Video Game / Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes

Time to beat the Death Drive.

Travis Touchdown: Hold it! I've been away a long time. There's a new generation of gamers out there! Let me at least introduce myself—
Bad Man: TRAVIS TOUCHDOWN! You murdered my daughter! Don't pretend you've forgotten!
Travis: Now quit making this shit confusing! They need to know about the most badass assassin in video games!
Bad Man: You BASTARD!!! Quit trying to butter up the gamers! Your fight is here in the real world! SON OF A BITCH!!!

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes is the third entry of the No More Heroes series, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture as usual and released on the Nintendo Switch on January 18, 2019, with ports for PlayStation 4 and PC via Steam launching October 17, 2019. Notably, it is being directed by Suda51, whose last directed game was the original No More Heroes over 10 years prior, and includes collaborations with various indie developers in the form of licensed in-game T-shirts. Despite taking place and continuing the story after the first two games, Travis Strikes Again is not No More Heroes III, and is instead a smaller-scale game that tells a somewhat different story.

Seven years after the events of Desperate Struggle, a ghost from the past returns to hunt down retired assassin Travis Touchdown: Bad Man, the bat-toting, beer-chugging father of Bad Girl, who's out for a personal vendetta against Travis for murdering his daughter. Tracking down Travis to an RV in the middle of nowhere, Texas, he attempts to kill him, but Travis gets the one-up on him and the two clash. In the midst of the fight, a mysterious "phantom" game console known as the "Death Drive Mk. II" in Travis' possession activates, transporting the two of them within. According to an urban legend, collecting (and beating) the console's six games, stored in eye-shaped cartridges called "death balls," will grant the owner a wish, enticing Bad Man to attempt to complete Travis' collection with him (and play through the games in the virtual world of the console) to use that wish to bring Bad Girl back to life.

The game is divided between the Death Drive games themselves, which play out as action gameplay with optional co-op, and adventure-game Visual Novel type chapters which show how Travis and Jeane acquire the Death Balls in the real world.

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This game contains examples of:

• All There in the Manual: You can complete the game without reading K's faxes or any of the bonus ones he sends if you find Hidden Characters in the levels, but you won't have the full context for what happens in the ending or a key piece of information about what you're really killing for most of the last stage. The magazine articles give extra backstory for the in-universe game worlds as well.
• And the Adventure Continues: The game ends with both Travis rediscovering his love for adventure (and, of course, bloodshed), and accidentally reigniting his enmity with Bad Man.
  Bad Man: Did you just call Charlotte a "fuckin' mutt"…? You just signed your death warrant. I'm gonna kill you!
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Per series tradition, Travis will be able to collect a variety of different T-shirts, with many of them this time based on real-life indie games.
• Arc Number: Seven. It's the number on Badman's default T-shirt from his baseball days, there's a vague 7 shape on Travis' new jacket, seven years have passed since the events of the last game, there are seven Death Ball levels in all, Garcia Hotspur was killed after being shot by seven holy bullets, and Dan Smith from Killer7 appears in the second intro cinematic added via the "Day 7 Patch".
• Artifact of Doom: The Death Drive Mk.II, along with its previous incarnation, the Death Drive AAA, were co-opted by the CIA for the purpose of making a Clone Army by gathering biometric data through the Mk.II's controllers and 3D-printing supersoldiers that could be controlled through the AAA. Klark and Dr. Juvenile filled the Mk.II full of bugs and scattered the Death Balls to thwart the CIA. By collecting the Death Balls and clearing the games, Travis would potentially be an Unwitting Instigator of Doom as he would essentially debug the Mk.II, reactivate the AAA, and allow the CIA to create its clone army.
• Art Shift:
  • Every Death Drive game opening scene has a different art style, including PS1-style CGs, vector-esque graphics and live-action video segments, with some elements of these carrying over into the games themselves.
  • Other examples include monochrome green and pseudo-CODEC-style interface for the "Travis Strikes Back" segments, and minimalist pixel art for the scene on Mars in the epilogue.
  • The "Day 7 Patch" emulates the cel shading style of Killer7.
• Babies Ever After: Travis off-hand mentions having a child and a wife that he had left behind so they wouldn't get continually threatened by the assassins coming for him. This is more fully addressed in the second DLC. Turns out he had two kids with Sylvia: one being his daughter Jeane, the girl who appeared in The Stinger of the first game, and the other being his son Hunter.
• Back from the Dead: Bad Man plans to use the Death Drive Mk. II's fabled wish-granting powers to resurrect his daughter. It actually works...sort of. Due to the fact that one of the Balls (the fake Killer Marathon ball) is basically a dud, she comes back in the form of Bad Dog (or "Bad Girl Dog", as labelled in the credits), a puppy with the attitude of an infantile Bad Girl. It's played straight in the second DLC—though she retains her regressed personality as Bad Dog—with Travis Lampshading the whole thing and wondering about what will happen now that Bad Girl is back.
• Bittersweet Ending: While the game ends with Travis' decision to unretire and take on the next wave of assassins, he's no less remorseful about killing Dr. Juvenile, who he finally realizes has been forced to bury her frustration and grief over very little going her way, and being taken advantage of. It especially gets to Travis as due to him getting to live out the video games she's designed, he experiences firsthand how much she poured all of her thoughts and emotions into every title, and praised her as a genius.
  • For the DLC: After clearing the finished version of Killer Marathon, Badman is finally able to properly wish Charlotte back to life (after the previous attempt ended in her coming back as a dog). Unfortunately, it had been so long since they had seen each other that they are both no longer recognizable as father and daughter: so much had happened since they were together, Shigeki Birkin is now Badman, and Charlotte Birkin is now Bad Girl, both psychotic assassins. As such, the two agree that it's time they parted ways. "No I love you's, no hugs." Nevertheless, Badman is happy to have been able to see his daughter alive once more.
• Boring, but Practical: The 00 Skill Chip gives either character access to a dash move. It doesn't do any damage or expand the offensive toolkit, but its low cooldown time makes for a handy evasive maneuver and a way to make timed puzzles much easier.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the reveal trailer, Travis personally introduces himself to the audience as the result of his long absence. Bad Man also literally breaks the fourth wall, also known as one of the lenses in Travis' glasses.
    Travis: (recoiling as he looks at the audience) Nice work, dickhead!
  • The demos shown at various gaming events all have the characters talking about the event the game is being shown at.
  • As usual, the game itself has almost No Fourth Wall.
• Breather Episode: Overall, compared to prior games, this one leaves out Santa Destroy and the ranking fights entirely and centers on a much more personal conflict about Travis and Bad Man being forced into an Odd Couple situation, as they deal with a cursed video game console.
• Brick Joke: When playing as Badman and entering Damned: Dark Knight, the sequel to Shadows of the Damned, he will comment during a conversation with Bugxtra that his daughter was obsessed with the original game and its protagonist. After unlocking Bad Girl, if you go back to the game as her she incredulously asks what Shadows of the Damned is, with her lack of recognition likely being a result of her infantile regression.
• Broken Pedestal: Played With. From hearing about the plights of Dr. Juvenile, both self-inflicted and out of her control, Travis' rosy view of how "fun" making video games must be is quashed. On the other hand, Travis gains a newfound respect for the developers themselves in the process.
• Brutal Bonus Level: The real Killer Marathon Death Ball, which only exists in the postgame in DLC. It's a significant step-up in difficulty from the entire rest of the game.
• The Bus Came Back:
  • Meta-example — Travis Strikes Again marks Suda51's return to the director's chair since No More Heroes, a time gap of more than ten years.^note No More Heroes was released first in Japan on December 6, 2007.
    • Similarly, Michael J. Gough reprises his role as Dan Smith 14 years after the release of Killer7.
  • The epilogue of the first No More Heroes teased a new character (a child named Jeane) and the prospect of their existence being addressed in the sequel, but NMH 2: Desperate Struggle completely ignored this point. In the TSA DLC postgame, this is finally addressed, after ten years.
  • Shigeki Birkin was a character who only appeared in a Killer7 spin-off story that was left unfinished. He finally returns as Badman.
• Came Back Wrong: The attempt to bring back Bad Girl in the main game goes this way, thanks to one of the Death Balls coming from an incomplete game. The second DLC addresses this, with Travis going through a completed version of said game, leading Bad Girl to come back as her old self, albeit with the infantile personality from her first resurrection still intact.
• The Cameo: Various characters from other works; see also Canon Welding.
• Canon Welding: Various characters and plot points from numerous other Grasshopper games appear in this one, including The Silver Case and its sequels, Killer7, Let It Die, Killer is Dead and others.
• Character Customization: Travis, Badman, Shinobu and Bad Girl can be equipped with chips (some of which are exclusive to a certain character) that grant them different abilities in combat, although none of them can have the same chip active simultaneously. All four of them can also be leveled up by defeating enemies, although the pool of EXP they do this from is shared.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: A second player can take control of Badman (or other unlockable characters in DLC) and join the first player (Travis) on their violent romp through the game.
• Cutting the Knot: In the first "Travis Strikes Back" scenario, Travis and Uehara arrive at a convenience store, where the Death Ball lies in wait at the end of a complex maze. Players of The 25th Ward will likely groan at the prospect of dealing with that puzzle for a fourth time...until Travis suggests that they just punch in a cheat code. Uehara does so, and they get the Death Ball without the hassle of the maze!
  Travis: Bitchin'!
• Denser and Wackier: By no means is this game tamer than previous No More Heroes titles, but it's certainly less gory due to the enemies here being corrupted data bugs rather than flesh and blood humans. The bosses are even dispatched in less violent ways, only being subjected to a single wrestling move rather than the over-the-top finishers seen previously. It does however amp up more ludicrous humor.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Dr. Juvenile had dream visions of Shadows of the Damned, which is how she was able to make a sequel to it about two decades before it came out.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Dr. Juvenile's struggles with game development directly parallel Suda51's, with certain games having very explicit parallels with his works. The Travis Strikes Back segments are filled with direct sendups to his visual novel games, while the invokedObvious Beta nature of the later games aligns with Suda's struggles with game development in recent years. This comes to a head in the Serious Moonlight level, which many critics theorize is a way for Suda to come to terms with the infamous level of Executive Meddling that Shadows of the Damned got from its publisher EA.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Much like the case of Skelter Helter and Jasper Batt Jr. in the previous game, there are people connected to the people that Travis has killed and their relatives are likely to be pissed about it — in this case, Bad Man.
• Expy: Silver Face of Killer Marathon is one of Garcian Smith from Killer7. Both are not quite the badasses that their respective games initially make them out to be: Garcian prefers to let the other personae of the Smith Syndicate kill, since he himself would "never hurt a fly"; and Silver Face is actually very squeamish and averse to physical exertion.
• Fictional Video Game: Travis and Bad Man fight their way through seven different video games:
  • Electric Thunder Tiger II, a cyberpunk-styled action game, and a sequel to Travis's favorite arcade game from his childhood.
  • Life Is Destroy, a puzzle game taking place in a developing residential area with the players pursuing a serial murderer.
  • Coffee & Doughnuts, a post-apocalyptic side-scroller, where players progress by collecting coffee and doughnuts for the game's protagonist.
  • Golden Dragon GP, which is two games in one: an action game where players clean up a Japanese-style hotel, and a drag-racing game which is rendered in vector graphics.
  • Killer Marathon, which contains within it the original Death Drive, a shooter not unlike Asteroids. This Killer Marathon ball is unfinished and thus extremely short. Later in the DLC (or post-game content in the PC version which includes all the DLC) a finished version is found, and it's quite Exactly What It Says on the Tin... except for its actually being a pinball game.
  • Serious Moonlight: Originally conceived as an open-world action-RPG, but due to the game's troubled production and Dr. Juvenile not being able to develop the game as she initially intended, the name was changed to Damned: Dark Knight. Travis is surprised to learn that it is a sequel to Shadows of the Damned, starring Johnson as the protagonist.
  • The final Death Ball is CIA. It's not actually a game, but a backdoor into the actual Central Intelligence Agency headquarters, where Dr. Juvenile and the Death Drive AAA await. The CIA agents appearing as Bugs is a result of the Death Drive Mk.II Mind Screwing the player's observation; the agents' bodies appear afterward in the hallways as pixelated sprites of dead Russian gangsters from Hotline Miami.
• Final Boss: In the demo, Travis immediately assumes that Dr. Juvenile, who created the Death Drive MK II, will be the final boss of the game. Turns out he was right, though the exact context behind the fight is much more complicated. This is subverted with the existence of the second DLC, which is technically the conclusion of the story, as Silver Face becomes the final opponent Travis faces. Silver Face's rage over being relegated to DLC and most people who finished the basic version of TSA not even knowing he exists ends up turning him into the hardest boss in the game. In the Complete Edition, which already contains all the DLC by default, Travis points out that he gets to be the actual final boss in this version of the game, which hypes him up enough to power him up to the same degree.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the trailer hub, Badman sometimes drunkenly mutters about how getting "sucked" into a video game sounds like nonsense to him in spite of the fact that it seems to happen to him and Travis every time they use a Death Ball. It turns out that the console actually employs a form of Brain Uploading through the Death Gloves that shunts the minds of its players into the heads of digital avatars of themselves.
  • At the ramen stalls in every level, Travis and Badman will say "Itadakimasu" before eating. Note how the pronunciation of the word differs between the two of them- Travis says it like "ita-daki-masu", while Badman says "ita-daki-mahss", which is actually the correct way to say the word. This hints at his Japanese heritage.
  • Exploited in a fourth wall break in the Bubblegum Fatale DLC when Travis is suddenly approached by two aliens named Mr. Wormhole and Mr. Blackhole, who have arrived on Earth to take it over, making mention of a "prince" in the process. Shinobu interprets the introduction of the new characters as "foreshadowing for the next game". Sure enough, No More Heroes III features an alien invasion by none other than said alien prince.
  • When you input the cheat codes to obtain K's faxes or trigger various in-game effects, a small 8-bit sprite of a cowgirl appears. The Travis Strikes Back postgame segment in the DLC reveals that this is actually Sylvia.
• Franchise Killer: Discussed In-Universe during the second sequence of "Travis Strikes Back". Jeane tells Travis how players would be upset over the visual novel segments when they were expecting an action game, only for Travis to say he doesn't care about how they feel. In response, Jeane tells Travis to expect the game to bomb and never see an actual third game. Though of course, No More Heroes III is still happening.
• Gaiden Game: This game is not considered one of the main titles in the No More Heroes franchise.
• Gainax Ending: At the end of the game, Travis kills several CIA agents, slays Dr. Juvenile, ends up on Mars, meets John Winters, shares some Martian coffee with him, then gets his head chopped off before being sent back to reality.
• Gratuitous Japanese: Travis will say "Itadakimasu" and then "Gochisosama deshita" before and after eating at a ramen stand. Not exactly unheard-of behavior for an Occidental Otaku of his generation. Badman also speaks in Japanese when eating ramen, although it's Justified in his case, since he actually is Japanese (and his accent is more fluent than Travis's).
• Hailfire Peaks: Killer Marathon, the globe-trotting sports murder title, is essentially the game's version of this, as it sees you going from a shopping center, to a wild western setting, to space, to a coral reef, and finally returning to the big city. This is because the game is actually a composite of multiple pinball tables.
• Healing Checkpoint: Toilets, this series's traditional save points, now also fully restore health.
• Horrifying the Horror: Downplayed; the playable assassins are disturbed and/or disgusted by Mr. Doppelganger (his exaggerated video game self, at least).
• I Know Madden Kombat: Badman was once a legitimate and promising professional baseball player until he was kicked out of the leagues for drunken misconduct during games. With few other skills apart from being able to slug things with a baseball bat, he became an assassin shortly after his forced retirement, though "Badman Strikes Back" takes time to cover his employment with the mafia as he transitioned from one into the other.
• Like Father, Like Daughter: Bad Girl's father fights much like his daughter; with a baseball bat and plenty of beer on hand. He even re-anacts some of her animations. This actually leads to Badman and Bad Girl deciding to part ways after the latter is properly wished back to life. After all, Badman never taught Charlotte to be an assassin, and Charlotte never knew that her dad was becoming a psychotic assassin, so each had become almost unrecognizable to the other.
• Logo Joke: The Grasshoper Manufacture image switches out the usual head on the logo for Travis'.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Bad Man is a drunk-off-his-rocker assassin wearing a leather mask. Justified according to Badman Strikes Back, as his face is apparently severely damaged and requires the mask to keep it in place, like a retainer for crooked teeth.
• Meaningful Name: The Death Drive game console is likely a reference to Freud's psychoanalytical theory of the "death drive," which describes humans' natural compulsion to destroy other things and themselves. Fits in well with Travis' life as an assassin, and the Death Seeker tendencies of much of the game's cast.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: K claims that even playing the Death Drive MK. II could give the player fatal brain damage and that perishing in the game world could have lethal consequences. He's actually lying in an attempt to dissuade Badman and Travis from playing further. Although this doesn't mean the console is harmless by any stretch of the imagination.
• No Fourth Wall:
  • In series tradition. As the fight with Bad Man and Travis starts, Travis notes that it's been a while since he's been in a game, and notes that Bad Man is probably confusing the audience. Bad Man gets angry at how little Travis is taking him seriously, and tells him to knock it off with the audience pandering.
  • In the game itself it gets to the point where concepts like localization costs, metacritic score, how many players will actually bother to play the DLC, the impending development of No More Heroes III, etc. are all openly discussed.
  • Early on, Travis addresses the player's possible accusation of him ripping his fourth-wall breaking affinity off of "Deadpole or whatever" by claiming that he did it first.
• Oddball in the Series: The game's gameplay is built from the ground up as a new kind of lower budget Hack and Slash format rather than being in the style of the other games, and the story is focused on in-universe video games rather than any sort of real killing (though don't mistake that for the story not being as serious).
• Previous Player-Character Cameo:
  • The Kamui Uehara who appears in this game is specifically the protagonist Uehara from Grasshopper's immediately previous release, the remake of The 25th Ward.
  • Mondo Zappa briefly appears after killing Count Dracula, giving a Death Ball to Travis before telling him to leave. Later on, a girl named Juliet who claims to have abandoned her past appears in a chapter called Hell's Chainsaw.
  • Nigel MacAllister, the owner of the Texas Bronco donut chain who gives Travis his third Death Ball is the same MacAllister featured in the Kinect-only game Diabolical Pitch.
  • Dan Smith shows up in the intro added in the Day 7 patch, two months between the release of Travis Strikes Again and the Killer 7 HD remaster.
  • Serious Moonlight is a Stealth Sequel of Shadows of the Damned. Its intro shows its protagonist, Garcia Hotspur, dying at the hands of an assassin, with his companion, Johnson, becoming the new hero, "Eight Hearts".
• Power-Up Food: In-game ramen stands provide Travis and Bad Man with a quick health fill-up. Unlike the toilet savepoints, they can only be interacted with once, but they do refill the energy meter and reset the cooldown for any skills as a tradeoff.
• Product Placement: The game openly advertises the Unreal Engine used in its development on numerous places including shirts and collectable items. Several collectible T-shirts feature images from various games, including (but not limited to) Hotline Miami, Galak-Z: The Dimensional, Jet Set Radio, and Undertale.
• Punny Name: A number of the Bugs are named after various pop culture icons such as the Backstreet Boys and Mark Zuckerberg among others.
• Purple Is Powerful: Travis has changed in his red jacket for a purple one.
• Retreaux: The adventure segments look as though they came out of an old Apple II computer game.
• Sequel Gap: invokedTravis lampshades that due to the gap between both games' release, not everyone in the audience would know who he is, what's going on, or how it came to this.
• Sequel: The Original Title: invokedTake note of how small the series' logo is in comparison to the new subtitle. This was a deliberate choice in lieu of calling it "No More Heroes 3", accounting for the nine-year long Sequel Gap and making it feel more like a newcomer-friendly, self-contained adventure.
• Shout-Out:
  • The logo has a very similar font to Stranger Things.
  • The "Death Drive Mk. II" is an in-universe predecessor to the Death Drive 128 from Let It Die, and its mysterious nature and backstory is inspired by Polybius.
  • Travis's TV screen is shown playing Hotline Miami. Fitting for an ultraviolent assassin. The Carl Mask (a.k.a. the locust mask) appearing in the trailer is likely a reference to Grasshopper Manufacture. Later on this turns into a pseudo-crossover.
  • The goal of the game is to collect six video games (called "Death Balls"), where collecting all six will summon a huge tiger god to grant the collector's wish.
  • Travis' Unreal Engine shirt alludes to the British Phonographic Industry's 1980s "Home Taping Is Killing Music" anti-piracy ad campaign.
  • When Travis or Bad Man first enter a game world, they appear naked in a sphere of electric light similar to a Terminator.
  • The Death Drive's boot-up screen features the console's name being chimed in a similar fashion to the famous "Sega!" cheer from the original Sonic the Hedgehog games.
  • On the back of Travis's jacket is "Eye of the Tiger" transliterated into katakana.
  • During one of the visual novel segments, Travis enlists a horse named Epona to find one of the Death Balls.
  • All the non-character exclusive Skill Chips are named after Gundams. Some of the skills themselves further reference their namesake Mobile Suits, such as F91 Chip creating clones to distract enemies and Shining Chip "grabbing" its target.
    • The upgrade parts in Golden Dragon GP are named Gearbox Z, Gearbox ZZ, and Gearbox v (the Greek letter Nu).
    • The finished version of Killer Marathon riffs on the series's iconic Colony Drop scenes.
  • Mr. Doppelganger announces the phase changes in his boss battle with "Change! Doppel 2!" and "Change! Doppel 3!", like the Getter Robo team.
  • The animation that plays when Travis acquires a Skill Chip from clearing a game is parody of the item-get pose from The Legend of Zelda, complete with a soundalike jingle. Collecting a Skill Chip while exploring the games presents a small 8-bit Travis sprite in the style of the original NES game holding up the Chip.
  • One of the visual novel segments features a company named Texas Bronco, a nod to Andrei Ulmeyda's t-shirt from Killer7.
• A Sinister Clue: The Death Drive Mk. II's controllers are two left hands.
• Stealth Sequel: Although it's obviously a No More Heroes game, less obvious is the fact that one of the characters, Kamui Uehara, is making an appearance that directly follows one of the endings to The 25th Ward. The fourth chapter of Travis Strikes Back sees Travis visiting the setting of the game and meeting numerous characters.
  • Serious Moonlight is actually one to Shadows of the Damned, revealing its true name and nature upon being booted up.
  • The new intro cinematic added with the 'Day 7' patch makes the game one to an old Japanese-only Killer7 spin-off novel, of all things.
• The Stinger: Once the (second) credits finish rolling, the player is thrown in a prototype area in a third person perspective and a slightly modified control scheme. Interacting with a dummy model has Travis break the fourth wall one last time to hint at the existence of No More Heroes III. Further exaggerated if you have the DLC, which includes substantial extra chapters even after that stinger.
• Stopped Numbering Sequels: invokedTravis lampshades the effects of Continuity Lock-Out, which is partially why this game is titled the way it is rather than No More Heroes 3.
• Stylistic Suck: The Death Drive Mk.II splash screen and introductory movies for most of the games look like they have tracking errors. The intro to Life is Destroy harkens to the Narmy live-action FMVs of early CD-ROM games, while the intro for Coffee & Doughnuts looks like it comes from a bargain-bin PS1 game. Within the games proper, visual glitches abound, and the enemies that you fight are referred to as "Bugs".
• Suddenly Voiced: Uehara talks with Travis in this game, but in The 25th Ward he was almost entirely silent, even in the ending that leads into this game.
  • Jeane also inexplicably speaks after spending the last two games just being a normal house cat. Several characters are suitably freaked out by this.
• Take That!:
  • The reveal trailer pulls a few fast ones on video gamers, gaming companies, and the game itself.
  • When advertising the game's use of Unreal Engine, it sarcastically calls it "noble and pedigreed."
  • A villain in the fifth Travis Strikes Back segment is an evil CEO with the last name "Riccitiello"; John Riccitiello was CEO of Electronic Arts when Suda was developing Shadows of the Damned. Travis ends up beating him to a pulp.
  • The entire Serious Moonlight/Damned: Demon Knight is a huge one to EA and their meddling with Shadows of the Damned, right up to the change in what type of game it was supposed to be and the entire stage being even more glitched out than usual due to the somewhat buggy nature of some sections of the game, including pop-in.
• Teeth Clenched Team Work: How the Co-Op Multiplayer works in-universe since Bad Man is the second player character. While players can't damage each other, they can still attack one another or make their partner the target of their Skill Chips.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Through his faxes, K warns that the Death Drive Mk. II is designed to gradually tweak the minds of players so that they can be influenced to see people in real-life opponents as digital Bugs that you can slay without remorse as a means of curbing the PTSD and guilt soldiers experience from killing humans. During the final level, Travis and Bad Man are manipulated into slaughtering hundreds of CIA operatives because they see them as a Bug army that Dr. Juvenile summoned from the game world.
• Timed Mission: Most of the levels in the finished version of Killer Marathon tasks players with reaching a checkpoint within a strict time limit. Running out of time forces you back to the last toilet you saved at.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Serious Moonlight begins with Garcia Hotspur being hunted down and defeated by Fleming's gun-totting son, Alfred.
• Top-Down View: Most levels uses an overhead view perspective.
• Trapped in TV Land: Travis and Bad Man, initially. After the first game, they are free to travel between the Death Drive and reality, but continue to return to it.
• Underground Monkey: Dr. Juvenile corrupted the Death Ball games with the Bugs to prevent players from completing them. As a result, they tend not to mesh with the settings very well.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: You unlock Death Balls by going through segments based on visual novels, and Golden Dragon Grand Prix is a racing minigame. In both cases, the game calls itself out on it.
• Very False Advertising: The game plays multiple times with this trope in regards to several games.
  • Serious Moonlight: The game was marketed as a modern century RPG, and while that was initially the intention, executive meddling and creative differences forced the game to be cancelled, causing Juvenile to instead create a sequel to Shadows of the Damned.
  • Killer Marathon: The game was marketed as a future action game that pits criminals into a globe trotting murder sport for entertainment. The boss, Silver Face, reveals that the game is actually a Pinball game; pointing out that the game's traps, layout and obstacles were a dead giveaway. Silver Face also isn't an actual murderer because his game doesn't involve murdering, he himself admitting to being squeamish.
• Video Game Caring Potential: If you choose to rescue Jeane every time she wanders off into the Death Drive, you'll be rewarded with a special Skill Chip that grants temporary invisibility.
• Visual Pun: The fact that this game's trailer is about Travis and Bad Man fighting in a literal trailer.
• Wham Episode: Serious Moonlight. The game is revealed to be a sequel to Shadows of the Damned where Garcia is seemingly killed and Johnson takes his place as Eight Hearts, the sequel's main protagonist. Cue the game's true title: Damned: Dark Knight.
  • The 'Day 7' patch, which reveals that Bad Man is Shigeki Birkin, a character from Killer7 All There in the Manual content, and was given the first Death Ball by Dan Smith, who knows who Travis is and wants him dead.
• "X" Marks the Hero: Jeane's portrait in the visual novel-style segments has an X-shaped scar across her snout.
• You Killed My Daughter: The man fighting Travis in the debut trailer is the father of Bad Girl, an assassin Travis killed in the original game.

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