Visual Puns in Video Games.
- Advanced Variable Geo: In Advanced V.G. II, Satomi's taunt animation has her wipe her forehead with the back of her hand. Then shows off by posing with one hand on her hip, while briefly emitting a miniature flame in the palm of her other hand (i.e. she's literally Playing with Fire). Bonus: She's actually mimicking Kyo Kusanagi's taunt pose from The King of Fighters. It's the same pose, except he wags his finger while emitting a miniature flame from the tip of it. So they're both doing it.
- Agarest Senki: Record of Agarest War]' has an enemy named Jumbo Cock. It's a giant rooster.
- Atlus:
- Despite its status as the company's first fully 3D video game, Maken X remains one of Atlus' more obscure — and equally experimental — titles. In 2001, two years after the original was released for the Sega Dreamcast, the game would receive a remake on the PlayStation 2 titled Maken Shao (or Maken Shao: Demon Sword in Europe). While the naming choice comes across as odd at first glance, it's actually this trope plus Bilingual Bonus, as explained by
Hardcore Gaming 101. Maken Shao takes the characters used in Maken X (魔剣Ｘ), but replaces the "X" with "爻" (which is pronounced "yao" in Mandarin but "shao" in Cantonese). 爻 itself is a symbol used in Taoist cosmology and other forms of Chinese esotericism (specifically referring to a hexagram found in the I Ching), which ties into the game's liberal use of the taijitu* as a power-up, but the character also looks like a "XX" — essentially going the Lettered Sequel route.note "X" Makes Anything Cool, but since Maken X already had an "X" in the title, Atlus decided to add a second one. - Persona:
- Persona and Persona 2: Vice-Principal/Principal Hanya's face is based on a Japanese Hannya mask. Luckily enough for the English-language versions, this also gives him an over-the-top Sadist Teacher look.
- Persona 4: Teddie's Persona is named after Kintoki-Douji, a mythological figure who carried a tomahawk. Teddie's Persona carries a Tomahawk missile.
- Persona 5: After yakuza boss Junya Kaneshiro transforms into his boss form as a fly-man, he starts displaying stereotypical Gangsta Rap poses and dialog. In other words, he's acting pretty fly.
- Persona and Persona 2: Vice-Principal/Principal Hanya's face is based on a Japanese Hannya
- Shin Megami Tensei and several of its related offshoots (including the aforementioned Persona) have the rather questionable-looking Mara, whose name translated from its Japanese colloquialism means "Penis." You can guess what it is for yourself. It also fits the original depiction too; Mara is the name of a demon that tried to "tempt" to Buddha while the latter was meditating. Kazuma Kaneko's depiction of Mara is a penis (sexual temptation)note drawing a chariot (temptation to do aggressive and violent things) made of gold (greed).
- Despite its status as the company's first fully 3D video game, Maken X remains one of Atlus' more obscure — and equally experimental — titles. In 2001, two years after the original was released for the Sega Dreamcast, the game would receive a remake on the PlayStation 2 titled Maken Shao (or Maken Shao: Demon Sword in Europe). While the naming choice comes across as odd at first glance, it's actually this trope plus Bilingual Bonus, as explained by
- In Balatro, the Seed Money Voucher is represented by a dandelion coin seedling.
- In Beecarbonize, the Doughnut Economy card is represented by a frosted donut.
- Cel Damage: One of the maps, Shooting Stars, has a shower spout with meteors pouring out of it.
- In Code:Realize, Queen Victoria is dressed in mostly yellow with some black stripes and the Royal Guard wears an insignia of golden hexagons. In other words, she is their queen bee.
- Duke Nukem 3D: At the end of the level "Pigsty", after fighting their way through a court room, you find a room containing... wait for it... a hanged jury.
- Electronic Popple have you assuming a sentient Antivirus software who battles andromorphic computer viruses. Among them, the virus worms and virus bugs looks like literal worms and bugs.
- The old Fantastic Four beat-em-up game for the original PlayStation has a neat one. If you keep spamming the same attacks, a cheese icon will pop up next to your health (ergo, the game calling you a "cheesy" player). Use a different variety of moves and the game shows you a thumbs-up instead.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth is the One-Winged Angel. The problem is, Kingdom Hearts already has enough Disney OWA bosses, and Dissidia would have to stop and load every time he entered EX Mode if they used his Safer form. How do they get around this? Simple: Give him a single black angel wing and turn him into That One Boss.
- Final Fantasy XIV:
- After Thancred is found in the Dravanian Forelands, he regales us with the story of how he escaped the events of ARR's ending. Turns out it was due to rare forbidden teleport spell cast by an ally... Which left him lost in the wilds hundreds of malms away, naked and without equipment. During the telling, the player is given a series of still images of his actions, which are only leave the T rating intact due to a well placed squirrel-like creature blocking their view of any naughty bits. Or as the creatures are known in universe, a Nutkin.
- The trailer for the Shadowbringers expansion features a brief shot of rich and overweight miqo'te lounging around. Literal fat cats.
- Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles has the Lilties, a race of onion-looking people who are the greatest knights and fighters in the world with their spears. Some actually fail to notice that it's an entire race making a visual pun on the class of Onion Knights from previous games in the Final Fantasy series.
- This Google Doodle web game has crickets playing Cricket (in addition to the usual duck pun).
- One of the subjects you can learn in Growing Up is "Birds and Bees", and the Player Character is shown trying to hook up a bird with a bee when studying it.
- Guilty Gear Xrd newcomer Elphelt Valentine. In keeping with the series' rock-and-roll theme, she wields guns and wears a dress decorated with roses.
- Haunting Starring Polterguy: One of the fright 'ems is the family's computer. Its mouse will turn into a huge real mouse.
- Intake is a puzzle/arcade game where the player shoots at multi-colored capsules to make them explode into glitter. Or, to put it more simply, it's about "popping pills".
- Katawa Shoujo: There is one that refers to something that was cut from the final game. In Hanako's good ending, the final images involve the camera zooming out from Hanako kissing Hisao until it is looking at the two from the inside of a bakery, with two muffins inside. This was supposed to imply that Hanako became pregnant (having "a bun in the oven") as a result of their having sex, but the scene was revised so that Hisao uses protection, and there is no indication that it failednote .
- Kirby: The series has Tacs, small feline enemies dressed like bandits who try to steal your copy ability. They're "cat burglars." They also possess the Copy ability. They're copy-cats.
- Left 4 Dead:
- The box art is of a dead left hand with four fingers (thumb ripped off). The sequel takes it a step further: two of the fingers are bent.
- At one point in the game, in the DLC "Crash Course", you will walk past some very big fuel-holding tanks. One of the survivors, a biker named Francis, will then exclaim: "Look guys, we're passing gas!"
- LEGO Adaptation Game: The series has a few examples.
- In LEGO Harry Potter, in the Hufflepuff common room, you cast a spell on two pillows and they fight each other.
- In LEGO Harry Potter 2, you have to bring a dying Snape a bucket to see his memories. When he actually dies, he kicks it.
- In LEGO The Lord of the Rings, when King Theoden says "My body is broken", the legs have literally broken off his minifig.
- In LEGO Indiana Jones, there are puzzles you have to solve by getting items from monkeys. Mostly, they're wrenches.
- Literal skeletons in closets are something of a Running Gag of the games, turning up in LEGO Indiana Jones, LEGO Harry Potter, and LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean.
- Mass Effect 3: After the abysmal reaction to the original ending, BioWare released the Extended Cut DLC for free, which contained both new and extended cutscenes plus an epilogue to make the ending make a little more sense. In one such cutscene, Shepard is charging to the beam with their crew when they are hit by Harbinger's laser, causing a nearby Mako armored-personnel carrier to flip over and injure a crew member. Shepard jumps over the wrecked Mako to save that person. In other words, they jumped the shark.
- Mega Man: Cut Man's weakness is Guts Man's weapon, which lets Mega Man throw stone blocks, in a literal case of rock beating scissors.
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Mistral uses a polearm called L'Etranger. Said polearm is a pole made of robotic arms linked together, with an arm holding a combat knife at either end.
- Mishap 2 An Intentional Haunting has one which shades heavily into Black Comedy. After Larry Lerpis, aka "The Savage Romeo" fights a wrestling robot built by one of the main characters, he announces that now that he's proven he wasn't just a phony, he can hold his head up high. And since his neck was elongated by the accident which killed him, he proceeds to do exactly that.
- Neptunia: The CPUs' bust sizes are a play on the relative sizes of their consoles, from flat and bitter about it Blanc to XBOX HUEG Vert.
- In OMORI, characters whose HP is reduced to 0 become "toast," having their portraits replaced by slices of toast. They can be revived in battle with an item called Life Jam.
- Pokémon, oh so many Pokémon:
- Exeggcute is a group of eggs that hatch and grow into a palm tree when it evolves, making it an egg-plant.
- Alolan Exeggutor is believed to have been partially inspired by the Dracaena genus of plants, often called "dragon trees". Alolan Exeggutor is a Dragon-type walking palm tree, therefore it's literally a "dragon tree".
- Alolan Dugtrio's appearance with its' long golden hair (making it look like a group or surfers or a rock band), its Steel typing and its increased weight compared to its' normal Kanto variant make it literally a "heavy metal band".
- Marill and its relatives are round balls of water with polka dots. In Japanese, polka dots are called "water balls" (水玉).
- Nosepass is a compass whose nose always points north, making it literally follow its nose.
- Empoleon is a literal emperor penguin.
- Shaymin is a hedgehog that's also a hedge.
- Applin is a wyrm (dragon) that lives inside an apple as if it were a worm.
- Fidough and Dachsbun are purebread dogs.
- Polyroll: One of the enemies in the computer-themed Digital Mind world is a ram with a RAM stick for a body.
- Portal: In the first game, as GLaDOS says "despite your violent behavior", her randomly flashing screens pause on a picture of a violin, and when you destroy the morality core, they flash to a picture of a couple of screws.
- Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask: Layton's childhood friend Randal Ascot wears an ascot. The Masked Gentleman also has a visual pun, but it's spoilerific: he's Randal Ascot, and he's still wearing an ascot!
- Progressbar 95: Occasionally you may find ladybugs in the system menu. Tapping on them brings the message "You found a bug!" and the option "Report it", which gives 2500 after a level. In other words, you're literally finding and reporting "bugs" in the system.
- Psychonauts: While exploring the insides of people's minds and mentalities, you will find several hatboxes, duffelbags, and purses that all bear sad, sobbing faces. That's right, emotional baggage!
- Psychonauts 2 opens with a circus strongman lighting a match on an Xbox Game Studios matchbox to launch Double Fine's mascot out of a cannon. In others words, Microsoft helped Double Fine launch their game.
- Quest for Glory: There's scarcely a scene that goes by without some sort of sight gag. Gnomes (Keapon Laffin, Punny Bones and Gnome Ann) especially are prone to this, and the gags in general are affectionately nicknamed "Silly Clowns" both by the fandom and within the games themselves. The Clown himself actually cameos in Quest for Glory III.
- Rockman 7 EP:
- Freeze Man freezes time as one of his attacks.
- Spring Man's level, "Viva! Spring World!", takes place in a hot spring at springtime.
- Sam & Max: Freelance Police: Prismatology alludes to the phrase "technicolor yawn;" the Gastrokenisis talisman, as well as the cover of "Emetics," is depicted as a man vomiting a rainbow, and it makes other character vomit in technicolor as well.
- Sega Superstars:
- In Jet Set Radio Future, Professor K describes Gum as "A real cool lady who leaves a trail of broken hearts wherever she goes." In Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, Gum's All-Star Move involves her literally leaving a trail of broken hearts on the track.
- In the PC version of Transformed, Pyro, Heavy, and Spy are playable characters. Spy takes over driving in the plane segments. Notice: Spy Plane.
- The Sims 2:
- Olive Specter is a literal Black Widow (as in, she's black, not that literally).
- The bubble blower makes Sims float after being used for a while. See, they're getting high!
- Slay the Spire: The unlockable Beta Art of the cards (unlocked by slaying the True Final Boss with one of the characters) are full of these. The most well-known example is probably the Defect's "Boot Sequence" card, whose Beta Art is the Defect inside a comically large boot.
- Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill: The Rush Limbaugh boss literally throws sticks while stones fall onto Socks. This is also a Take That! at his pro-deforestation views.
- One particular B-12 memory in Stray is a bowl of broth topped with RAM chips. Those who know their cyberpunk will immediately recognize this as the robotic equivalent of ramen.
- Super Mario Bros.:
- The three major princesses have motifs (Peach/Mushroom, Daisy/Flower, Rosalina/Star) that match the three power-ups from the very first game.
- Super Mario Bros.: Fire Flowers are known as hi-banas in Japanese, and the Japanese word for "fireworks" is hana-bi.
- Team Fortress 2:
- The game features two characters that are responsible for continuing the war between RED and BLU, The Administrator and Miss Pauling. Guess what color they wear?
- In the Capture the Flag mode, players have to steal briefcases of sensitive documents from each other's base. When a player has a briefcase, some documents will fall off and hang on the floor for a few seconds, letting the enemy team track him down through a very literal "paper trail".
- TinkerQuarry: Staya, the main antagonist, is a vicious toy dog who makes sure no toys leave the Dollhouse. He's covered in mechanical clock parts, so one could say he's quite literally a "watchdog".
- Touhou Project has Parsee Mizuhashi, a Green-Eyed Monster. Take a wild guess as to what her eye color is. Parsee also has a visual Stealth Pun going on: she's a Persian (hashihito) bridge princess (hashihime).
- Unleash the Light: The Flanker Badge, which boosts the wearer's attack by 5% if they're on the top or bottom of the diamond formation, is represented by flank steak being cut with a sword.
- VVVVVV: The title doesn't just refer to the six members of Captain Viridian's crew. It also refers to your most common obstacle.
- World of Warcraft: The icon representing the passive Shaman ability "Mental Quickness" is a picture of a brain running around on little legs.
- Worms: The animation for skipping a turn is skipping rope.
