Video Game / Lollipop Chainsaw

As far as last things to see before you die (again) go, this one's not so bad.

"My family's throwing me a birthday party after school. Nick is totally freaked out having to meet my family for the first time. But I'm even more freaked out for him to find out about my family. Because even though they're the most amazing ever, some of our traditions are a little... unusual. Nick's already so sweet to never complain about my ginormous fat butt, if he finds out I'm the number one World's biggest weirdo, he might not stick around... I'd be so sad, I'd seriously cry forever. Oh, no! I'm totally late! I'm supposed to meet him before school! I'm so lame, ugh. I hope Nick isn't mad. That's about the worst thing that could ever happen!"

— Juliet Starling

Juliet Starling never had it so good. She's a popular cheerleader at San Romero High School, California. She's smart, athletic, and she has both a supportive family and a cute boyfriend. To top it all off, she's celebrating her eighteenth birthday after school! What could go wrong?

...well, there's the minor matter of a Zombie Apocalypse tearing through San Romero High—which has claimed her boyfriend, Nick, as a casualty. But fear not for dear Juliet: the not-so-average cheerleader has enough knowledge of magic to separate Nick's head from his infected body while keeping him alive. Why? Because she's a zombie hunter, duh.

Armed with her magical chainsaw to keep any grope-happy zombies at bay and aided by the support of her family and her utterly bewildered disembodied boyfriend, Juliet becomes the last line of defense against disgruntled classmate/emo-goth-wannabe Swan and the Dark Purveyors, a group of Rock'n'Roll Zombie Lords who want to rip the entire world's collective head open and gnaw on the brain matter therein.

And if that happens, who's going to help Juliet celebrate her birthday?

Lollipop Chainsaw is a 2012 game from Grasshopper Manufacture, created by Suda51, James Gunn and Tomo Ikeda for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360. Suda wanted to create something different from the standard zombie fare with this game; as part of what he brands "a piece of pop zombie entertainment", zombies explode into bright, multicolored displays of light and glitter instead of blood and gore (instead a mix of the two for the English release). He also tried to push the limits of how much he could blend pop music sensibilities into a zombie-themed Beat 'em Up.

A remaster, titled Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, is set to release in 2024 with updated graphics and music.

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Lollipop Chainsaw contains the following tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Juliet and her dad, Gideon, have a number of these amongst the zombies. The farmer zombie photoshops Juliet's head onto swimsuit model bodies. The female police officer zombie gets off with her nightstick while looking at class photos of Gideon. Swan also crushes on Juliet leading up to the whole zombie mess, which is why getting rid of Nick is one of his goals.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Juliet's chainsaw cuts through entire four-door sedans, chain-link fences, steel security shutters, stacks of trees, concrete pipes, bus doors, and I-beams. She repeatedly uses it to cut flying cars in half before they can hit her. It's an explicitly magical chainsaw, of course.
• Achievement Mockery:
  • The trophy "Gunn Struck", which is awarded to you once you shock Juliet a total of ten times.
  • The Achievement "I Swear! It Was An Accident!", which is awarded for looking up Juliet's skirt.
• Action Bomb: Some zombies wear dynamite around their waists.
• Action Girl: Juliet and Cordelia are both seasoned zombie hunters. Juliet and her chainsaw gets the most focus, but Cordelia is skilled with her sniper rifle.
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: On the Japanese cover◊, Juliet and Nick are laying on a bed with lollipops scattered all around them, and Juliet looks so soft and cuddly. The American/European cover, on the other hand◊, depicts Juliet holding her chainsaw in one hand and a lollipop in the other, looking like a total badass who shouldn't be fucked with, while a zombie can be seen coming out of a locker in the background. This extends to the game's logo too.
• Anguished Declaration of Love:
  • Nick as he lies zombifying in the prologue. Juliet reciprocates, even while severing his head.
  • Near the end of the game, Juliet gives one to Nick before his Heroic Sacrifice.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • Yumil's hobbies are listed as disemboweling, drinking blood, and balancing a ball on his nose.
  • Killabilly's influences are genocide, splinters, suffering, rape, roadkill, Michael Bublé, flat tires, Satan, Charley horses, oppression, torture, and M. Night Shyamalan.
• Artistic License – Biology: Hilariously Lampshaded by Nick, after he's reduced to a talking head.
  Nick: (while learning that he's now just a head) How am I still talking... WITHOUT A FUCKING THORAX!?
• Art Shift: Several things in this game (such as the menus, loading screens, and the Game Over screen) are depicted in the style of a vintage comic book from the 70's or 80's. During Chapter 2, there's an Art Shift that happens during gameplay: Whenever Juliet—a semi-realistic-looking character—gets shocked by electricity or lightning, viewing from the front reveals that she has a cartoonish skeleton.
• Ass Kicks You: Juliet has an attack where she launches herself butt-first at an enemy, making them groggy.
• Athletic Arena Level: The infamous "Zombie Baseball" mini-game, in which Juliet must help Nick (whose head is attached to a zombie) score three home runs.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Courtesy of Zed, who attacks by yelling swear words.
  • Nick gets one at the beginning when he realizes he's a disembodied head.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The culmination of Swan's diabolical revenge plan involves the summoning of Killabilly, a ginormous, zombified, Elvis Presley-esque abomination who has enough power to destroy Earth if Juliet and Nick don't stop him. Fittingly, he's the final boss of the game.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: Cordelia and Juliet's Fastball Special.
• Auto-Tune: The way Josey talks.
  Josey: Hey Juliet, are you ready to boogie-woogie?
  Juliet: Stop making fun of Stephen Hawking, you jerk!
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite all the weird shit that happens to them, and however often Nick complains about the situation, Juliet and Nick really do care deeply about each other.
• Badass Adorable: Juliet is an attractive, cute-looking cheerleader who is also a badass zombie hunter with a chainsaw. Among the foes she saws down are the Dark Purveyors, sentient zombies with godlike power.
• Badass Biker:
  • Gideon Starling mows through a crowd of zombies on a motorcycle in the final battle, before making his Heroic Sacrifice in order to help Juliet defeat Killabilly.
  • Lewis Legend is a villainous example. His introduction has him driving a motorcycle, and his boss battle reveals he can transform it into an elephant-themed Mini-Mecha. The first phase of his boss battle focuses on getting him off his motorcycle so the player can perform a finisher.
• Badass Bystander: A Red Shirt early on fought off a couple of zombies for a bit before getting eaten.
• Badass Family: The Starlings are a family of zombie hunters.
• Bears Are Bad News: Vikke wears a still-living bear skin named Yumil, and uses it as a last resort to kill Juliet.
• Beat 'em Up: Gameplay is quite similar to another game in the Grasshopper pedigree.
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  Nick: I think that dude is a little too... intimate with those chickens, if you know what I mean.
  Juliet: You mean he has ''sex'' with them? Vomit!
• Between My Legs: When Juliet first encounters the zombies.
• Big Bad: Swan. His actions of summoning the Dark Purveyors and unleashing a Zombie Apocalypse on San Romero brings him into direct conflict with zombie-hunting cheerleader Juilet.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Dark Purveyors' death speech explicitly tells you what's going on and the identity of the final boss. However, even if you know Latin, you probably will miss the meaning of the latter until the third or fourth time.
  Dark Purveyor: Meus Vitai, Rege, pro nefario coepto. (My Life, O King, for your villainous conception.)
• Black Screen of Death: In the bad ending, when everyone comes home and find that mom is a zombie, the screen blacks out as we hear everyone scream, followed by a loud crunch, implying that the mom killed them.
• Blade Lock: Carried over from No More Heroes. If Juliet and a armed zombie attacks at the same time, you have to press the Y/Triangle button rapidly to win. Doing so stuns the zombie, letting you kill it.
• Bond One-Liner: Juliet is full of those after defeating a Dark Purveyor. Admit it, "Looks like you’re out of coins, weird voice guy" is a good one.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Gideon Starling still dotes on his three daughters like they're his little girls, even though they're all capable of handling themselves to varying degrees. He is not happy with Juliet dating Nick, and enraged by the possibility that Nick performed sexual acts with her.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick:
  • Nick's hobbies are, as listed: "Badminton, Bass Guitar, Masturbation".
  • Zed's influences are listed as "The Misfits, Black Flag, torturing small animals".
  • Vikke's influences: "Bathory, Enslaved, necrophilia".
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Juliet interacts with the bosses' biography bubbles in a manner reminiscent of Deadpool.
  • Juliet also angrily puts down her chainsaw, glares at the player and covers herself when the player tries to look up her skirt (even if her outfit has no skirt to look up).
• Bring My Brown Pants: One of the classmates you rescue says to you, "Don't worry about the smell. I just shit myself."
  • In Chapter 5, when facing a huge horde of zombies, Nick says that if he still had a body, he'd be shitting all over the place.
• Buffy Speak: The game's premise is Buffy the Vampire Slayer on acid instead of crystal meth, of course there's this.
• Car Fu: Twice Juliet has to slaughter a field of zombies with a farm combine.
• Casual Danger Dialog: Most of the game has everyone, especially Juliet and Nick, casually making conversation even though they're in the middle of a devastating Zombie Apocalypse.
• Catchphrase: Juliet tends to say "What the dick?" a lot. This is lampshaded the first time she says it, where she then explains she just made it up 'cause she wanted to have a catch phrase.
• Chainsaw Good: Juliet's weapon of choice (and a heart-spangled one at that!); Probably the most conventional element of the game.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Used on the "Special Edition" trailer, as a gamer talks about his sexual fantasies with Juliet.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Seeing as how this game is from the creators of No More Heroes, this is no surprise.
• Cool Bike:
  • Gideon Starling's bike.
  • On the villain's side, there's Lewis Legend's "Ellyphant", a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that can transform into an elephant-themed Mini-Mecha at will. It's also outfitted with weaponry such as a machine gun, a missile launcher, and sawblades. It's also what makes Lewis extremely tough.
• Cool Sidecar: It's less cool, but enough to fit Juliet and Nick in together.
• Cosplay: Several of Juliet's alternate costumes are based on anime currently airing at the time of the game's release. One pre-order bonus costume is a gender-bent version of Ash Williams' outfit from Evil Dead 2.
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits sequence shows Nick, Juliet, and her family running through all of the areas they previously visited, complete with a "wheel-like" effect.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Played for Laughs; one of the zombies considers being unable to forget a Katy Perry song a "terrible" way to die.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Just a minor example, as most of the things that Juliet does in the cutscenes she really can do in game, but when she encounters Lewis Legend he lets rip a hail of bullets on her. She not only dodges them with ease, but she's also able to parry a couple of them as well. In game, her only defence is dodging. In fact, it's the enemy that can parry you leading to a Blade Lock to smash through their block.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: There really isn't anything special about turning eighteen for Juliet — a zombie outbreak just happened to appear during this time. Though Swan might have picked this day to "get back" at Juliet for 'rejecting' him.
• Delinquent Hair: A few examples in the game.
  • Zed, a punk rock archetype, sports a foot-tall bright red mohawk.
  • Brett, one of the zombies found in Stage 5, wears a pompadour.
  • Gideon has an Elvis-esque pompadour despite being in his early 40s.
  • Lewis Legend, a rock n' roll archetype, also has a pompadour, though it's exaggerated ala JP from REDLINE.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The drop kick can be hard to use, but it's one of the easiest ways to make zombies groggy, leading to a One-Hit KO.
• Dirty Old Man: Morikawa, whose hobbies include collecting women's underwear. In his intro scene, he's basically looking up Juliet's skirt while talking to Nick.
• Disaster Dominoes: Juliet's father punches a building, causing this and ends up setting off a explosion that gains entry to Swan's lair.
• Disney Death: Gideon performs a Heroic Sacrifice to help Juliet and Nick get to Killabilly during the final chapter. He somehow survives.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Swan starts a Zombie Apocalypse because he was constantly bullied in high school and because he felt 'rejected' by Juliet when he saw her dating Nick.
  • An example of this trope being Played for Laughs occurs in Stage 1, when Juliet is fighting the zombified Mr. Fitzgibbon:
    Nick: He gave me a D last week. Kill him!
• Drives Like Crazy: Juliet's younger sister Rosalind, who is seen causing a multi-car pile-up in the intro. This is what makes Juilet suspicious when, in the Farm level, she meets "Rosalind" (actually Mariska in diguise) who mentions fixing the bus, when the real Rosalind doesn't know anything about cars.
• Ear Worm: A zombie exclaims:
  Zombie: I can't get this Katy Perry song out of my head! What a terrible way to die!
• Enfant Terrible: Juliet claims to have killed a zombie with a sharpened rattle when she was six months old.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: Most of the special attacks are full of rainbows.
• Everything's Better with Sparkles: The sparkles can be seen on the background of all the Nick attacks.
• Expy: Swan strongly resembles a human version of Billy from Saw who seems to have stolen Beetlejuice's suit.
• Fastball Special: Using Nick's head. While he's still conscious and lucid. He returns the favor occasionally when he gets a body to get Juliet to new heights. In a one-off scene, Cordelia assists Juliet with one to get her onto the second boss's flying boat.
• Fetishized Abuser: Downplayed with Juliet. She genuinely loves Nick and couldn't bear to lose him, which is why she cast a spell on his head after decapacitating him to save him from zombification. However, she can be Innocently Insensitive to Nick's plight, and according to Nick, she treats him like a fashion accessory more than a person. Juliet also doesn't defend Nick from her older/younger sisters when they abuse him as well.
• Fever Dream Episode: It is left extremely vague what (if anything) in the Farm level actually happened other than the final boss.
• Flat "What": Nick's reaction to the introduction of the Nick Popper.
• Fingore: There's an achievement you can get by cutting off the final boss' fingers.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Bosses' and characters' stats flash on screen when they're introduced, but are way too fast to read all of them your first way through.
• Gender Flip: In the trailers, Juliet comes off as a female Travis Touchdown.
• Girlish Pigtails: On Juliet, of course, and between these and the cheerleader outfit the line between cute and sexy is being played for all it's worth.
• Girly Bruiser: Juliet being a cheerleader with the aforementioned chainsaw qualifies big time!
• Goomba Stomp: Juliet can do this to zombies.
• Gory Discretion Shot: There's no real gore in the game, despite it involving chainsaws and zombies. When a zombie is sliced apart or killed, instead of blood, there's usually rainbows and hearts. This is lampshaded by Nick, who asks how she can make rainbows come out of zombies, to which Juliet simply says, "From awesome!"
  • Also seen on the "Special Edition" live-action ad, when Juliet kills the gamers.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Juliet mentions that she needs to find her 'Sensei' and Nick figures she means her teacher. Amazed that he can speak Japanese, Juliet starts speaking it out of the blue... Nick corrects her, stating that he simply knows what Sensei means.
• Gratuitous Latin: Swan's ritual with the Dark Purveyors involves chanting Latin phrases.
• Greaser Delinquents:
  • Brett, one of the zombies found in Stage 5, is a Greaser with the archetypical pompadour and leather jacket. As a Named Zombie, he's stronger and faster than normal zombies, and attacks with a guitar.
  • Lewis Legend, one of the Dark Purveyors, is also a Greaser due to being based on classic rock. He uses a guitar-gun and drives around a flaming motorcycle that can transform into an elephant-themed Mini-Mecha.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Using items called Nick Tickets, Juliet can use Nick's head in a variety of attacks all throughout the game.
• Groin Attack: With a chainsaw. Also comes in regular kick-in-the-nads variety if Juliet escapes a grab from a zombie.
• Guilt-Based Gaming: Die in the Prologue chapter. Go on, do it.
• Hand Wave: Juliet uses magic her sensei taught her to keep Nick's head alive.
• Hard Mode Mooks: There are named zombies you need to slay to complete an album, and some of them only appear on harder difficulties.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: This happens regularly to Juliet's victims. And she does it both horizontally and vertically, too. Mariska also does this to herself after Juliet performs her first finisher. After magically regenerating her split halves into two, the two Mariskas then rip themselves in half into four with their own bare hands.
• Hellish Copter: Juliet tells the helicopter pilot "Glad you made it, pilot dude!" He dies five seconds later.
• Hidden Depths: Juliet, despite her ditzy personality, has a 3.4 GPA, speaks fluent Japanese, knows magic, and has been a zombie hunter since she was six months old.
• Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Juliet was a zombie hunter since she was six months old. Which means her father exposed her to zombies when she was only six months old. She killed it with a sharpened rattle.
• Hypocritical Humor: Juliet has no problem cutting zombies apart, but is disgusted when Nick tells her that he once dissected a frog. He even replies with, "THAT'S gross?"
• Impairment Shot: Happens when Nick regains consciousness after Juliet decapitates him.
• Instant Awesome: Just Add Mecha!: Lewis' elephant mecha and Mariska's three-headed chicken mecha.
• Insistent Terminology: Heaven and Hell are referred to as "The Land Beyond Words" and "Rotten World", respectively.
• It's a Wonderful Failure:
  • Getting a Game Over results in the screen turning gray as Juliet faints, and then a comic book panel of her as a zombie, rising from her grave and reaching for Nick's head. There are different variants to this Game Over screen, depending on how you died, but the most unsettling (and depressing) one is definitely the one you get when you die in the Prologue chapter. Six words: "Juliet... I will always love you..."
  • Finished the game, but didn't save all the classmates? TOO BAD! After the credits, everyone comes home to find that Mom is a zombie. "Time for dinner! And by dinner, I mean...YOU!" ''(everyone screams, screen cuts to black, CRUNCH).
• I Was Beaten by a Girl: Vikke's reaction to being defeated.
• Jiggle Physics: Juliet is a busty teenager in a skimpy outfit who does all kinds of crazy acrobatics. There's lots of jiggling involved.
• Last Kiss: Juliet and Nick share one before his Heroic Sacrifice. It is ultimately subverted when Nick comes Back from the Dead.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Juliet is apparently able to read the title cards that introduce each of the zombie bosses, since she reacts to them, and, in one case, cuts it in half.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to other zombie apocalypse franchises one can think of, this game is rather silly.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: The PS3 version suffers from this greatly. Loading screens usually last for 30-45 seconds, sometimes they may even take a minute. This can get very irritating if you want to skip a cutscene, because the game has to load the cutscene, then load again after you skip the cutscene.
• Losing Your Head:
  • Juliet's boyfriend Nick, now attached to her waist. He was bitten by a zombie and she "saved" him the only way she could. He can still talk, though, and definitely voices his displeasure about his predicament. Many of the puzzles in the game are solved by giving Nick a temporary zombie body; Nick always expresses delight in having a body again, however temporarily.
  • Later happens to Swan, combined with a hefty dose of Boom, Headshot!.
• A Love to Dismember: Juliet does this to Nick's head, with the twist being that he's still alive thanks to a magic spell she cast on him immediately after.
• Manly Tears: Gideon cries Tears of Joy at the beginning of Stage 4 after Juliet drew up a plan on how to save Rosalind.
  Gideon: [crying] My little girl is a tactical genius.
• Martial Arts and Crafts: Juliet utilizes her cheerleading chops as a branching series of quick, light, set-up combos.
• The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Played for Laughs — Juliet is worried that being a zombie hunter would make Nick think she's weird.
• Medium Blending: The game's artstyle tries to achieve a 70's or 80's comic book style, and greatly succeeds. Character models have outlines around them, shading is stylish, menus are designed to look like panels from a comic book, and several times, the game even shifts to a comic book illustration.
• Me's a Crowd: During the boss fight with Mariska, she splits herself into four, then eight, duplicates. You only have to finish the real one.
• Meta Guy: A good portion of Nick's commentary is pointing out how absurd pretty much everything in the game is.

• Minidress of Power: Juliet wears her San Romero High cheerleading outfit into battle, which includes an archetypal cheerleader miniskirt.
• Moment Killer: After Nick comes Back from the Dead, he and Juliet are about to share a kiss... only to be interrupted by Rosalind, Cordelia, and Gideon showing up.
• Money Is Experience Points: Medals can be used not only to buy health-restoring lollipops, but also upgrade the protagonist's health, attack power, and recovery, and also learn new moves.
• Monster and the Maiden: Juliet is a zombie slayer who wants to defeat the Dark Purveyors, find her family and get out of her zombie-infected town. She's accompanied by her boyfriend Nick, who's just a severed head (who she decapitated herself to stop the infection from spreading) she has attached to her skirt. Nick can still talk, briefly take over headless zombies to help Juliet with heavy lifting and be used as a projectile, but it's Juliet who has to handle most of the fighting and legwork herself.
• Mood Whiplash: Towards the end, several cutscenes are played more seriously, at least compared to the rest of the game. Going into super mode starts playing Toni Basil's "Mickey" no matter what is going on, causing great contrast with serious scenes such as Juliet's dad's Heroic Sacrifice and Nick complaining about being a head including such gems as requesting to be left in a mailbox or mercy-killed.
• Morph Weapon: The chainsaw, normally in her gym bag when not zombie hunting, "magically" changes into her various different weapons, including her cheerleader pom-poms, a grenade launcher, a party popper that fires her boyfriend's disembodied head, etc.
• Morton's Fork: Poor Juliet. Don't do anything? Zombies are free to roam the city and kill everybody. Kill the purveyors who are leading the zombies? Summon a bigger zombie. The only way to not be screwed over is if somebody else killed one of the purveyors, which was unlikely to happen in this situation.
• Ms. Fanservice: Juliet. Doing acrobatics in a miniskirt and the variety of equally skimpy alternate costumes.
• Multiple Endings: Just two: a good ending and a bad ending. (To get the good ending, Juliet must not only complete the game, but save every one of her classmates while doing so. Otherwise, you get the bad ending.)
• Mundane Utility: One of the few video games to use a chainsaw to cut wood.
• Mushroom Samba: During Stage 3, courtesy of Mariska.
• Musical Assassin: The Dark Purveyors; The first, Zed, fires projectiles at you in the form of guitar riffs and lyrical profanities.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: The Sexy Rider Suit. It's a hot pink jumpsuit for Juliet, with the front zipper unzipped all the way down to the crotch.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Killing all five Dark Purveyors only ends up completing Swan's ritual and summoning Killabilly.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Of all the ways Swan could have killed himself, he had to choose the way that ultimately allowed Juliet to use Nick to take control of his body and foil his plot - shoot himself in the head with Lewis' guitar-gun.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: "It's like Mecha-Chicken-Zilla!"
• Non Sequitur: When you save a fellow student, their response is either thanking Juliet, lampshading the zombie apocalypse... or just one of these.
  I need a girlfriend!
  My favorite president is Warren G. Harding!
• Noodle Incident: Nick mentions a "Father O'Malley" on a couple of occasions, but doesn't go into too many specifics.
• No Sympathy: No one seems sympathetic to Nick and his plight of being a talking head-slash-Butt-Monkey. It's played for laughs, though it does contribute to his growing misery.
• Oh, Crap!: Both Juliet and Nick have this reaction when they see Killabilly, the Zombie of Zombies.
  Juliet: Oh, no...
  Juliet: The Gates are open... It's the Zombie of Zombies... Killabilly!
  Nick: Yesterday, I stubbed my toe. I was like, "This is the worst day ever!"... Yeah, not quite.
• Only Sane Man: Nick. However, he eventually starts to give up on logic.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The rank-and-file? Not so much, other than their dialogue ("Let me fuck your father"?). The Dark Purveyors? Definitely.
  • The rank and file are really different. There are scarecrow zombies that can fly and hurl body parts at you, firefighter zombies that can breathe fire on you, cheerleader zombies that can fight in a handstand position after getting their legs cut off and then there are the zombified livestock at Farmer O'Bannon's.
• Out-of-Character Alert: Rosalind, after picking up Juliet and Nick in a bus, said that it had broken down but she was able to fix it. The red flags go up because Juliet pointed out that just last week Rosalind took her car to the mechanic because she didn't know cars need oil.
• Parody Commercial: "Zom-Be-Gone, from the makers of Lollipop Chainsaw!" From caked-on spleen, to totally clean!
• Pink Is Erotic: Josey is the fourth Dark Purveyor fought by Juliet, he is known as the "Master of funk" and makes sexual remarks towards Juliet. Josey wields a pink keytar, wears a bright pink fur coat with a pink star, a pink top hat, and pink high-heeled sneakers. His arena also has a pink and purple aesthetic and it has pink lighting.
• The Power of Rock: Each of the Dark Purveyors is based on a different genre of rock music: punk rock for Zed, viking/black metal for Vikke, psychedelia/acid rock for Mariska, funk for Josey, and classic rock for Lewis Legend. The Final Boss resembles Elvis Presley, maybe with a little Gene Simmons thrown in.
• Power-Up Food: Juliet can refill her Life Meter using candy. (Not just lollipops, even though those are her favorite. She can also use things like jellybeans and sugary cereal.)
• Power-Up Motif: Toni Basil's "Hey Mickey" plays whenever Juliet goes into Super Mode.
• Press X to Not Die: Boy howdy. Interestingly, the button you have to press does correspond to the action Juliet needs to take, making it more intuitive than most QTEs.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Dark Purveyors. All of them have personalities that revolve around the music genres they're based on - Zed (Punk Rock) is a loud, foul-mouthed punk, Vikke (Viking Metal) is a boisterous zombie who fancies himself a warrior, Mariska (Psychedelia/Acid Rock) is a Horror Hippie stoned off her ass, Josey (Funk) is a party animal who enjoys dancing and playing video-games, and Lewis Legend (Classic Rock) is a flirtatious smooth-talker who also is a trigger-happy sadist.
• Refuge in Audacity: A cheerleader accessorizing with her boyfriend's severed head spunkily chainsawing zombies into a fine, glittery, rainbow mist? What exactly did you expect from Suda?
• Rule of Cool: Cheerleader saves the world with a magic chainsaw and the decapitated head of her boyfriend.

• School Setting Simulation: The opening level of Lollipop Chainsaw takes place on the campus of San Romero High School, and has Juliet, the heroine of the story, chainsaw her way through zombified classmates and faculty.

• Senseless Sacrifice: At the end of the prologue, Nick performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Juliet from a zombie mook, not knowing her profession at the time. He ends up bitten, and she effortlessly dispatches the zombie.
• Sequential Boss: Every single Dark Purveyor must be defeated at least two or three times. Yes, the first one, too.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: The three survivors you rescue during the game's prologue end up dying and turning into zombies anyway after the helicopter they are on crashes.
• Shout-Out: Now with its own section.
• Spectacular Spinning: Juliet has a few combos that involve spinning her body around.
• Spoiled Sweet: Juliet appears to cater to this from the various cutscenes. She's obviously got top-tier social standing within the school, but doesn't seem to have Alpha Bitch tendencies...save for dealing with Swan and his minions, of course.
• Stuff Blowing Up: School buses crashing and exploding, helicopters crashing/being shot and exploding, exploding zombies wrapped in dynamite, Swan's birthday cake for Juliet (a cake made of fuel tanks and dynamite, to be specific)...
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Courtesy of Nick:
  Nick: I've never had a space cake and it totally doesn't remind me of how I feel right now.
• Symbolic Blood: When you kill a zombie with a finishing move, wounds gush rainbows and clouds of shiny purple stars and hearts instead of the red stuff. Juliet evidently makes this happen through "awesomeness".
• Take That!:
  • Upon finding a bunch of jock zombies on treadmills, Nick and Juliet trade quips about how running zombies are stupid... which happens after fighting zombies that run, jump, fly, and can turn profanities into lasers. This is a joke at James Gunn's own expense, since he wrote the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake, which popularized the fast, running zombie.
  • The villain's name is Swan, he's associated with the undead, a pale-skinned loner, and he's a whiny Emo Teen. The only way it'd be more obvious is if Swan were female.
  • "I can't get this Katy Perry song out of my head! What a terrible way to die!"
  • "Now I hate you more than Carrot Top!"
  • Rosalind's dream is to meet Justin Bieber and add his skull to her collection of yeti skulls.
  • Juliet could be seen as a Take That! to negative teenage girl stereotypes, same as how Travis Touchdown was one towards male otaku. Fitting, since this game has been described as the Gender Flip version of No More Heroes.
  • In Chapter 4, Nick says, "If a guy in a red cap and blue overalls comes running at me, I'm going to vomit."
  • Blink and you'll miss it, but Killabilly's introduction screen lists his influences, like with the Dark Purveyors. Among them are M. Night Shyamalan and Michael Bublé.
• Theme Naming: Juliet and all her sisters are all named after characters from Shakespeare's plays. Their mother is named “Elizabeth”, referring to the time the plays were written. Their surname, “Starling”, may also be a reference to Shakespeare.
• Theme Music Power-Up: When Mickey by Toni Basil starts playing, it would be wise for the zombies to stay clear of Juliet.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: At the end, after putting up with all sorts of crap throughout the game, Nick is given a second chance at life thanks to his Heroic Sacrifice, and gets a new body in the process. Granted, it's a 77-year-old man's body, but he takes it all the same.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: By the end of the game, when Nick gains the body of Juliet's old mentor. His eyeline is level with her neck.

• Video Game Perversity Potential: You get a trophy/achievement just for looking up Juliet's skirt. As PS3Trophies.org said:
  "For all you perverts out there, you probably gotten this trophy out of sheer curiosity (cause that’s what we do right?). Heck, this is probably the first trophy you’ve earned."
• Virtual Paper Doll: Juliet can wear several different outfits.
• Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: One of the junkyard boss' attacks is this. The letters home in on Juliet and deal damage on impact.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Throughout Level 5, Nick, having effectively hit the Despair Event Horizon, repeatedly calls Juliet out on treating him like an accessory and never once respecting his wishes.
• Womb Level: The last phase of the final boss involves Juliet going inside Killabilly's body in order to finish him off.
• World of Ham: Just about everything here is over-the-top.
• X-Ray Sparks: Happens in Chapter 2 when Juliet gets struck by lightning, or is shocked by other electrical attacks. As mentioned earlier, viewing from the front shows that she has a goofy and cartoony skeleton, despite looking realistic on the outside (or, as realistic as the Unreal Engine allows, anyway), and you can even get a trophy/achievement for shocking her 10 times.
• Zombie Puke Attack: The end boss chokes up vanilla zombies.

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