Video Game / River City Girls 2

"We should probably get some reinforcements."

It's time for you to leave, oh,
You're not welcome in this world!
Pack your bags, you're getting evicted (Bye-bye!)
By the River City Girls!
Kyoko: "Two!"
Misako: "No, you don't say the 'two' part."

Kyoko: "But it says it right there..."

Misako: "Ugh, let's try again."

—The (second) Expository Theme Tune

River City Girls 2 is the sequel to River City Girls, and another entry to the long-running Kunio-kun series, once again developed by WayForward Technologies, announced in June 2021. It was released in Japan and Asia on December 1, 2022, while the North American and European release dates were pushed back to December 15, 2022.

After being defeated by Misako and Kyoko, Sabuko ends up having to confront her father, Yakuza crime boss and longtime nemesis of Kunio and Riki, Sabu. Having been made aware of Sabuko's disgrace, Sabu breaks out of prison and decides to restore his family's honor personally, with the aid of Sabuko and his adopted son Ken (who is somehow alive again after the events of River City Girls Zero). With the stakes much higher this time, Misako and Kyoko are not only aided by their boyfriends Kunio and Riki, but also Marian from Double Dragon (who appeared in the previous game as a shopkeeper) and Provie from River City Ransom: Underground.

This game now features co-op with four players, and retains the same style of open world beat-em-up as its predecessor.

On April 25, 2024, it was announced that Downloadable Content is in the works, featuring Billy and Jimmy Lee from Double Dragon as additional characters.

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River City Girls provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Kayli Mills's nickname, "Donut Queen":
    • She voices Misako, and her uppercut is dealt with her backpack, leaking donuts out of it.
    • The Donut Queen shop is even pointed out on their Twitter
  • Two of the robot enemies as named K4Y-L1 and K1R-A after the voice actors for Misako and Kyoko respectively
• Adaptational Badass: Sabu was previously only an Extremity Extremist fighter who exclusively uses kicks and firearms, and is otherwise a fairly typical Yakuza boss. In his introduction for this game, however, he smashes down a prison wall with a single punch and pulls off massive Ki Attacks in his bossfight. Turns out this is due to him enhancing himself with a Super Serum.
• Adrenaline Makeover: Marian eventually decided she had enough of sitting on the sidelines as a Damsel in Distress and got into serious training. Instead of the curvy girl she was in Double Dragon, she's now an Amazonian Beauty with oft-described "legendary abs" capable of brawling alongside the other cast members.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Parked automobiles get this treatment (ala Shredder's Revenge) as the steering wheel's position is flipped depending on the position the vehicle is facing.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Henchmen that you've unlocked can be recruited from hideouts, rather than having to hunt them down, then beat them and hope they're begging. Hired Henchmen however need to be found in the world and paid every time they get rehired, and unlike hideouts and shops, their positions on the map are not marked.
  • Unlocking Provie or Marian gives you a large sum of cash (usually $700 to $800), so you can easily get their moves from the dojo and buy food for stat boosts if you want to switch from your first character to them.
  • During the first visit to The Lost Woods, if you keep getting lost, floating symbols will appear on top of the correct pathways.
  • Store items that give stat increases will indicate which stat they improve, instead of leaving the player to hope it'll do something. Using one will have the stat increase symbol disappear so you know which one has been used already.
  • During the Timed Mission near the end of the game, not only can you use the Bus Stop without consequence but the hostages are all located fairly close to or in the area of the bus stop.
• Apathetic Citizens: Played for Laughs for the sake of slapstick comedy. It seems the drivers don't have issues with running over people on the road, and none of the players inside a coffee shop apparently care about hitting someone with a thrown axe.
• Ascended Extra: The obvious case of shopkeeper and Double Dragon damsel Marian aside, Martha Splatterhead, the final boss of Technos's obscure beat 'em up The Combatribes, was also a shopkeeper in the first game and returns here as an enemy type.
• Assurance Backfire: In the opening theme song, no less - one of Kyoko's lines is "We probably won't die!" which Misako sounds less than thrilled to hear.
• Badass Boast: Kyoko and Misako make an extremely casual and off-hand one towards Ken before his boss fight, when he threatens to kill the girls.
  Misako (amused): "I mean, you can try."
  Kyoko: "But that usually doesn't usually work out too well for people."
• Badass in Distress: Provie's friend Chris, who in River City Ransom: Underground was the leader of the gang/group she was a member of, has gone missing, and Provie suspects that Ken and his goons are behind it. Considering that Chris was able to bust herself out in Underground, it's little surprise that her River City Girls counterpart also winds up being a Damsel out of Distress, as she can be recruited in Crosstown as an Assist Character immediately after getting Provie. Her Honkr message doesn't make any mention of being kidnapped either, so she likely fought off any yakuza trying to do so (or they didn't even try and Provie just lost track of her).
• Bag of Spilling: The justification for the girls getting reset to level one is that they spend two whole months doing nothing but playing video games and only decide to leave the house to buy a new game.
• Beat the Curse Out of Him: Marian's brainwashing is undone by punching them in the head. Really hard. Repeatedly.
• Blood Knight: While Blood Knight tendencies are common among the gangs and some of the residents of River City in general, special mention goes to Marian, who is almost constantly wearing a smirk when she fights and the fact that her most common vocal reaction to defeating an enemy or even being knocked on her ass is an amused chuckle. The fact that she wears a track suit and MMA gloves at all times implies that she spends a 'lot' of her spare time either fighting or training to fight.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The reason Marian is a boss fight before joining the girls. Blaire used their magic to brainwash her and put her under Yakuza control. The girls break the brainwashing by beating Marian up, which surprises Blaire, since they didn't think the spell would be broken that easily.
• Bullying a Dragon: In the first River City Girls, Sabuko's defeat happened due to a supposition on Misako and Kyoko's part about her being behind anything. This game starts with her father Sabu's escape from jail, in order to crush the girls' livelihoods and then take over the city, out of vengeance.
• The Bus Came Back: Provie, one of the new playable characters, had only one other appearance in River City Ransom: Underground, which was released 5 years prior to this game. Provie's intro trailer reveals that she's looking for her friend Chris, another character previously only in Underground. The game itself features additional characters from Underground, including Paul, Wes, Glen and Mike via assorted NPC roles.
• The Cameo:
  • Sol Badguy and Jam Kuradoberi as well as Kebako appear as hire-able plot-irrelevant assist characters.
  • Patricia Wagon appears as a shopkeeper.
  • Berserker joins his fellow cyborg turned shopkeeper Bullova as well as enemies Trash and Martha Splatterhead in the game, acting as a hireable assist character.
  • Paul, Wes and Chris from River City Ransom: Underground are hireable assist characters.
  • Tengu owns a ramen shop in Uptown.
  • Yamada from River City Girls appears as a mini-opponent at Ocean Heights, and after he's beaten, Misuzu (in a referee outfit) falls on top of him.
  • Jake, the protagonist of LIT (2009), runs one of the accessory stores in the Technos atrium.
• Cave Behind the Falls: The Waterfall in the Flatiron Camp. Although this one is tricky because there are invisible platforms and it's hard to see yourself. Go all the way to the right. Go down. Go left until you can't go left anymore. You should be able to jump and tap up to get on a ledge. From there, jump to the right. You should be on a higher ledge. Then do a running jump to the left. You should be on a higher ledge. Hold down X to enter the cave.
• Character Blog: Honkr, an in-game social media app where characters will either post about random things or provide updates on quests.
• Crossover: As with the first game, but the cast of Underground is included as Provie serves as one of the playable characters. Paul, Wes, and Chris are among the Henchmen the players can hire. Additional player characters from that game Glen and Mike (who replaces the shop ran by Martha Splatterhead, promoted to enemy NPC) also moonlight as shopkeepers.
• Cycle of Revenge: Thanks to the events that occurred in both previous games, Sabu and his daughter Sabuko are set to have their revenge on the heroes.
• Darker and Edgier: To an extent. While the game is mostly as lighthearted and wacky as the previous game, if not moreso, the plot of the game is about Misako and Kyoko being hunted down by a ruthless mob boss and his seemingly endless army of enforcers. Also worth noting is that, compared to the last game, this game's bosses openly make it clear that, at least from their perspective, the boss fights are to the death (though the girls once again refrain from actually killing any of their foes).
• Decomposite Character:
  • Jeff "Crash" Cooney is his own person and not Kunio, and gives a racing mini-game.
  • Similarly, Mr. K (of Renegade, the original English localization of the very first Kunio-kun game) is his own person and not Kunio, and gives an item hunt side-quest.
  • Roxy (Hasebe's NES English name) runs the Vegan-and-Out in Technos, and looks like an older Hasebe.
• Defeat Equals Friendship:
  • After being beaten, Marian and Provie become unlocked as playable characters.
  • After beating them, Blaire decides to quit working for the Yakuza and will sell some Accessory items.
• Denser and Wackier:
  • This was already the case in the first game, but this game is especially so to River City Girls Zero - in particular, Ken uses a gun like his father did, but it's Played for Laughs due to him acting like a Dirty Coward while using it and bullets only do a single hit point per shot. Downplayed with Sabu himself, who is less a straight-laced Yakuza boss this time around but is an absolute powerhouse and arguably more intimidating than ever.
  • The game itself has a non-stop 4th wall breaking meta over the top tone that rivals WayForward's own Double Dragon Neon with events like a BMO parody being used as an EMP and to fight enemies, killer cat robots, seemingly serious song lyrics that talk about "getting off my lawn", gravestones that all have inappropriate or pun filled epitaphs, combo titles that read less like actual combo titles and more like injokes e.g. 69 gets you NICE, higher counts like 1000 have the game question your sanity for doing this, 2 of the characters you save in a bomb defusal mission are joked about as being really unimportant to the story, a shopkeeper is a talking dog that speaks in bow wow and woofs in a human voice, and it all starts as early as the title song joking about how well the first game sold and how it's the long awaited sequel.
• Elevator Action Sequence: Like many Beat'em Ups, this game has a fight in an elevator; unlike many Beat'em Ups, the logic of this is deeply questioned by Misako and Kyoko, who both point out that simply waiting at the top and attacking all at once, instead of leaping down in waves, would be more difficult and stand a better chance of defeating them, as well as being safer for the attackers. Also unlike most Beat'em Ups, while you can break the glass windows of the elevator, you can't actually throw anyone out of it- they hit invisible walls first.
• Everything Is Trying to Kill You: Unlike the first game, River City has a ton of environmental hazards that can harm you, and your opponents. Ranging from getting run over by passing cars, blowing up explosive barrels, getting launched by steam (or by breaking a fire hydrant), getting slammed by doors, etc. The bully using a spitball serves as a first clue to this presence, since while he can be scared and stopped temporarily, he can't actually be made to quit attacking permanently- he's actually a stage hazard, not an enemy.
• Evil Gloating: Parodied; Sabu attempts to give a gloating villain speech only for the heroes to distract themselves by wondering if he's strong because of science, magic or because he's old. Sabu tries to get them to pay attention before giving up and just getting to the fight.
• Extremity Extremist: New characters Marian and Provie. Marian solely relies on punches and grapples for all of her attacks (including her aerial moves), while Provie is a Dance Battling Kick Chick who hardly ever uses her fists.
• Eyelid Pull Taunt: The first Snapr picture is Misako pulling her left eyelid down from her perspective, and sticking her tongue out at the player.
• The Family That Slays Together: The Sabu Family are now hell-bent on revenge against the girls for humiliating them in the previous game. There's a lot of friction there, though- Sabuko in particular is working against them due to their dismissal... or to be more specific, she's trying to sabotage Ken to worm her way back into her father's favor.
• Free-Range Children: Lampshaded by the end credits song Thanks For Your Time.
  Where are all the parents during such violent escapades?
  (Where were they?)
  Who gives brass knuckles to a teen girl anyway?
  (Yeah, who does that?)
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Among the playable characters, Marian's fighting style is the most realistic, being comprised of punches and wrestling moves. She's also the only one in the team dressed for a fight, wearing a track suit and MMA gloves.
• Guns Are Worthless: Unlike in Zero, where one shot from Sabu's gun could take off nearly all of your health bar with an instant-travel bullet (albeit at head height), guns here only deal one bar of damage, with the only real danger being that because Ken (or his bodyguards) fire a barrage of bullets, it can continuously hit characters if they don't dodge it in time.
• Hearts Are Health: During the door opening in the Launch Trailer, an "HP HERE!" sticker is seen, also having a white Heart Symbol on a red background.
• Hired Guns: Certain Henchmen can only be recruited by hiring them from the overworld. They're stronger than the average Henchmen but if defeated you'll have to pay them again. Among them are bosses from the previous game (Abobo, Hibari, Noize). In New Game Plus you can hire Jam Kuradoberi and Sol Badguy.
• Hypocritical Humor: Sabu mocks his daughter in the opening for losing to two high schoolers... when he himself was put into jail by two high schoolers.
• Invincible Minor Minion: In the beginning, a bald, musclebound bully (who resembles Heilman from Nekketsu High School Dodgeball Club) who uses a spitball cannot be taken out, only stunned. Likewise Ken's bodyguards, unlike Noize's cadre of fans from the first game, can be briefly incapacitated but not taken out.
• In-Universe Game Clock: The pause menu shows the time on the upper right. The areas will change from day to night.
• Irony: Hasebe and Mami's cameo at the end sees them as the delusional duo rebuffed by the characters they've been chasing, much like Misako and Kyoko were to Kunio and Riki in the last game's normal ending. For added irony, the choice of adapting both endings means Kunio and Riki really are Misako and Kyoko's boyfriends here, making their cameo almost an Hourglass Plot for their arc.
• Lame Comeback: Before the boss fight with Marian, a yakuza goon tells Misako and Kyoko to knock it off, at which point they threaten to knock him off. He responds with "Yeah? Well... okay" and shuts his mouth.
• The Lost Woods: The Witchy Woods which have a specific path to the end. From the entrance, east, north, west, south, east. If you want the shop and survival horror challenge, from the entrance go east, north, west, north. There's also a shop hidden in the woods- and amusingly, the two shopkeepers are very surprised to have a customer!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The beginning of the game has the girls decide to leave the house to purchase the sequel to their favorite game, stating that "sequels are always better". The ending of the game has the girls finishing said game and deciding to play it again, which is followed by New Game Plus being unlocked.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Provie has a boss fight with Misako and Kyoko because she thinks the two are with the Yakuza.
• Magic Music: One possible explanation for Noize's power as a Henchman: she plays her guitar, and heals the player characters. It's a bit unusual, given her genre of choice is rock, but very useful.
• Merging the Branches: The game combines the two endings of the previous game by showing that Sabuko was the canonical final boss while the boys ended up going out to dinner with the girls. The post-credits scene also feature Hasebe and Mami (now using crutches) stopping by Kyoko's home to demand a rematch between her and Misako, showing that the duo once defeated Hasebe and Mami in a fight.
• Mythology Gag:
  • River City Girls Zero:
    • Kyoko's Bedroom shows that she has the game poster above her bed.
    • One segment at Flatirons has the player fight near a ferris wheel, identical to an area in that game.
  • During the boss fight with Tsuiko, she uses her phone to send the players into areas from Double Dragon I and River City Ransom.
  • As might be expected, Marian is an absolute fountain of references to her home series, Double Dragon:
    • The last hit in one of Marian's combo strings is a standing uppercut that mimics the shot she lands on Skullmageddon at the end of Double Dragon Neon.
    • A second one involving Marian links back to the first game: Marian is the boss faced in the Subway, the same area her fellow Double Dragon refugee, Abobo, had his boss battle in the first game.
    • This isn't the first time a possessed/brainwashed/otherwise mind controlled Marian has been a boss fight.
    • The boss music that plays when fighting Marian is the title music from Double Dragon.
    • A piece of graffiti says "Bimmy was here" a reference to the memetically misspelled "Bimmy Lee" from the NES version of Double Dragon III.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Misako and Kyoko's defeat of Sabuko in the previous game was almost certainly not going to lead to a positive outcome. When Sabu learns about it, he's understandably pissed and wants revenge; starting with River City High (and expelling the two girls), then later, the city itself.
• No Fourth Wall: Compared to last time doing it sparingly and making the Denser and Wackier nature of the sequel more apparent, Misako and Kyoko are 100% aware they are in a game constantly pointing out exp, boss fights, them complaining about having to do every annoying side mission (with the game having the boss of Technos, Tsuiko call you out if you finished that particular mission) the credits song addresses the player and snarks at them the UI glitching up at one point on purpose with it being pointed out, and in the opening sequence Misako gets annoyed that Kyoko sung River City Girls 2 instead of River City Girls and is more annoyed that it is actually in the script.
• Ominous Adversarial Amusement: Not long before gaining access to the game's final zone, dialogue with a heretofore Enemy Mine Sabuko features a bout of nefarious chuckling, which the player character(s) confusedly lampshade. Naturally, she was using them to disgrace her adoptive brother, and is now properly ready to aid her father's Evil Plan.
• Overly Long Gag: The final boss battle ends with all six playable characters delivering a simultaneous Megaton Uppercut that sends the boss flying through the ceiling. He's then shown being blasted through floor after floor of the skyscraper for the entirety of the ending credits.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Zig-Zagged. In order to get into Primo's restaurant, the girls decide to disguise themselves as Blaire and Tsuiko with the help of Hibari. In the eyes of the players, they simply wear a cowboy hat and moustache (Misako), a pirate hat (Kyoko), a ribbon (Marian), and a crocodile mask (Provie). To the characters and everyone else, they are wearing the real deal (they complain that they can barely breathe through these masks). This doesn't work on Primo because he knew the two well enough that he knows which is the imposter and a real deal.
• Phrase Catcher: Marian, who cannot go five minutes without someone describing her "legendary abs." It's even her social media account name!
• Polyamory: When asked which of the Lee brothers she was the "closest" with, Marian states that they were all pretty close, complete with Eyebrow Waggle from the comic book cutscene.
• Promoted to Playable: Marian, after only being a shopkeeper in the last game and being a Damsel in Distress in most of her home series.
• Race Against the Clock: After Ken is beaten at the school, Sabuko betrays the team and tells them their allies have been captured and strapped to bombs. Although, the people captured weren't exactly close associates with the team, which gets lampshaded.
• Remember the New Guy?: One of the characters that Sabuko kidnapped and strapped a bomb to is Sonny Lee, who claims to be the third Double Dragon Brother. None of the heroes have heard of him despite his claims that he's totally gone on adventures. Surprisingly, he's actually right.
• Sequel Escalation: Compared to the first game, everything's been amped up. More playable characters, more enemies, a bigger world map, adding destructibles, environmental hazards, day/night cycle, 4-player co-op instead of 2-player, and the previous wild goose chase plot has been replaced with a higher-stakes plot of revenge.
• Sequel Hook: Defied; The end of the game has Hasebe and Mami showing up at Kyoko's house for a rematch, but since they already beat Sabu the girls don't care anymore and promptly slam the door in their face before going back to playing videogames.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several towards JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • One of the combo messages is "Ora! Ora! Ora!"
    • The intro pans in on Sabu's prison cell with a Doooom effect.
    • One of the characters on the game cartridge items is Josuke Higashikata.
    • One of the Tarot powers Blaire uses in their boss fight is called "The World" and causes your movement to slow considerably for a short time.
  • Kunio can learn how to perform Cody's Critical Art, with an uppercut that creates a tornado.
  • Master Chief appears on display in some stores.
  • Graffitti near the Safehouse in Flatirons says Secure. Contain. Protect. and the SCP logo is crossed out on a lower platform.
  • The Training Dummy of the game is a Tigerman named "Dojo Cat".
  • Marian's side Heavy is named the Liger Drop, and matches the exact animation of Kiryu's Tiger Drop.
  • Once you recruit her, Empress Crushfist's assist attack looks a lot like Geese Howard's Raging Storm.
  • There's a convenience store in Yokocho named Kevin 11.
  • The trophy "Up To No Good" has the description "Put a stop to some bullies making trouble in your neighborhood."
  • The Gen Rushing achievement has a name and description taken from player slang in Dead by Daylight.
  • Some graffiti in a subway tunnel reads "Tunnel Snakes rule".
  • A train in the abandoned trainyard has the exact same paint job as Thomas the Tank Engine.
  • Some graffiti in the zoo reads "Flameo Hotman" and Hakuna Matata.
  • The Matt McMuscles skull logo is also painted on the wall of the zoo.
  • A bearded man wearing a jacket and red shirt holding a controller is spraypainted in the Abandoned Train Yard.
  • There's a creepy cabin in the woods with a basement that leads to the graveyard. You also fight the furniture at one point.
  • In the night club's bathroom, you can find a bunch of Yakuza thugs passed out from what looks like a fight. One of these thugs has their head in the basin.
  • The people at the nightclub have some interesting dancing moves.
  • The boss fight against Provie has two giant Rock'em Sock'em Robots, one at each end of the screen.
  • Abobo's building has an exit door with the words "DON'T ROOF OPEN INSIDE" written on them.
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Billy and Jimmy have been passed over for Marian as the sole playable character to represent the Double Dragon series. This is explained by Marian's decision to become a powerful fighter that's no longer helpless, so there's no real need for the Double Dragons to be involved in much of anything anymore. They got bored and set up their respective dojos to pass the time.
• Skewed Priorities: Kyoko and Misako wanting to save the town is less about stopping Sabu, and more about they wanted to buy Vampire Puncher 2 by going to the mall; they are apathetic to the yakuza's fresh takeover of the city at first, only getting dragged into further fights because the yakuza and their emblem carriers do something to personally mess with them before they can go home. Misako in particular is somewhat annoyed that they have to save the city again.
• Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Although the cutscenes are clearly written with Misako and Kyoko in mind, if you're playing as another character, that character replaces one of them and says the same lines Misako or Kyoko would be saying, regardless of how little sense this makes. In single-player, you can even choose who replaces the other character from the settings menu. The only changes are during scripted scenes about Provie or Marian where the dialogue references that there are inexplicably two of them now.
• Strapped to a Bomb: Near the end of the game, Sabuko betrays the girls by revealing that she kidnapped their friends and strapped bombs to them. Said "friends" being some of the NPCs they've met in the game, none of which are ones that the girls are particularly fond of nor close to.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After Ken expels them from River City High, Misako and Kyoko spend the next two months doing nothing but playing video games and eating junk food, causing them to lose all of their XP and moves from the first game due to letting their fighting skills atrophy. Both of them comment on how rusty they’ve gotten in the interim.
• Tarot Motifs: Blaire attacks occasionally by drawing tarot cards themed after scenes and characters from the two games. The cards themselves become available to look at after their battle in Snapr, once the cards are found in various places within the city.
• Technician vs. Performer: Right down the middle:
  • The main girls: Misako is a street brawler who fights with practical, hard-hitting punches and kicks, plus slinging her heavy backpack around. Kyoko, on the other hand, fights with an eclectic mix of kicks, volleyball moves, cheerleading flips and dance steps.
  • The new girls: Marian has perhaps the most practical fighting style, revolving entirely around pummeling her opponents with haymakers and throwing them with wrestling moves. Provie, in contrast, has perhaps the flashiest, least practical fighting style that revolves entirely around her breakdancing moves, assaulting her opponents with a dizzying array of roundhouse kicks, spinning aerial kicks, and spinning headstand kicks (Provie really likes her kicks), that can be strung together in a "dance routine."
  • The boys: Kunio's moves are all based on street fighting, although he can also do things like throw tornado punches (which can be charged into flaming tornado punches), and some of his attacks are downright goofy, such as whipping his enemies with a towel or sending them flying by aggressively eating hamburgers at them. However, he's got nothing on Riki's actual superpowers, like firing a slow-moving Energy Ball or summoning a shadowy copy of himself that beats the opponent with Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs.
• Timed Mission: Near the end of the game, Sabuko kidnaps and strapped bombs to various characters she assumed were friends of Kyoko and Misako and the heroes have 20 minutes to scour the city and save them all. Thankfully they don't have to hoof it on foot and the hostages are all located within close vicinity to the bus stops.
• Took a Level in Badass: Marian was getting tired of getting kidnapped, so she started working out while waiting for the brothers to rescue her. It's also the reason why the Lee brothers now run dojos rather than going on adventures.
• Training Dummy: The training dojo contains Dojo Cat, a gray Tigerman that merely stands still and can be wailed upon to one's heart's content.
• Tsundere: The first Honkr message from Misako mentions the term:
  Miasko @knockknockBOOM: What is a tsundere and why do people keep calling me that.........
• A Twinkle in the Sky: Exaggerated; After Sabu is defeated, he's punched by the entire gang up from the basement, through all the floors of Sanwakai Tower, and crashes into the helicopter Ken and Sabuko are flying in, sending them all into the sky.
• Unexplained Recovery: Ken was last seen in River City Girls Zero and was shot dead by his own father in a rather shocking You Have Failed Me moment. Though considering the ending of the English localization implies there's some weirdness going on with how much of that game might have actually happened.
• Unishment: Ken's first act after taking over River City High is to expel Misako and Kyoko on false pretenses, as part of Sabu's greater plan to destroy their lives and then take revenge on them. Since the two aren't exactly star students, they take it as an excuse to play video games for two whole months until they decide to go buy another one. Kyoko's case is even more notable as she doesn't even attend the school.
• Unnamed Parent: Kyoko's Mom is never given any other name to the point that her name on Honkr is simply "Kyoko's Mom @REDmomma".
• Villain No Longer Idle: After learning of his daughter's humiliation, Sabu breaks out of jail with his bare hands, with intent on getting revenge on Misako and Kyoko.
• Villain Song: Every emblem-carrying boss has one, played in the areas under their control, all sung by the inimitable Megan McDuffee, who did all the music for both this game and the first one.
  • The mall's background music is "I'm Better Than You", a song sung from Ken's perspective in which he gloats about how cool and powerful he is.
  • "Get Off My Lawn" is sung by Blaire the Witch and heard during the Witchy Woods as well as various other areas of Flatirons. It's literally about getting off of their lawn; they do not like visitors much, and hexed the Witchy Woods to make sure people stayed away from their home.
  • "Your Like" is from Tsuiko's point of view, describing her general views on life- she doesn't stand in the way of progress and is big on social media, but despite having a job focused on human connection, she's almost inhuman in her distance from others and focuses on relentless technological advancement and information control. It's telling that the first line is "forgive the impression of caring."
  • "Feel the Heat", which also freatured Matthew Lister, is Primo's song; it lists his love of spices, references his cooking talent, and mentions him as master of his domain. It's an early clue to his mind-controlling food.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: As seen in 0:24 of the Launch Trailer, where Misako nearly dying is referenced, her soul is lit by a white light from above, winged, with light blue shadows, slowing rising up off the screen and descending back down into her body every time Kyoko stomps on Misako. And referenced in the lines for that part of the song:
  Kyoko: We probably won't die!
  Miasko (concerned): Probably?!
• Xenafication: Marian talks about her Distressed Damsel status in her home series and her decision to become an Amazonian Beauty and "save herself".
• Yank the Dog's Chain: At the end of the game, Sabuko and Ken are in a chopper over Sanwakai Tower and decide to repair their relationship as siblings. As they're wondering what's taking their dad so long, Sabu blasts through the rooftop and collides into them, sending them all twinkling into the sky.