PaRappa the Rapper / YMMV

Accidental Innuendo:
- Some of Colonel Noodle's lyrics from "Noodles Can't be Beat!" from PaRappa 2 are talking about noodles, but can sound like he's talking about... something else.
  Yeah, that little slippery thing tastes so good all the time.
  Slurp it, suck it, I know you/we all like it.
- Everything about "Big" from PaRappa 2, if all the lyrics about one's size aren't already a Double Entendre.
Alternative Character Interpretation: Sunny Funny. She's presented as PaRappa's sweet love interest, and while some people see her as such, others see her as an insensitive, Ungrateful Bastard that never acknowledges the hard work her boyfriend puts in for her. The fact that PaRappa has recurring intrusive thoughts of her breaking up with him over the smallest of things might say a lot about the state of their relationship: PaRappa constantly feels on edge around her and is scared that she'll take just about any excuse to leave him. Given PaRappa's Determinator status, it's hard to pin this all on his own anxiety—her lack of communication with him (exacerbated by her few lines of dialogue with him in both games) also seems to be a factor. The developers must have caught onto this, because she apologizes to him at the end of the game.
Annoying Video Game Helper: Boxy Boy's tutorials in PaRappa 2, which interrupt cutscenes. They can be skipped once they begin with the start button, or prevented from starting entirely with a cheat code. But neither are mentioned anywhere.
Awesome Music: Has its own page.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Level 7 of PaRappa 2 has DJPJ's booth crashing through the wall and causing a power surge. The level then continues as if nothing happened.
Breather Level: The last stage of each game is always easier than the ones directly preceding it. This is especially noticeable in the first game and Lammy, where the preceding levels are both That One Level (the Bathroom Rap and Taste of Teriyaki, respectively). Since it's always a celebratory Dance Party Ending, it's a way for the player to cool down and show off what they've learned.
Common Knowledge: For some reason, various online sources claim Parappa is a rat terrier. No official source gives Parappa a breed.
Contested Sequel: While PaRappa 2 is still loved by fans, whether it lives up to the first game and Lammy is a point of debate. Some consider it weaker than the first game for being easier than the other games, heavily retreading the first game, and Boxy Boy's unnecessary tutorials. Other fans find PaRappa 2 to be the superior game for experimenting more with its music styles, having a more interesting story, the songs and levels being just as memorable as the first game's, and all-around better humor. Even the Sequel Difficulty Drop is considered a blessing in disguise by fans who were put off by the strictness of the previous game's inputs.
Critical Dissonance: The second game received mostly mixed reviews from critics, but fan response is much more positive.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Chop Chop Master Onion, PaRappa's karate sensei. He's the only one of the rap masters to show up with a song in all the games in the series, and if PaRappa characters show up outside of the games, he will always be one of the showcase characters.
- Hairdresser Octopus (Takoyama-san in Japan), particularly for his hilariously flamboyant and Keet alter-ego, and weird design even for PaRappa standards. Oh and as a plus, how darn catchy his song "Hair Scare" is.
Fan Nickname: In a slight variant, most English-speaking fans prefer calling Hairdresser Octopus by his Japanese name Takoyama-san, or just Takoyama.
Fan-Preferred Couple: PaRappa and Lammy, despite the fact that both PaRappa games focused on PaRappa's love of Sunny. Some fans lampshade this by showing that Sunny is not amused. There are also a number of people who ship PaRappa and PJ thanks to the Stage 2 "Romantic Karate" level.
Friendly Fandoms:
- With Friday Night Funkin', another call-and-response Rhythm Game featuring a rapper getting into various music battles to prove his love for his lady. Many PaRappa fans consider Friday Night Funkin' a successor to this series, and the creators of the latter cited PaRappa as one of their inspirations.
- Scratchin' Melodii, like Friday Night Funkin', is a call-and response rhythm game that takes more direct inspiration from PaRappa in its gameplay and UI; its protagonist even spends the game encountering people all over town to help complete their Humble Goal. Because of the similarities between the three, fans cross its protagonists over under the trio name BPM.^note
Funny Moments: Has its own page.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Due to Rodney Greenblat's popularity in Japan, he was chosen to design the game's characters and environment.
Good Bad Bugs: Being an early, rap-based Rhythm Game, the COOL freestyle system is far from perfect and can be easily broken... to hilarious results.
Harsher in Hindsight: In stage 3 of the first game, Prince Fleaswallow tells PaRappa that "Money money money is all you need". Over a decade later, it seems PaRappa, or at least his voice actor Dred Foxx, took Prince Fleaswallow's lesson to heart: he scammed someone out of 100$ when given the money to voice lines for a PaRappa fan animation.
Hilarious in Hindsight: In episode 8 of the original anime, a rumor is spread around that PaRappa and friends are working on a new gymnastics move called "Rocket Jumping."
Heartwarming Moments:
- Although it takes playing Cool Mode to hear the full conversation, PaRappa's Love Confession to Sunny at the end of Stage 6 in the first game is nothing short of adorable.
  PaRappa: Alright, alright! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Thank you so much! This was all made possible 'cause I never gave up, and I always believed in my lovely Sunny Funny! Yeah! Thank you!
  Sunny: (chuckles endearingly)
- PaRappa being congratulated by his father after you beat Stage 6 of the second game.
Ho Yay: PaRappa and PJ doing the moves from "Romantic Karate" on each other. Doesn't help that the show they're imitating is billed as being for adults only.
It's Easy, So It Sucks!: While the first game had some very unforgiving levels, the sequel is generally seen as swinging the difficulty too far to the other side due to the game making it harder to fail, along with it being much easier to achieve a Cool rank.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The PS4 "remastered" version was treated by fans as such, noting that it was the same as the PSP version, only with graphical filters to smooth out the visuals for high-resolution displays. Hackers would later discover that the remaster was literally the PSP version, as it was run on a PSP emulator with upscaled textures.
Memetic Mutation:
- "chinese", a video of PaRappa 2's multiplayer mode, has seen some exposure. It's known for being a showcase of some of the crazy things people can do in said mode, such as spam lyrics or make up new ones. This led to Colonel Noodle becoming something of a meme himself, with his "CHINESE" and other lines being incorporated into many image macros and remixes.
- You [X]in' awful! ^Explanation
- A video syncing up an infamous rant about "cringe culture" to the Hair Scare stage from PaRappa 2 made the rounds in 2020. "Cringe! Is that all you shitposting fucks keep saying?!"
- A meme that went around in 2021 is having a PaRappa style call and response with inappropriate things. It started by mocking the impromptu rap battle in Space Jam: A New Legacy with Daffy Duck saying "I thlammed my penith in the car door". The next example takes the "This is where I watched my parents die, Raphael" scene from the Batman/TMNT crossover comic. It even has animations. Another popular example is the "pick up the can" sequence from Half-Life 2, except PaRappa can't say "can" so he ends up coming off as being a smartass to the metro cop, who proceeds to beat him to death.
Moe: PaRappa is literally a rapping, beanie-wearing puppy. What about that description doesn't sound like the most adorable thing in the world? On top of that, his voice in the anime is Miyu Irino doing the cutest voice he can.
Nightmare Fuel:
- Hairdresser Octopus from the second game. Mainly his scissors-flailing crazy side.
- In Stage 3 of the first game, PaRappa and his friends collide head on with a semi-truck! Fortunately, none of them appear to be hurt after that (but the same can't be said for the poor car they were in).
- There's something about the sunset scene in the first game's Stage 5 cutscene that's very spooky and unsettling... The color error and animation could be suspect.
Once Original, Now Common: Newer gamers would probably look at the first game and wonder what the big deal is. It only has six stages, no customization, and can be beaten in under an hour. But when it first hit shelves back in 1997, nothing like it had ever existed before; not only did it pretty much invent the Rhythm Game genre but its distinct art style hadn't been done in any video game either. It also defied the stereotypes about rap music at the time, due to its clean lyrics.
Parental Bonus: Benito Mussolini —> Instructor Mooselini.
Porting Disaster: The PS4 remastered edition has some very noticeable input lag. Bad enough for most games, but for a rhythm game, it makes it essentially unplayable. The remastered version also has several visual glitches, such as a red bar appearing on Cheap Cheap's head in Stage 4 when your rank is Bad (which is supposed to be a part of the visual filter for the Awful rank where her whole head turns red), the rain only appearing in the corners of the screen for the Bad and Awful ranks of Stage 5, and the fade to black transition at the end of Stage 6's song not occurring.
Retroactive Recognition: Younger players are likely to know PaRappa's voice actor, Dred Foxx, as being the gruff vocals for Knuckles the Echidna's theme song, "Unknown From M.E.", from Sonic Adventure.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: PaRappa 2 is significantly easier than the first game by having the timing window for button presses be more forgiving, getting a Cool rank is easier to obtain, and dropping down to Bad or Awful will have the master repeat the last set of lyrics to give you a chance to redo your mistakes without running into a possible Unwinnable game. Rising back to the rank of Good from this state will put you back to where you were originally before the rank drop so that you don't have to redo parts of the lyrics yet again and possibly screw up the same parts.
Suspiciously Similar Song:
- In PaRappa 1, "PaRappa's Live Rap With MC King Kong Mushi" sounds a little like the rap version of "December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
- The cinema before the fourth level includes a short ditty that sounds remarkably like the song "Tijuana Taxi".
- The piano accompaniment from the driving lesson song is blatantly sampled from "Turtles Have Short Legs" by Can.
- The piano accompaniment from the Prince Fleaswallow song sounds similar to the Joe Cocker version of "Feelin' Alright".
- The music playing during Boxy Boy's tutorials in PaRappa the Rapper 2 has a lot of similarities to "Intermission" by Blur.
- Awful mode "Romantic Love" in PaRappa the Rapper 2 sounds very similar to the Special World map music from Super Mario World.
That One Boss: Potentially, any of the bosses, but Cheap Cheap the Cooking Chicken is consistently hard for a lot of people not just due to the button timings, but the detection of said timings: even if you time the buttons perfectly your rank may still drop.
That One Level: The bathroom rap level is considered to be extremely frustrating due to how many buttons the player has to play back with near-perfect timing in order to succeed. This was probably one of the reasons why the sequel has a more forgiving mechanic for button pressing in its levels.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Despite being a girl, Instructor Mooselini is often confused as a boy, mostly owing to her androgynous voice and not having any noticeably feminine features aside from her easy-to-miss skirt. Possibly aware of this fact, NanaOn-Sha opted to make her sister, Instructor Moosesha, more obviously feminine, including giving her breasts, a tutu, and a Beehive Hairdo.
Vindicated by History: PaRappa the Rapper 2 has become more well-liked in later years thanks to it having a far more playable PS4 port compared to PaRappa the Rapper Remastered, as well as Memetic Mutation giving it some more exposure.

Anime-only examples:

Creator's Pet: A awful lot of the episodes center on anime-only character Paula. Thankfully this is a less frustrating example considering Paula herself is a fun character.
Magnificent Bastard:
- "Droopy": Domonjo is a sapient flower who forms a bond with Sunny Funny after the latter saves his life. Wanting to help Sunny, Domonjo informs her of a plot by Gaster and Groober to plant bronze statues of themselves in PaRappa Town, and subsequently releases a pollen on the male characters that makes them blindly loyal to Sunny. When this inadvertently leads to Gaster's truck becoming a runaway, Domonjo stops it by having it crash into him, taking a fatal blow in the process. Realizing at last how much Sunny cares about Dorothy's wilted flowers, Domonjo revives them with the last of his strength, and even in death leaves behind his seeds so Sunny can see him again someday.
- "It's PJ and His Friends!": MC King Kong Mushi is the bombastic president of Building Records who has PJ Berri sign a contract to become a worldwide sensation. Mushi abides strictly by his contract, apathetically leaves PJ's friends in the dust and PJ himself without motivation, and outwits the gang with things such as a giant blimp and spare circuits when they try to get him back. It is only when PJ's annoying footsteps become known that Mushi fires him, citing the contract once again.

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YMMV / PaRappa the Rapper

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Anime-only examples: