Video Game / Killing Floor 2

I'm back. And I've got some new tricks.

In the beginning, London was reduced to ruins as someone at Horzine Labs let out some specimens who weren't supposed to end up like they ended up. So, what do you get when a containment breach occurs and the specimens run havoc in not just London, but the rest of Europe? As more people attempt to fight back specimens, someone is causing them to spread, even after the Patriarch's assumed final death.

After the successful Unreal Tournament 2004 mod Killing Floor gained traction and became a full release in 2009, Tripwire Interactive took a couple of things learned from their other games released in the meantime, and created Killing Floor 2. The game got released as an Early Access title in April 2015, to fix bugs and receive plentiful feedback to improve on the Killing Floor formula, along with letting players experience a bit of the game before it fully launched in November 2016 on both PC and PlayStation 4, with an Xbox One port following the next August.

A VR game was released later on that somewhat uses the same engine but for VR devices called Killing Floor: Incursion. Here's the Launch and PSX trailer.

Also a short found footage film was made to market and expand a bit of the universe of Killing Floor, called Killing Floor: Uncovered. Watch it here.

A sequel, simply named Killing Floor 3, was announced during 2023's Gamescom.

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I'm back, and I've got some new tropes!

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: The RPG-7 won't detonate if it hits something less than about 10 meters away like the M79, which is incorrect because its original-issue ammunition uses a simple contact detonator that does not have a minimum-range safety feature.
• A.I. Breaker: Scrakes, Fleshpounds and even Hans could previously be tricked into just spinning on the spot if the player runs in close circles around them. This gamebreaking exploit has been fixed in the beta preview release though.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: As of the 2018 "Treacherous Skies" update, some of the enemies that the player has to fight against are E.D.A.R.s, corrupted robots originally manufactured by Horzine but which ended up assisting zeds instead of killing them. They come in 3 variants:
  • Blasters, who shoot lasers at a distance to whittle down the player's health.
  • Bombers, who launch rockets that can push players around.
  • Trappers, who uses lasers to freeze players in their spot, leaving them vulnerable to any zeds nearby.
• All There in the Manual: Know the plot for the last game?^{You don't?}Kevin Clamely was set up to make super soldiers that could survive grievous injuries, his son was killed and he was much less ethical about his project as he considered the Specimens his children. As more of the workers at Horzine Labs started seeing things not being completely okay, Kevin did the only thing he could do before it was shut down: Use himself as a test subject. Cue the Killing Floor 1 Objective mode update that expanded a bit on the story, concluding that Kevin's own daughter wanted to put an end to the Zeds and that Kevin cloned himself. Oh and the team takes a train to Paris. Cue sequel. Okay, well, you're sent in to kill lots of freak cloning specimens, get money, buy better guns, survive to kill the boss, rinse and repeat until the game goes gold and possibly gets a plot-point like the last game.^note Nope!
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: As of the 2017 Summer Sideshow event, Weekly Outbreaks are available which can earn you exclusive cosmetic items, as well as a separate set of sideshow tickets that when collected in sufficient number can be exchanged for themed cosmetics. The later Halloween Horrors update that same year, alongside its own set of Halloween tickets, introduced a new dosh vault that players can earn money for by completing certain objectives, including the weekly objectives. Filling it up past certain intervals rewards special loot crates that can be opened for free and contain exclusive cosmetic items.
• Art Shift: Pretty much abandons the slasher film aesthetic, replaced with a predominantly sci-fi look, with later maps introducing a Steampunk look.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Some of the zeds have designated weak points other than their heads, including the fleshpound's glowing chest plate, Hans Volter's power core on his back and the Husk's backpack.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: There are plenty of dark places on some maps (especially Catacombs) and your options for lighting them up are severely limited and often ineffectual. What lights there are tend to get broken quickly, especially with a Demolitionist on the team. Naturally, the Zeds have perfect night vision at all times.
• Always Night: Almost every map is either set at night or indoors with almost no natural light sources available. The only exceptions are Outpost, which appears to be set during polar twilight; Black Forest, which starts at dusk, then switches to night in the midpoint of the mission; Nuked, wherein the exact time is unknown, though the sun is at least barely visible either setting or rising through the dust of its namesake nuclear detonations; The Descent, where the opening area of the first wave, at least, takes place in daylight before the player moves on to different darkened indoor areas for later waves; and Zed Landing, one of the few maps to completely take place in daylight. As of the Treacherous Skies update, the Airship map was added, which takes place on the deck of a flying machine during a midday rainstorm. This trend was continued in both the Cyber Revolt and Back & Kickin Brass updates, with the respective Spillway and Steam Fortress maps both being set in what appears to be either early morning or sunset.
• Ammo-Using Melee Weapon:
  • The Pulverizer is a sledgehammer with a magazine of explosives feeding into it. Using heavy attack will detonate one on impact, adding a shaped explosion to the actual swing. If the magazine is empty, only the actual hit will do damage. The light attack, jab, and block don't use ammunition.
  • The Eviscerator is a Swiss-Army Weapon that launches spinning circular blades, but also has a larger circular saw mounted in front. The projectile discs are loaded from a magazine, while the front saw uses a tank full of fuel to spin, rapidly doing damage to whatever is in front of you. Jabbing and blocking likewise use neither ammunition.
  • The Hemoclobber is a futuristic looking bat with needles sticking out on one side, that functions similarily to the Pulverizer, just with healing gas instead of explosives. Its heavy attack will release healing gas on a hit, poisoning zeds and healing any nearby players. It can also heal players with the primary attack which does not use up ammo, albeit only one at a time or if they're near each other. It has less ammo compared to its counterpart, being able to load 2 healing charges per clip and with 10 charges to spare.
• Amusement Park of Doom: The first Summer Sideshow limited time event added a new map called The Tragic Kingdom which is set in a giant abandoned amusement park. The map has tons of special features including minigames, ride based traps and hazards that players can set off, new Circus of Fear themed skins for all of the Zeds (including bosses) and prize tickets players can exchange for new cosmetic items.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Due to Tripwire taking things into account, a lot of things have been added to ease issues:
  • You don't need to be alive to get the achievement for completing a map, nor do you need to complete it on 10 waves.
  • When you die and respawn, you're either compensated with an amount of money proportional to progress through the mission, or you get to keep how much you had before dying, whichever one is higher.
  • Similarly, if you join a game that has been in progress for a few waves, you'll find yourself with a larger amount of starting dosh. You'll still need help from your teammates to fully kit yourself out, but it won't require them to sacrifice nearly as much of their own funds.
  • Each class has a class-starting weapon even without any experience with that class (compared to the first game requiring high levels in a perk to spawn with weapons), lessening the issue of getting a gun from the get-go that revolves around your perk.
  • The Healing Dart hitbox is double the size of the player model for injured players. The darts will actually home in on other players, and all medic weapons will have an audio cue for when the dart is locked on to a player. Updates made it so that the darts fly through the air faster as well.
  • A button was made specifically for a Quick Melee bash, leaving you less defenseless than previously, especially during reloads. However, it interrupts a reload, so use it wisely or you'll die bashing zeds instead of shooting them and living on. It will get clots to let go, which is good if you're grabbed while trying to reload on the run.
  • Wave-completion rewards increase on higher difficulties.
  • A minor one, but you can now vote to skip the trader so you won't have several seconds of downtime before the next wave.
  • Perks were remade to fit a better leveling structure - you don't need to specifically play as a perk to gain experience with it, and you also gain experience for that perk just by using weapons associated with it rather than having to accomplish specific objectives while playing as that perk - making leveling up more of a frequent thing, allowing for leveling perks without actually playing them, and made each perk get skills every 5 levels that players can swap between when they need to between waves. A later update also allowed for more explicit cross-class abilities, such as getting Commando bonuses while using the Medic's assault rifle, or Sharpshooter getting lesser versions of the bonuses for pistols and revolvers that its Gunslinger offshoot can get. It does retain a hint of the old "requirements" leveling by giving you increased XP for specific perk-related actions: the Commando still gets XP bonuses for killing stalkers, the Support still gains experience for welding doors, the Demolitionist can get more experience by killing Fleshpounds with explosive weapons, etc. However, you're not required to do these while playing as those perks to level them as in the first game, thus also not screwed out of leveling up when someone else invariably kills your target on accident - they're just a bonus you can get any time you have the appropriate weapon on-hand.
  • You're no longer stopped dead in your tracks when you receive melee damage from enemies. Instead, this was re-worked into clots and its siblings grabbing hold of you, with the game pointing you into the direction of what exact enemy grabbed you. This can be a disadvantage at times, however, as it forces you to prioritize weaker specimens regardless of your situation (though sometimes you can get lucky and nail an accidental headshot on the enemy in question just due to the camera naturally pointing your gun directly at it); a later update added an option to toggle this behavior on or off depending on whether you appreciate it or find it annoying.
  • The maps have multiple respawn points, unlike the first game where everyone always spawned at one specific point. The respawn point used for between-wave player spawning will be within a short sprint's distance from the trader.
  • Increasing difficulty will raise the smaller Zeds' numbers, damage, speed, aggression, and variety of attacks, but they don't gain additional HP at any difficulty level above Hard. The devs specified this was to mitigate the frustration of leveling up to more powerful weapons but having them be less effective because you're playing on harder difficulties. Similarly, the game's Dynamic Difficulty system can increase the game's pace, but won't make enemies more durable or numerous, so you don't have to worry about running out of ammunition because you started out doing too well.
  • Unlike the first game (and earlier versions of 2), everyone has a body-mounted flashlight instead of just a few weapons having mounted flashlights, so players no longer need to choose between the right tool for the job or something lesser to be able to see.
  • If Zed Time starts when no Zeds are around any players, everyone can move at normal speed until someone attacks or comes into range of an enemy. Zed Time also slightly speeds up reloads and weapon switching (with some perks also getting skills that let you reload even faster during it), so if you have to do either, the Zed Time won't be completely wasted.
  • Weapons lower on the tier tend to start out with more ammunition than ones that are more powerful, and are cheaper to refill as well. They can also be upgraded farther than higher-tier weapons, as of the update that added that ability, and often get noticeably better performance boosts for it (for instance, before it got a nerf the Gunslinger's starting 1858 revolver could be upgraded to deal almost as much damage as the top-tier .500 Magnum).
  • Reloads can be interrupted at any time, unlike in the first game where, at best, weapons had one or two specific points before the animation finished that would let you interrupt by switching weapons. This is a mixed blessing, but is generally seen as more of an advantage than a disadvantage, with some weapons allowing for noticeable amounts of time to be shaved off of reloads because of how early in the animation the player's ammo counter actually updates, as well as allowing players to easily cancel out of badly-timed reloads if you're, say, trying to top up a still-half-full weapon and suddenly get ambushed by a pack of Crawlers.
  • The final handful of zeds in a wave are marked on the heads up display if they are not in line of sight. This is especially helpful when a zed is stuck in a spawning vent, circumventing the need to locate them using only their audio cues.
  • Each zed also has a hidden "rage mode" which is activated after a certain amount of time has passed or when only a few zeds are left. It makes all zeds faster and more aggressive, so they're more likely to run into you and get gunned down rather than hide away and force everyone to hunt them down.
  • Unlocked skills that are so useful that everyone uses them, but aren't considered overpowered, generally end up patched to be innate abilities of the class. Examples include the Berserker's immunity to being grabbed by clots, Demolitionist and Support's supplying teammates with grenades and ammo, and Commandos sharing their sight of cloaked Zeds. Conversely, the same also sometimes happens for skills that are simple, useful in some circumstances, but completely outclassed by a much better skill they compete against at the same level, like the Demolitionist's ability to set welded doors to explode when Zeds break them down, which is a neat niche ability but was nowhere near useful enough to be worth using over the ability to prevent Sirens from making all of your weapons harmless.
  • While playing solo, a self-heal restores 50 hit points rather than the 20 it does in multiplayer. This compensates for missing out on the more powerful healing only available in multiplayer (Field Medic weapons and the halved cooldown from using a healing syringe on someone else).
  • The achievements for collecting items across levels used to require finding all of the items, of which there was something like 30. A later update lowered this to just ten, allowing quite a bit of leeway for exploration without having to waste a lot of time ignoring one or two enemies to find everything. Some later maps have even been designed with only ten collectibles in them, though maps where the player goes past a Point of No Return between waves, like The Descent (where it's a straight shot between areas), Nightmare & Biolapse (where the waves between the beginning and end are completely randomized), and Krampus' Lair (another straight shot that changes every three waves) still have the full thirty to try and alleviate the possibility of a player missing just one collectible in an area and promptly screwing themselves out of getting the achievement in that run.
  • Weapons added from crossovers and events (like the Zweihänder, available to those who own Chivalry: Medieval Warfare) or through DLC (like the Glock and riot shield combo), can be purchased in the pod by anyone in the match if at least one of the players owns the prerequisite games or has unlocked the weapon in question. And even if that player leaves, their shared content will remain available for the rest of the match. In the case of the MKb42, at least, shortly after it was introduced as a reward for completing the 2018 Halloween seasonal objectives it was added to the regular inventory, though the unique skin also unlocked remained exclusive to those who completed the objectives.
  • During the Transport objective on many of the game's objective maps, the player carrying the datapad gets slowed down, making them dependent on teammates to protect them. This does not apply in solo matches or if the player in question is the last one alive, to reduce the time needed to travel to the drop-off point.
  • When random objectives to defend an area in the map for extra dosh were first added, players were required to keep themselves within the objective area and zeds out of it for the entire wave to get the reward. It was annoying for several reasons, including its tendency to trigger at every wave, and the inconvenient placement of the defended areas; if they weren't set in areas that are difficult to keep zeds out of for an entire wave, then they were placed at the exact opposite side of the map from where the trader opened up, often forcing players to miss out on some of the possible reward because the objective counted as being abandoned before anyone even got into it. A later update turned everything around: the objective triggers much less frequently (with greater rewards for them in turn), and your reward now ticks up from zero as you kill zeds while standing in the defended area, with the objective being counted as cleared and letting you move to a more convenient area once you've gotten the maximum reward the wave allows.
  • Ambient sources of damage, like long falls or anything that sets people alight, are negated while the trader pod is open between waves, to facilitate taking shortcuts to the pod that would damage you in normal gameplay.
  • The 2021 "Day of the Zed" Halloween update adds the ability to repair armor by quarters, giving greater control over how much dosh is spent on armor if you need to put more towards weapons and ammo, though it also comes with the caveat that skills which increase the amount of armor you can have now also increase the amount you need to spend to fully replenish your armor.
• Arbitrary Weapon Range: If the M79, RPG-7, or Seeker Six hit something less than about 10 meters away, the explosive won't detonate,^note This is realistic for grenade launchers, but not so with the RPG-7, whose original-issue ammunition uses a contact detonator that does not have a minimum-range safety feature though the impact itself still does some damage. This is contrast with the starting grenade pistol, whose projectiles can detonate at any distance and won't harm the shooter even at point-blank.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction: Occasionally, a bonus objective will pop up that awards bonus dosh and experience if you complete it. Some levels have a wider array of objectives with a justification, such as repairing parts of the machinery or keeping zeds out of the greenery to dump water in Airship, but ones where you just have to defend an area for a wave can show up in any map, barring those where one switches between areas for every wave, and are presented without context.
• Arm Cannon: The Husk Cannon, added in the Infinite Onslaught update, fits over your arm and has a fist-shaped hand guard. Naturally, Husks have one grafted in their right arm.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The G36C for the SWAT, one of the DLC weapons added with the Blood and Bonfires update in 2022 uses armor piercing ammunition as its main draw. This lets the weapon's bullets go through everything from the Rioter's helmet and armor pieces, up to the ones used by the Abomination and the Matriarch's shield and mech to directly damage their health.
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: A versus mode debuts in this game. It plays similarly to the regular survival mode where one side controls the humans and fights against the horde, but now there's another side that plays as some of the special zeds.
• Aura Vision: Cloaked specimens (such as Stalkers) near a Commando will be visible to the entire team as transparent red figures. They can also uniquely see specimens' health bars, whereas everyone else can only see the boss's health bar.
• Ax-Crazy: Oh boy... Hope you loved the Zeds in the first game, cause they got worse. Oh, and the Patriarch might be late to the party, but Hans is much... much worse.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • While melee weapons when not used by the Berserker are good for emergencies, you have a melee bash which can be equally as effective, if you're not the melee guy. All melee weapons including starting ones, however, can block another zed's melee damage and stumble them. This can save you a lot of health and armour against a single Clot or Gorefast that's managed to get to you.
  • While off-perk weapons aren't as crippled (or ridiculously expensive) as in the first game, it's still generally better to stick to your specialty.
  • Summer Sideshow 2018 introduced the M99 AMR Sniper Rifle, an anti-tank rifle for the Sharpshooter class. It's as powerful as you think, but it weighs 12 units (most high-end primary weapons weigh 9-11 units, enough to equip a second primary weapon, but this limits you to a secondary at best), reload speed is worse than the rail gun (and is also a one-round clip, but with no auto-aim), and every single bullet costs 50 dosh. You need to be skilled and well-supported to line up efficient shots, as these things don't take out heavy enemies in one hit, or just save it for the boss and hope it's a big target.
  • Infernal Insurrection 2020 introduces a minigun. As you would expect, it fires faster than lightning and chews through even the biggest Zeds. As you might also expect, it's extremely heavy. Not only does it take up 10 weight slots (meaning the only backup Commando weapons you can use are the starting AR-15 or the tier 2 L85), but you move very slowly when wielding it, and at a snail's pace when firing it. Couple with high recoil, a high price of 2000 dosh, a slow spin-up before firing, an abysmally small (for its fire rate) base magazine size of 90 rounds without perks, and extremely stiff aiming when firing, it's extremely fun, but also extremely situational. Without certain skill choices to increase reload speed or magazine size, it's basically unusable. If you try to use it as any perk other than Commando, or without getting levels in Commando first, you'll literally spend more time reloading than shooting.
• Audible Sharpness: Invoked as part of a consistent audible cue system.
  • The Katana and Zweihander do this when you equip them.
  • The Gorefast uses a blade as a weapon, so it makes that sound to warn of its approach. Also semi-justified as the blade is actually long enough to scrape against the ground (they'll use them as a sort of crutch if you shoot their heads off or if they're getting up after being knocked over, for instance) which could be making the sounds.
• Bad Guys Play Pool: Volter Manor has a pool table set up on the upper floor. Maybe it's what Hans plays during his entertainment break?
• Bayonet Ya: The Mosin Nagant rifle (introduced as DLC in the Yuletide Horror update) features a bayonet to stab any zed that gets too close for comfort. It's about four times as powerful as most guns' bash attacks (and unlike them is affected by weapon upgrades), letting you kill common Zeds with one stab to the body and slightly more powerful variants with one to the head. It's also one of the few ranged weapons (alongside the Eviscerator, Frost Fang and the Piranha Pistols) that can be used to block.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Hidden behind a destructible rock wall in the Netherhold map is a massive, pulsating heart complete with purple lights synchronized to its rhythm, surrounded by what appears to be giant walls of flesh. Finding it for the first time during the 2021 Day of the Zed in-game event would also complete a seasonal objective.
• Bedlam House: Ashwood Asylum, the 2019 Halloween map introduced in the Grim Treatments update. It's got everything, a nice courtyard, a fountain out front, various graffiti on the walls, a creepy science experiment area, lots of dead bodies of former inmates laying around...
• Bling of War: The prize for the fourth weekly mutation of the Summer Sideshow is a sweet suit of golden Horzine combat body armor. Now you can mow down a legion of Zeds with a katana and look totally bitchin' while you do it. The prize for another one added a golden helmet to go along with it, and yet another added a "King Fleshpound" visor that takes the form of a gold-plated version of the metal band over the Fleshpounds' eyes. There are also "Precious" skins for various firearms that take the form of entirely gold-plating the things, and as of the Dosh Vault's addition you can also get similar gold skins for cosmetics (including a version of the Scrake's facemask) and slightly-less-ridiculous "Vosh" skins for weapons, including the various classes' knives.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The MEAT system makes Killing Floor 2 much more gory than the first game, which was pretty bloody to begin with. Attacked Zed parts become bloodied and cratered when hit and dismembered by lethal blows. While corpses will fade once you've put enough distance from them, the blood that gets spilled all over the floor and walls persists through the entire match, letting you paint the maps so red that even the player characters (who at this point are experienced veterans in the struggle against Paddy's hordes) will express their disgust at it. Exaggerated with the introduction of NVIDIA FleX in a post-launch update, which adds realistic fluid simulation to Zed blood (and Bloat vomit), as well as plenty of wobbling, gory goodness from the various chunks of flesh, internal organs, and lengths of intestine that spew out of the hundreds of Zeds you'll be slaughtering through.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: Zigzagged, though in a different manner than in the first game: rather than getting different protection values depending on the damage source,^note full protection from Bloat vomit and ambient fires, 99% protection from Husk fireballs, 77% from anything else except Siren screams or long falls, which injure you directly the percentage of damage your armor absorbs from an attack depends on its condition, starting at 75% and decreasing to 65% and then 55% at specific intervals. Siren screams and falling damage will, as before, bypass it entirely. The amount of protection even at low percentages still ensures you'll almost never die with armor still on though, so it basically is an extra health bar that's harder to restore. Most significantly, losing armor doesn't slow you down like losing health does. This is invoked with the SWAT's Heavy Armour Training skill and the Survivalist's passive Heavy Body Armor bonus, where all physical damage is applied to armor first^*The armor is damaged as much as it would be normally, and the hit point damage is simply negated., with only Sirens and the Matriarch's sonic attack being able to damage hitpoints through that armor.
• Body Horror: Hope you loved what they presented in the first game, cause this is taken further this time around:
  • Clots exist in 3 variants:
    • Regular or "Alpha" Clots are just mean looking, and have blood from their mouths. While not as terrible as other Zeds, their bodies can, and will, walk around with their heads partially (or completely) removed.
    • Cysts, which look very... "hollow", have empty black holes for mouths and eyes, and look just... horrifying. They're underdeveloped versions of the Clots. They're incredibly weak, and fall over if they miss an attack.
    • Slashers are basically batshit-insane Clots. They have claws, they slash at you, jump at you, lunge at you, and have spikes popping out of almost every part of their body, something of a cross between a Clot and a Crawler. They move erratically (including the occasional somersault) that makes it hard to land a headshot on them.
  • Gorefasts seem much more bloody and meaty, still missing their lower jaw, their non-blade arms have been removed from the shoulder and the arm 'holding' the blade just has it jammed halfway through, leaving the hand and lower arm completely bisected. Gorefiends are both better and worse, as they've been allowed to keep their left arm... but they've got another blade jammed through that one. They also seem to be missing their lower jaws, leaving their unnaturally-long black tongues to hang out.
  • Crawlers look less like they've been strapped into leather BDSM gear and instead have clumpy hair everywhere and random vestigial spider legs that twitch around as well as extra eyes.
  • Husks' bodies glow as if their fire-tank is lighting fire inside of them. This is more or less confirmed if you take a Husk's head off, as the neck stump will occasionally spew fire. They'll also occasionally just blow up, usually from a kill-shot that hits the tank on the back (which damages nearby Zeds), but sometimes intentionally to try and take you down as well.
  • Sirens have gotten what seems to be a sonar-machine jammed into their throats and their jaws broken, explaining their ability to scream people to death. Oh and they look much, much worse, with their arms not being strapped to their body, but hooked out by their metal harness, which goes through their body.
  • Bloats are just as fat as ever, but have huge boils on their body. And jiggle physics.
  • Fleshpounds are bigger, wider, and much more aggressive, along with looking like a freak accident between steroids, extreme body modification and unrelenting rage.
  • Scrakes are again a lot bigger and more muscular than previously. Which isn't much body horror until you open fire and see the skin slowly wear off his skull. The metal plate on his face that almost looks like a surgical mask is actually part of his mouth, which you can sometimes see open when he stops to taunt a killed player. It's full of spiky teeth, of course.
  • Stalkers are much less humanlike, their skin has a texture resembling charcoal, they're extremely thin and they have Barbie Doll Anatomy, unlike the lingerie and curvy figures they had in the first game.
  • The new boss, Hans Volter, is not as tall as the old Patriarch, but geezus crust on a crutch, he is covered in syringes and tubes, which change colour as he loses health, along with appearing bloodier and sparking as he reaches critical health levels.
  • The Patriarch himself has become so mutated he's barely recognizable from his human form, apart from his glasses. He's much larger, and much of that mass isn't from his natural muscles.
  • The Matriarch is barely any better, being almost impossible to identity as the once good Rachel Clamely that assisted the mercs. Initially most of her apperance is covered by the giant mech she's operating, but over the course of the fight with her its weapons and head armor get destroyed, showing what's remaining of her. And it is not a pretty sight, with her left hand having turned into a giant meaty claw with pointy fingernails and her head having multiple big warts.
  • The Firebug causes this, since zeds burnt by him will have realistically charred skin, and will inflate to the point of exploding if shot at with the Microwave Gun.
  • The Hemogoblin is a great asset for the Medic class, but the way it drains Zeds of their blood is pretty horrifying as it leaves them looking like shriveled up prunes.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Support's starting weapon, being a pretty potent shotgun, with the main downside being the reload and cocking animation between shots. You can occasionally find a free one lying around, which will be useful even off-perk, because it can quickly dispatch common Zeds without using more valuable ammo until its runs dry, then be sold for 100 dosh.
  • The Double-barreled Boomstick, the Support's next-cheapest weapon available, is far more spectacular than that fact would imply - the full damage of all of its pellets are guaranteed to remove the head of any zed save for the largest two, even those two will be staggered for a bit after eating its pellets, and the kick on the gun when firing both barrels with alt-fire will knock you backwards to keep you away from zed retaliation. Just don't miss, because it only holds two shells.
  • The Berserker's starting melee, the Crovel (a combined shovel and crowbar), which does its job, but is less fancy looking than a katana. It works like a slightly less hefty version of the fire axe from the first game.
  • The Medic's starting weapon is a pistol that is slightly weaker than the 9mm (but still strong enough to kill common Zeds with 1 headshot), has more than double the reserve ammunition, and weighs 1 block. It also makes healing darts available for you from the beginning of the game. Even if you aren't a Medic (and already have a Medic), it's good to keep everyone healed, especially on higher difficulties, where even one Medic can't keep everyone healed.
  • The Commando's starting weapon is not the Bullpup, a much favored gun (it has been replaced with a higher-tier, full-size rifle that does better damage), but the 9mm Varmint Rifle, a slightly less powerful submachine gun, with burst fire or single fire settings, which makes it more like an oversized pistol due to its small mag and lack of auto-fire. It does just fine getting you through early waves where all but one of the zeds that spawn can be killed in one headshot. Like the pump shotgun, you'll occasionally find one lying around, which is good for off-class use as a faster substitute for the pistol that kills common zeds in one headshot, then can be sold for an extra hundred dosh towards a better gun.
  • The Gunslinger's M1911 pistols are basically the 9mm handguns, but with extra firepower in exchange for about half the magazine capacity. Still cost-effective and easy to use against smaller targets even as an off-perk weapon; in the hands of a gunslinger they will clear crowds of weaker zeds in seconds with good aim and recoil compensation.
  • Although it had a rocky start (it seemed it took the entire shot just to kill one basic Clot), thanks to buffs, the starting HX25 Grenade Pistol for the Demolitions perk can take down 4-5 weaker Zeds at once in earlier waves, is cheap to buy both itself and ammo for it, and the best part: whereas the M79 and RPG-7 can cause self-harm if you're too close to the explosion and have an Arbitrary Weapon Range before their projectiles will actually detonate, the HX25 will detonate even on a zed that's grabbed you, and deal no self-damage whatsoever. Plus, it sells for 150 dosh, fifty more than most other starting perk weapons.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: In the first game, Scrake and Fleshpounds could be a problem, but still manageable by a single player. In this game? Even if you do a solo match, Scrake and Fleshpounds are practically mini-bosses. Even worse on difficulties above Normal. This has been mitigated somewhat by the introduction of the long-awaited Sharpshooter class, which is capable of powerful headshots and can stun even large zeds long enough to finish them off.
• Breakout Character: Mr. Foster's popularity made him one of the first two characters from the first game to be playable in the second, pretty much solidifying him as the face of Killing Floor.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Among the selection of modern weaponry available are such things like an old-west lever-action rifle, black powder revolvers, a pre-WWI shotgun, and a Vietnam War-era light machine gun. Hans Volter's primary weapons are also a pair of old MKb-42(H)s from midway through World War II, which he will gleefully point out while shredding you from long range with them ("Old man, old guns!").
• The Bus Came Back: Ringmaster Lockheart from Summer Sideshow 2013 of the first game returns in Summer Sideshow 2018 of the sequel, having been trapped on the airship he used to get away from Steamland with specimens.
• Bullet Time: Zed Time. Not only does it slow down time, it increases the contrast and adds a slight monochrome effect, making it easier to see in the dark at the cost of blinding you in the light or if you're using night vision. Some perks get bonuses that trigger during it, like Gunslinger's quicker reloads or Commando being able to extend it further with more kills, and at the maximum level every perk's bonuses are two choices to make things even more awesome for them while in Zed Time, such as being able to reload in real-time, causing zeds to explode and poison other nearby zeds when you kill them during it, or having infinite ammo while it's active.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": Money was renamed into "Dosh". That's not even just what the characters or fanbase call it - the money icon on the HUD isn't any real currency symbol, but a modified "D" that's open at the bottom and has two horizontal lines through its stem, similar to the symbol for the Euro. This is probably because the maps now take place well outside of the British isles — two of the starting maps take place in Paris and Germany.
• Calling Your Attacks:
  • Your character along with your teammates call most enemy attacks and when enemies go berserk.
  • Hans calls out nearly everything he does, including changing from melee attacks to guns, throwing grenades of each type (he makes sure to clearly identify which one he uses) and when he enters his 'hunting' phase. One of his callouts is even "HERE'S A WARNING FOR YOU!"
  • The Patriarch is equally guilty of this, with one of the randomly-chosen hints displayed when the boss wave starts telling you that he does so because of his arrogance.
• Cast from Money: The Doshine Gun is an assault rifle with 20 rounds that fires wads of 10-Dosh bills. Unlike most money weapons, you can retrieve the dosh at full value after the wad drops to the ground, meaning you can technically fire and reload this gun forever, but it will take time to collect every green wad.
  "Taking bribery to a new level."
• Chainsaw Good: Currently, the Berserker's Eviscerator is the closest thing to a player-usable chainsaw at the moment. It's more chainsaw bad from the Scrake.
• Character Class System: Even moreso than in the first game, with 10 in total and more occasionally coming with updates.
  • The Berserker: Focuses on high melee damage and taking out the trash without their buddies wasting ammo. The class has been slightly re-balanced to support a couple of guns to make the Berserker less reliant on "running face first into danger and die" tactics. Can throw EMP grenades that will leave zeds doing little more than walking and swinging (rather than, say, Husks burning the team). They have natural damage resistance and, depending on the skills chosen, can regenerate health or near-double their maximum health to become the tank.
  • The Commando: Focuses on hitting enemies at mostly any range and dealing a good amount of damage, making them quite able at taking out trash mobs, special threats such as Stalkers or Husks, and even the giant zeds with headshots. Can see Zed health and cloaked stalkers that are close enough, and reset Zed time up to 6 times at maximum level to provide his team a bunch of leeway to annihilate the Zeds in slow-motion. Throws normal HE grenades.
  • The Support: Focuses on dealing huge amounts of damage on multiple targets, and making sure big armored threats, like Scrakes and Fleshpounds, die quick at close-range. They're also good at welding doors (and are the only class that can repair destroyed doors) and can, well, support other players by carrying an ammo pack that their allies can get ammo from once every round. They can throw frag grenades that have a weaker explosion but will shoot out shrapnel that will bounce like pinballs in enclosed areas for greater effectiveness.
  • The Medic: One of the two re-balanced perks, adding Medic-based guns for almost each weapon category, giving Medical versions of pistols, SMGs, shotguns and automatic rifles. They're less potent than their proper brethren, but hold more ammo and can fire healing darts to keep the rest of the team at full strength. Also gains gas grenades that heal teammates and poison zeds. Their regular healing syringe also recharges faster than any other class.
  • The Firebug: Focuses on setting things on fire to deal damage over time, and lighting up dark areas. Most of their weapons create a radius of fire if fired at the ground, allowing both your teammates to see better in the dark, and to set zeds that walk through it ablaze. Throws Molotov Cocktails... which, of course, also light the ground and stuff on fire.
  • The Demolitionist: Focuses on utilizing explosives to deal massive damage. Every single one of their weapons save their melee is explosive. Rather limited when things get closer since most of their weapons will either no longer work or damage themselves. Can throw extremely potent sticks of dynamite as grenades which explode on contact, they can turn any door into an explosive deathtrap, and they themselves release an explosion instead of dying the first time they're reduced to zero health each wave.
  • The Gunslinger: An offshoot of the Sharpshooter that focuses on single and dual-wielding pistols and revolvers to take out zeds with headshots. Similarly to the Commando, the Gunslinger is quite versatile and able to handle a variety of things easily from a variety of ranges. Throws a nail bomb that is similar to the Support's frag grenade that instead does mostly piercing damage from bouncing shrapnel and is liable to stun Zeds for a short duration, just a bit less than the SWAT's flashbang.
  • The Sharpshooter: The original Sharpshooter perk is back, only he's given his pistols to the Gunslinger and now only uses rifles and the old crossbow. The lever-action rifle, a Winchester, is much as it's ever been, and his starting weapon at all skill levels, with a later update also adding a higher-tier version with more modern furniture, including a short-range scope. The crossbow has lost its perfect aim (but does increased damage and causes Zeds to stumble almost every time), so the go-to weapon is now the M14 EBR, much unloved in the first game but improved with an ACOG scope and greater damage. He also initially traded his M99 in for the much lighter rail gun (which includes an aim-assist mode with reduced damage), before eventually getting it back as a more unwieldy but even higher-powered option. Instead of blowing up, his grenades freeze surrounding zeds for a few seconds, doing only minimal damage but allowing easy headshots and making stalkers visible.
  • The SWAT: Small guns with large magazines and fast rates of fire, the SWAT specializes in hosing down zeds with bullets and keeping large targets at bay. Currently, the SWAT can focus either on buffing his armor limit and durability in order to get in the face of large targets, or enhancing his own mobility and disrupting the mobility of targets with increased stumble and slowing down targets with continuous fire. The SWAT carries a flashbang grenade that puts targets into a stunned state and kills small targets at the site of the explosion.
  • Survivalist: Has no weapons to itself (except the Freezethrower, Killerwatt and HRG Arc Generator, added in late 2017, early 2019 and late 2020 respectively), instead they get increased damage with any weapon, but not quite as much as dedicated perks. Unlocks allow minor specialization, for instance increasing reload speeds for about one half of the weapons or the other, extra space for ammo or more room for weapons, replacing their grenades with other sorts of grenades (e.g., the Medic grenade), and the like. This allows for extremely versatile weapon combinations to fill several roles at once, but most players would prefer that you use a specialist. Mainly used for picking up the weapons of dead teammates and utilizing them with partial synchronization.
• Charged Attack: With the Husk Cannon, you can hold the trigger to charge a more powerful shot. The Killerwatt's alt-fire also lets you charge up a powerful shot that, in addition to dealing damage, electrocutes any zeds in it's path and gives the same effects as the Berserker's EMP grenade.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: A couple of selectable skills in each perk invoke this: Carry around more ammo or carry around an ammo bag your teammates can use.
• Collection Sidequest: Every map has hidden items that players have to find and shoot to collect, usually Dosh pendants but sometimes something unique, like purple baby-ish things in Black Forest, puppets in Farmhouse, or beachballs with Alan Wilson's face on them in Zed Landing. You earn an achievement if you and your team can find ten of them.
  • Elysium takes this a step further, containing collectible flowers and tomes in two of its selectable areas^*the forest and egyptian ones to be exact. These can be placed in their respective holders in the map's main area, which will open up one extra location each^*a botanical area and one containing the controlling entity of the map, the Loremaster. Finding the items is optional, except for the seasonal objectives for Christmas Crackdown.
• Christian Rock: A LOT of the OST is provided by Solid State records with the most heavily featured acts from their line-up being being Demon Hunter and Living Sacrifice. Songs like Someone to Hate even having vocals with unashamedly Christian Lyrics intact.
  Heart is cold, and my weapons are washed in blood
  I avow to the call on high
  My resolve in the blessed above
  In this ever-consuming divide
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Several examples.
  • Green poison gas and Bloat bile. Bad for you! Run away.
  • Medic guns have blue Tron Lines, syringes also have a blue motif (though the healing fluid is green while in the capsule) and all healing device readouts are blue. Healing darts generate a puff of blue vapor, and medic grenades emit blue smoke. Even the medic's scalpel melee has a glowing neon blue handle. Updates have added a visual component to the zed-time healing area effect; if you leave zed time before it finishes, you'll see that it is also blue.
  • Fleshpounds glow yellow when calm, red when raging. Their hand-grinders also glow with heat when they've been attacking.
  • Scrakes' chainsaws glow red when raging.
  • The red glow of the Fleshpound and Scrake weapons, along with the Patriarch's gun and Volter's claws when performing melee attacks, indicates that the player can't parry them.
  • Hans Volter's chemical harness glows a bright green when he's healthy and runs through yellow, to orange, to red as he goes through his healing phases. Same for the Patriarch's various growths on his right arm.
  • Hans Volter's frag grenades trail red smoke as they're being thrown. They are also highlighted on the HUD with flashing red symbols.
  • When Hans Volter is healing, his victim occasionally emits red vapor.
  • Commando-vision shows stalkers and the Patriarch as transparent red figures while they're cloaked.
  • Siren screams also manifest visually as waves of red.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • Hans Volter's lunge is much longer than what his animation shows, although this seems to be more of hitbox dissonance, rather than outright cheating. His aim with his guns, on the other hand, sometimes goes through the level geometry, as well as being on point, every damn time.
  • It was once possible to join a server as a spectator and spectate Hans in first person. Doing so showed his view was somewhat rigid, as if his view was being moved around with a controller thumbstick, as in it takes a short moment for him to turn around or go around a corner. But as soon as he pulls his guns out, his view would instantly snap between targets at rapid speed, regardless of his world animations. Explains why he would be facing away from you shooting at a teammate, and you would get nailed with a bullet or two without him even turning around.
  • For reasons unknown, bullets fired by Hans would somehow open any closed door, preventing you shutting one behind you to take cover from his fire or buy time. This was a big problem if he shot a door open from behind you, then tossed a very deadly gas grenade ahead of you, boxing you in between him and the gas when the grenade should have bounced of a door that should have been shut. This has been mitigated in later patches, and now the only attacks that will open closed doors are explosions.
  • Originally, Zeds could teleport ahead of you. This was most noticeable near the end of a wave, when there are only a few zeds left; people frequently run around the map looking for extra weapons to sell for cash — or even just try to get to the trader before killing the last zed, to get more time at the trader (especially important on large maps). You could run away from a zed, turn a corner and run directly into him again. Some areas could be temporarily blocked at both ends by a single zed.
  • In spite of this, it is still possible to create a map with stuck zeds. The mind boggles.
  • A patch released shortly after the "Bullseye" update made it so zeds could only teleport if they had gotten stuck or had no way of reaching the player otherwise, but this for the most part has removed their tendency to teleport ahead of you in favor for a tendency to teleport behind you, often seeming to do so less than five feet away when you're looking in another direction.
  • In the first beta of the 2018 Summer Sideshow update, E.D.A.R Trappers had the ability to ignore level geometry with their lasers, which made them able to stop players dead in their tracks even if they physically shouldn't have been able to. This was patched out with the 2nd beta, which also reduced the range of the laser.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: Some of the weapon and skill descriptions are inaccurate, either because they are outdated or describe features that haven't been implemented yet.
  • The alt-fire on the AA12 toggles between semi-automatic and fully-automatic, but the description used to say it's automatic only. This was eventually corrected.
  • Likewise, the MP5's description used to say its fire mods are semi-auto and full-auto, but it's actually full-auto and three-round burst. Again, this was also corrected.
  • The Commando's stat listing claimed every fifth level will increase Zed time extension by one second, to a maximum of six. The way it actually works is that getting a kill during Zed time causes the three-second timer to reset, and what increases is the limit on consecutive extensions that that Commando can cause (any other perk can only do the first reset). This was eventually rectified in the 2019 Summer Sideshow update, where the stats now list said passive as Zed Time Refreshes.
  • The Demolitionist's "Extra Rounds" skill claims to increase the maximum ammo for explosive weapons by 10. It does so... so long as the explosive weapon in question isn't C4. For some reason, until like the above the description was updated with the 2019 Summer Sideshow event, there was no mention whatsoever before trying the skill out that C4 is exempt. What was more confusing is that one of the perks's innate bonuses is an extra round for each explosive weapon every fifth level, and that one does work with C4.
• Continuity Nod
  • A few of characters from the previous game reappear, with a couple of background (and minor) changes, to either their background story, name and/or face. And voices too.
  • The last map added to the original game, when played in Objective mode, has you finish by leaving in a train bound for Paris as London blows up behind you. Naturally it's explained that the zeds have preceded you, so you're going there to fight more of them.
• Cool Airship: The HMS Queen Victoria on the Airship map, which looks like it flew right out of a steampunk novel.
• Cool, but Inefficient: Night-Vision Goggles have every downside they could have in real life (obscured peripheral vision, blurred picture, fewer colors), can only be used for 25 seconds at a time before waiting just as long to recharge, and their usual purpose is rendered null by the fact that all enemies are unaffected by darkness. Previously, they were the only way to see in the dark while not using a weapon with a flashlight attached, but an update made flashlights body-mounted, and subsequent patches made turning the flashlight on/off the default action of the flashlight key, making the night vision goggles less accessible and useful.^note To access the night vision goggles, press and hold F as a Berserker or Commando until it turns on. However, night vision goggles allow for a wider cone of visibility than the flashlight, and the update which introduced the SWAT perk also boosted the battery life of flashlights/night vision goggles, making them situationally more useful.
• Counter-Attack: Parrying by hitting the block button with a melee weapon around the moment a zed's melee strikes lands can stumble and leave them vulnerable for a small duration. More advanced melee weapons can stumble even the largest zeds with a parry and reduce more damage while parrying or blocking. The Berserker has a Parry skill available to choose at level 15 that will pull this trope up even higher by reducing damage taken, increasing melee attack speed and melee damage for 10 seconds after a successful parry.
• Crosshair Aware: The grenades Hans throws are marked so you can spot them more easily.
• Crowbar Combatant: The Crovel Survival Tool is this mixed with Shovel Strike. They're the Berserker's starting weapon and can also occasionally be found in the maps.
• Cyberpunk: The theme of the spring 2018 and 2019 seasonal events. Rewards include things like techno headgear and cool glowy cyber outfits.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • Health below 100 lowers your movement speed by as much as 15%. Since almost all enemies use melee attacks exclusively, this makes it a lot easier for them to hurt you, lowering your speed even more. This is one reason armor is so important: it takes most of the damage instead of your health, and losing it doesn't slow you down. Likewise, health lost above the standard 100 does not cause speed loss, making skills that boost maximum health even more useful than they initially appear.
  • Killing enemies just slightly slower than they come in can lead to a few strays sneaking up behind you to body-block or even grab you. This often slows and distracts you enough that a swarm will catch up to you and surround you, continuously pouring in faster than you can hope to handle (especially if you have to reload). Once you're surrounded, even the most basic mooks can take you from full health and armor to nothing in seconds by sheer volume.
• Deadly Gas:
  • Hans throws gas grenades that basically function like aerosolized bloat bile. He calls them 'nerve gas', but they will rip through armor just as well as health.
  • On the player's side, the Medic's gas grenades will poison zeds. It's potent enough to kill crawlers and clots on its own, and does decent damage-over-time to everything else.
  • White-colored "Elite" Crawlers will explode in a cloud of gas similar to Hans, unless killed with a headshot.
  • The new objective mode for Nuked has the player deal with an entire map covered in deadly gas and radiation that they have to clean up over the course of their mission there.
• Decomposite Character: The Sharpshooter now has a greater focus on rifles, giving handgun bonuses to the Gunslinger. The Field Medic, meanwhile, has a more vast array of unique weaponry to choose from, with its submachine guns (and its old bonus to magazine capacity depending on perk level) going to the new SWAT perk.
• Demonic Dummy: The collection items on Farmhouse are strange dummies placed about in odd locations, such as the driver's seat of a truck or looking down from a support beam in a barn...
• Diegetic Interface: The medic weapons show how many bullets are left in the magazine and how long you have to wait before firing a new healing dart via a small screen located within the sights. For added practicality, when your magazine is about to run dry, both the gun's ammo counter and the reflex sight turn red, along with having the weapon's firing sound go hollow as it empties. They also emit a short tone and gain a second sort of crosshair around the normal one when you're aiming at a teammate who's in less than perfect health.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Berserkers can wade through hordes and even take on Scrakes, Fleshpounds, and Hans in melee, but this requires understanding the expanded melee system that isn't really explained anywhere. The biggest things to understand are that you get a different attack depending on the directional arrow you're holding and that blocking with precise timing will actually parry attacks (if the weapon is strong enough compared to the enemy), negating all damage and stunning the enemy briefly. While using a blade, aiming the swing to cut onto the neck will also cut the weaker Zeds' heads clean off.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: C4 blocks can be detonated about as fast as you can hit Secondary Fire, but using several in rapid succession weakens its effect against a single enemy: each bomb will do three-quarters the damage that enemy took from the last one until you go three seconds without using C4 on it. Luckily, explosions do not detonate C4 (just using the detonator and shooting them), so you can still do maximum damage, there's just a limit to how fast you can.
• Disc-One Nuke: Each perk has a selection of skills that can help players stick with their starter weapon for a wave or two, and then move directly to the final tier by carefully scavenging for most necessities, such as ammo and armor. The Berserker, post-starter weapon, can cash in a surprising amount of dosh, one-hit kill almost any specimen, as well as resist a ton of damage. Soloing Scrakes and Fleshpounds, or even Hans is much easier as a Berserker, due to having such a high damage resistance.
• Divided States of America: The "Nuked" map takes place in the ruins of a Republic of Texas Embassy in France. It's about as 'merican as you can get: guns, rustic atmosphere, wood furniture, whiskey... It'd be comfortable if nukes weren't going off in the distance and the place was crawling with zeds.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Pistol, SMG, and rifle accuracy is doubled while looking down the sights and increased by a third while crouching, both of which slow you down. All projectile weapons receive less recoil if you aim down the sights or stay still, though some of them fire slow enough that it doesn't really matter. The Sharpshooter in particular can choose to get extra damage while stationary (level 5, "Sniper") and even more damage while crouching (level 10, "Stability") when using on-perk weapons. Conversely, the SWAT and Gunslinger perks have abilities that allow you to move at normal speed even while aiming and (in the SWAT's case) crouching.
• Dynamic Difficulty: In addition to adjusting the number and health of zeds per wave depending on player count and difficulty level, KF2 adds an AI "Game Conductor" that tweaks the difficulty depending on how well players are doing, much like a certain other horde-based shooter. Most of the time you're assessed based on a combination of average Character Level, accuracy, and how quickly an average Zed is killed, but low average health or a recent player death will take this rating down to the minimum. Zed spawn rate, movement rate, and aggression go up when performance is better and down when it is worse—unless you're playing Hell on Earth, where it will only get harder, not easier.
• Elite Mooks: There are a couple Zed sub-variants that appear more often at higher difficulties.
  • Paler-colored albino Crawlers explodes into a cloud of view-obscuring, armor-shredding gas when killed without being decapitated. They're quite fragile, but their deaths can be a pretty effective distraction.
  • Rioters are armored Clots that will occasionally buff the zeds around them to sprint and do more damage.
  • Gorefasts are arguably elites compared to the most common Zed, but have their own upgraded variant, Gorefiends, that have two blades to work with. They're faster, have more health and can perform very damaging Spin Attacks that can't be interrupted.
  • Inverted with Quarter Pounds: Notably weaker Fleshpounds that tend to spawn in packs from a single Quarter Pound to up to 6. They also spawn to assist the King Fleshpound whenever you deal enough damage to him.
• Emergency Weapon: Along with the standard knife, you can do weapon bashes to not only knock enemies back, but also potentially knocking their heads off! Don't depend on it against anything taller than you, though. The best benefit of every class' specific starting melee weapon is that they can block or parry with it (though with less reduction than a bought/found melee weapon) even when their guns are currently empty. It's a lot better than just eating the Fleshpound's rage attack entirely, after all!
• Endless Game: The March 2018 update added a new endless mode where the player faces increasingly harder waves of Zeds until they die. To keep things interesting every fifth wave spawns a boss and bumps up the difficulty if the players survive. There are also random variant waves such as all Zeds being of a single type or having traits from one of the weekly modes. Best of all, the Patriarch himself replaces the Trader Pod as the announcer and constantly taunts and begrudgingly offers support to the players killing his children.
• Escort Mission: Objective mode occasionally has the players escort and protect a drone as it moves around the map. Thankfully, these missions are much easier than the norm due to being pretty short in length and allowing the player to repair the drone if it gets too damaged.
• Every Bullet is a Tracer: Not only every bullet, but every projectile, including shotgun shot and nails. Even Hans' grenades have color-coded trails! The bullets become especially visible during Zed Time.
• Excuse Plot: Similarly to its predecessor, the narrative is basically only found on the game's Steam Store page: it's almost non-existent within the game itself, due to its wave shooter roots and heavy emphasis on online play. Based on the premise, the sequel is set one month after the end of the previous game, with the outbreak of Zed clones spreading from London and the UK to continental Europe. Communications have failed, and national militaries are mostly crushed by the horde. Therefore, enter Horzine Biotech, the amoral company whose former CEO is responsible for the invasion, who hires gun-savvy civilians, mercenaries, and the few remaining European police and military personnel they can find to contain the Zed forces and thus, save the company's face by cleaning up hot-spots around the continent (beginning with their own hidden facilities dotted around Europe, of course). However, all this is just basically meant to explain the automatic TRADER machines, the multinational line-up of core maps (which, among others, includes downtown Paris, a Scandinavian ferry port, an Italian catacomb, or a Russian prison) and the diverse cast of civilian and law enforcement characters. Later official maps (set for example in a tropical island, a nightmare world, or hell itself) however tend to heavily deviate from this premise, but no one cares. After all, the business is the same on all of them: Kill Zeds, get money, buy weapons, kill the Boss, rinse and repeat! No need for spoiler tags or any meaningful story here.
• Face–Heel Turn: Remember Dr. Rachel Clamely, the NPC who guided you in the last objective map in the original Killing Floor? Well, she's back. As the Matriarch.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Firebug specializes in them. First is the "Caulk'n'Burn", as the name implies a DIY flamethrower made from caulk guns and scrap metal, then a WW2 M1897 Trench Gun loaded with Dragon's Breath rounds that shoot incendiary shot, then a bigger, better flamethrower made from industrial piping and using proper fuel, and a microwave ray that acts either like an incendiary Wave-Motion Gun or uses concentrated bursts of microwaves to (somehow) cause knockback like the Pyro's airblast from Team Fortress 2.
• Firing One-Handed: Any shotgun that uses individual shells instead of a magazine can be fired while reloading with the result being the character firing the shotgun one handed.
• Flare Gun: The 2020 Halloween event Infernal Insurrection added the HRG Scorcher to the game for the Firebug. The gun is a modified version of the Demolitionist's starting weapon that has been modified to shoot flares instead of grenades.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: With the Battering Ram skill, it's possible for a SWAT to do this in Zed Time. Not only does the SWAT move in real time, but they move even faster than in normal time, and can send Zeds flying just by running into them. Lesser Zeds can be killed without a single bullet having to be fired.
• Fragile Speedster:
  • Crawlers become this on Suicidal, getting a new attack pattern letting them rush players in a hurry. They're still able to be killed by one shot to the head by any weapon, though.
  • Some of the Clot subcategories, such as Slashers and Cysts, get special sprinting abilities on Suicidal. Slashers, especially, get new lunging attacks, where they jump surprisingly far to attack targeted players, as well as a combat roll when approaching a player at close range to avoid head-height shots. They too are rather lacking in the health department.
  • Stalkers are as fragile as Crawlers, but mostly invisible. On Suicidal, they'll do cartwheels to evade headshots.
  • The Gunslinger perk also qualifies. They get an increase in movement speed, and their handguns and revolvers pack enough punch to shoot down any enemy that comes in their path... but unlike the Berserker, they have no resistances toward any damage except for bullets (which is used by very few enemies) and cannot increase their health in any way whatsoever.
• Friendly Fireproof: Players cannot damage their own team. Fortunately for the players, however, the Zeds can accidentally damage each other (and they even know it, as smaller zeds will try to avoid the path of enraged Scrakes and Fleshpounds) - and in some cases, even derail the game entirely as they all try to retaliate and beat each other up rather than you.
• Ghostapo: Hinted at. Hans Volter has the Black Sun symbol, strongly associated with both the occult and Nazis, branded on his chest, and adorning his home. It can also be found underneath Paris on the Hostile Grounds map, suggesting a link.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Husks, although this is more apparent on harder difficulties, where they stop just sniping with their fire-cannon and actually use the flamethrower as a flamethrower and attempt to charge and blow themselves up to take you with them if their health gets too low. The glass part comes from their very tiny head-health pool, which allows decapitation with a single shotgun blast or a rapid series of pistol rounds. Also, if you can get enough hits on their backpacks, they'll explode and damage or kill surrounding zeds. Much easier to do after patches where it seems to only require a few body shots.
  • Firebugs can kill common Zeds en mass with fire that spreads or explodes its victims while holding giants at bay with the Microwave Gun's knockback. Demolitionist can carry extra explosives, including up to four times the regular amount of C4, and eventually prevent Sirens from destroying them with their screech. Unlike the other perks, neither one has any way to increase their health or armor, and they only get damage resistance against fire and explosions, respectively, which very few Zeds attack with.
• Gorn: Where do we even begin?
  • Body parts, including internal organs like intestines, can, and will, be blown all over the place via explosions.
  • Bones and internal organs can be exposed when a specimen is dealt enough damage to a specific body part. This includes their head.
  • Heads can be sliced off, sliced in half, skinned, and flat out blown apart.
  • All limbs can be sliced off at three different points. The hand/foot, the elbow/knee, and the shoulder/hip.
  • Bodies can be sliced in half at the waist. Or down the middle, lengthwise.
  • The actual models, putting aside what you can do to them, are brutal. Some have metal jammed into open wounds with jaws missing, some have them grafted on or into them, and some just have limbs replaced, very haphazardly, we might add.
  • Blood splatters everywhere, to the point that the game actually keeps track of where the blood splatters on a level and keeps it splattered throughout the entire match.
    • Adding onto this, there is an optional graphic mode that straight up adds a comical amount of simulated liquid blood that spills, drips, sticks to walls, and absolutely sprays out of wounds. This mode is rather hardware intensive, but if you can stomach it, it's a sight to behold.
  • In fact, there's an entire developers' diary based around the sheer amount of detail to the gore there is in this game. Watch it here.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: There are messages both for leaving a game for the main menu (stuff like "Abandoning the fight already?") and for closing the game entirely (things like "They're going to find you either way. They'll find you and they'll eat your heart, like a fleshy little snack.")
• Gun Porn: The weapon models have a significant level of visual quality and attention to detail even by the standards of the genre. For example, reloading half-empty guns will have the character visibly keep the old magazine while inserting a new one, and pressing reload while the weapon is already fully loaded will have the character inspect the weapon in various ways (looking over the right side of the weapon, pulling out the mag to check it's full, pulling back the slide or charging handle to check the chamber, etc.). Tripwire went so far as to animate the weapons at 200 frames per second (roughly 4 times more than typical animations), allowing for Zed Time details like individual parts vibrating and moving from the force of gunfire.
• Hand Cannon: Upstages the first game's Hand Cannons and revolvers by introducing their own version of the Smith & Wesson Model 500 named in some sources as the "T&W 500 Zed Collector"◊. And, yes, they can be dual-wielded. Even on higher difficulties it remains viable due to its insane damage, rivaling the biggest guns of any other class.
• Have a Nice Death: The message displayed when a player dies varies depending on what killed them.
• Hazmat Suit: The main prize of the Summer Sideshow limited time event is a hazmat suit that is unlocked once the player completes all of the carnival minigame missions on The Tragic Kingdom map.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Players have 100 health and armor by default, and by the end of the match will be capable of hundreds of points of damage per second. The most common enemy has 100 health and does less than ten damage per attack. Bosses have health in the thousands and do in the area of 50 damage per slow attack. For this reason, players have 70-90% self-damage reduction depending on difficulty—except on Hell on Earth, where pretty much all self-damage is instantly lethal.
• Hellgate: The new Halloween 2020 map is Hellmark Station, which is London's King's Cross Sation filled with a hellish invasion of sorts, including several portals that Zeds will periodically wander out of during the rounds.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: A valid means of dealing with Scrakes, Fleshpounds and bosses. While they will move faster than some characters, putting level geometry between you or closing doors in their faces will slow them enough to make a getaway. The last player standing in a round is reduced to this, as the Zeds will swarm him and hold him/her down if they don't keep moving.
• Holiday Mode: Like the previous game, Killing Floor 2 sometimes has events like the Summer Sideshow in which all the specimens sport special themed looks and special objectives appear which award exclusive cosmetic items when completed.
• Homemade Flamethrower: The Firebug's starting weapon is the Caulk n' Burn, true to it's name it's a caulk gun heavily modified to act as a flamethrower.
• Improvised Armour: The shield for the "Bone Crusher" is basically a hub cap covered in scrap metal.
• Improvised Weapon:
  • While the other classes have actual knives as melee weapons, the Demolitionist instead has a utility knife◊ for a melee weapon while the Medic uses a humble scalpel.
  • Exaggerated with the Gore Shiv melee for the Survivalist perk, which is just what appears to be a sharp piece of a metal beam with a severed hand and fingers tied to it with string. The implication is that it's an improvised knife made after ripping the blade out of a Gorefiend or Gorefast's arm.
  • Closer inspection of the "Bone Crusher" reveals that the "mace" is simply a bat with sawblades and other scrap metal shoved into it.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The AA-12 is the undisputed king of guns even when it's not being used by a Support. With a ferocious rate of fire and excellent damage, it's fully capable of shredding through virtually anything in the entire game; even Hans Volter's shield will rapidly break under the hail of lead. Give it to a highly-ranked Support, and things just get nasty. The only real downside is that it sucks up ammo fast, but that issue is almost completely nullified by the Support.
• Invisibility Flicker: Stalkers' and Patriarch's cloaking is much less visible compared to the first game, where cloaked stalkers still showed rough outlines in the air as well as cast shadows. Now the only indication of them nearby before they attack you is what appears to be disturbed air, which is much harder to notice when you're frantically running and gunning down other zeds. The player characters at least automatically call out that there are invisible enemies nearby should they get close, putting you on the alert if you're not busy doing something else.
• Irony: Berserker, the perk focused on melee combat, quite possibly has the smallest standard knife (with the Demolitionist's utility knife coming at a close second) with the Support, Sharpshooter and Gunslinger having the biggest knives out of all the perks.
• Jack of All Stats: The survivalist dabbles in the other perks' specialties in its skills. Its innate bonuses are just general good things to have, like "Global damage reduction". It seems mostly to exist to bridge the gap between perks rather than be all of them. If you want to be flexible in your roles such as juggling crowd control and topping off everybody's health, then this is the perk for it.
  • A downplayed example is the Crovel survival tool, as it's the only melee weapon capable of causing both slashing and blunt damage.
• Jump Scare: Keeps happening thanks to teleporting Zeds. It can be as harmless as a Clot waiting around a corner to grab a fleeing player, or horrifyingly bad with a Fleshpound waiting behind a door in front of you.
• King Mook:
  • King Fleshpound, the third boss to be added to the game, is an even stronger version of the Fleshpound. Unlike the other two bosses that cycle through attacks until they hit a certain health gate, whereupon they'll try to regain health and spawn weak mooks like Clots and Crawlers, King Flesh Pound has no way of healing, and instead charges at enemies until he's killed. He also consistently spawns Quarter Pounds.
  • The fourth new boss added to the game, the Abomination (Krampus if you're playing the Christmas map) is essentially a bloat with a giant healthpool, 3 armor pieces that can be knocked off, the ability to move much faster should he lose said armor pieces, and a new ability where he "devours" the zeds he spawns throughout the fight, creating running bile timebombs that deal a fair amount of damage and eat through armor. Much like regular bloats, he also drops a whole lot of gas and bile puddles that deal damage, making it hard to take him down, while also having to watch out for his zed spawns and his gas.
• Kung-Foley: Every melee weapon makes audible "wooshing" sounds with every swing.
• Kukris Are Kool: The Sharpshooter's unique melee weapon is a kukri.
• Late to the Punchline: Characters' lines in response to the environment don't change in reaction to what they themselves are doing or equipped with, hence things such as Classic Masterson noting that he misses his old night-vision goggles from when he was in the military while having NVGs as a Commando, or players deliberately breaking lights, only for their character to then complain about how dark everything is.
• Lag Cancel: Like many other shooters, the full animation for reloading can be canceled after the current ammo counter for your weapon goes to full by switching back to the same or a different weapon, or pressing the bash button. This can also be done after healing oneself with your own medical syringe, very useful since it's likely you're doing that while barely managing to avoid getting torn apart. This use to let you tremendously decrease reload time for Guns Akimbo, as your ammo counter went up as soon as a single magazine loaded, but was patched to require both to go in.
• Laser Blade: The Ion Thruster, a tier 5 weapon for the Berserker added as DLC in the Grim Treatments update. It has the same attack speed as the Katana (that is, quite fast), does a decent amount of damage per hit, sets enemies on fire and charges when hitting enemies and allows for a really powerful attack when said charge is full.
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Scrakes move quickly when enraged and Fleshpounds got an upgrade in their attack pattern, letting them do attacks that close the gap between running players and themselves. Hans Volter is also quite fast and damaging, especially when he's gone berserk. All of them are incredibly durable, with health that scales depending on the number of players and difficulty.
  • Medics get significant passive boosts to armour and speed, healing and trash-clearing gas grenades, a wider-than-usual variety of perk weapons, and they're almost as good at self-healing as healing others. The half of the skills based on being a Combat Medic give them better damage, even higher speed, larger weapon magazines, and add a poison effect to their weapons that debilitates and does damage over time.
  • Berserkers get damage resistance, increased damage, and increased attack speed from levels and skill, and one of the first skills unlocked is a large movement speed boost along with damage. One level 25 perks allow them to move with their normal speed in Zed Time; a skilled Berserker can charge through a horde of Specimens in Zed Time and kill them all before the body parts hit the floor.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Zeds that are frozen solid will shatter into dozens of pieces when killed.
• Losing Your Head: Being robots, destroying an E.D.A.R's head doesn't kill them. Their actual weak point is the energy core in their chests.
• Lumber Mill Mayhem: The Krampus Lair map has this in its first major area, complete with deadly blade traps that can mulch any unlucky zeds (or players) that get caught in them. One of the side missions for the map even tasks the players with killing some zeds this way.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
  • The Bone Crusher for the Berserker perk comes with a makeshift shield that will greatly reduce damage taken from enemy projectiles, and allows for powerful shield bashes.
  • The Glock 18, a DLC weapon for the SWAT perk comes with a riot shield that will reduce all incoming damage from the front by 60% when aiming down the sights. You can also bash enemies with it.
  • The HRG Bastion for the SWAT, a repurposed variant of the Commando's Stoner 63 features a toggleable energy shield that blocks 70% of incoming frontal damage, both when hip-firing and aiming down sights unlike the Glock and Riot Shield. It does however have a limited energy supply which rapidly drains, especially when actually taking hits, and automatically turns off if it is depleted, but recharges when not in use.
• Machete Mayhem: Comes back from the first game, although now made into a starting weapon for the Support perk. If you look closely, you can see the Support Specialist's icon from the previous game engraved onto the blade near the handle. Humorously, its description refers to it as the biggest knife, despite the fact that the Gunslinger's Bowie Knife and the Sharpshooter's Kukri somehow look even bigger.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Halloween Horrors update brings back the Seeker Six from some of the DLC for the first game, which trades the brute force of other Demo weapons for being able to partake in this. Its damage may not be too impressive, but the ability to lock onto multiple targets at once with a large missile barrage is very satisfying.
• Mad Scientist: Hans Volter will be happy to test his new nerve gas on you and drag your body away for experimentation once you are dead, and the Patriarch is still livid that you murdered his "children".
• Magikarp Power: Some of the perks really don't find their footing until they unlock some abilities. Possibly the prime example would be the Firebug perk. At level 1, your fire damage is rather weak. You are able to spread a lot of it around, but it isn't good for much besides softening up zeds for others to come in and clean up. However, once you hit level 15, your damage against basically everything besides Scrakes and Fleshpounds will skyrocket. You can get 35% more damage with fire at level 5, you can create ground fires which cause heavy damage and slow zeds at level 10, and at level 15 you get an ability that makes it so zeds hurt and set each other on fire whenever they touch each other while on fire. Since they tend to huddle together in groups, they will damage each other rapidly. With all three skills combined, if you so much as tap a spray of fire into a group of zeds, they will crumple like tissue paper.
• Magnetic Weapons: The Rail Gun and the HRG Incision (a Rail Gun modified for Medic use). You can actually see the projectile floating inside the weapon's electromagnetic field.
• Make Me Wanna Shout: Besides Sirens, the Matriarch gets on this trope too. When her health is low enough, she replaces her electric AoE attack for a beefed up version of the Siren's scream.
• Master of None: The survivalist can do anything, but a dedicated perk can usually accomplish what they do much better. Its general bonuses aren't very powerful one way or the other, while the class perks give small bonuses to every other perk's specialty, such as making any healing done more potent or increasing melee weapon handling. It's basically good for supplementing multiple teammates who are more specialized, e.g. adding onto healing with a medic gun while still being able to do respectable damage; if you want to do something specific, then you'll want to take that particular perk.
• Mighty Glacier:
  • Scrakes prior to raging are powerful but slow and easily avoided. Damage them enough beyond a certain threshold though and they'll turn into something else entirely.
  • Berserker with the Dreadnaught and Berserker Rage skills forsakes any speed boosts in favor of massively increased health and health recovery for every Zed time trigger, respectively.
• Misidentified Weapons:
  • Mr. Foster will occasionally shout "This is my rifle! There are none like it!" when killing zeds using the M4... which is a shotgun, a completely different type of weapon than a rifle. The line also doubles as out of character as Foster is considered a knowledgeable gun nut amongst the mercs.
  • Due to an oversight, Classic Briar makes a similar error in reverse, taunting zeds about the power of a shotgun when using the M1911, a .45 handgun.
• Missile Lock-On: The main feature of the Seeker Six is that it can lock on to several Zeds at once.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: The Berserker perk has quite a few.
  • The Berserker's starting weapon is the "Crovel", a short folding shovel with a sharpened edge and a crowbar at the end of the handle.
  • The Pulverizer is basically what would happen if someone made a sledgehammer-shotgun hybrid, also said shotgun component is loaded with explosive shells.
• Molotov Cocktail: The signature grenade item of the Firebug class; the Survivalist can use them too with a skill.
• Monster Clown:
  • The Summer Sideshow special event added a new map filled with monster clown versions of the Zeds along with other similarly themed monstrosities such as bearded ladies and sword swallowers.
  • The Nightmare map has more than its fair share of demon clown imagery.
• Monumental Damage: On the Burning Paris, Hostile Grounds and Shopping Spree maps, you can see a destroyed Eiffel Tower in the distance.
• More Dakka: This is the SWAT perk's shtick, as their SMG weapons have some of the highest magazine sizes in the game, which only increases as they level up.
  • The Descent update added the Stoner 63A for the Commando, a light machine gun that holds an insane 75 bullets by default. Talents allow Commandos to increase their magazine sizes, allowing it to reach a colossal 188 bullets in a single magazine.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: In the Biotics Lab map, you can see giant sea anemone creatures that grow Cysts on giant tentacles. These tentacles can also be seen on the Catacombs and Black Forest maps, though these two are not seen to grow any cysts. What appear to be infantile versions are scattered throughout the Black Forest map as its unique collectible.
• Move in the Frozen Time:
  • Many of the skills unlocked at the level cap make movement, attacking, or reloading immune or partially resistant to slowing down during Zed Time.
  • Gunslinger and Survivalist's reloads get 3% resistance to slowdown per level. At max level, Zed time lets them reload in a quarter the usual (in-game) time.
• Nail 'Em:
  • The Vlad 9000 nailgun returns, now assigned to the Berserker in addition to the Support through the cross-perk system. It is one of two strictly ranged weapon in the Berserker's arsenal and shots can ricochet up to two times. In single fire, it's powerful enough to kill common Zeds with a headshot and has an enormous magazine, but the fire rate and projectile speed are both slow. In multi-shot mode, it's a powerful Short-Range Shotgun that burns through ammo very quickly and can use the ricochet to take out densely packed hordes of Zeds.
  • The Grim Treatments update also added the automatic HRG Nailgun for the SWAT Perk. It shoots nails either in full auto or in bursts of three nails per shot.
• Nightmare Sequence: The Nightmare map. It all takes place inside a deranged Monster Clown's head and is filled with surreal and nightmarish imagery such as giant spider nests and broken up buildings floating in a void.
• Night-Vision Goggles: Commandos and Berserkers get goggles as an alternative to the flashlight, but they're quite realistic, meaning they mess with your depth perception, blur your peripheral vision and looking at a light source or even just using them in lighted areas all but blinds you. They can also be disabled by hitting yourself with an EMP grenade. Classic!Masterson will occasionally make mention of these as well, lamenting when in the dark that he misses the "PVS-7" he had in the military.
• No Bulk Discounts: Played straight with all weapons and ammunition, except C4, which was initially a bizarre, probably-accidental aversion. You buy a detonator and get it fully stocked with C4, and can sell it back for 75% of what you paid even if you've detonated all the explosives (because ammunition supply doesn't affect sell-back cost). You could then buy C4 again, effectively letting you refill your stock for 1/4 of the weapon price (rounded up). Since C4 costs 650 dosh and refilling it originally cost 100 dosh per explosives, this is a discount when buying any more than one explosive. This was pretty minor for off-perk use because you only get two explosives, but a Demolitionist gets between three and seven explosives depending on level, so one could effectively get C4 for half the price of grenades despite doing more than twice the damage. Later updates eventually fixed this, with as of 2020 it costing 300 dosh to buy the weapon and selling for 225, and the maximum number of charges you can carry is increased by one (so three normally and eight with a fully-leveled Demolitionist) but you only get two when buying the weapon rather than a full set and it costs 50 dosh per charge - enough that it's only a discount to sell and rebuy the weapon if you're completely out of charges.
• Noisy Guns: Pick up or equip any weapon. It will click and clink and rattle like it's about to fall apart, especially when you reload with a full magazine and your character does a 'fiddle' animation. Then again, they were 3D-printed from a machine made by the same company responsible for the outbreak.
• Non Fatal Explosion: Husks can choose to make themselves explode when near death, which will do enormous damage to players. They also explode when the tank on their back is shot and/or hit enough times or on occasions where they're decapitated while charging, which does not harm the player at all. This leads to the bizarre instance of charging Husks blowing up in a player's face due to a lucky shot and leaving them completely unharmed, and other times where the Husk makes itself blow up in exactly the same fashion and the player is either heavily wounded or completely dead on higher difficulties.
• Non-Indicative Name: The Commando's starting weapon is called a "Varmint Rifle", but visibly uses handgun rounds, which technically makes it a submachine gun (specifically a Colt 9mm SMG). It's been effectively retconned into being a 5.56x45mm assault rifle (doing the same damage as the SA80 and Stoner 63A and only benefiting from the Commando perk, not SWAT), regardless of what the model shows.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Other than why one level takes place in Paris (see All There in the Manual above), there is no real justification for why you are in any of the game's levels. And really, it doesn't matter; just kill zeds.
• No Swastikas: Hans Volter's manor contains golden Nazi Reichsadler, but the swastika has been replaced with the iron cross. The presence of the Black Sun symbol, commonly associated with Neo-Nazi groups, should also be noted. In the earlier concepts, Volter clearly wore swastika armbands.
• Numbers Stations: In the official map "Farmhouse", there is a radio in the basement that plays a repeating sequence of numbers in Czech.
• Offscreen Teleportation: As in the first game, Zeds can spawn in thin air or teleport to spawn points if players aren't looking at them or their potential destination. However, the game also adds some limits on this: just being within 10 meters of a Zed is equivalent to looking at them, teleportation cannot happen until some time after line-of-sight is broken, and the largest types of Zeds (Bloats, Husks, Scrakes, Fleshpounds, and bosses) cannot ever teleport. Even when they aren't teleporting, though, all off-screen Zeds move at a fixed speed that's faster than most Zeds' on-onscreen sprinting.
• One Bullet Clips: Played straight in the same manner as the first game, but there are now multiple different reloading animations for any one weapon to tacitly explain it. Reloading before the magazine is emptied has the player character grabbing a new magazine and swapping it out with the old one in one quick motion before tucking away the old mag, while reloading from empty has them drop the old mag, attach a new one, and then chamber the first round of the new one. A skill available for most perks, most often called "Tactical Reload", offers alternate animations to speed up the reloads, like using the slide release lever or bolt-catch button instead of pulling back the slide or handle for empty reloads. Attempting to reload when the gun is still full plays one of the idle animations, in which the player character double-checks that the mag is full, performs a brass-check to ensure a round is in the chamber, examines the weapon itself, or shows off. And, unlike the first game, all of these are interruptible.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: All projectiles have travel time during Zed Time, and some have at all times. Most go at 100-200 m/s, which is faster than most examples (and a perfectly realistic speed for grenade and rocket launchers), but bullets still only fly at a fraction of their real life speed. Since handguns and rifles are hitscan weapons normally, going into Zed Time can actually make it harder to hit the target. Conversely, almost everyone can throw grenades at 50 m/s (major league fastballs are usually only 40) and the fastest projectile in the game is a crossbow bolt (which goes three times as fast as a handgun round).
• Paint the Town Red: One of the main features of the game is the ability to completely dismember enemies and splatter the walls and floor with their blood and guts. Bodies and severed limbs will eventually disappear so as not to break the game, but blood stays between rounds all the way to the end. Even on a short 4 wave game there will be enough blood spilled for the players to bathe in by the time the boss goes down.
• Pajama-Clad Hero: Completing all of the side missions on the Krampus Lair map during the 2017 Twisted Christmas event rewards players with festive pajamas (complete with bunny slippers) to wear during their next bloody killing spree.
• Palette Swap: The "HRG" weapons tend to just be existing weapons given a new white and blue color scheme, typically firing a different projectile than its base. The "HRG Buckshot" revolver (based on the .500 Magnum), at the very least, does also cut down the barrel to about half its base's size, but others don't even go that far, like the HRG Winterbite based on the Spitfire, which goes as far as still having a(n albeit blue-colored) pilot light around the muzzle, despite its different ammo type simply not needing one.
• Play Every Day:
  • There are daily objective to complete that give vault dosh when completed, which goes towards unlocking special crates.
  • Weekly Outbreaks are games of fixed length and difficulty that modify the game in different ways, like Zeds exploding when they die or shrinking when they're damaged. Completing them earns an exclusive cosmetic item and a large amount of vault dosh.
• "Pop!" Goes the Human: Hit Zeds with a stream from the Microwave Gun for long enough, and they'll swell up to the point of popping in a shower of gore. Lovely.
• Power at a Price: The Hellmark Station map for the 2020 Infernal Insurrection event is filled with satanic looking obelisks that the player can use to enter a powerful berserker state at the cost of some health. One of the seasonal objectives requires the player to do this ten times.
• Power Fist: The Static Strikers, a Tier 4 weapon for the Berserker, are a pair of pneumatic gauntlets that can deal electricity damage on a successful heavy attack.
• Power-Up Letdown: Some unlockable skills are very underpowered, in comparison to their Mutually Exclusive Power Up, or just in general. Note though that the devs typically respond to this and fix things in some manner, however:
  • The Berserker's Vampire skill restores 4 HP for every kill. Even by itself, this is only mildly useful, requiring large amounts of Zeds that are weak enough to be killed quickly without damaging you in return for it to outpace just relying on the 20 health every 15 seconds from your own syringe. However, it absolutely paled in comparison to its alternate ability, Fortitude, which increased maximum health by 75% (very useful for a class that has to get up close and personal to giant Zeds). A later update made it slightly more viable mostly by changing Fortitude, a second-tier skill that completely outclassed Vampire, into the first-tier Dreadnaught (where it instead competes with a skill to increase speed and allow Gradual Regeneration), giving Vampire a bonus to attack speed, and giving it a more reasonable counterpart in Butcher, which has a slightly higher attack speed bonus and gives a damage bonus instead of the health-drain effect.
  • Field Medic's Regeneration skill passively recovered health, but at the absolutely abysmal rate of 2 HP every 5 seconds. For comparison, every class has a syringe that can self-heal 20 HP every 15 seconds, with the Medic getting bonuses to the point that, at the highest level, they can recover 30 health every 5 seconds. Strangely, the Support's version of the same skill healed twice as much in half the time, fast enough to actually be worth using, but both versions of the skill were removed regardless.
  • Regeneration's alternative, Lacerate, made all perk weapons inflict fifteen seconds of bleed damage. The amount inflicted each second was proportional to the attack's power, but it's such a small fraction (2%) that even the most powerful Field Medic weapon only did any bleed damage thanks to rounding up. Functionally, it increased damage rate by a piddling 1 point per second then, very slowly, did 15 damage afterward, in a game where the weakest enemy has 55 HP, which is why it too was removed from the game.
  • Zed Napalm, for the Firebug, makes fires spread from one Zed to another. But Firebug weapons aren't exactly precise in their application, so if the Zeds were close enough to each other for one that's on fire to spread it to the others, then they'd have been close enough that they'd all have caught fire from your attack in the first place. Eventually it was buffed to also increase burning duration by 150%.
  • The Demolitionist's Door Traps made doors you've welded explode when they're broken down. Barricading itself is, at best, a situational strategy, and demolished doors cannot be repaired except by a support specialist taking about a minute away from actually fighting to repair the door. In comparison, Siren Resistance prevents Sirens from destroying Demolitionist's explosives (i.e. all of their weapons except bullets from the M16), completely removing what is easily the most irritating part about playing Demolitionist. Door Traps was later made into a passive ability the Demolitionist always has, replaced with Fragmentation Rounds - which, increasing the explosive radius but decreasing the damage, still isn't even remotely a fair comparison against what is now called Sonic Resistant Rounds. Eventually, the damage reduction in Fragmentation Rounds was removed, making it a reasonable alternative to Sonic Resistant Rounds.
• Prison Rape: Alluded to with the collectibles on the Prison map. Soap on a rope... a large number of which can be found in the showers.
• Punch-Packing Pistol: For a long time, the backup 9mm pistol could be a Little Useless Gun or just enough to kill common Zeds with one headshot, depending on your combination of difficulty level and perk/skills. Then the 2018 Treacherous Skies update increased its base damage enough for headshots to One-Hit Kill the Clot variations and Crawlers regardless of difficulty. Furthermore, the weapon upgrade system introduced in the same update was especially favorable to the 9mm, allowing its damage to as much as double without the weight increase most weapons get, even when using two of them. This further stacks with skills available to the Commando and SWAT, allowing tripled damage—making your little pistol more powerful than an automatic rifle. The only downside is that you can carry comparatively little spare ammunition—just six magazines.
• Quick Melee: Every gun can be used as a bludgeon against enemies. These attacks do very little damage (just barely enough to decapitate the weakest Zeds, if you actually hit them in the head), but can cause almost any enemy to stumble, interrupting special attacks such as grabs—just don't think you can stunlock enemies this way, because they'll be Immune to Flinching for a few seconds afterward. For actual melee weapons, the button for stock bashes is how one of their attacks are used, generally a quick thrust.
• Recursive Ammo: The DLC Rhino revolver fires special fragmentation bullets that, on impact with a target, split into three more projectiles, punching through weaker zeds to allow multi-kills or bouncing off of stronger ones and walls for trickshots.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Zeds that are buffed by a Rioter gain glowing red eyes.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: The sky turns a sinister red during the last few waves of the Monster Ball map.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Both played straight and inverted with the Gunslinger weapons.
  • Inverted by the starting weapon(s), a pair of Remington Model 1858 Army revolvers. They do a respectable 50 damage per shot (twice as much as the 9mm), but have the second-smallest magazines among the Gunslinger's weapons and a slow reload in a game where you'll be constantly swarmed with weak enemies. They are widely regarded as the worst starting weapons.
  • Played straight by the tier 4 weapon(s), a pair of .500 Magnums which outdamage every automatic pistol and rifle by a considerable amount. The reload is still a weakness, and unlike the 1858 the recoil is incredibly strong, but these are generally worth the power to kill mid-tier enemies in one headshot or large enemies with one dual-wielded magazine.
• Satchel Charge: Available to Demolitionists in the form of an explosive C4 charge that can attach to various surfaces and packs one hell of a punch when set off. The only downside is that they're a little on the expensive side (300 dosh to buy it and 50 for each pack of C4) and are (naturally) a single use item in a game where enemies typically attack in groups of six or more.
• Scenery Gorn: OHHHHHHH YEAH. The violence and gore isn't limited to the enemies by any means whatsoever. Expect lots of ruined city streets, wrecked bases and labs and even some underground caves and tunnels. To say nothing of the gore system that lets players literally paint the town red with blood and guts...
• Shield Bash: The Bone Crusher and the Glock 18 & Riot Shield combo have this as their Quick Melee animation.
• Shock and Awe:
  • The Killerwatt, one of two weapons exclusive of the Survivalist perk, is a futuristic assault rifle that shoots bolts of electricity. Its alternate fire turns it into an electric Wave-Motion Gun.
  • The Matriarch can shoot Chain Lightning from her Arm Cannon and has an electric area-of-effect attack. Both hurt a lot.
• Shout-Out:
  • The achievements for beating Outpost on varying difficulties are "You Can't Fight In Here, This Is The Control Room", "This Is What Happens When You Meet A Zed In the Alps" (a reference to the TV dub of this scene of The Big Lebowski), "The Shield Doors Must Be Closed", and "Fear Is For The Zeds, My Little Lord".
  • Beating Catacombs on Hell on Earth awards "They Shall Not Pass".
  • One of Mr. Foster's lines is "Happiness is... as they say."
  • Mr. Foster sometimes says "Nananananana... BATMAN!" while exploring cave areas,.
  • Lt. Masterson also compliments this by wondering if he'd find the Batmobile while being inside a cave.
  • The officially-recognized community map Nuked continues the Dr. Strangelove references in its completion achievements: "The War Room", "The Mineshaft Gap", "Peace is Our Profession", and "How I Learned to Love the Bomb".
  • The default appearance for the M79 Grenade Launcher features tiger stripe camouflage.
  • The Sharpshooter's unique melee weapon is a kukri, same as the Sniper from Team Fortress 2.
  • The collectibles for the Zed Landing map are volleyballs with a face on them, and finding them all gets the "ALAN!!!!!!" achievement. Also, the faces on the volleyballs are those of the vice president of Tripwire, Alan Wilson (who also pulls double-duty as the voice and face of Classic Masterson).
  • Masterson will sometimes comment on a map by saying "H. P. Lovecraft would get off on this weather..."
  • The achievement for completing the Halloween-themed Nightmare map on Normal difficulty is "I Got a Rock".
  • Some of Tom Banner's face paints are a reference to more famous war paints: "Freedom!", "To War!", and "Valhalla!"
  • The E.D.A.R. redesigns for the Christmas season include visual references to Mobile Suit Gundam and Neon Genesis Evangelion.
  • The Sanitarium map and its achievements, introduced in the Yuletide Horrors update, are a big reference to H. P. Lovecraft and his work.
  • Sometimes, when calling E.D.A.Rs to aid her, the Matriarch will say "E.D.A.Rs, would you kindly?"
  • The Hellmark Station map features the mercs heading to King's Cross Station in London to thwart a demonic uprising... wait a second, hell portals? London? Sci-fi/horror esthetics and an invasion by the legions of hell? Why does all that sound so familar...?
  • When killing a Zed with poison, Ana Larive might quip "Not so Chemical Romance!"
  • When going underground, Mrs. Foster might sing "Underground, overground, Wombling free...".
• Shovel Strike: The "Crovel", the Berserker's starting weapon and something that can be occasionally found throughout the maps, is a survivalist shovel combined with a crowbar.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Support Specialist's whole shtick, as in the previous game, swapping out the starting Benelli M3 for a down-chambered Mossberg but otherwise keeping all the varieties - double-barreled, pump-action (including one with incendiary shells as a cross-class Firebug weapon), semi-auto and magazine-fed, with updates also adding the "HZ-12" that's a combination of all the above (mag-fed, pump-action, but has two barrels that are fired one after the other before rechambering) and going up to eleven on the double-barrel variety with an even stronger four-barreled version. The Medic also gets in on it with the introduction of the HMTech-301 shotgun, a semi-automatic shotgun that combines its benefits with the medic's healing-dart launcher. Even the Berserker can join in as of the Christmas Crackdown update with the addition of the Frost Fang, a DLC shotgun that fires ice and comes with an axe to defend against close-up attacks and cut cleanly through zeds.
• Sinister Subway:
  • France has some pretty nasty subways which can be seen on the maps Burning Paris and Hostile Ground. The lack of light and hordes of Zeds make them a fun place to traverse.
  • King's Cross Station from the Hellmark Station map introduced in the 2020 Halloween event has them both beat. It's a sprawling ruin covered in gore that is currently undergoing a demonic invasion by the forces of hell!
• Space Station: The Containment Station community map takes place in an orbital Horzine station.
• Spin Attack:
  • The Scrake may spin in a circle while holding its running chainsaw out. It's one of their more dangerous attacks, as it has the potential to hit things other than the intended target (like your Medic).
  • Gorefiends are able to spin like a top to inflict a rapid series of slashes on higher difficulties, which can shred through the armor and health of someone who can't move fast enough to get away from them when they start on it. The Gorefiend is immune to multiple forms of incapacitation during the attack, including parries.
  • The King Fleshpound adds onto its repertoire with one of these. Like with the Scrake, it's one of its most dangerous attacks, between the much wider angle it can hit things from and the fact that it also makes the King move much faster than even his full-tilt running speed.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: Every Zed makes some kind of distinct noise to warn the user of its approach, which compensates for a necessarily limited field of view. Your character also calls out particularly dangerous Zeds when they are near.
  • The Siren in particular has a rather quiet approach and can be easily missed, especially in a crowd. Your character will speak up before she gets within range.
  • Stalkers are nigh invisible but your character will remark when there are any nearby.
  • Every time a scrake or a fleshpound spawns, a loud roar is heard; the scrake's is accompanied by the roar of a chainsaw, while the fleshpound's is noticeably deeper and louder.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Zig-zagged. Hans Volter may have been a Nazi, and he did have considerable technology during the war (for instance cryogenically freezing a wounded soldier from the Battle of Stalingrad), but save for his guns, all the technology he uses nowadays belongs to Horzine.
• Swipe Your Blade Off: Pressing the reload key with a bloodied melee weapon plays a cleaning animation, which for the Katana and Zweihander takes this form.
• Swiss-Army Weapon:
  • The Berserker's top tier weapon is the Eviscerator, a motorized device with both a fixed buzzsaw for melee attacks and a magazine of circular sawblades launched as projectiles. As it's technically classified as a melee weapon, even being able to block and parry, the Skirmisher ability will boost movement speed while holding it. It's effectively the Berserker's Chainsaw and Buzzsaw bow from the first game combined into one weapon.
  • The second set of premium DLC weapons combine this in gameplay: the SWAT's Glock and Shield combine a SWAT's typical SMG with the damage-blocking/damage-shielding shield of the Berserker, and the Mosin-Nagant gives Sharpshooters the melee capability of Berserkers.
  • The Frost Fang, the sole DLC weapon added in the 2020 Christmas Crackdown update counts too for this trope. Not only is it a shotgun that fires bursts of ice that can freeze zeds in their place, but it also doubles as an axe to slice them apart and parry attacks. To top it off, zeds frozen by it take extra damage from the axe and it's part of the crossperk system, being useable by both the Support and Berserker.
• Sword Drag: Gorefasts drag their blade across the ground when they're walking. Helps to make them look intimidating.
• Sword Lines: Every passage through air of a projectile or a melee weapon causes visible distortion. If you swing your Katana you can see the swoosh. Though it's harder to see with bullets, especially your own.
• Taking You with Me:
  • Be careful about Husks that are close to death. They will gladly show you their impression of a suicide bomber.
  • The old "Drop all your grenades right at your feet" is still a valid tactic if the Zeds manage to surround you; just make sure you aren't the last one alive — unless you're a Medic, in which case it will actually heal you while poisoning the Zeds. Berzerker EMP grenades and Sharpshooter "freeze" grenades also do less self-damage and may be survivable.
  • The Demolitionist perk has a skill that allows them to trigger an explosion on themselves once per wave if they take lethal damage. However, the skill leaves the player with 5 health afterwards.
• Technicolor Fire: The Infernal Realms map has bright green flames and even what appears to be glowing green lava.
• Technicolor Toxin: Green gas and Bloat bile are poison to you, blue gas is poison to zeds.
• Trap Door: The Biolapse map contains two of these in the prison room. Both lead to a medium-sized fire that burns anyone unfortunate enough to fall in, mercenary or zed. It can be used to great effect with a Berserker leading them, but watch out. Each door can only be used once before needing a 90 second recharge.
• Trick Bomb: Each perk gets their own special grenade with a unique effect (though some types are reused) that fits with their role. In addition to classic standbys such as EMPs, molotovs and flashbangs are more exotic designs like the medic grenade or freeze grenade.
• Tron Lines: Medic weapons and the syringe. Hans also achieves this effect with what looks like IV lines attached to the needles on his gloves.
• Turns Red:
  • Husks that are low on health will attempt to sprint toward a player and detonate themselves on the player.
  • Scrakes become enraged and chase after the players way faster after taking damage (on the Hell on Earth difficulty, after losing only 10% of their total health) while also becoming a lot harder to incapacitate.
  • Zig-Zagged with the chest device on Fleshpounds, which as in the first game glows yellow under normal conditions and then glows red when they get angry after being damaged... but they can also get enraged without you hitting them at all, start their timer for becoming enraged just after seeing players, and will always stop being enraged (for a little while, at least) after hitting a player rather than being mad for the rest of the fight.
  • Volter's chest and IV lines go from green to yellow to red as you drain his health, and he becomes faster and more aggressive each time.
  • The Patriarch will sprint and use his different attacks far more often as he survives more phases and ends up more damaged. He'll also start using a mortar attack and being able to shoot his minigun while moving.
  • The King Fleshpound will start a series of explosions around him while he starts pounding the ground and begins raging, fire a laser beam out of his chest, and put up a shield as he becomes more damaged to progress him through his phases.
  • The Abomination farts more often as well as trying to suck in players and bite them more often as he loses health. Additionally, he starts sprinting, farting and spawning his spawns rapidly for a time for every 20% of his health that is lost.
  • As the Matriarch's longer-ranged weapons get damaged, she moves faster and instead focuses more on close-ranged attacks. At 25% health, she'll cloak to get in closer and do more melee damage as well.
• Unorthodox Reload: Gunslingers with the Speedloader ability will perform fancy trick reloads with their perk-relevant handguns, with the revolvers making use of Gun Twirling. This takes a fraction of the time of a normal reload, especially if one is Dual Wielding.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Volter loses his cool as his fight progresses, starting from constantly taunting you to wondering how you're still standing as he enters the next phase. He starts screaming about how you have to die now on his final phase.
  STOP LIVING, SCUM! WHO SAID YOU COULD GO ON LIVING?!
  • The Patriarch will similarly lose his cool whenever the squad brings his health down to critical levels and he runs off to heal, especially if they manage to corner him or have a Commando on their team, which allows them to track him when he turns invisible.
  Come my children! Don't let your daddy die!
  This isn't fair!
  It can't end like this!
  • Averted with the Matriarch, who remains focused and threatening during the whole battle regardless of damage to her mech. She even lampshades it at one point.
  I will not panic. Not yet...
• Very High Velocity Rounds: Inverted. Pistols, submachine guns, and rifles are normally hitscan weapons (despite the visuals). When Zed Time is active, they use actual projectiles, none of which exceed 200 m/s. This can actually make getting headshots more difficult in Zed Time than outside of it.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • When you buy any weapon, it comes with half of its maximum ammo. When selling a weapon back to the trader, the current ammunition supply does not affect its sellback price. Thus, when certain weapons are almost out of ammo, selling them and buying them back can restore some ammunition for cheaper than just buying the ammunition directly.
  • Hans Volter used to be best dealt with in between waves by deliberately letting him grab a player to siphon health from, since he was Nigh-Invulnerable otherwise. An update changed this to give him a shield as he attempts to grab players to heal, one that can be destroyed when damaged enough to break him out of that phase and go back to just shooting and lobbing grenades.
  • The Patriarch's minigun suffers from an oversight where if you're as close to him as possible when he's firing it, he will not be able to hurt you at all, because you clip right through the barrel and beyond the exit point of his bullets. Because of this, if he decides to use it right next to you, running right at him increases your chances of survival and lets you dish out some free damage for several seconds. Just be prepared to parry afterwards...
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Scrakes and Fleshpounds can be this to both new and old players: They are much tougher and faster than previously, and only get worse with fewer living players.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • One of two possible attacks the Matriarch can use with her Arm Cannon. If you don't find cover immediately when she starts firing, you'll be fried in seconds.
  • The players have access to the Killerwatt's overcharge mode and the microwave gun.
• Wham Episode: The new "Objective" mode for certain maps has new plot developments that look to shake things up, namely the fact that Horzine is now actively working to cover up their involvement in the outbreak by violently suppressing any evidence and silencing anyone they feel could expose them, including the player characters and the Trader. The ZED Landing map in particular ends with the Trader being abducted by a Horzine strike force.
• You Will Not Evade Me:
  • As in the first game, the Patriarch has a tentacle he can use to grab players from range and pull them in close for a melee attack.
  • E.D.A.R. Trappers fire a short ranged beam that will immobilize any player hit by it, turning them into sitting ducks for the Zeds. If you're low on health and trying to flee, this can spell your doom.
  • Once her Arm Cannon is destroyed, the Matriarch can take a cue from her father and launch a tentacle that will drag whoever it catches towards her, leaving the target within range of her devastating melee attacks.