's become a humanity-extinguishing supervirus that will kill all humans who aren't awakened conduits if the RFI isn't used to cure it.
• Cozy Catastrophe: The evil ending, where the world falls apart as superhumans slowly inherit the earth.
• Crapsack World: The world has gotten worse since inFAMOUS as the chaos has expanded outside of Empire City, and the Beast only brings more destruction in its wake as it pursues Cole. This causes massive unemployment, the US military withdrawing its forces from around the world, yet another worldwide economic collapse, and other countries consequently refusing to provide aid. Oh, and that plague in the first game wasn't stopped by the quarantine (mainly due to the Beast blowing it to kingdom come), and is slowly spreading across the East Coast.
• Cutting Off the Branches: After some deliberation, Sucker Punch decided to treat the good ending from this game as canon while the Evil ending essentially becomes just for fun.
• Deal with the Devil: The bad ending: Cole sides with John/The Beast to save all the conduits from the plague...at the cost of all ordinary humans' lives.
• Degraded Boss: Ravagers and Crushers are both bosses the first time you face them. Later on, they turn up as Elite Mooks, and not alone.
• Denser and Wackier: While 2 is just as dark and dramatic as the first game — Crapsack World, apocalyptically high stakes, Downer Beginning, Bittersweet Ending, etc — the game is also a lot more "comic bookish" than the first one. The color palette is more vibrant, there's more humor, there are Swamp Monsters, Bertrand is more dramatic and charismatic than Empire City's supervillains, and the "Bad Karma" actions are more cartoonishly over-the-top (like hunting down street performers because Zeke had a bad experience with one, or rigging a rail-trolley with explosives to blast open a heavily-guarded plantation).
• Devil Complex: The evil ending, where despite his new godlike powers, Cole admits he hasn't become a god at all, but the devil.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Finally, Cole killed Bertrand and has used every Blast Core. Now he can use the RFI, kill the Beast and save the world! But uh oh! The RFI was actually made to kill Conduits! So Cole is left with a choice; activate the RFI, nullify the ray field radiation killing everyone and kill the Beast along with every other conduit in the world including himself or live and allow the Beast to activate all of the conduits in the world and doom the rest of mankind to die of radiation poisoning. This only receives foreshadowing if you collect all 29 of Wolfe's Dead Drops, as in the last one he apologizes to Kuo for not being able to tell her about the full ramifications of the RFI's activation.
• Didn't See That Coming: At the end of the game, both Cole and the Beast express surprise at Kuo's sudden onset of Dirty Cowardice and her Face–Heel Turn.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • iF2's Karma Trailer. Nix represents the proverbial evil devil on one's shoulder, while Kuo represents the inspiring good angel. It's not clear whether Sucker Punch actually knows that the Latin for "left", Nix's "shoulder", is "sinister". In the ending of the game, Kuo is making the selfish, evil decision, and is on Cole's left shoulder, while Nix is making the angry, revenge-driven, yet good decision, and is on his right shoulder.
  • In a more Captain Ersatz related example: Joseph Bertrand and his pseudo-religionistic military group doesn't look like much... unless you're an X-Men fan. Bertrand himself, his motives and his agenda look like they could be taken straight from the pages of God Loves, Man Kills. To Sucker Punch's credit - that's not a bad thing.
• Downer Beginning: As Cole, Zeke, and Kuo are getting ready to head for New Marais, the Beast shows up much earlier than predicted. And though Cole puts up one hell of a fight, he's utterly trounced, drained of most of his powers and left in a weakened state for most of the game. Even worse, the Beast just shrugs off all the damage Cole did to it and wipes Empire City off the map.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?:
  • Played straight in the beginning. Even though Cole does his best to fight off the Beast, he's blamed for the destruction of Empire City after he loses and the Beast wipes it off the map.
  • Though thankfully, this finally gets subverted in the Hero ending, as instead of yet again being the unsung savior of the world, Cole becomes the patron saint of New Marais.
  • Also subverted in one of the missions, where you meet someone who had relatives in Empire. If you went the Good Karma route, she thanks you for helping and gives you a kiss on the cheek. (If you went the Evil route, you're attacked.)
• The Dreaded: Regardless of alignment, by the time Cole reaches New Marais' second island the Militia are scared shitless of Cole whenever the player shows up. They'll still fight, but they'll begging Cole to spare them the whole time.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: The good ending. Sure, Cole kills himself (or does he?) and every other Conduit in the world (retconned in Second Son to be about 90%), but he saves humanity from the Beast and the plague at the same time.
• Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Though Zeke and Cole are back to being friends as of inFAMOUS 2, Zeke's betrayal of Cole is still brought up several times, and it's clear that Zeke has been working overtime to earn his forgiveness. As Cole says in the intro, he'd do anything to be friends like they used to be. It helps that he's also not a moocher this time.
• Electric Slide: There's some vertical power conduits on the sides of buildings Cole can grab to give himself a short launch upwards with. A pre-order power allows him to hook onto enemies and pull them towards him.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: A lightning storm rolls in on the second to last mission, providing Cole with infinite recharges at any time by draining the storm itself. At the end of this mission, Cole gets back the ability to call lightning bolts from the sky. This power now automatically targets the biggest enemy in the immediate vicinity and is usually enough to kill them in one hit.
• Elite Mooks: Infamous 2 does not have Conduits among the Militia, but they do have guys with high-powered sniper rifles and Heavy-like guys with machine guns. The Corruption doesn't have "elite mooks" so much as loads of minibosses that take a lot of cluster bombs or rockets to die. Vermaak 88 has "heavy" troopers with ray beams who like to create ice columns for themselves to stand upon, and a miniboss form of their own.
• The End of the World as We Know It: The Beast is going to kill most of the population, but they're all going to die from ray field radiation anyway, so he's using the normal humans to activate all the world's Conduits (who can metabolize the radiation) and save what's left.
• The End... Or Is It?: The very end of the good ending for implies that Cole might be Not Quite Dead. That lightning strike looked very oddly shaped. Now if you consider the fact that Kessler, Cole from an alternate future, learned how to time-travel...◊
  • Unfortunately it's been confirmed that Cole is dead in Infamous: Second Son.
• Enemy Civil War: The three major factions of enemies have a common point of origin, but they're dead set on killing one another (and you!).
• Enemy Mine: All the various warring factions in the city end up (somewhat unintentionally) joining forces to defeat the Behemoth, which is actually Bertrand's true form. Also happens in both endings, where the rebels and militia will fight side-by-side in a last-ditch attempt to either take down Cole and the Beast in the evil ending, or help Cole slow down the Beast in the good ending.
• Engineered Heroics: One of Nix's missions has her attacking the populace so that Cole can conveniently show up and stop her, making him look like a hero. The cartoonishness of the scheme is joked about if Cole chooses Kuo's mission instead.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: In the good and canon ending, every single named character aside from Zeke dies.
• Evil Pays Better: Being evil not only lets you net easy experience by killing random bystanders, but gives you temporary unlimited ammunition if you suck the life out of them.
• Evil Plan: Bertrand's plan to convince the world to hate and fear conduits by mass-producing them and selling them to various countries and military powers as weapons.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: The Ice Tower.
• Expy: There is one Vermaak 88 soldier with dialogue, dark suit, breathing sounds, and mannerisms that is reminiscent of Darth Vader.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Cole's monologue in the evil ending shows he thinks that even if there were never a plague, humans being exterminated at the hands of conduits would just be an inevitable side effect of evolution.
• Face–Heel Turn: Kuo, who decides to let The Plague and the Beast kill millions because she doesn't want to die. A Hero Cole will call out her rationalizations as selfish and even she finally acknowledges it after Cole defeats her and the Beast.
• Fantastic Racism: Bertrand really hates conduits, probably because his powers revolve around turning people — including himself — into monsters.
• The Fettered: Good karma nets you precise, efficient powers.
• Final Boss Preview: The game opens with Cole battling the Beast, then retreating to New Marais to lick his wounds and prepare for the rematch. Unusually for the trope, Cole is able to do a lot of damage to the Beast; it's just that the Beast can regenerate fairly easy.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Nix, Kuo and Cole, respectively. Also, John, Kuo and Cole.
• 555: Many numbers use this trope (most notably on the Militia's constant big-screen TV ads). The cellphone number Zeke gives for Cole is 555-0127. (Probably not Cole's actual number, otherwise he might well have spent the final 1/3 of the game inundated with calls from admirers. Or maybe he has his phone on silent. Quite possibly it's Zeke's number.)
• Flash Step/Teleport Spam: Nix can do this. Kuo's "flight" is half this; she turns into a wisp of mist that flies through the air at high speed.
• Flight: This seems to be one of the more common Conduit powers. The newscast reports sightings of an old lady capable of flight, Kuo's ice powers (for some reason) also give her the ability to fly, the female Conduit activated by the Beast late in the game discovers the power of flight, and Cole gains the ability to fly as part of his Eleventh Hour Super Power power up in the good and evil final missions.
• Foreshadowing: Late in the first game, John White explains that he was right behind Cole when the Ray Sphere went off, the Ray Sphere being a device that creates a massive blast of energy that kills all normal people and unlocks the powers of all Conduits in range. Guess who turns out to be the Conduit Anti Christ in the second game.
  • Furthermore, when John disintegrated during the Ray Sphere's destruction, his eyes and mouth glow blue. In the ending cutscene, when Cole realizes he needs to fight the Beast, its silhouette is shown with a set of glowing blue eyes and mouth.
  • John, please say more dramatic things about the Beast in Wolfe's audio logs, implying more blatantly each time that you have a connection to it.
  • About 2/3 of the way through, Zeke starts coughing every now and then because he contracted the plague.
  • Before Cole is even within New Marias' borders, Kuo drops an interesting line: "People do strange things when they're afraid."
• Forgot About His Powers: While activating the game's last transformer, Bertrand traps Cole in a iron cage, since this would stop Cole from being able to use his lightning powers. This would be fine, if Cole didn't get ice or fire powers a few missions earlier that should be able to fire through the cage no problem. It's to the point that once Bertrand's men start shooting at Cole, the game will actively prevent said powers from being able to go past the cage if the player tries them.
• For the Evulz: Evil Cole and the Beast, both subvert this at the end.
• Freudian Trio:
  • Cole acts as The Kirk. While other characters provide the missions and options, by virtue of being the Player Character Cole is the one who makes all of the decisions.
  • Kuo is The Spock. The majority of the time she is the one urging Cole to decide to make the choices that give Cole good karma, her plans based in a "hearts and minds" form of logic. In the final decision of whether to activate the RFI or join the Beast, it's demonstrated that the "smart" thing isn't always the "right" thing - Kuo, scared by the prospect of dying, reasons that joining forces with The Beast is the best choice for survival. When Kuo is kidnapped by the Militia, Zeke takes her place.
  • Zeke is the first to fill the role as The McCoy, encouraging Cole to either take on petty acts (like harassing sign spinners) or the easy option (blowing up a slum village to take out the Militia, the residence nothing but collateral damage). Nix quickly replaces him in this role, being a Psychopathic Manchild and Smug Super who has trouble trusting regular humans and would rather burn Bertrand's operation to the ground and to Hell with the consequences. When given the option to fire the RFI to join The Beast, she wants to fire the RFI. Specifically she wants this as Revenge for The Beast wiping out her Corrupted pets, not caring that she would die in the process. The fact that it would cure the plague and save mankind was just a bonus.
• Friendship Moment: Cole and Zeke get one when they drink beer and watch a movie together. When someone (likely Kuo) tries to call them they wordlessly agree that they'd rather ignore it and just relax. They even pull a platonic Sleep Cute on the couch.
• Genocide Dilemma: A two for one: Murder all Conduits by using the RFI to potentially save all the normal human beings from the plague, or let the Beast murder countless normal people and speed up their extinction to definitely save the Conduits.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Subverted. At first, no explanation at all is given for the sudden appearance of the Corrupted in New Marais, and up until they are introduced Cole has spent all his time fighting gun-toting gangs and other super-powered mutants. Later, however, it is revealed that Bertrand himself is a Conduit whose powers involve transforming into said Giant Space Flea as well as turning other humans into Corrupted under the guise of cleansing them from their demons.
• Gone Horribly Right: If Cole is evil in the first game, Kessler's plan to teach his younger self not to be weighed down by emotion succeeds far better than he likely thought possible. It succeeds so well, in fact, that an evil Cole in the sequel decides to save the human race by taking over as the Beast. It does "stop" the first one...
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: By the end of the second game, the morality system is less about Good and Evil and more about two separate races struggling to survive the Plague, and the only solution for either race requires the destruction of the other...
• Guide Dang It!: Looking for all the Dead Drops? You can only find 28 out of 29 in the main sandbox. The 29th is located in the Swamp Blockade and doesn't activate until you've been on the main island for a while. Somewhat mitigated in that there's a clue in the trophies about where to find it.
• Hammerspace: Sucker Punch has Cole, during cutscenes, reach behind his back to store and retrieve objects, noticeably blast cores. Presumably they didn't want to waste time animating him putting it in his backpack.
• Harmless Freezing: Averted. Freezing an enemy/civilian instantly kills them.
• Hehheh You Said X: In one of their conversations Cole laughs at Kuo's use of "penal code".
• Heel–Face Turn: Zeke refuses to go with Cole if he chooses to go along with John's plan.
  • Nix, who in the end is actually willing to sacrifice herself to save millions, but only because she wants revenge on the Beast.
  • In the good ending, Kuo turns good again right before the end, admitting she only sided with the Beast out of fear of death but now realizing that Cole's decision was the right one.
• The Hero Dies: The Good ending has Cole sacrificing his life to save humanity. Though he kills every other Conduit on the planet in the process.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: inFAMOUS 2 gives Cole and Zeke's friendship more screen-time, including one entire cutscene dedicated solely to them hanging out, watching cheesy movies, and completely ignoring the problems they have to deal with for just a little while. It makes both endings hurt that much more.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Nix, motivations aside she is the only character who always chooses to sacrifice herself no matter what decisions the player makes.
• Hesitant Sacrifice: Kuo gets cold feet when it comes time to perform the species-wide Heroic Sacrifice, and pulls a Face–Heel Turn. In the good ending, she eventually admits that she was wrong and selfish, and that she's scared. Cole, for his part, admits he's scared too, but soldiers on regardless.
• Human Popsicle: Enemies finished with ice powers, realistically this also averts Harmless Freezing; frozen enemies are dead instantly, even breaking them out won't save them.
• An Ice Person:
  • Kuo, who will share her powers with Cole if he makes orderly decisions.
  • Also the Vermaak 88, who act like watered down version of Kuo due to being given her powers by Bertrand.
• Implacable Man: The Beast is so strong that he survives getting half his head blown off by the initial fight. Cole and his friends flee to New Marais, and the rest of the game keeps track of the Beast's swath of destruction as he follows you down the coastline. Every time you pause the game or hit a new story chapter, it tells you how many miles are left before he gets to you.
  • Just having his head blown off? Try surviving a nuke. The only thing that can keep him down is outright "turning off" his powers and directly extinguishing his lifeforce with the RFI.
• In a Single Bound: The ice troopers primarily use this to get around; rather than having super-strong legs, they instantly create a small pillar of ice under their feet, launching themselves into the air. Cole can optionally get this power as well; it makes his jump distance nearly triple its ordinary length.
• Incurable Cough of Death: The deadly plague sweeping through the city is a major plot point. As the game goes on, you'll probably notice Zeke coughing a lot and sounding progressively more hoarse....
• In Love with Your Carnage: Pretty much the entire reason Nix decides to hang out with Cole is because he's supposedly the demon who destroyed Empire City, to the point where she calls Cole the Demon as a term of endearment.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Averted, finally, and lampshaded; you actually get a trophy for climbing over a chain-link fence.^note The trophy itself is hilarious as well: the name is Don't Fence Me In, and the description for how to get it is "Climb a chain link fence and rejoice."
• Irony:
  • In the first game, Kessler praised Cole if he chose the Infamous action of using the Ray Sphere a second time to enhance his own powers and derided him if he took the Heroic route of just destroying the damn thing. In the Infamous ending of THIS game, Cole becomes the Beast and continues his work, while Hero Cole does what Kessler wanted.
  • Lucy and Nix always advocate for Good Karma and Bad Karma decisions, respectively, at least until the ending where Lucy joins the Beast out of fear for her own life (though she does preform a last second Heel–Face Turn in the Good Karma ending) while Nyx still wants to defeat the Beast even though she knows that it will end up killing all conduits including herself.
• It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Flashbacks establish this was true for New Orleans stand-in New Marais before it was hit by its version of Katrina.
• Karma Meter: The Karma Meter from the first games has been revised so that most of the Karma choices in story missions, bar two, are an active choice between two missions; not two versions of one mission, but different missions entirely, in different locations, taken from different people, with different enemies and goals.
• Kick the Dog: One of the evil side tasks that pops up when you are walking around New Marais is to beat up street performers simply because Zeke finds them annoying.
• Knight Templar: Bertrand, who wants to get rid of all the Conduit "abominations" despite being a Conduit himself.
  • Actually Bertrand hates Conduits because he is one; specifically, as Cole realizes, he's unable to reconcile his own narcissism and faith in a holy mission from God with the fact that his powers just turn him into a "fifty-foot maggot" instead of a "shiny superhuman". Consequently, Bertrand wants everyone to share in his hatred of Conduits and does so on two fronts with the horrific Corrupted and the unstable Vermaak 88 ice soldiers, both of whom he can ship around the world so other nations will witness the "horrors" of Conduits and thus have no qualms about wiping them all out. Ultimately, Bertrand wants to live in a world that hates and rejects Conduits...because otherwise, he can't live with himself.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: In an aversion, especially considering how much of a huge twist it was, the second game doesn't spoil the fact that Kessler and Cole are the same person. Only Cole and Zeke know, and they never discuss it or tell anyone else. Doctor Wolfe noticing that Cole "looks just the same" as Kessler is the only hint, and Cole quickly dismisses it. He does wonder if they happen to be related in one of his Dead Drops.
• Level Editor: You can create your own missions, called UGC, in-game. Though you're restricted to building in the in-game world, the editor is fairly extensive, and there are plenty of parts to let you create what you want.
• Magic Pants: Averted when the Behemoth shrinks into its original form and reveals itself to be Bertrand, who is naked and has to cover himself with a cloth as he flees.
• Meaningful Echo: In the evil ending, right before Cole kills Zeke.
  Zeke: Half as long.
  Cole: Twice as bright.
• Meaningful Name: Kuo's name makes sense as following the Good missions maintains the "status quo", which is also Lampshaded by the achievement "Quid Pro Kuo" when you take Zeke's suggestion of freeing the police to save her. Also Nix is named for Nyx (the personification of night) from Greek Legend.
• Mega Manning: Cole gains a "transfer device" that allows him to use some of Kuo or Nix's powers.
• Mistaken for Disease: The plague from the previous game, though treated as a pathogen-spread disease by the government, is now revealed to be something very different: it's actually a variant on radiation sickness caused by exposure to the Ray Sphere. Conduits are immune to its effects once they've been activated, but everyone else exposed to it is as good as dead.
• Moral Event Horizon: invoked Played arbitrarily/nonsensically in the mission where you can swap powers with Nix or Kuo. No matter how many lives you've saved, good you've done, and how respected you are, choosing Nix's powers over Kuo's instantly sets you as evil. And no matter how many civilians you've torched, cops you've killed, and babies you've eaten, choosing Kuo's powers makes you good.
• More Dakka: Bolt Stream, the good-aligned powerup for the regular lightning bolt.
• Nerf: Unlike the first game, you can't obtain the ability to drain energy from rails by just sliding on them now. Some of Cole's other abilities also aren't as powerful as they were in the first game — especially his ultimate attack, the Lightning Storm, which now runs off a new kind of ammo that's a pain to refill.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • The Evil Ending, where the Beast, now weary of the slaughter, gives Cole his powers. Afterwards, Cole continues the Beast's mission across the United States, awakening all Conduits and killing all ordinary humans in his path to save the former from the plague. As he notes to himself, He becomes what Kessler was trying to stop.
  • When Cole unknowingly sets free the Vermaak 88 while saving Kuo from her underground prison at the plantation.
  • Thanks to Kessler, the entire timeline is completely warped. Though Cole is indeed stronger than Kessler was in his time, the Beast arrives a lot sooner than originally predicted and sends Cole running with his tail between his legs. Needless to say, things were crazier than ever.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  • Vermaak 88 can accurately be described as "Gunslinging South African ice ninjas".
  • Zeke calls the swamp monsters "inbred shirtless crocodile freaks" — which both he and Cole agree is actually pretty cool.
• No Body Left Behind: The usual enemies vanish when the camera pans away from their bodies, but it's oh so definitely averted with Bertrand's remains:
  Laroche: Well, it took thirty men, seven chainsaws and twelve pickups, but we finally got that monster's corpse off the streets.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Word of God confirmed that the Hero ending is canon in this game as well.
• The Not-Love Interest: Especially if you play as Good Cole (Evil Cole will have Belligerent Sexual Tension with Nix), Cole doesn't have a Love Interest in the game presumably because he's still mourning Trish. A lot of the drama and emotional beats in the game comes from his relationship with Zeke and both men's attempt to repair their friendship.
  • There are very subtle Kuo-related moments as well. After meeting Wolfe, Cole will teasingly ask if he's a "significantly older boyfriend" and there's some potential warmth at the start of the mission where Kuo practices with her powers.
• Oh, Crap!: When the Beast shows up, Cole's first reaction to the destruction and smoke everywhere is speechless shock, followed by "No... No, no... No!"
  • During the second-to-last mission, the mooks you're fighting can experience this: "He's getting power from THE STORM!!"
• Old Save Bonus: If you played the original game, inFAMOUS 2 will give you the option to start the game already set on either karmic path with additional bonuses, depending on the karma of your existing save files from the last game.
• One Super One Powerset: Averted. While in the first game Cole is stuck with using his lightning powers and nothing else, Infamous 2 allows Cole as part of the storyline to use a machine to copy either fire or ice powers from two other superpowered people, depending on his alignment.
• Personality Powers:
  • Embodied by Kuo and Nix; Kuo's cool-headed to match her ice powers, while Nix is wilder and hot with rage. However, Kuo is also brittle when under a lot of stress, and Nix has a few surprising moments of warmth.
  • Bertrand also counts, the corrupting hive lord maggot.
• The Plague: It's revealed that the plague from the first game is in fact ray field radiation slowly killing every person who isn't an active Conduit.
• Playing with Fire: Nix who will share her powers with Cole if he takes chaotic decisions. She also has oil-based powers: she can create blobs of oil to ensnare her enemies, who can be lit up afterwards, and her main ranged attack is tossing little flaming balls of oil.
• Plot Coupon That Does Something: Cole's overarching goal in the story is to find and absorb seven Blast Cores so that he can power up the RFI device and use it to defeat the Beast. Each one also gives him a set of new abilities. Ultimately, they only resolve the plot in the good ending. Should Cole opt to join forces with the Beast, then the RFI device only serves as an obstacle in his way.
• Power Nullifier: What the Ray Field Inhibitor does. Perfect for fighting the Beast, though it turns out that it kills all Conduits in process.
• Power Trio: Cole, Kuo, and Nix act as the Freudian Trio. See the Characters Page to see specifics.
• Product Placement: While you're running around New Marais, why not enjoy a 5-dollar Footlong at your local Subway™? (Eat Fresh!™)
• Prophetic Fallacy: Kessler didn't actually know why the Beast will go on its apparently world-ending rampage, and thus neither does anyone who gets the warning, including Cole. Whether Cole acts on that missing puzzle piece once it's discovered or decides that it changes nothing is the crux of the ultimate karmic choice.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Nix is red, Kuo is blue.
• Route Boss: The "Hero" path ends with a fight against The Beast and Kuo, while the "Infamous" path has you fight Nix and Zeke instead.
• Rule of Cool: Vermaak 88 apparently gave Kuo a sweet new haircut and nice suit when they locked her in the tube, leaving her looking like a pop star, or someone going out to the club, or, y'know, a superhero.
• Sadistic Choice: The final and end-deciding moral choice is one of these. Kill all the world's Conduits to save the rest of the human race, or kill the rest to save all the Conduits.
• Sad Battle Music: The song that plays when you fight Zeke is a huge Tear Jerker just on its own. It's fittingly titled "Half as Long...Twice as Bright". Damn.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Kessler's plan to stop the Beast by turning Cole into The Unfettered? Turns out that the only reason the Beast exists is because of the Ray Sphere, which Kessler created. Hell, one of the Dead Drops implies that Kessler knew John would become the Beast, which means he chose to let all that mayhem occur instead of just killing John before his powers activated.
• Sequel Hook: Maybe◊.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: A lot of people's actions in the first game are made pointless in this game.
  • All the good you did for Empire City in a Hero run? It's blasted off the map in the first five minutes.
  • The Beast spends the beginning and middle of the game carving a path through America towards Cole, activating conduits and killing ordinary humans to cure the plague. In the Hero ending, the RFI is used, which cures the plague...and kills all Conduits, everywhere, regardless of whether or not their powers were activated.
  • Kessler went back in time to stop the Beast from rampaging the planet. In the evil ending, Cole becomes the Beast and decimates humanity to save as many Conduits as he can.
• Shout-Out:
  • A preorder power includes a 'lightning hook' which pulls enemies towards you. Get over here!
  • If you look closely, Zeke is reading the Thievius Raccoonus in a pre-mission cutscene.
    • And then there's the theater with a marquee covered in Parallel Porn Titles - Solid Serpent: The Man, The Movie, Call of Booty, Uncharted Love, Assassin's Need (LoveToo), Hey, Low Reach, No Need For Speed, Epic Hickey, Little Big Unit, Latch It And Skank, and of course, Sly!
  • ""STOP. SHOOTING. THE THERMONUCLEAR MISSILE, YOU DUMB HICKS!"
  • Possible shout-out in mission 32 to Two Gamers on a Couch, since the entirety of the mission is Cole and Zeke watching a Western, drinking beers, and then Cole absorbing the penultimate Blast Core.
  • In Flood Town, one can see on a roof written, "I'm starving". The reply written under it is "You can has cheeseburger."
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Bertrand is revealed as the leader of the Corrupted after trying to give himself powers and is noq bent on starting a genocide on himself and all Conduits, Cole quickly puts him in his place.
  Cole: Oh, I finally get it. Oh, you thought the Ray Sphere was gonna turn you into some sort of shiny superhuman, but instead it turned you into a fifty-foot maggot.
• Spanner in the Works: The one thing Kessler doesn't account for is the possibility that the Beast isn't motivated by Evulz.
• Stripperiffic:
  • Nix wears lots and lots of leather and accessories, to signify her unstable mental state. Ironically, the outfit would actually be rather impractical for a stripper.
  • Kuo wears a standard business suit upon her introduction, and later switches to something a little more... distinctive, more suited for a night at the club. She also gets her hair done, and her skin coloring switches to look like some nice makeup. Still not exactly stripper-wear, but sexier (and cooler) than her old outfit. Compare and contrast.
• Superpower Lottery: Stated.
  Wolfe: It's impossible to predict how a Conduit's power will manifest.
  • Most named Conduits actually won this one. Bertrand... not so much.
• Sunglasses at Night: Zeke and a few cops.
  • Zeke's might be justified in that he's hiding the rest of his face so Cole won't piece together he has the plague.
• Take That!: There are stores called "Red Ring Electronics," an obvious Take That! against the Xbox 360. Comes complete with a neon sign that does the full red ring animation.
• A Taste of Power: The beginning has a fully powered Cole with infinite energy and Megawatt Hammer rockets as a default attack facing off against The Beast. However, Cole soon loses all these powers and spends a good part of the game getting them back.
• Temporal Paradox: Thanks to Kessler's very presence in the first game, the timeline is altered so much that the Beast arrives much sooner than Cole expects, and Cole ends up outmatched and forced on the run.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: Zeke paraphrases George Bernard Shaw's Maxims for Revolutionists #124 just before the finale.
  "The way I see it, there's basically two types of people. Most of them are guys like me. Guys that sit on the couch, we might not like the shit that happens to us, but we deal with it. Then there are guys like you."
• Too Dumb to Live: The militia shoot at Cole and Zeke, who have a truck with a nuclear missile on the back. That is all.
  Militia #1: Give us back our nuke!
  Zeke: Man, if you know what it is, THEN STOP SHOOTING AT IT!!!
• Transformation Discretion Shot: Joseph Bertrand's Behemoth transformation is seen on camera only once, albeit partially obscured by the green gas cloud surrounding it. In all other occasions, the transformation occurs out of view: in one case, if the player chooses to expose Bertrand's true nature to the public, the character can be seen storming off-screen in a rage, with green gas and sound effects from off-camera being the only indication that he's transformed. Later, during the final confrontation, he's seen leaping over a ledge in a shot pointed at the building behind him; a cut to the opposite angle reveals the gas cloud and the Behemoth rising high over the surrounding area.
• The Unfettered: Evil karma nets you flashy powers that destroy everything around you.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Holy shit does the game managed to pull this with choices for the ending. Neither choice is easy, between killing thousands of humans or helping the Beast under the belief that it's the only way to save humanity. Since the Good Karma choice proved the lesser of two evils and being forced to kill Zeke proved such a Player Punch, the game brought this so hard that players ended up preferring the Good ending over the evil one, contrary to the developers' expectations.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Ionic Charges mechanic. You can spend an ionic charge you've stored up to release a powerful area attack that has a high potential of one-shotting most enemies: the trick is that you can only get ionic charges by defeating bad guys... or cops... or random people passing in the street. Since innocent victims are a lot more plentiful than bad guys during later parts of the game, Evil Cole tends to be a lot more free with his wanton destruction than Good Cole.
  • Each civilian you kill nets you a "Bystander" bonus above a certain Evil karma level. For that matter, even "Good" karma random encounters can be turned around to negative karma: you can Thunder Drop on groups of wounded, trigger the bombs left around the city (or just kill everyone near the bomb and then defuse it), kill the mugging victims AND the muggers, dump grenades on abductees... it's less than surprising that this time around, instead of just one or two guys hucking rocks, civilians will actually gather in large groups and try to beat you to death with their bare hands.
• Weaponized Offspring: The Hive Lord enemy will create pods that sprout from that ground. The pods hatch Spikers if the player doesn't destroy them fast enough.
• Wham Episode: "The Face of Change." In this mission, Cole meets the Beast face to face, uncovers its identity, finds out its motivation, and starts to understand how serious The Plague really is.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The penultimate choices fall into two categories. The good act is to commit genocide on all conduits so the rest of humanity can live; the evil ending is vice-versa, killing off humanity so conduits can reign.
  • It may be classed as the good choice simply because there are far fewer conduits than ordinary people. In that case it becomes a choice between killing billions to definitely save millions, or killing millions to possibly save billions.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Cole himself does this late in the second game, if he's a Hero. Kuo will want to side with the Beast because she's scared of dying, and Cole calls her out on it.
  • There's a minor one with Dr Wolfe by the resident Conduits near the end. He explains that the RFI could be used to subtract the Beast's abilities, rendering it weak enough for Cole to lay the smackdown. What he DOESN'T explain is that the RFI's effect of wiping out Ray Sphere radiation actually kills all conduits across the world when fully charged. Needless to say, Cole, Nix and Kuo aren't happy they were lied to. Wolfe's last Dead Drop - his last message to Kuo - is simply titled, "Forgive Me." Hint: she doesn't.
  • One side mission has Cole keep watch over a captured militia mook, while the cop who gave you the quest hurries off to fetch reinforcements. As soon as the cop leaves, the militia mook spews one insult after another, and you have the choice between ignoring him or frying his defenseless ass. Doing the latter causes the cop to chew you out for it, first with words and then with weapons.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • Nix. She just loves to watch stuff burn.
  • Mid and late game good karma missions have you team up with a benevolent member of Vermaak 88. Said member gets stronger with every mission, starting out as a normal mook, then becoming a heavy unit and ultimately a titan. His sanity slips away with every power up, and in the end, you are forced to Mercy Kill him before he harms innocents.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Bertrand's plan to make humanity fear Conduits.
• Zero-Effort Boss: At the end, if you side with the Beast, then Zeke becomes your "final opponent" at the very end when he tries to stop you and the Beast from exterminating humanity. He stands about as much of a chance against Cole as you would expect. Also counts as a Post-Final Boss, since the "real" final boss of the evil path is Nix.

Festival of Blood

• Airplane Arms: The Harpies do this just like Nix.
• Alternate Continuity: The entire plot of Festival of Blood is a story Zeke made up in order to score with some chick, until he's interrupted by Cole.
• Bat People: In the "Festival of Blood" DLC, the Blood Conduits are a vampire breed of Elite Mooks that can disguise themselves as regular humans. Cole can distinguish them from humans with his vampire vision and can on-shot kill them while in this state. If provoked, they transform into giant bat monsters, being much harder to kill than the common vampire.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The rocket and grenade upgrades you gain by completing UGC missions. They would be very helpful during a playthrough, but you can only play UGC missions once you complete the game, so all they're good for is messing around in the overworld.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Once you get the Barbed Cross in the final mission, your melee attacks are greatly powered up, allowing you to kill regular vampires in one hit and firstborns in just a few. In the last part, where you have to fend off hordes of enemies, you do so in an area that's filled with water, so you can mass-shock everyone with reckless abandon.
• Evil Pays Better: It's much easier to replenish your blood supply by feeding on readily avaliable innocent bystanders than staking an evil vampire for theirs. Of course, then again, would you really want to do that?
• Final Boss Preview: You can encounter Bloody Mary while just roaming around; however, if you try to fight her before you're supposed to, she drains your energy and taunts you before fleeing the area.
• Flash Step / Teleport Spam: Most vampires, Cole included, can turn into either a swarm of bats or a wisp.
• Halloween Episode: Takes place on the Halloween Fictional Counterpart of Pyre Night.
• Improvised Weapon: After losing his Amp, Cole makes a makeshift Wooden Stake out of a large cross with a pointy bit of wood on the end from a broken coffin lid.
• It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Festival of Blood features Pyre Night, which was ostensibly Mardi Gras with pumpkins. Still technically averted as Festival takes place on a single night.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: A UGC mission made by Sucker Punch has Cole posit the theory that Vampires could actually just be blood-based Conduits, though this wouldn't explain the various runes that only Cole and other Vampires can see.
• Naked on Revival: Vampire Bloody Mary is au natural after being revived by Cole's blood.
• Nerf: Most of Cole's abilities are reduced to their most basic level, barring upgrades that go on as you kill vampires, with a few of the other powers being replaced by features of the game (the sniping ability is replaced with flight and Vampire Sense replaces anything on the R2 button). Cole also can't use his most powerful ability, Ionic Storm, until near the end of the DLC, and even then it's a Scripted Event.
• No Ontological Inertia: Bloody Mary's vampires follow the "head vampire" rule, knowledge of this is what lets Cole (who is canonically good for this game) feed on people without letting the guilt crush him; sure he might turn them for the night, but as long as he kills Mary before night's end, they'll all be cured.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Cole figures Bloody Mary and those she infects are blood based Conduits.
• Rewarding Vandalism: There are two trophies for feeding on people, as well as one for destroying one of the large demon head balloons.
• Shout-Out:
  • At one point Cole says "My Vampire senses are tingling".
  • The Flight Night trophy.
  • The Play. Create. Scare. trophy for playing user created levels.
  • A movie theater showing L.A. Gore, Red Dead Vampires, Dead Face, Mass Infect 3, and Unstaked: Vampires Deception.
  • When Cole tells Zeke he's a vampire, Zeke jokes "Do teenage girls suddenly find you irresistible?"
  • Zeke defends his vampire comic book by saying that "it's a guide to survival."
• The Stinger: At the end of the story, the girl Zeke was talking to reveals herself to be a real vampire before leaving the bar with Cole.
• Unreliable Narrator: Festival of Blood's framing device is Zeke telling a story about Cole to a hot woman in a bar. Obviously, it's not clear whether he's telling the truth or not. He claims Cole is a good guy, but that could be either from Cole being Good Karma, or Zeke trying to "sell" the story to the woman because Cole was actually evil. Then again, in the end we learn that the girl Zeke was speaking to was a real Vampire.
• Vampire Refugee: Early on, Cole is bitten by Bloody Mary and becomes a vampire, and will become a vampire permanently and be Mary's slave by sunrise. Cole is not happy about this and fights back against Mary and her minions, determined to stake her and cure himself before then.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: At the start of the game, Cole heals partiers caught in a collapsing church and is captured when one of them turns out to be a vampire faking being injured to get close to him.

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