Video Game / Whacked!

Hey, everybody! It’s time to get WHACKED!

Whacked! is a 2002 Xbox game about seven cartoon characters competing in a game show for the mystery grand prize. It was developed by Presto Studios (the developer's last game before it closed its doors later that year) and published by Microsoft Game Studios. Inspired by Mario Kart 64, the game is an arena-based Third-Person Shooter with some platforming elements. Players use various cartoon weapons to win six different game types.

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Whacked! provides examples of the following tropes:

• Attack Animal: The Good-Bye Doggie chases the targeted first place opponent, or the second place opponent if the player is in first place, with a stick of dynamite in its mouth.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The game's soundtrack is VERY electric guitar-heavy.
• Basement-Dweller: Eugene, who lives in his mother's basement.
• Battle Cry: Each character has their own stock quotes for picking up a weapon. A lot of these quotes could count for other tropes too, like pre-asskicking one-liners or evil laughs.
• Bee-Bee Gun: The beehive weapon unleashes a swarm of bees on your opponents.
• Berserk Button: If you value your life, never call Lucky a bunny.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Toof, though technically not an alien. He's a formerly-single-celled organism with a fully-radial "flip top" mouth, with the top half of his head connected to the rest of him by a stretchy tongue-like appendage, and he literally thinks with his stomach with his brain being stored inside it instead of anywhere in his head.
• *Bleep*-dammit!: Some strong language is bleeped out, and other four-letter words aren't. Bleeps only seem to be inserted where it would be funny.
• Bonus Round: The final level of the story mode is set up this way after the show is cancelled, in an attempt to get it Uncancelled.
• Buffy Speak: Otto sometimes says "I have a... thing!" when picking up a weapon.
• Butt-Monkey: Lucky and Eugene both get picked on in cutscenes featuring them.
• Censor Box: Don't let the box art fool you; in-game, Lucy is dressed in nothing but gloves, stockings, and a few blue censor boxes and she is totally fine with that. She attempts to pull them off during her interview. She succeeds, but Toof blocks her display.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Everyone swears like a sailor in this game, but one of Lucky's death stock quotes is just a string of bleeped f-words.
• Color-Coded Characters: The characters are all associated with a different color. Blood is color-coded so you can tell who was recently in a spot. Characters can't collect stars of their own color. Characters emit a glow of their color from afar, so you can always tell them apart. The screen even flashes a certain color and portrait for a split-second when you get hit so you know who just hit you.
  • Lance = purple
  • Lucy = dark blue
  • Otto = light blue
  • Eugene = green
  • Charity = yellow
  • Toof = orange / yellow-red
  • Lucky = red
  • Van Tastic = burgundy / maroon
• Combat Commentator: The announcer comments on various situations as the match progresses, such as when a character's score is way below the others'.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI is naturally immune to any Big Red Button events that mess with the camera.
• Covers Always Lie: Lucy actually barely wears that rubber suit dress in-game. It tears right off and you play as her naked. Of course, this was all-the-more-likely to be for censorship reasons.
• Cute Bruiser: Charity, who is a small deranged girl with pigtails and a yellow dress. She is just as violent and unhinged as the rest of the cast.
• Cycle of Hurting: Question Marks can give you the Plague, which can't be cured. You have to watch your life bar dwindle away until you die. Fortunately, it's highly contagious and you can pass it on to opponents by simply brushing up against them, but you still won't be cured. It is also possible to endlessly pass it on to each other every time they respawn, potentially turning the rest of the match into one big Cycle of Hurting.
• Deadly Rotary Fan: The fan in El Bano can be temporarily switched to high-speed, resulting in a One-Hit Kill for anyone who touches the edges of the blades.
• Defeat Means Playable: Defeating Van in Gameshow Mode unlocks him for Battle Mode.
• The Dividual: While Van Tastic seems to just use a voice changer within the mask, the mask itself is shown to be able to fly around on its own and does all the talking, even after the demon has taken it off. Given he's, well, a demon, it's likely that the two are inherently linked.
• Downer Ending: You've won Whacked! You're led to your prize as the crowd cheers... whoops, turns out Van Tastic murdered the rest of the cast by fire. The grand prize traps your contestant in a white void with their heart's desire, meaning they'll never leave and move on with their lives. Just to top it all off, Van Tastic is somehow not dead after his dip in the lava, and Whacked! is back on the air.
• Dressed All in Rubber: Lucy wears a very tight latex dress on both the game's cover and its intro. Too tight, in fact, as it bursts apart in the intro, leaving Lucy nude for the rest of the game. Her gloves seem to be made of the same material as her dress, so technically she still fits the trope.
• Establishing Character Moment: Each of the seven contestants get a commercial centering around them auditioning for Whacked! and showing just how they react.
  • Lucky's has a chicken wander onto stage- and he promptly shoots it, assuming it has one of his feet. When it doesn’t, he threatens the audition judge, who convinces him to join by claiming one of the contestants has his feet.
  • Eugene seems very nervous when he gets to audition, and we see that he's thinking about himself like always. He is tested by having missiles shot at him- we see an Imagine Spot where he deflects them, and then cut back to reality where he is blasted by them, but turns out to be okay.
  • After telling the judge that he has a "appetite for destruction", Toof is tested when a cannon is rolled onto the stage. He promptly swallows the cannonball it fires.
  • Lucy spends her audition trying to pick a dress to wear, but the judge tells her less is more, so naturally she rips it off.
  • Acting as The Thing That Would Not Leave, the judge tries in vain to get rid of Lance, resorting to trying to blow him up with dynamite. Lance survives, and the judge is convinced by this to let him on.
  • Charity barges onto the stage trying to take everything she can, eventually resorting to attempting to blow up the vault containing the prize.
  • Finally, Otto remains asleep throughout his audition, at one point having his chair knock his wallet loose (the judge discovers it's expired), and eventually the judge realizes the chair is doing all the work and lets them on.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • There are, in fact, a few things Lucy isn't turned on by. She wasn't satisfied with her... activities with Lance, for one — and also implied disinterest in Toof — and in this scene, she seems uninterested in Otto, not to mention she expresses disgust when Otto presents his "stool sample" (actually a pudding cup).
  • When Lucky overhears Charity mention that she has a a bunny's foot, rather than pummel her for it, all he does is calmly and quietly ask her to show it to him, and when that fails, distracts her with a piñata and then looks inside her box (at the chicken foot inside it). Even for someone of his temper, beating up a small girl is too much. Especially notable since being called a bunny is his biggest Berserk Button, and the possibility of someone having his missing feet is a slightly smaller button.
  • Charity, upon seeing that Toof has been eating her hoard, shakes him down for everything in his stomach, including his walnut-sized brain. Charity decides that she doesn't want it, and just tosses it over her shoulder, coincidentally reviving Toof when his body reflectively swallows it.
• Evil Laugh: Plenty of the characters Particularly Van himself once he reveals himself to be a demon.
• Extreme Omnisexual: Lucy seduces Otto's chair. It develops a crush on her for the rest of the game. They even hook up in their endings. She also has intercourse with Lance and attempts to, ah, "convince" game host Van into letting her win early on.
• Extreme Omnivore: Toof. He was genetically-engineered to eat oil molecules, but by the time they realized he wasn't programmed to stop eating, or that he was able to gain sustenance from what he ate, it was too late to stop him.
• Fighting Clown: Everyone, considering how bizarre they all are. A rabbit missing his hands and feet, a guy in a sleep coma riding a sentient easy chair, etc.
• Fish-Eye Lens: One of the Big Red Button events forces the display to become this.
• Flaming Sword: Flaming meat cleavers, actually. Attacking any player with fire when they're holding a meat cleaver results in the meat cleaver being set on fire instead, and it can, in turn, be used to set opponents ablaze.

• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Winning the competition sees Van Tastic offering a new contract to sign, which lets your contestant play a bonus round for the "Grand Prize". The contract is on screen for a couple of seconds, and it's a a contract giving your soul to Hell upon your death.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Lucy, who spends most of her screentime and subsequent battles clad in nothing but boots, gloves, and Censor Boxes.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: As explained under Everyone Has Standards, Lucky never attacks Charity in order to get his missing foot, presumably because she's only a little girl. Despite this, Lucky can still attack Charity during gameplay, just like anyone else.
• Gangplank Galleon: The Pirate Ship stage. If you look closely at the background, you can see that it's actually a toy in a giant bathtub.
• Gladiator Games: Death Wall is a Roman gladiator arena.
• Gotta Catch Them All: The objective of the "Combat" games is to collect a certain amount of stars by beating them out of your opponents.
• Gotta Kill Them All: "Chicken" games involve killing a certain amount of chickens and collecting their stars. "Fragfest" requires you to kill the other players, and get the most amount of kills before time runs out.
• Gravity Screw: The El Bano level takes place on the ceiling of a giant bathroom. Using the Shocker weapon messes with your character's gravitational field, causing you to uncontrollably orbit around them in mid-air.
• Ground Pound: If you don't currently have a weapon, you can do this to steal an opponent's weapon (if they have any) and temporarily flatten them.
• Gun Slinger: Lucky. Whilst, technically, any character can use any weapon provided for them, Lucky appears to have a preference to firearms. His audition has him shoot a chicken and threaten the director with a shot-gun taped to his arm stump. When Van is introducing the weapons, Lucky immediately asks to see the guns. And when you finish his story his prize is a bionic hand with a built-in gun. Also, the box art depicts wielding a cannon.
• Gusty Glade: It's not exactly wind, but the Space Walk stage has a switch which, when flipped, temporarily activates the space station's thrusters, causing all players to be blown in the other direction. All you can do is to attempt to avoid being flung off the stage by running in the same direction the station is going (which thankfully isn't random because the game gives no indicator for said direction).
• Hand of Death: The Big Red Button can spawn a literal one of these. It chases players around the stage. Anyone who touches it dies.

• Heavy Sleeper: Otto. He's literally asleep during the entire game, except for when he wakes up for short moments in a few cutscenes. You're technically playing as his sentient chair.
• Hell Is War: The final level if only because of it being such a battleground.
• Hidden Depths:
  • It's not brought up very often, but it would seem Lucy is actually quite intelligent and business-savvy. In her audition, she quickly analyzes her current audience in marketing terms to decide which of her outfits would be best received. She's also the only one who gets close enough to Van Tastic to find out he's actually wearing a helmet; prior to that, she's just flirting with Tastic, but after Lucy realizes this she's clearly trying to get him alone so she can find out what's going on. In addition, after the show is cancelled and Van confesses to not having a prize, Lucy recites a long and accurately-detailed legal document that she signed upon passing her audition simply based on memory.
  • Lucky has a very brief one during his interview, where he quietly laments about how everybody asks him "What's it like being a rabbit with no feet?", and that nobody asks him "how's your summer?" or "can you read us some of your poems?", suggesting that he writes poetry in his off time.
• Homing Boulders: Besides homing missiles, meat cleavers also have very limited homing capabilities, at least homing in on an opponent's general direction. The Yolk-O-Matic's eggs also home in.
• Hot Pursuit: The Joyride stage consists of a truck being chased by a police car on a highway. Specifically the trunk of the truck and the hood of the police car.
• Hub Level: ...Somewhere on the set of the game show. It's just a small room with a set of three doors leading to a different match to choose from and a computer where you can review what the weapons, power-ups, and Big Red Button events you've unlocked do.
• I Am Not Weasel: In one of the backstage cutscenes, Lucky repeatedly calls Eugene a penguin to troll him. (Eugene claims he's a falcon himself, but he's obviously a mallard.)
• I Meant to Do That: Eugene sometimes attempts to Hand Wave being killed by claiming it was all part of his strategy. Lance will sometimes do the same thing, claiming that being killed was all part of his plan.
• Improbable Weapon User: Pretty much a given for a game like this. Improbable weapons include rubber duckies, staplers, dogs, cacti, shish kebabs, dodgeballs, and cans of soda. Charity's default attack while not carrying a weapon is to backhand with her lollipop.
• Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Eugene often daydreams about pulling out a flamethrower and burning everyone after being disrespected.
• Instant Ice: Just Add Cold!: The Freeze Gun blows freezing air that freezes the opponent in a block of ice, which can be pushed around by continuing to blow on them.
• Interspecies Romance: Lucy the human bangs Lance the lion backstage at one point. But alas, the Lion's pride was too small to impress Lucy. Which is Truth in Television, as real-life lions literally have very small prides.
• Ironic Name: Charity is a little girl whose name is the opposite of greed. Naturally, she’s greedy.
• Killed Off for Real: Van eventually burns all contestants except you to death.
• Killer Rabbit: Lucky in a very literal fashion. He's a rabbit that's permanently in a simmering rage, and it takes very little for him to just escalate to violence and homicide. His audition was actually for a chicken magician, and he murdered the chicken because Lucky thought that the bird had one of his missing feet.
• Kitchen Sink Included: Sort of. The back of the box says the stages are everything including the kitchen sink. There really is a stage that takes place on a giant kitchen sink. As a piece of advice, don't fall into the garbage disposal.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: In Whacked! you have Lucky the rabbit, Eugene the duck, and Lance the lion competing as equals against Lucy, Charity, and Otto, who are all human.
• Live Item: The Goodbye Doggie, which is a German shepherd dog carrying a lit stick of dynamite in its mouth. Throwing it causes it to try and bring the "stick" back to another player.
• The Load: Otto to his chair in a literal fashion. The chair clearly doesn't need him for the competition, but it couldn't get past its interview otherwise, so it's stuck carrying the useless man for the show.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Dying always results in the victim exploding in a mess of blood and body parts.
• The Minion Master: Van's Super Mode summons his minions to beat on the other players.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Lance has huge muscles, yet his generic punch when not carrying a weapon still just invokes Scratch Damage.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Grabbing a weapon when you already have one makes the previous one disappear. Try to grab a Question Mark when you're already under the effect of one, and you'll just knock it aside.
• The Namesake: Whacked! the video game is named after Whacked!, the gameshow in the video game.
• Notice This: Anything you can pick up sparkles and hovers above the ground while spinning. Also, far-away opponents glow brightly.
• Older Than They Look: Van Tastic, and your first hint is when he states after the intro matches that "I haven't seen action like that since I taught Emperor Nero that trick with the lions!". The same Nero who was a Roman Emperor that lived from 37 AD to 68 AD, that one. Then after he introduces the Exclamation Point, he mentions in a phone call that he's been "doing this since Adam and Eve were wearing their fig leaves". Then he takes the mask off once a contestant wins, revealing he's a demon in disguise.
• One-Hit Kill:
  • Making direct contact with a regular missile or the Good-bye Doggie results in one of these.
  • Question Marks can give you "Da Bomb" instead of a power up, which is basically a bomb floating above your head and counting down from 10. Other players can die from the explosion too if you're near enough.
  • The "Death" Big Red Button event spawns a giant skeletal hand which chases players around the stage, and touching it instantly kills you.
  • Toof's Exclamation Point turns the other players into walking hamburgers, allowing him to eat them by attacking them without a weapon.
  • Lucy's Exclamation Point causes her to constantly blow kisses of death, which if they come into contact with anyone, causes them to levitate into the air and die instantly.
  • Some stages have unique features that can cause one-hit kills.
  • Finally, chickens die instantly when hit with any weapon.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Your host, Van Tastic, has some weird white lines just above his suit collar and odd red gloves. Those white lines are his teeth, and those aren't gloves on his hands either. He's just wearing an oddly expressive metal helmet that doesn't cover his whole head the entire show.

• Playing with Fire: There are several ways to set opponents on fire.
• Power-Up: Question Mark pickups give characters a random power-up... mostly.
• Power-Up Motif: A hard rock theme plays whenever a character is under the effect of an Exclamation Point. The "El Vampiro" power up has a Mexican theme. Each Big Red Button event also has its own theme, though not all of them involve characters powering up.
• Product Placement: An in-universe example. Some of the fictional products showcased in the story mode's "commercials" show up as props in the stages, most prominently the Christmas Tree stage.
• Random Event: Grabbing the Big Red Button activates these, and the Buttons can appear in any weapon spawn point, at any time.

• Regenerating Health: Health regenerates very quickly. It's actually very useful because there's no other way to heal, and you're constantly getting crushed and maimed.
• Ring Out: There's no Fall Damage normally, but it's possible to die in some arenas by falling out of the perimeters of the stage.
• Scratch Damage: Characters can do a simple punch/kick if they're not carrying a weapon. It only takes about a pixel off the life bar, but still possible to kill someone with. Chickens can't die at all this way, though.
• Sequel Hook: The final match ends up being a hit with viewers, pushing the ratings through the roof. The network execs call Van to inform him that they're not canceling the show after all. It's too bad that the game's developer, in a stunning display of irony, went out of business after releasing Whacked!.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Each of the seven contestants was designed to be a walking representative of the sins:
  • Lucky: Wrath. Red rabbit with an accent rampaging through Ireland and Scotland. Was possibly a normal rabbit at some point, but lost all his feet to a lucky rabbit foot factory. Devotes his time to getting his feet back, and keeps the ones he's recovered in a box. His Berserk Button has been permanently broken ever since.
  • Eugene: Envy. Green Canadian Mallard that lives with his mother. Wants to fly and be a much cooler bird. Often fantasizes about killing everyone that makes fun of him for being a lame penguin/mallard.
  • Toof: Gluttony. Orange thing with socks. Was created by the Asson Fire oil company to clean up their oil spills, but began to eat everything and get bigger.
  • Lucy: Lust. Human woman with blue hair, blue gloves, blue high heels and blue lingerie stockings with nothing else. Completely happy to boink anything that moves. She's censored by the show itself, much to her chagrin.
  • Charity: Greed. Young human girl in a yellow dress with odd eyes. Is a full-blown kleptomaniac due to her parents spoiling her to a ridiculous degree for her whole life. She is compelled to take any object she sees and put it in a pile.
  • Lance: Pride. Buff lion with purple hair (wig). He makes narcissists look well-adjusted. Possesses little-to-no sense of humor.
  • Otto: Sloth. Incredibly pale human on a sentient easy chair. Otto is asleep the entire game and has been this way for at least five years. His chair beats him in an attempt to wake him up, often causing some non-sequitur response from Otto. The chair is the actual contestant, Otto was just the excuse to get the chair past the auditions, and the chair seemingly can't get rid of Otto until the show's over.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Lucy wears a skintight rubber dress that can disintegrate when she wants to the show, and she never puts on clothes after it happens on the set.
• Shock and Awe: The Shocker weapon, which continuously shocks the opponent as you uncontrollably orbit around them in the air.
• Shout-Out: When a Big Red Button makes Lucky "It", the announcer says to kill the wabbit.
• The Show Must Go On: The final fight in Hell wasn't planned for the show. After the intended final match, the show is canceled due to Van's boss being concerned that one of the contestants might use the prize to wish for something like world peace, and Van, in an act of desperation to save his show, challenges the player to one final battle against himself for an even better prize.
• Skyscraper City: The High Rise arena takes place on the rooftops of a cluster of skyscrapers.

• Spikes of Doom: Standing too close to any of the walls in Death Wall will cause spikes to repeatedly poke out and retract.
• Spoiled Brat: Charity's parents give her everything she ever wants, and it's turned her into a maniacal kleptomaniac.
• Spread Shot: Possible with the Rubber Ducky weapon. Holding down the attack button longer results in you throwing more rubber duckies at once, and they'll be spread out.
• Squashed Flat: Ground Pounding an opponent does this, as do the Mallet and Stapler weapons. In this state, you can still move but cannot jump or grab any items.
• Stuff Blowing Up: There are a lot of explosive weapons, including missiles, cannons, dogs carrying sticks of dynamite in their mouths, rubber duckies, star mines, and sticky bombs.
• Super Drowning Skills: Touching the water in Pirate Ship is a guaranteed One-Hit Kill.
• Super Mode: This is what Exclamation Points give. Each character has their own unique Super Mode.
• Super Move Portrait Attack: Sort of. Being killed by another player displays "Whacked! by" and the portrait of the character who killed you on the screen.
• Surfer Dude: Lance talks like one, and the announcer during character selection in Gameshow Mode mentions one of Lance's hobbies as catching waves.
• Take Cover!: Death Wall is the only stage that doesn't feature objects to hide behind or under.

• Temporary Platform:
  • Stand on the roof of the broken-down car in No Trespassing, and it collapses to reveal Spikes of Doom.
  • The chicken cages in Hell sink into the lava when you stand on them.
• This Is the Final Battle: The announcer always announces the conditions of winning at the start of every match, but he specifically notes that the final match in Gameshow Mode is the last one.

• Victory Pose: Characters have their own animations for winning and losing a match.
• Victory Quote: When your character wins or loses a match, they say a random quote from their own pools of quotes.
• Your Heart's Desire: The grand prize varies depending on the character. Coincidentally, it just so happens to be the player character's deepest desire.
  • Lucky: A cybernetic gun arm with presumably infinite ammo and an infinite number of Van cutouts to shoot.
  • Eugene: A huge number of cardboard cutouts appear depicting all the things Eugene's "won" up to and including the entire world as he awkwardly says it's everything he's ever wanted. As his sin is Envy however, Eugene is the only contestant who stays unsatisfied with his prize.
  • Toof: A giant burger he can't possibly finish in his lifetime.
  • Lucy: Otto's chair is waiting for her in the vault, giving her something comfortable to sit on for all eternity. She also discovers a certain "feature" that causes the chair to vibrate giving her an off-screen Immodest Orgasm.
  • Charity: An infinite mountain of wrapped presents.
  • Lance: A packaged life-size action figure of himself that can move and talk.
  • Otto: Nothing. His chair is the one who actually won the contest so it kicks Otto to the curb before getting its reward, which is being with Lucy.
  • Unfortunately, this (nearly) gets the show cancelled by Van's boss (implied to be ol' Scratch himself) who's paranoid that the winner might use their wish to get rid of all evil.

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