Video Game / The Simpsons Game

"The only Simpsons Game I can think of is the one where we all pretend Dad isn't an alcoholic."

— Bart

The Simpsons Game is a 2007 platformer based on The Simpsons. It's also an Affectionate Parody of loads and loads of other games, and lampshades just about every trope they can think to lampshade.

Each character has their own special powers: Homer can become a giant ball and smash into things; Bart becomes Bartman, and is able to glide and shoot with his slingshot; Lisa can harness the power of the Buddha and stun enemies with her saxophone; and Marge can rally up supporters and is able to send Maggie into small gaps.

During the game, Bart finds the manual to The Simpsons Game, from which the family discovers their superpowers. As they realize the full potential of their new powers (i.e. abuse them), the story quickly goes to crap as new menaces - no matter how illogical or extraordinary - threaten to change their lifestyle. It's up to them to fight back parody after parody of video game media to set things right again.

Notable that it came out a few months after The Simpsons Movie was released, although they aren't connected beyond both being The Simpsons media. Also gets points for having both the writers and the original voice cast brought on to help with its development.

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This game provides examples of the following tropes:

• Achievement Mockery: There's a zero-point achievement earned by dying ten or more times during the game.
• Acting Unnatural: When Lisa and Bart are discussing a possible boss monster, Homer mistakes this for a boss in the business sense and tries to "act natural" by looking busy and writing on a clipboard.
  Lisa: It's the mother ship!
  Bart: This must be the level boss for this part of the game.
  Homer: The boss! Quick, act natural. [puts on business glasses and pretends to write on a clipboard].
• Adaptational Badass: In "Shadow of the Colossal Donut", Lard Lad is capable of shooting Eye Beams, and has to be dismantled to be defeated, which is a stark contrast to his counterpart in Treehouse of Horror VI, who is taken down just by being ignored.
• Adaptational Heroism: Homer is capable of turning into an enormous green blob, likely as an allusion to his transformation in Treehouse of Horror XVII. For obvious gameplay reasons, he uses his powers for good, as opposed to the original episode, where he cannibalized on other people to satisfy himself.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • King Snorky and his dolphin legion have no problem overthrowing all of Springfield in Treehouse of Horror XI. In "Night of the Dolphin", they're easily thwarted by two children and an old sea captain.
  • Many of characters who can be found wandering the open world map. They'll all run in terror when attacked and can be knocked out even by Bart and Lisa, even those who are tougher than that in the show.
• Affectionate Parody: Of just about everything.
• Alien Abduction: The people at the Springfield mall, Cletus and a pig gets abducted.
• Alien Invasion: The Rigellians invade Springfield halfway into the game, filling the town with alien soldiers in addition to animating Lard Lad and making the dolphins intelligent to sow chaos, forcing the Simpson family to head into the Game Engine to find a way to fight back.
• All for Nothing: The latter half of the game largely consists of the Simpsons gathering the key cards to access Matt Groening's mansion, and then he doesn't help them anyway.
• Anal Probing: during the alien invasion level, while Kang and Kodos's mooks are raiding the mall, Cletus complains that he spend all day cutting out coupons for a new flat screen TV and this exchange happens between two of them:
  Alien 1: This human has tiny pieces of paper which gives him big, big savings. We must study him!
  Alien 2: Study him with Anal Probing?
  Alien 1: Of course with Anal Probing! What else would we do?! Talk to him?! (They then beam him up and one of the mooks follows him after doing a glove snap with his tentacle.)
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Several late-game levels grant the Simpsons alternate costumes upon completion: Lisa gets an anime-esque costume, Marge gets a Zelda-inspired outfit, Bart gets an army uniform and Homer gets all three.
• Anti-Hero: Homer and Bart are more interested in using their powers for selfish gain (Bart wants to be a superhero for the sake of it; Homer wants to win an eating contest), but both still ultimately contribute to saving the world.
• Art Evolution: The cutscenes are animated in the style of the show, instead of using the game engine, and they had to be done in High-Definition for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. On top of that, the first level is "The Land of Chocolate", previously seen in a dream sequence from the 1991 episode Burns Verkaufen Der Kraftwerk.
• Asteroids Monster: Benjamin Franklin.
• Badass Family: The Simpsons, over the course of the game, foil a museum robbery and an illegal logging operation, fight against an alien invasion, invade the Game Engine — where among other things they slay a dragon and fight in World War II — and eventually invade Heaven to fight God. Not your typical family bonding.
• Badass Normal: Parodied by Bart's powers, which simply give him a cape and a mask, while he’s otherwise unchanged.
• Balloon Belly: Homer's powers are to expand into this and roll like a ball.
• Berserk Button: For Groening, mistaking him for Seth MacFarlane.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Kang and Kodos kickstart the game’s main conflict.
• Biting-the-Hand Humor: While the original show constantly mocks Fox, the game constantly mocks EA.
• Bland-Name Product: The Final Boss involves destroying Bland Name versions of the Seventh Gen consoles.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Lampshaded with the "Blood Room" in the Game Engine, which is an entire area filled with blood dedicated to the violent aspects of mature gaming. Even Bart, after initially getting over his excitement of arriving there, admits it's overkill on just how much blood there is.
  Lisa: Oh, it's all so carnal and unneccesary!
• Boss-Only Level: "Shadow of the Colossal Donut" consists entirely of a boss fight against Lard Lad.
• Bottomless Pits: A hazard in numerous levels. Falling in one instantly knocks out whoever fell in, but respawning them back in safe ground minus all of their health.
• Bragging Rights Award: Getting all the collectibles gives the Simpsons unlimited energy for their attacks.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • The Simpsons family are quite aware they're in a Video Game, one with hilariously self-referential cutscenes.
  • The Sea Captain subverts this by transposing it to Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    Sea Captain: I almost never appear this much in the series...
    Bart and Lisa: Huh?
    Sea Captain: ...of events that constitute your lives. [they all laugh]
  • Ralph Wiggum is aware that "someone's looking at me!"
• Brick Joke:
  • In "Bartman Begins", the mastermind behind the robbery is revealed to be Skinner. In "Mob Rules", he is a recruitable character, and is found in front of the museum he tried to rob.
  • During the first cutscene of "The Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game", Homer refuses to eat any sushi ("unless it's full of chocolate and there's no sushi in it"). The only available food in the level is sushi, and he eats it anyway. This is just a gameplay mechanic, but it's still hilarious.
• Broken Aesop: Intentional and in-game. Marge gathers an angry mob to smash up Itchy and Scratchy adverts and beat up anyone who tries to stop them... because they're opposed to violent video games like the Itchy and Scratchy game. Lisa points out the irony.
• The Cameo:
  • Sideshow Bob is working with Kang and Kodos. Bart lampshades how weird it is that he'd be working with the aliens; Bob advises Bart to "Try not to think about it too much, and instead just focus on what an unexpected treat it is to see me here".
  • Will Wright, creator of The Sims, only shows up for one level to kill some old-school video game versions of the Simpsons.
• Character Alignment: In-Universe. Homer questions his own, understandably, in the "Neverquest" level.
  Homer: Am I Lawful Evil or Chaotic Good?
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: The French villagers in "Medal of Homer" play this trope straight to a frankly absurd degree. Young Abraham Simpson even calls the French this in the same segment. Just to be clear about this, the first mission in the level is a Fetch Quest to remove all the white flags from a French city after Uter breaks a window of one of the buildings with a rock.
• Cliché Storm: Invoked. One of the collectibles in the game is "Video Game Cliché Moments", as pointed out by Comic Book Guy.
• Company Cameo: To progress in the fifth level, Lisa has to put together a square, circle, and triangle in order, and the characters then comment that it looks like a corporation logo. The joke is that the game was developed by EA Games, and the logo is their earlier logo.
• Continuity Porn: Sure, this game isn't part of the animated canon and it was even shown at one point, but any Simpson fan who's played this game would instantly recognize any bit and piece of Simpson history referenced in it.
• Couch Gag: Every single version of the game has different box art: while the basic composition remains the same, each version has different characters and Homer has a different pose on each.
• Crate Expectations: During one of the video game parody levels. As seen in everything.
• Creator Cameo: Not only does Matt make an appearance, he's also a boss.
• Crossover: Near the end of the game, the Simpsons fight the characters from Futurama, namely Bender and Dr. Zoidberg clones in the Groening mansion, where they're summoned by none other than the man himself.
• Creepy Twins: Sherri and Terri's appearance in the Game Engine, doing a Shining ripoff.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: There is a DanceDanceRevolution parody/Shout-Out in the final level of the game, but the arrows are in the wrong place for those familiar with the real game. It should be left-down-up-right, EA Games, not left-right-up-down!
• Death Seeker: One of the Marios in the Game Engine can be heard saying that he longs for death.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Comic Book Guy Cliche 13 is "Obvious Weakness" and comes with the caption "A must have for the masters of the obvious."
• Double Jump: The Simpsons can do this. How original...
• The Dragon: Bender and Zoidberg, to Matt Groening in his level.
• Dramatic Irony: Homer spends the final sequence of the tutorial level expressing his delight at the fact that he's not dreaming, when the player already knows that he is. Needless to say, he's not too pleased when he wakes up.
• Dream Land: The Land of Chocolate, as the name suggests, takes place in Homer's chocolate-filled dream.
• Ecocidal Antagonist: In the level that introduces Lisa's capabilities, the villain of said level is Mr. Burns, who's using large buzz saw blade-wielding machines to cut down massive trees... so he can make each one into a single toothpick.
• Eiffel Tower Effect: The "Around the World in 80 Bites" episode takes place during an eating contest with a "flavors of the world" theme, complete with various world landmarks. The "boss" of the level, if you can call it that, is a replica Statue of Liberty that you have to destroy in order to get to the giant burger it's holding.
• Escort Mission: Medal of Homer has one. Abe lampshades it and Comic Book Guy declares it the Worst Video Game Cliché Ever. "Sorry, psycho. This one's about protecting, not killing." Though it's not present in the PS2 version.
• Eternal Engine:
  • "Lisa the Tree Hugger" combines this with The Lost Woods in the form of an active lumber camp filled with machinery, and progresses into it fully by the time the main plant is reached. Level traversal involves traveling along giant conveyor belts, dodging buzzsaws, setting off Exploding Barrels of nuclear waste to jam up machinery, and rearranging exhaust pipes in order for Bart to glide on the smog updrafts.
  • The Game Engine levels take place inside immense mechanical complexes that keep reality running, and require the family to navigate mazes of machinery while avoiding giant pits of suspiciously colored fluids.
• Evil Genius: "Every single one is a ripoff of Lex Luthor."
  Comic Book Guy: Oh. That's real original.
• Exploding Barrels: Explosive barrels, which can be set off by projectiles or physical strikes, appear in multiple levels. They're also one of the game's Video Game Cliché Moments collectibles. "Lisa the Tree Hugger" also contains a pair of extra-large such barrels that must be fed into a conveyor belt to destroy it.
  Comic Book Guy: The explosive barrel: frustrating AND hackneyed.
• Flintstone Theming:
  Kang: Well, we're here. And it only took 300 deca-Sols.
  Kodos: You're the one who made us stop to visit your Mother-in-Space.
  Kang: Why do we always argue on space-cations?
  Kodos: You're right. Let's kill and space up!
• Foreshadowing: The game opens with Homer asleep on the couch while a Grand Theft Scratchy advert plays in the background. The game plays a pivotal role in the storyline, and eventually you spend an entire level inside it.
  • Also whenever most enemies die, a halo rises to heaven from them. The final level takes place in Heaven, and you fight pretty much every enemy type in the game there.
• Funny Animal: The Itchies, Scratchies, orange female prostitute cats, and dogs in "Grand Theft Scratchy".
• Game-Over Man: Nelson laughs at the player if both Simpsons die or the player is otherwise forced back to a checkpoint, typically with a retort like "Hope you reached a save point, dingus!"
• Gasshole: Homer, as usual. But this time it's weaponized and CAN be fatal to enemies when powered into a Power Burp
• Godzilla Threshold: Aliens are still attacking your town and the game's almost over? Go directly to God for help.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Each character has a set of items to collect in each level.
• Great Big Book of Everything: Subverted. While the game instruction manual has useful information in it, it doesn't tell how to beat a boss. Good thing that's what the Internet is for.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Matt Groening. This is revealed in one of the last missions.
• Greenwashed Villainy: Parodied in "Lisa the Tree Hugger". Mr. Burns' logging operation is called "Auntie Nature Eco-Friendly Clearcutting" and its logo is a female version of Mr. Burns shown with flowers in her hair and hugging a bunny... all while still sporting a sinister smirk. The whole thing is of course a paper-thin veneer over ruthless razing of the local forests.
• Groin Attack: At the end of "Shadow of the Colossal Donut", Homer and Bart manage to defeat Lard Lad. Homer continually punches the mascot's crotch, much to Bart's disdain.
  Bart: Homer, try to show a little dignity in victory.
  Homer: [still punching] Eat fist, lard crotch!
• Guest-Star Party Member:
  • Cletus joins Homer and Bart for the last section of "Invasion of the Yokel Snatchers". He isn't playable, but instead offers support against the aliens with his shotgun.
  • The Sea Captain joins for a few segments in "The Day of the Dolphin", where he provides support while Bart and Lisa fight the dolphins.
• Helium Speech: When Homer inflates himself by inhaling helium, his voice becomes much more high-pitched.
• Humanoid Female Animal: The orange female prostitute cats look more humanoid than Scratchy.
• Insane Troll Logic: Sargent Abe in "Medal of Homer" catches on that Private Burns looks and sound evil, but he thinks that since he's American he can't possibly be evil.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence: Called the Steep Slope Barrier in the clichés. "You'd know this was impossible if you'd ever actually been outside."
• Interspecies Romance: Professor Frink's relationship with his new turtle bride when Bart and Lisa go to consult him.
• Invisible Wall: You will come up to this while playing through levels or the over world. Because the game doesn't go on forever.
• Karma Houdini: Matt Groening escapes the Simpsons' wrath to merchandise their likenesses another day.
• Lampshade Hanging: The Clichés consist of Comic Book Guy's sarcastic commentary on recurring video game tropes, and are unlocked when the player runs into the associated game element for the first time.
• Large Ham: Many characters, even those that are relatively less hammy in the series.
  Apu: GOOOOOOAAAALLLLL! WE'VE REACHED OUR GOAAAALLLLL!
• Lethal Lava Land: The setting of "The Super Happy Fun Fun Game". "It's not that original."
• Level Ate: "The Land of Chocolate" tutorial level is… Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Levels Take Flight: A fight occurs on a flying boat.
• Lineage Ladder: At the end of the level Lisa The Treehugger, Lisa and Bart try to talk to the loggers after destroying Mr. Burns' picktooth factory. One of the loggers said that his "daddy was a logger and his daddy before that" in order to reinforce to the kids that not only did they ruin his job, but also effectively disrupted his family's ways should he take on a different job as a replacement. His tone even changes as he invokes the speech pattern to induce guilt and/or convey a sense of sentimental sadness. Their conversation below:
  Lisa: Uh, you could retrain in a field with a brighter future like daycare management or sports massage?
  Logger: But I'd been a logger all my life! My daddy was a logger and his daddy before that, and (saddened) his daddy before that.
  Bart: Hey, great story. (Snores)
• The Lost Woods: The early parts of "Lisa the Tree Hugger" take place in an active lumber camp, mixing this trope with Eternal Engine. Bart and Lisa travel through a series of forest clearings while navigating platforming puzzles made out of tree stumps and buzz saws stuck into tree sides, before eventually leaving the woods for the main factory complex.
• Lotus Position: Lisa, after gaining the freezing, lightning and flick abilities.
• Mad at a Dream: Homer rants about not having the "giant ball" ability in the first level after he wakes up.
  Homer: Why is life so unfair? All I want is the ability to eat everything in sight and turn into a giant ball! Is that too much to ask? Damn you, reality!
• Major Injury Underreaction: After winning the eating contest, Homer bites Moe's forearm clean off, and Moe just acts mildly annoyed, even picking up the arm so he and Homer can high-five.
• Medium Awareness: The Game is built on this.
  Bart: [to Zoidberg] You're my least favorite Billy West character!
• Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness: The Simpsons meet expies of their NES counterparts.
  Homer: Wow, we're so pixel-y.
  Bart: And poorly rendered.
• Mind Screw: We're playing the Simpsons Game, which is a game inside God's Earth Game, which itself is a game inside Ralph's game, which is in our game. Yeah.
• Mini-Game: The game itself is one to God's Earth game, which is a game within a game within a game.
• Monster Clown: In his level, Lard Lad brings miniature Krusty robots to life to attack Homer and Bart. They simultaneously wow and terrify Bart.
  Homer: I wish I had my clown poison!
• Musical Assassin: Lisa can use her saxophone to brainwash enemies into fighting for her and perform a powerful Spin Attack.
• Mutants: In the Frogger parody segment in "Lisa the Tree Hugger", the floating platforms that Bart and Lisa must use to cross the river include giant three-eyed crocodiles and turtles with A Head at Each End interspersed with the regular logs, implicitly being animals mutated by the nuclear waste found lying around everywhere.
• Mythology Gag
  • The tutorial level is directly based on Homer's Imagine Spot from the episode "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk."
  • The entire second act of the game, where Kang and Kodos launch an attack on Springfield, is one big reference to Treehouse of Horror.
    • The titular antagonists from "Night of the Dolphins" return.
    • Homer and Bart fight the sentient Lard Lad statue from "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores."
  • Sideshow Bob attempts a Villain: Exit, Stage Left after revealing he's working with Kodos and Kang, but almost immediately steps on a rake.
• Never Trust a Trailer: Played for Laughs with the original E3 reveal trailer, which billed the game as being on "every platform ever made", ranging from then-current systems like the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii to older systems like the Dreamcast, Nintendo 64 and Atari Jaguar. Obviously, it never came out on the older systems.
• Newbie Immunity: The first level has no health meter, so Homer can't take damage from enemies. He also doesn't have a stamina meter, so you can spam his ball abilities as much as you want until the level ends.
• No Fourth Wall: Though it only applies to the game itself as nobody aside from the Sea Captain is aware of the TV show.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Running out of time in "Bargain Bin" results in a short cutscene of the 8-bit Simpsons being incinerated and Will Wright laughing about it.
• Not in Front of the Kid: While Zoidberg is battling Homer and Bart, he shouts "my claws will pinch your private areas!" Needless to say, one can but hope that he was not directing this at ten-year-old Bart...
• One-Word Vocabulary: In the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 version, Sarah Wiggum appears in the hub, but all she ever says is, "Clancy", Clancy being Chief Wiggum's first name.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Occasionally uttered word-for-word by Fire Sumos. Though they attribute it to Final Fantasy IX instead of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
• Orchestral Bombing: "Day of the Dolphin" and "Game Over" feature this.
• Palette Swap: The various types of Comic Book Guy Sumo Wrestlers in "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game".
• Patchwork Map: In the "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game" level, the ice world and the lava world are right next to each other, separated by only a fence. Lisa lampshades how little sense this makes.
• Police Are Useless:
  • As usual for the Simpsons. Chief Wiggum gets lost on the way to the Springfield History Museum, arriving just after Homer and Bart defeat the bullies.
  • They also help out violent, criminally insane children. Wiggum is HELPING VIOLENT CRIMINALS.
  • Wiggum also does nothing when the Regellians invade, and outright refuses to stop them if spoken to in the Playstation 3/Xbox 360 version.
• The Power of Rock: Lisa can knock people out with a few notes on her saxophone. And can even hypnotize them.
• Power-Up: Every family member has one that makes them deal more damage as well as being temporarily invincible.
• Pressure Plate: It takes two losers to make these work.
• Quirky Work: "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game" is a pastiche of weird Japanese video games, including references to Pokémon and Katamari Damacy.
• Rage Against the Author: Simpsons vs. Groening. After beating him up, the family call him out for milking their franchise. And...
• Rage Against the Heavens: When defeating Groening doesn't stop the chaos in Springfield, they take it to the one person more powerful than him — God.
• Rake Take: In the ending cutscene for "Invasion of the Mall-Snatchers", Sideshow Bob appears and tries to kill Homer and Bart- only to step on a rake and knock himself out in a reference to a Running Gag from the show. Lampshaded by Kang afterwards when he tells Kodos, "I told you to pick up your space rake!"
• Recycled Title: "Lisa the Tree Hugger" shares its name with the episode that inspired it.
• Respawning Enemies: Some enemies respawn either continuously or for a set number of times. Rigellian aliens periodically beam down to Earth, while Lard Lad constantly spawns new Krusty bots.
  "Infinite bad guys from a small door. Way to rip off the clown car."
• Reference Overdosed: Holy crap. Whether it's to movies, Simpsons history, video games or other media, the game is absolutely packed with references.
• Reformulated Game:
  • The PS2/PSP/Wii versions lack the PS3/Xbox 360 versions' larger Hub World and instead have smaller, separate hubs. Several levels are also scaled down in terms of length and have segments removed.
  • The DS version is a 2D platformer with no Hub World altogether.
• Retraux: The family meet their 8-bit selves. 8-bit Homer mocks Homer for having infinite lives and Marge can't tell which one is supposed to be her.
• RPG Episode: Homer and Marge go through a level called "Neverquest" and Homer and Lisa go through JRPG battles in "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game".
• Scoring Points: In-universe, 8-bit Homer is confused that the modern characters have no interest in this.
• Self-Deprecation: Matt Groening's cameo.
  • With a hell of a Take That! in the mix:
    Matt Groening: Your creator is TV's most beloved animation visionary!
    Homer: Seth MacFarlane?
  • And some Ungrateful Bastard to boot. The Simpsons spare him, and he still intends to destroy them.
• Serial Escalation: At the start of the game, you're foiling teenage punks trying to rob a museum, competing in eating contests and trying to get violent video games banned. Then the aliens invade and you have to fight alien soldiers, a giant statue that shoots lasers from its eyes and homicidal dolphins. Eventually, you enter the engine that runs the world and fight your way through a series of video games in which you lead an army of hobbits to slay a dragon and fight in World War II, eventually culminating in fighting the creator of the whole series before mounting a full-on invasion of Heaven to fight God Himself.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook:
  • In "Shadow of the Colossal Donut", it's possible to get past the walls of the Springfield Prison, at which point two Rigellians will spawn. If you jump back over the walls to the main area with the Krustybots, the aliens will follow, at which point they and the robots will ignore you and fight to the death. Note that this won't have much of an impact — the bots' Zerg Rush will overwhelm the aliens in short order.
  • Lisa can use her saxophone power to hypnotize enemies into fighting each other once she level-ups.
• Shot-for-Shot Remake: As noted in Art Evolution, some scenes from the original series are reanimated to fix the context of the game, such as Lard Lad's awakening, the dolphin uprising, and Homer's voyage in the Land of Chocolate.
• Shout-Out:
  • To a metric ton of other video games. Even Hotel Mario, when the Mario expy says at the end "I hope it's a-spaghetti!". Not a lot of tropers are willing to describe them, but you have a list of most of them at WikiSimpsons.
  • "Big Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game" in particular is full of references to Japanese video games. Among other things, Milhouse is dressed like the King of All Cosmos from Katamari Damacy, the Sparklemon are obvious references to Pokémon, and defeated Fire Sumos say "every light must fade, every heart must return to darkness", from Kingdom Hearts.
  • Not even other media are spared; Dolph asks Bartman if he ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight, defeated Fire Sumos may occasionally scream "TETSUOOOOOO!", Homer calls the NeverQuest card "My precious!", the list goes on.
  • Level 15 is titled Five Characters In Search of an Author, a reference to Six Characters in Search of an Author.
  • When Homer mistakes Matt Groening for Seth MacFarlane, Groening says "Say hello to my little friends!" before siccing Zoidberg and Bender.
• Sigil Spam: The EA logo shows up a lot. Probably counts as Biting-the-Hand Humor.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: One of the classic/cliched video game stages in "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game".
• Slogan-Yelling Megaphone Guy: Marge, though it's more for controlling a mob.
• Space "X":
  • "I told you to pick up your space-rake!"
  • "Space me agrees!"
• Speaks in Shout-Outs: The various Sumo enemies from "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game" all have Comic Book Guy's likeness, and accordingly, their dialogue consists almost entirely of video game and anime references.
  Fire Sumo: I burn like Cyndaquil!
  Sumo: Every light must fade, every heart must return to darkness.
  Sumo: Only a Flesh Wound! That's a quote from Final Fantasy IX! Ha ha!
  Sumo: TETSUO!
• Stock Audio Clip: Zoidberg's audio clips are actually first used for the aliens.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Cletus gets abducted by aliens and is found stapped on a table along with a pig with both of them having a rather big pointy thing pointing at them.
• Super Drowning Skills: None of the family members can swim and will die instantly upon touching water. It's not the sequel yet.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Bart and Lisa's logging factory mission highlights the dangers of deforestation, but when they destroy the factory a pair of loggers confront them for destroying everyone's employment and putting all of their families at risk.
• Teamwork Puzzle Game: Each level (barring the tutorial, which only features Homer) has you take control of two members of the Simpson family, using both of their unique sets of abilities to help each other through the levels.
• Technical Pacifist:
  • Despite fighting against violence, Marge is strangely okay with rallying an angry mob, recruiting violent criminals, destroying property and murdering policemen and children in the first level she's in. Lisa even lampshades this after you complete it. At least she becomes more productive with it for the other 2 levels she's in.
  • Lisa's no better: she wanted to stop Mr. Burns' deforesting scheme, and did it by murdering the loggers.
• This Loser Is You: Oddly enough, God fills this role.
• Trailers Always Spoil: Sideshow Bob is revealed as working with Kang and Kodos for the purpose of making a cameo. This would be a surprise... if the game's advertising didn't mention the surprise cameo whilst showing the character's distinctive silhouette.
• Trees into Toothpicks: Mr. Burns wants to cut down every tree in Springfield, and turn each into luxury toothpicks.
• Unexplained Recovery: All the recurring children characters as well as Chief Wiggum and his two partners serve as enemies and bosses in "Mob Rules”, but they’re perfectly fine after the level.
• Underground Monkey: In "Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game", the basic sumo wrestlers in the central hub have fire, ice and air variants in the appropriately-themed elemental areas as part of the parody of video game cliches. It's all fully lampshaded, of course.
• The Unfought: The Alien Mothership. Justified in that the characters know they don't stand a chance against it, even with their video game powers, and the climax of the game instead revolves around them trying to find someone who can do something about it.
• Variant Cover: Each version of the game has their own unique cover.◊
• Versus Character Splash: In Big Super Happy Fun Fun Game, when you fight the Sparklemons.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • You can beat up and knock out various characters walking around Springfield.
  • You can use Marge's power to gather all of the roaming townsfolk together, then push them all into the sea at the side of town.
• Video Game Tutorial: Because you wouldn't read the manual.
• Wallbonking: One of the Video Game Cliché Moments. Invoked by Ralph Wiggum, of course.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Marge has the power to bend people to her will, which she uses to create a mob who destroy a bunch of video game merchandise and advertisements, as well as beating a bunch of innocents in the process. She does this in the name of protecting kids from video game violence.
• World Tour: Downplayed heavily in the third level, where you travel around a giant set made to look like a real World Tour. In order, the sets are China, Australia, Mexico, Germany, France, Scotland, Italy, and the USA.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!: A certain someone who hosts the Cliches achievement system will invoke this. Take a wild guess who it is.
• Would Hit a Girl: Playing as either Marge or Lisa won't save you from the enemies. In turn, Marge doesn't seem to have problems with setting her mob on female enemies, like the cat prostitutes in Grand Theft Scratchy.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Enemies don't seem to have a problem with attacking Bart and Lisa.
  • Marge and her mob don't seem to have a problem attacking the kids buying Grand Theft Scratchy.
    • Downplayed in the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions. When the children are defeated in Mob Rules, the kids fade away in a cartoonish Circling Birdies effect as opposed to the standard Halo effect seen in the rest of the game, implying that the kids were merely knocked out as opposed to dying.
    • Enforced in the Wii/Playstation 2 versions and the DS version, where the kids disappear in the standard way and are later seen in heaven.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Homer asks if video games get easier as they go along. Of course, though some video games do get easier as you learn how to play them, this game starts to get more challenging as it goes on, such as by including more powerful enemies and by making the bosses stronger.
• You All Look Familiar: From level to level most of the enemy types tend to look the same.
  • Played straight with the generic minions such as the Riot Cops and the Loggers.
  • Justified with the Dolphins, as most Dolphins tend to look the same in real life, along with the Krusty Dolls, Zoidbergs, and Benders, as they are the same image of their source characters replicated over and over.
  • Exaggerated in cases like the Moe Orcs or the Raphael/Sideshow Mel Security Guards where it will be a recognisable Simpsons character reimagined as a group of minions.
  • Subverted in Around the World in 80 Bites, where all the contestants are individual characters, and the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions of Mob Rules, where there will be a large range of GTS Kids based on individual child characters in the series.
• Zerg Rush: A tactic used by both the Rigellians and the Krustybots, both of which come in much larger numbers at a time and are much weaker than other enemies. The aliens simply beam in a couple dozen Mooks at once one or two times per stage, while the bots in the "Shadow of the Colossal Donut" level spawn continuously in groups of three that are easily dealt with by themselves but can become a threat if you let their numbers build up.

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Cliche Unlocked: TV Tropes Page "Because every thing must be on a website for people who spend too much time listing stupid, common things like a stupid nerd.