Pajama Sam 2: Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening, also released as Pajama Sam: Thunder & Lightning, is a PC Adventure Game and the second main installment in the Pajama Sam franchise. It was made by Humongous Entertainment and released in 1998.
Sam, attempting to watch a TV show based on his favorite comic Pajama Man but being disturbed by a thunderstorm, decides to visit World Wide Weather atop the clouds via a path from his attic. He meets Thunder and Lightning, the operators of the company's weather machine, and asks them to stop making the weather to avoid dealing with his fears. However, Sam trips and presses a Big Red Button that breaks the machine, leading to bizarre and catastrophic storms around the globe. Sam is then tasked to find the four lost parts to fix the machine before things get worse and Mother Nature herself shows up to do an inspection.
Not only does it have Humongous's trademark randomized item location, but Thunder And Lightning Aren't So Frightening is one of the only games in company's library that allows you to customize the experience. A special menu allows you to pick and choose the spawn locations of the machine parts San needs to find, ensuring you see every pathway on subsequent playthroughs if you so wish. However, because a couple paths are mutually exclusive, you are given several presets instead of truly malleable path choices.
Tropes:
- Antepiece: Similar to the opening of the previous game, Sam is not allowed to leave the first screen until he has found his cape. Finding the cape requires clicking on anything notable in Sam's living room, teaching players how to interact with the game before they're sent off to World Wide Weather.
- Artistic License – Biology: The factory has a machine that grows crops on trees extremely quickly. Fruit that doesn't grow on trees, such as cucumbers and eggplants, are included, which Sam points out is odd."I didn't think cucumbers grew on trees..."
- Big Red Button: The console in Thunder and Lightning's office has a large red button surrounded by yellow and black stripes. The plot gets going when Sam accidentally presses it, causing explosions that result in pieces of the machines around World Wide Weather to get lost.
- Boring Vacation Slideshow: In the game's ending, Mother Nature arrives at World Wide Weather just as Sam is about to fix the fourth and final weather machine. When Mother Nature demands to see the monitors that show the various weather around the world, Lightning tries to stall her by showing her slides of her visit to Cleveland. An unamused Mother Nature's response is "I'll try to live with the disappointment."
- Broken Bridge: Sam can't get into the offices of World Wide Weather without an appointment. You can't make an appointment without knowing the number to ring to book one, and the number is in Thunder and Lightning's control room, which you can't enter without breaking the weather machines and setting the whole plot off.
- Call-Back: Several paintings in World Wide Weather depict minor characters from the previous game No Need To Hide When It's Dark Outside, such as Otto the boat and the anthropomorphic furniture from Darkness's living room.
- Cape Snag: Sam steps on his cape during his initial confrontation with Thunder and Lightning, causing him to go flying and land on the Big Red Button, damaging the weather equipment and setting the rest of the game's plot in motion.
- Cargo Concealment Caper: Early in the game, Sam tries to get into World Wide Weather to confront Thunder and Lightning about the thunderstorm they're making in his neighborhood, but the gate won't let him in. Sam sneaks around the back and finds a crowbar, which he uses to open a crate so he can stow away inside it and a forklift will take the crate to World Wide Weather.
- Collection Sidequest: Like how he had to find his socks in the previous game, Sam also lost the pieces to his puzzle. There are 16 of them, which can be found around World Wide Weather. Completing the puzzle shows one of a few randomly-selected images.
- Cultural Translation: One of the questions in the employee quiz may ask "Describe the US economy." The British dub changes this to "Describe the economy of the European Union."
- Cutting Off the Branches: In the previous game, Carrot would only appear in one of the mask paths and was thus not guaranteed to have met Sam. If the game rolls the path he shows up in here, however, Sam recognizes him and makes an explicit Call-Back to the Land of Darkness.
- Debug Room: Slightly more superfluous compared to the previous game as there is now an ingame option for selecting where each of the missing pieces are located, but still present and useful for determining the exact hiding spot of the Snowflake Inspector on that route.
- Developer's Foresight:
- When you meet George Someone, he'll greet you with a different line depending on how long you take from making the appointment to going into his office.
- In the route where Y-Pipe gets stuck in Foster Boondoggle's locker, you are required to find out Foster's birthdate since it's the lock combination. The birthdate is randomly chosen in each playthrough, so you have to give an apple to George Someone to gain access to the employee files to find it out. However, the game lets you open the lock by guessing. If Sam has the apple in his inventory after saving Y-Pipe this way, he'll comment on what he's supposed to do with the aforementioned fruit, only for the locker to eat it.
- With the vending machine in the employee lounge and the bottled rain facility playing pivotal roles in the route in which Wingnut is trapped inside said bottled rain facility, the other routes that use these elements (Y-Pipe being stuck in the vending machine and one of the striking Snowflake Inspector's potential hiding spots being the bottled rain facility) are never available with this route active.
- Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: The dust devil on the roof of the warehouse doesn't affect anyone who doesn't directly touch it, and anyone who gets caught in it just briefly gets dizzy after it spits them out.
- Double Take: When Sam makes it to Thunder and Lightning's control room, Lightning looks over her shoulder to face him before turning back to look at her work. She then turns around again, before loudly shrieking.
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: When Sam and SID find the Snowflake Inspector, he refuses to go back with them to his station because they don't appreciate him there. When Sam gives him a blue ribbon and claims he has been named employee of the month, he is convinced that they like him and appreciate him after all and agrees to go back to work.
- Empty Room Psych: Defied regarding the office bathroom; should it be not be the location where Velo is locked up nor the Snowflake Inspector's hiding spot, it will be occupied and permanently inaccessible for the entirety of the save.
- Game Within a Game: If you open the inventory, you can access a board game known as Weather Board that's a clone of Sorry!.
- The Ghost: Foster Boondoggle, the employee that lost his ID card that Sam uses to enter the control room of World Wide Weather, is only ever seen in a photo.
- Guide Dang It!: The game gives no real indication on where to retrieve the coins needed for the missions involving the vending machine; the player basically has to stumble across it by creating a rainbow in the weather-testing room.
- Hidden Object Game: On the roof of the warehouse is a pair of binoculars looking out towards the Land of Darkness. Sam can choose to play a minigame here that involves finding ten of his Pajama Man comics scattered throughout the view.
- Insane Troll Logic: Andrew won't give out office supplies since it's the only way he can think of to ensure the company never runs out. Sam points out how silly that is, since it means the supplies never get used like they're supposed to.
- Locked in the Bathroom: One of Velo's spawn locations has her stuck in the restroom, and she can't unlock it from inside. Since the restroom is only accessible to the company's board of directors, Sam has to become a board member to be allowed to take the key.
- Mother Nature: The president and CEO of World Wide Weather is a character literally named Mother Nature. She oversees all of the weather operations, and Thunder and Lightning are afraid of incurring her wrath.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Sam breaking into World Wide Weather to stop a thunderstorm leads to him accidentally breaking their Weather-Control Machine, causing chaos in the factory and on earth with the weather going completely whack.
- No OSHA Compliance:
- Despite being located up in the clouds, World Wide Weather has very few railings alongside its factory walkways. If Sam were to trip on his cape again out there like he does in an early cutscene...! Even the indoor offices are missing huge chunks of floor, making them no less hazardous.
- And let's not forget that the Big Red Button that caused everything to go haywire does not have a safety cover.
- Noodle Incident: Lightning, an anthropomorphic lightning bolt working at a factory that manufactures weather, apparently took a vacation to Cleveland once.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Played for Laughs where one of the puzzles has Sam having to fill out a bizarrely-named form and get it signed by a non-appearing manager to get a rubber band.
- The Operators Must Be Crazy: Sam can use the phone in the lobby to call several departments of World Wide Weather as part of a set of Easter Eggs. The Suggestions Department can either been fairly reasonable or pretty snarky, the coffee cup running the Complaints Department complains at Sam, and the phone that acts as operator constantly mishears what he says.
- Parental Bonus: The game leans very heavily on World Wide Weather's factory setting for its humor, leading to a lot of jokes about workplace and corporate culture that most kids probably won't comprehend. For example, needing paperwork just to get a rubber band as a commentary on excessive bureaucracy.
- Prank Call: Many of Sam's calls to the operator involve him attempting to prank her. The boy's efforts are completely wasted since she constantly mishears his words.
- President Mole: One story path results in Carrot infiltrating the company, becoming a member of the board, and eventually completely dissolving it to run it himself.
- Pun-Based Creature: The chairman of World Wide Weather's board of directors is an actual chair, while the board members are planks of wood.
- Reverse Psychology Backfire: While the Snowflake Inspector is on strike, SID decides to use some reverse psychology by saying he'll not move, hoping it'll encourage the Inspector to get back to work. This backfires as the Inspector says he was gonna change his mind, but since SID supports the move, he decides to continue his strike.
- Shrink Ray: World Wide Weather makes snowflakes on a production line at a size visible to the naked eye before using a shrinking machine on them. Sam must use this machine if Wingnut gets stuck in the pipes, as he's too big to go down to save the part otherwise.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Wingnut will not shut up about how he's the most important part of the sun machine.
- Take That!: If Sam calls the Suggestions Department, one of his ideas can be air so thick you can swim in it. The operator on the other end will respond by saying he's clearly never been to Los Angeles.
- Take Your Time: After Sam puts some of the weather machine pieces back, Thunder and Lightning call and inform him that their boss, Mother Nature, will arrive at basically any moment to inspect the factory. She doesn't show until the end of the game after everything has been fixed.
- Tempting Fate: When you fix the third weather machine, Thunder remarks that they'll "have everything ship-shape before anyone even notices." Directly after she finishes the sentence, they get a call waiting. When they answer it, it turns out to be Mother Nature, enraged about the weather going haywire.
- This Is Not a Drill: Once the last part is returned, an alarm goes off and Thunder announces over the PA, "Attention, all personnel: The President is arriving. This is not a drill."
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: One puzzle requires you to lure a sentient vacuum cleaner with a bag of dirt. Normally you're supposed to throw it in the elevator, but when you're on the first floor of the warehouse, you can throw it anywhere on the floor you like...and even into the hail room. Should you do that, the vacuum will try to fetch it as usual...only to let out a very obviously hurt dog-like whimper as it stumbles back to its regular spot.
- Visual Pun:
- The personnel manager at World Wide Weather is a staple remover and the character running the supply room—who's terrified of getting fired—is a stapler.
- There's a board meeting where all the members of the board...are boards. There's also a chair as the chairman.
- Weather-Control Machine: World Wide Weather, being a weather factory, naturally has a machine that can actually control what it produces. Sam breaking the thing and causing the world's weather to go haywire is what sets off the plot.
- Weird Weather: After Sam breaks the Weather-Control Machine, the world's weather goes haywire. The console in World Wide Weather's control room shows places like Seattle not having rain and a tropical island getting snowed on, among other oddities.
- World in the Sky: World Wide Weather is located in the sky with its facilities scattered amongst the clouds.
