YMMV / ULTRAKILL

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • A book in 5-2 sings praises about Gabriel from the point of view of the Ferryman. Given that said book is a personal diary kept in the Ferryman's quarters, the last written line shown by the game is a waxing poetic "Radiant is Gabriel, for he is the light in my darkness" like it's from a fanfiction about the author's most beloved character, the Ferryman has a painting in 5-3 depicting Gabriel holding him in a Bridal Carry, and the capital text following the diary's text has V1 deem the rest of the book "irrelevant", it's easy to imagine the unseen text describes the Ferryman and Gabriel doing something privately racy (if not at least intimate) and V1 is refusing to read something they find gross.
  • Gabriel's line "Come to me", right before the climactic fight in 6-1. It's obviously supposed to be a challenge to V1, but the breathy way he says it and especially the increased Foe Romance Subtext from his rematch make it feel like he's either telling V1 to masturbate while thinking of him or to physically come to him so they can have sex. (Although in an interview, Hakita said that he and Gianni knew exactly what they were doing...)
• Anti-Metagame Character: Guttermen and their otherwise unbreakable shields are an obvious ploy to prevent players from only ever using the Feedbacker arm due to how useful parrying is and to force them to pull out the Knuckleblaster once in a while for a dedicated purpose.
• Awesome Music: Enough to warrant its own page.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • Swordsmachine definitely qualifies, being a rather aggressive opponent wielding a sword and a shotgun, the latter of which you can claim for yourself after beating him for the first time... or by defeating another Swordsmachine with both phases in the same room, while contending with a much smaller but more vertical room, which nets you the shotgun before you face him even once.
  • Cerberus is also pretty fun and lives up to its title of "Guardian of Hell" fairly competently. And in a move reminiscent of Dark Souls, once you knock the first one to half health, the second one gets up and joins the fight. You'll have to earn your way into Hell.
  • The final boss of ACT I, Gabriel, is no slouch himself, with a variety of brutal attacks, including a light spear you can parry right into his face for a good chunk of his health. Combine that with his relentless taunting and brutal difficulty and beating him becomes incredibly satisfying, especially with his Precision F-Strike punctuating the whole thing. That's right, you drove a loyal servant of God to curse you out with a shameful, whining tone, and it's every bit as awesome as it sounds.
    • His rematch in ACT II keeps going with the trend. Enraged at his earlier loss, he yells about how much he'll enjoy brutally murdering you, pulls out the two swords at his side and shows why they are his weapons of choice with a blistering assault. As the fight goes on, he gets calmer but even more dangerous as he weaves in teleporting. Once again, defeating him is cathartic as he truly begins to grow as The Rival and accepts V1 as a Worthy Opponent.
  • The first boss of P-1, Minos Prime. A Large Ham to beat out Gabriel? Check. Absolutely Nintendo Hard? Check. Ridiculously good Boss Remix? Check. Original and badass design with awesome moves? God save us all it's a check! Going through P-ranking every single level in Act 1 is worth it for a chance to fight him. The fact that he fights you to avenge his people and humanity while being voiced by Stephan Weyte (who also voiced Caleb) makes him even more awesome.
  • P-2 brings us Sisyphus Prime, a deep-voiced badass who is faster than Minos and will unleash an ass-whooping on you like there is no tomorrow. His attacks are lightning-fast but balanced by a lot of them being parryable, he can spam shockwaves to catch players with bad positioning and has maybe the quickest Teleport Spam of any boss so far. Beating him is truly a test of might reserved only for the most die-hard of players, since in addition to P-ranking all of act 2, P-2 is not like P-1 in that it throws a small army of enemies at you beforehand, though mercifully if you reach him once a shortcut permanently opens that allows you to skip the gauntlet. Overall, Sisyphus Prime is everything beloved about Minos Prime cranked up to fifty and tossed in a blender, and it is immensely satisfying to finally beat him.
  • V2 is already a vicious doppelganger of you from the get-go, but the rematch against them in the Greed layer kicks things up a notch. After reducing their first health bar to zero, they will once again attempt to flee - but this time, V1 gives chase, resulting in a high-speed shootout while the two of them slide down the side of an immense pyramid.
  • The boss of Wrath, The Leviathan, is a titanic Sea Serpent that takes everything good about The Corpse of King Minos and turns them up a notch, thanks to its surprisingly fast and intense attacks, lack of the black hole, and having a scary build-up in the abyssal depths of the Ocean Styx. In its second phase, it fights you with both its head and tail at the same time, requiring you to be aware of your surroundings while weaving through its attacks and dishing out damage in return. You can even ride on its back to attack its weak-point!
  • If fighting the Leviathan wasn't enough for you, then meet The 1000-THR "Earthmover", the Battleship Raid boss of Violence. You battle this colossal death machine by scaling its massive body with Whiplash beacons surrounding its body while mowing down mooks on your way. Once you get to the back of this beast, you battle its security system before invading it from the inside-out by climbing your way up to the robot's mechanical heart to destroy it. Once you destroy its core, the robot activates its self-destruct mechanism, so you escape with your life, but just as if you're close to the exit, you deal with one more wave of mooks before finally escaping in one piece while The Earthmover explodes behind you.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Split-shotting with the Base Marksman never gets old, especially if you set off an explosion by hitting the Hell orb of a Stray or a Soldier. Bonus points if you hit two Streetcleaners on their flamethrower tanks. TINK-TINK-BOOM.
  • What other game lets you punch your own shotgun shells to make them faster and stronger? This game.
  • Turning an army of mooks into Ludicrous Gibs and painting the arena with their blood while getting the ULTRAKILL rank is proof why this game is called ULTRAKILL. The best part is that there are so many ways to pull this off, like core ejects, boosted projectiles, over-pumps, rockets, saw-traps, overheated nails, fall damage, and the Malicious Railcannon (which can create a bigger and stronger explosion when shooting at a shotgun core or a frozen rocket). Note that all but three of these methods involve explosions.
  • Gabriel butchering The Council one-by-one is immensely satisfying, since The Council are a bunch of Holier Than Thou jackasses that ruled Heaven with an iron fist and made Hell as miserable as possible, going as far as sending Gabriel to kill King Minos just because he made Lust a better place to live. They also stripped Gabriel of his holy light for losing to V1, causing him to die in 24 hours unless he defeats V1 for good. But the funny thing is that without their authority, they're defenseless! So seeing them getting slaughtered for their crimes like the spineless bastards they are by the very angel they spat on is poetic justice. For extra catharsis, Gabriel gloriously presents the decapitated head of the last Council member to Heaven's citizens, showing them they have nothing to fear now that their divine tyrants are dead.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • It's very, very common to never see players pull out the Knuckleblaster at all (except to deal with Guttermen and their shields as of 7-2) and rely exclusively on the Feedbacker because of how ludicrously useful parrying is against almost every enemy in the game and how many style points can be accrued via parrying, as opposed to the limited use the Knuckleblaster has as essentially just a shotgun with higher knockback and a worse reload^note Not to mention that the addition of the Jackhammer provides many of the same benefits as the Knuckleblaster (such as the ability to destroy Gutterman shields) while still allowing you to hold the Feedbacker. The chance you would forget to switch back to Feedbacker in the heat of combat and get killed when you tried to parry with your face wasn't deemed worthwhile. This was somewhat mitigated by an update that optionally gives each arm its own dedicated button instead of having to manually switch between them, so you can bust out the Knuckleblaster for a quick pop without worry.
  • The Slab Piercer revolver is usually seen as a direct upgrade to the default Piercer, and as such is basically a permanent select for most players after they unlock it.
• Crazy Is Cool: V1's entire reason for entering Hell and butchering its residents messily? So they can literally use the bloodshed to fuel themselves. That's it. And considering all the crazy things they can pull off while running and gunning through levels, there's a certain charm to this robot's single-minded desire for blood.
• Crossover Ship: V1 is sometimes paired with V from Murder Drones, since they both are psychotic robots with a literal bloodlust.
• Creator Worship: Gianni Matragrano is generally beloved by the community, between Gabriel being affectionately mocked by the community and Gianni's willingness to participate in ULTRAKILL's Memetic Mutation.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Mindflayers have an assortment of abilities that make them difficult to fight at any range. They can teleport, fire either homing projectiles or a sweeping laser, and swipe with some strong melee attacks. They're surprisingly bulky despite appearances, and while they have some weak points, they're difficult to hit thanks to their size and the Mindflayers' movements. It's telling that most experienced players say to burst them down with the railcannon and the nailgun before they even get a chance to really get going. You can temporarily prevent them from teleporting by hitting them with the Screwdriver variant of the railcannon, but this only mitigates the threat they pose slightly. You can also kill them instantly by using weapons that deal Splash Damage (such as the Malicious Railcannon, parried Shotgun pellets, the Blue Shotgun's Core Eject, the Green Shotgun's Max Pump, and the Knuckleblaster) to reflect their blue projectiles back to them, but pulling this off is difficult. These things are one of the most infamous enemies that show up in the Cyber Grind, and for good reason, especially when multiple appear at once in later waves.
  • Virtues are almost always one of the highest priority threats when one shows up on the field, as they use highly damaging holy beam strikes that can target V1 from anywhere on the map and through cover, which cover a wide area and have lingering hitboxes to boot. Not so bad normally due to their lack of aggression and relative fragility, but in pretty much all cases besides their introduction, Virtues will always appear backing up significantly more aggressive enemies (with multiple at once being a common occurence in later stages), often tucked away in corners of the arena where they'll rain fire from out of sight while you're struggling to handle the other foes, greatly restricting your movement. On top of that, if you thought you can just ignore it and kill all the other enemies, Virtues will permanently enrage if left alone for long enough and start leading their attacks to make them more dangerous. Like most enemies, they're even more painful on Brutal; not only do they attack much faster, but their beams now only vanish when the next one is fired, turning them from short-lived area denial to full-fledged stage hazards.
  • Mannequins move incredibly fast, are more durable than they look, and tend to swarm you from multiple directions at once due to their ability to cling to walls and ceilings. Offensively, they have a one-two punch (a four-punch combo on Brutal or higher) that comes out very quickly and has them get right in your face, and homing blue shots like the Mindflayer which aren't bad normally, but can get out of control when multiple Mannequins are sniping you from different points across the room; it's also somewhat hard to tell whether one is going to try and rush you down or snipe you until it actually begins to attack. Parrying either of their attacks can instakill them, but they'll often scuttle to new positions in between attacks, making them harder to hit with parried projectiles or retaliate against. Furthemore, they have a 50% resistance to explosions, making it harder to cull groups of them at once like you would with most swarm-type enemies. To add insult to injury, their tendency to lie flat and the way their body and gibs look alike can make it look like they're dead when they're really just idle or winded, potentially catching you off guard if you assumed you had killed them. On the bright side, if one is clinging to a wall, knockback or damage can knock them down, leaving them temporarily dazed and open to attack, and punching a Mannequin mid-fall will straight-up kill it.
  • Guttertanks are deceptively speedy and evasive for their size and typically fight from a distance. They'll pelt you with lightning-fast missiles or landmines, the latter of which have a tiny parry window, and these explosives inflict heavy knockback. Within melee range, they have a quick, powerful punch with the same strong knockback as the explosives, and it cannot be parried unless the Guttertank misses and trips over. One Guttertank is already a headache, but they commonly spawn in groups that can easily juggle an unprepared player. The Freezeframe Rocket Launcher can temporarily freeze their rockets to make things a bit easier, and there's even an instakill trick in which you can ride one of their rockets back into them, but it can only help so much. And on Brutal difficulty and above, these enemies are even worse to deal with; they don't trip upon missing a punch, meaning they can rapidly follow up on a missed punch with another, thus making healing off of their blood extremely risky.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • King Minos, due to being the only unambiguously heroic character in the setting, having a sympathetic backstory, and his memorable boss fight, which is generally considered as one of the best boss battles in the game, alongside being played by fan-favorite voice actor: Stephan Weyte.
  • Similarly, King Sisyphus, for being a Determined Defeatist with a relentless and thrilling boss fight, alongside with being voiced by Lenval Brown of Disco Elysium fame.
  • Swordsmachine is also a fan-favorite character, despite only being the second boss of the game, thanks to their distinctive, towering design.
  • Something Wicked is popular in fanart, even though it's a literal stick figure that only appears in the first secret level.
  • The 1000-THR "Earthmover" is an almost literal example. It has seen plenty of fanart due to its imposing and creative character design and equally epic boss battle, being a colossal, Centaur-like robot that is fought by scaling its body and invading it from the inside while dealing with a relentless series of gauntlets.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • V1 themself is a deadly killing machine that bears a literal thirst for blood, but they can showcase their talent in slaughter by committing a number of impressive tricks while in the heat of battle.
  • While some may argue whether he is genuinely evil or not, Gabriel is nonetheless a badass Archangel on account of his cool design, imposing voice acting, and for proving to be a challenging and formidable foe in both of his boss battles.
  • Hell itself is the game's sadistic Big Bad, and it is also one of the most creative depictions of The Inferno for being a Genius Loci with visually unique depictions of its nine layers. On top of that, Hell is capable of writing both amusing dialogue and rich poetry that is worthy of the Divine Comedy inspirations, making this living realm of torment quite literally Sophisticated as Hell.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The Malicious Face has been christened "Maurice" by the community, based on an adapted meme identifying one as such. Some specifically use Maurice to refer to the Malicious Face wielded by the Sisyphean Insurrectionist. As of the Saw Your Heart update, it has become an Ascended Meme, as crushing an enemy under the falling corpse of a Malicious Face grants the "Mauriced" style bonus.
  • The Cerberus's name is often shortened to "Cerb" (pronounced "Serb"), with multiples referred to as "Cerbs." The Cerberus is also called Andre because of its file name. The four Cerberi that Jumpscare you in the opening of P-2 are called Weezer, after the cover the Blue Album.
  • V1 and V2 are often referred to as "GoPro cameras" for bring one-eyed Killer Robots.
  • Gabriel's name is sometimes shortened to "Gabe".
  • The Corpse of King Minos is often abbreviated as "COKM" (pronounced "Cock-em") because it sounds like the word "cock" and he used to rule the Lust Layer.
  • The Leviathan's name is sometimes shortened to "Levi" (pronounced "Live-ee"). It's also called "big snake" for being a titanic Sea Serpent.
  • The Earthmovers were sometimes called "death llamas", "death ponies", or "war giraffes", due to their tall, quadrupedal designs and being first seen in 7-2: the first ring of Violence. Several Image Macros also call them Benjamin, for... some reason.
  • Subsequently, speedrunning the Earthmover in 7-4 is often called a "lobotomy", owing to how Sequence Breaking it results in it destroying its head from the inside out with the lasers meant to protect its brain.
  • The boss of P-1, Minos Prime, is often shortened to "Pinos" because it's a portmanteau of "Prime Minos" and it also sounds like the word "penis". Similarly, the boss of P-2, Sisyphus Prime, is sometimes shortened to "Pisyphus" (Geddit? Piss?) to make it a sort of Theme Naming around Vulgar Humor. He's also called Sussyfist sometimes, mostly because it sounds both similar and amusing.
• Fanon:
  • People generally use he/they/it pronouns for V1 and V2. This wiki sticks to they/them, but a lot of people in the fandom refer to the bots with he/him.
  • While V1 and V2 don't speak in-game, V1's voice, as shown in media like Gianni Matragrano's Ultrakill Community Memes videos, is the S.A.M. text-to-speech voice program. V2's voice is either also S.A.M., or it's Microsoft Richard, aka the Windows 10 Narrator. The former has shown up occasionally in fanworks whenever V1's voice is needed.
  • Gabriel has a gaming channel by the name of Gabriel Gaming, though this is mostly used for memes and joke works.
  • Characterizations of V1 and V2 vary from person to person, but people generally make V2 to be either more cold, serious and stern or more arrogant compared to V1's more playful Memetic Troll jokester attitude.
  • People like to interpret V2 and Gabriel as having a Vitriolic Best Buds-type friendship or at least on good terms with each other, despite neither of them interacting together in-game.
  • Gabriel is sometimes depicted as a trans man. This seems to be inspired from devteam artist Francis Xie's personal headcanon of Gabriel being such.
  • Some artists draw the golden sides of Gabriel's helmet with a wreath-like design, while others draw said sides with its tips pointing upwards like that of a demon's. Some artists draw both, with the design depending on certain events.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Gabriel is quick to show his disdain towards V1 from the get-go, but that didn't stop people from shipping them anyway. The conclusion of Gabriel's second battle only added more fuel to the fire, as Gabriel's enjoyment from being beaten by V1 as well as his Character Development that happened as a result led quite a few people to interpret it as Gabriel actually developing feelings for the machine. Gianni Matragrano himself has leaned into this, doing a bit as Gabriel where he explicitly calls V1 his husband while referencing the "My name is Skyler White, yo" scene.
  • Minos Prime/Gabriel is also seen on occasion, even though their only interactions within the game's lore are when Gabriel kills him for turning the Layer of Lust into a paradise and Minos wanting to gore him for doing that.
  • While the two are mostly rivals, V1/V2 can be seen occasionally as well.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Since DUSK, AMID EVIL, and Gloomwood are also Retraux First-Person Shooter games published by New Blood Interactive, fans of ULTRAKILL get along with fans of those games.
  • Fans of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal tend to be fans of New Blood games as well, a group that also happens to include both games' director Hugo Martin.
  • There is a lot of overlap between ULTRAKILL fans and fans of the Hellaverse, likely due to them both having large LGBT Fanbases and featuring non-standard depictions of Heaven and Hell, though they're on the opposite ends of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
  • ULTRAKILL players tend to be fans of Murder Drones, probably because both works introduces robots with literal bloodlust.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The original version of the Sharpshooter Revolver was found to be hilariously busted. Against the various Superbosses, it could quite handily delete a majority of their massive healthbars after ricocheting off some coins.
  • The Jackhammer quickly became notorious in the community for having access to insane tricks which allowed it to one shot Malicious Faces, Virtues, and Sentries as long as V1 was able to pick up enough speed to be able to deal its devastating X4 damage Megaton Punch, its Core Eject variant which let it spam nukes without the need for the Malicious Railcannon, and a slew of other interactions with other weapons that can turn most enemies to paste in an instant. The only downside is that these tricks are a lot harder to pull off than the ones with the base shotgun, making it a case of Difficult, but Awesome.
• Genius Bonus: Being based on The Divine Comedy, the game has at least a few references that won't hit unless you're familiar with the 700+ year old poem:
  • The text behind Cerberus in Prelude's Climax is part of the text from the entry-way to Hell from the story: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here".
  • In the game, Limbo, the first circle of Hell, is depicted as an apparently serene and beautiful place, which turns out to be a fake to torment sinners about the impossibility of enjoying the real thing in the afterlife. In the poem, Limbo is reserved for pagans that lived a virtuous life and unbaptized children, and their only punishment in Hell is the knowledge they'll never see Heaven.
    • A book in Limbo's "Clair de Lune" briefly mentions the level's skulls tempting the writer to take the plunge deeper into Hell. The one who guides Dante throughout all of Hell, Virgil, resides in the Limbo layer.
  • The massive tower with bounce-pads arranged in a circular pattern, along with the huge wind turbine seen later in the Lust circle is a reference to the hurricane Dante depicted as a punishment for the lustful in the book.
    • The theme for 2-1 (the first level of the Lust layer) is called "Cold Winds", also a reference to the punishment received by sinners in the circle of Lust.
  • The three Cerberi fought in the second room of 3-1 reference the poem's Cerberus, as it guards the Gluttony layer while punishing its sinners by gnawing on them. Although Hakita states that this was unintentional in one of the streams.
    • More about Cerberus: when inactive, they adopt a Thinker Pose. The Trope Namer, the sculpture The Thinker, was intended to be part of a monumental statuary group depicting Dante's Inferno called The Gates of Hell, which Auguste Rodin never got to complete.
  • The punishment for Greed in the fourth circle in Inferno was to spend eternity pushing a boulder back and forth. While Dante never explicitly mentions Sisyphus, the game does show shadowy figures pushing boulders up and down a pyramid and makes Sisyphus the (former) ruler of the Greed circle.
  • While the Styx in the poem was a marsh and not an ocean, the punishment for the wrathful in the 5th circle is depicted in 5-2 fairly accurately. The lore entry for the Leviathan even mentions the sullen, who like in the poem, lay at the bottom of the Styx.
  • In Heresy, upon reaching the outdoors area, you can see a city in the burning horizon. In the poem, the circle of Heresy was the entrance to the city of Dis, the capital of Hell itself. You even get to explore Dis itself in P-2.
  • Violence has a lot to unpack:
    • The boss of 7-1 is the Minotaur. In Dante's Inferno, the Minotaur was the guardian of the seventh circle of Hell, and Dante and Virgil had to distract it to proceed further. Also, it was also King Minos the one who locked it in a labyrinth in the original myths.
    • In 7-2, you can see a river of blood across the whole level. This is the Phlegethon, which in Dante's Inferno was a river of boiling blood in which those who committed violence against others (murderers, warmongers, tyrants, plunderers, etc.) were punished by being submerged in it for eternity. In the far distance, you can see three Earthmovers overseeing the blood river Phlegethon, serving as analogs to the three Centaurs that guard the 1st Ring: Pholus, Nessus, and Chiron.
    • 7-3 is a fairly accurate depiction of the Forest of Suicides, the second ring of the circle of Violence, where those who committed violence against themselves are punished.
    • Not related to The Divine Comedy, the Greek script in the tombstone painted with the message "FEED US, WE WILL GROW" is a transcription of Revelation 9:6. In summary, that passage details how death shall be denied even to those who seek it, which is perfectly fitting for the circle of Violence designed to punish those who took their own life.
    • The Earthmover in 7-4 is striding across the sands in which those who were violent against God, Art, and Nature are punished. You can see fire raining from the sky during your Colossus Climb.
• Goddamned Bats: Brutal difficulty gives Drones and Soldiers very erratic movement that makes them way harder to pin down without relying on Ricoshots. The result is that these two fairly common enemies can become quite the nuisance.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • A bug present until Version 14b allowed anyone that performed an insane act of Sequence Breaking in 7-4 by climbing up the outside of the boss to essentially skip the whole fight by making it fry itself from the inside with its own defenses. The community lovingly dubbed this "Lobotomy%" once it was discovered.
  • Pressing the dedicated Feedbacker or Knuckleblaster buttons while looking at a touchscreen (such as those on the terminals) will cause V1 to tap the screen really hard. Not useful at all since it doesn't actually interact with touchscreen elements, but it looks a lot funnier than V1 spam-tapping the screen.
  • The FULL ARSENAL update shipped with a peculiar bug: dying while Firestarter flames existed caused them to burn infinitely when you respawn. Ever wanted to turn any boss arena into a flame-smothered hellscape? We don't know why you'd want to, but you can.
  • Also from the Firestarter, there was a bug where spraying the level start door would cause it to slide towards you. Fans got a lot of mileage from telling streamers to oil the door, startling them when it proceeded to float closer.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • The Lust Renaissance is uplifting as it is tragic. The layer was once a miserable realm until King Minos and his beloved subjects gradually reform the layer into a thriving kingdom where everyone is prosperous. King Minos brought prosperity to Lust's sinners not out of desire for glory or fame, but out of compassion for Lust's sinners. His altruism made him so beloved by his people that they made tributes of him, like the painting in 2-2, express deep sorrow when their beloved king is slain by Gabriel, and fondly remember him for eons after his death. Even though the Lust Renaissance tragically ended, the fact that there was a kind and selfless soul that turned an entire layer of Hell into a beautiful paradise out the goodness of his heart is not just triumphant, but proof that good exists in the ULTRAKILL universe.
  • The ending to 2-S. After the unseen player character counters Mirage's existentially terrifying argument on nihilism by debating that despite nothing mattering in the end, it only gives people the ability to define their own goals for themselves, they reassure Mirage; and by extension, the player, that despite their emotional side refusing to let go of the existential dread, it is still possible to overcome it.
    PC: And during the hardest times, when all seems lost and you want to give up, never forget...
    PC: We will always love you.
  • The Idol's lore entry is surprisingly touching for a Demonic enemy. The Idols were born with life but they were small and helpless until the Ferrymen adopted them during their travels. Then the Ferrymen carefully carved the Idols in the image of the Virgin Mary, both as a tribute to the Angels for granting them mercy, and as an act of kindness for the Idols, who finally have a face of their own and a chance at life. Raised with love, the Idols continue the chain of compassion by using holy magic to protect others from harm. Even in the depths of Hell, love can still thrive.
    • Adding onto this is the fact that Idols are often paired with Virtues in their encounters, with three notable Idol/Virtue encounters across three different levels. Virtue lore states that the higher angels inherently look down upon them due to their human origin, and they're frequently tasked to do menial work that greater angels can't be bothered to do themselves. The Idol's blessing is likely the first real kindness that Virtues have ever felt since they became angels.
  • As utterly bizarre as it sounds, Gabriel's Character Development after his second defeat. He notes the foreign sensation of meeting someone capable of shedding his blood and retreats to collect his thoughts. During Act 2's ending, it's revealed that this sensation was relief at finally being freed from the expectations of being The Ace and thus The Council's hold over him. With his mind now truly independent, Gabriel realizes just how dogmatic and blindly cruel he's become under them and returns to Heaven to kill them and free Heaven's denizens from their tyranny. In essence, V1 had managed to unintentionally beat the delusion out of Gabriel.
  • The entire Developer's Museum is a massive museum that celebrates the game's 5th anniversary of its development, serving as a monument of gratitude to all the contributors who help bring this game to life.
• He's Just Hiding: The general behavior of the death of V2. A considerably large part of the fandom believes that V2 will come back despite Hakita confirming that V2 indeed died when they crashed into the floor of Greed. It even became a meme when Hakita mocked the implausibility of V2 coming back because they are literally eviscerated into a stain on the floor right in front of the player's eyes.
  Hakita: This character is so fucking dead. It's—and I—it's so dead as it possibly could ever be, and people are still like "maybe it's alive, though, maybe it comes back, maybe someone like, reconstructs it—". RECONSTRUCT WHAT!?!? THERE'S NOTHING LEFT!!!
• He Really Can Act: Gianni Matragrano, while a professional voice actor by trade, is mostly known for posting strange, humorous voice acting work on Youtube. His role as Gabriel, however, proved that he's a professional, as he adds a level of pathos and emotional depth to Gabriel that nobody saw coming, to the point where some have called his To the Pain speech in Act 2's finale chilling.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: An Eldritch Abomination that is also a Genius Loci, is found beneath the Earth, is described as a superorganism despite being one entity, and is/contains a Womb Level that's populated by Body Horror creatures. Are we talking about Hell or the Permian Basin Superorganism?
• Ho Yay:
  • Judging by how the Ferryman calls Gabriel "the light in [his] darkness" and the painting of Gabriel holding him in a Bridal Carry, it's pretty easy to imagine he has feelings for him.
  • Quite a few of Gabriel's voice lines from Act II are rather suspect, with "Come on, machine! Fight me like an animal!" in particular getting comparisons to the "I wanna fuck you like an animal" line from Nine Inch Nails' "Closer".
• I Knew It!:
  • Pretty much the entire game's playerbase assumed that the boss of P-2: Wait of the World was going to be Sisyphus Prime long before the Prime Sanctum was added into the game, given how King Sisyphus carries the same amount of narrative weight in Greed that Minos carried in Lust, and V1 can find his corpse in the secret area of the pyramid in 4-4 where they find the Sawblade Launcher and it's just as big as the Corpse of King Minos, denoting that Sisyphus had a prime soul.
  • The second that the Earthmovers were teased in preview material for 7-2, fans immediately concluded that at least one of them would be the Climax Boss of Violence, which was right on the money.
• The Inverse Law of Fandom Levity: ULTRAKILL is a game with an extremely nihilistic plot about a Killer Robot traveling through Hell and killing every living thing in existence just to stay alive a little longer using their blood as sustenance. Despite this, the fandom is one of the most non-serious modern gaming communities, primarily concerning themselves with making jokes about shipping V1 and Gabriel, giving every single enemy in the game ridiculous-sounding mundane names and generally being silly. Even one of the game's fan wikis has completely non-serious jokes mixed in with the actual information on almost every page.
• LGBT Fanbase: Even if you look past the amount of gay jokes people make about the game and its characters (as well as the amount of mostly male-on-male shipping), ULTRAKILL is immensely popular with people from all across the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Many of the people who worked on the game are LGBTQ+ themselves, with examples including lead dev Hakita himself (who's bi) and artist Francis Xie (a trans man).
• Memetic Badass:
  • Due to being a Prime Sanctum Boss who can give even experienced players a difficult time when they first fight him, King Minos, generally in his Minos Prime form has seen a fair share of fanart which depict him as being completely unstoppable, which is aided by in-game lore stating that Prime Souls are the result of a soul being able to stay formed through sheer willpower alone and are feared even by angels. Not to mention, he built an entire paradise in Hell out of compassion for Lust's sinners.
  • Ditto for Sisyphus Prime, the second Prime Sanctum boss, for being just as if not tougher than Minos, having led an insurrection against Heaven and being substantially more of an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy to V1.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Gabriel, the final boss of Act 1 and 2, has been continuously degraded and (lovingly) insulted by the game's fans. A frequent pastime of the community is finding increasingly more humiliating ways to defeat the angel, culminating in such challenge runs as beating him blindfolded or without movement keys. Even Gabriel's own voice actor has gotten in on this, producing videos like this. It toned down a bit after Act 2's release, where Gabriel takes his second defeat with grace and views V1 as a Worthy Opponent before giving The Council a Karmic Death, earning himself a couple levels of badass.
  • V2 eventually became to be seen as one as well, with several jokes being thrown about them losing their arm (twice, even) and some interpreting them as being a Small Name, Big Ego. This has ramped up considerably after Hakita made clear just how dead V2 is, to the point the Margarita in 7-S's filename is V2, alluding to a morbid joke Hakita made on stream about putting what was left of V2 in such a glass in a future update.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Memetic Troll: V1 is frequently characterized as a figure that likes to belittle and bully Gabriel and V2.
• Moe: For some reason, many players find V1 to be cute as all Hell. This gets even more pronounced with V1's alternate counterpart, Mirage, if you don't mind her descent to nihilism.
• Moral Event Horizon: Hell already proved itself as a vile, depraved villain of unimaginable cruelty by slaughtering the human race to claim their souls and torture them for all eternity out of sadistic pleasure. But if an atrocity like this didn't cross the line for some players, then maybe its cruel treatment of one of its Demons will, such as leaving The Minotaur to rot in the Garden of Forking Paths for a millennia before crushing its Tragic Dream of seeing the sky one last time by leading it to the level exit before immediately closing the exit doors it just opened, forcing it in a losing battle against V1 where the Minotaur dies with regret for failing its dream. Hell is so evil that not even its own Demons are safe from its cruelty.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The electric crackling that accompanies the gentle humming, followed by the big "BOOM" from the Electric Railcannon can be best described as weaponized ASMR.
  • The "tink", short pause and subsequent explosion when you parry something or explode a Streetcleaner's tank with a coin. On top of giving you a split second to breathe, it's just plain cathartic to hear the game giving in to the big booms.
  • The "BRRMMMMMMMMMMMMM" of the Overheat Nailgun's Alt Fire as it eviscerates a Malicious Face or depletes half a boss's HP at close range.
  • The "dink-BOOOM" produced by connecting a charged blast with the Alternate Shotgun, complete with a generous dose of Hit Stop where the entire game freezes for a good half second just to hammer in the impact of the weapon.
  • Sometimes, the most wonderful sound can be no sound at all if you overload the arena with so many explosions, blood splatters, and other attacks that the game can't even handle it, with all sound cutting out momentarily as everything on screen is reduced to a slurry of red.
• Narm:
  • Level 0-S is normally pretty damn creepy, but if you're able to get a good look at the monster, its walk cycle is goofy as all Hell.
  • Beating the boss of P-1, Minos Prime, is well and truly satisfying, and he gives a beautiful soliloquy as his final words, but then he proceeds to let loose the goofiest scream ever as he dies.
• Narm Charm: As you approach him to fight him a second time, Gabriel is playing his own ominous theme on the pipe organ. If a vengeful archangel rocking it on the organ isn't outright badass to you, it's at the very least an example of the trope: It's corny, but it absolutely fits someone as dramatic as Gabriel.
• Older Than They Think: Mixing Stylish Action with shooter gameplay to reward the player for an aggressive but technical playstyle seems wholly original, but Bulletstorm, Demonsteele, and Vanquish had done it previously.
• Pop-Cultural Osmosis: A bizarre example. Hakita's Author Avatar that shows up in spots in the game and is the profile picture of his official Twitter account is considered a pretty big part of ULTRAKILL's overall identity thanks to Creator Worship. What many don't seem to know is that Hakita had actually used a pre-existing character (specifically, Saika Totsuka from My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected). By the creator's own admission, this avatar has evolved into its own thing separate from its source.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: GabV1el or V1Gabe for V1/Gabriel.
• Scrappy Weapon: While most of the weapons have their place, a few of them are regarded by players to be borderline useless:
  • The Default Piercer is a good starter weapon, until the player unlocks the Alternate Revolver, trading fire-rate and limb/head-shot bonus damage for extra base damage. Even with the bonus damage, the Default Piercer is still weaker than the Alternate Piercer, which deals 0.5 more damage than the Default Piercer's headshot bonus of 2.0 without the need for hitting limbs or heads. Combine that with the Alternate Piercer's stronger secondary fire, the Default Piercer is rendered useless except for challenge runs.
  • The Alternate Marksman has a lower fire-rate than its default counterpart, making it far easier to whiff one's Ricoshots. That alone would be bad enough, but the weapon also trades coin split-shotting for increased coin damage focused onto a single target. While this Ricoshot variant has its advantages, especially in boss battles, the loss of a crucial, versatile crowd-control attack in V1's kit is difficult to ignore. Thus, most players opt to pair the Default Marksman with the Alternate Piercer, which, in addition to its charge shot secondary fire, interacts with coins exactly like the Alternate Marksman does. With quick weapon switching, players can access both Ricoshot variants without restriction, leaving the Alternate Marksman without much purpose.
  • The Rocket Launcher is awkwardly bound to the "5" key, meaning it's difficult to remember you even have it, fires slow projectiles, and only explodes on a direct hit, making it challenging to use. However, its apparent use case (slaying clusters of fodder enemies) isn't good because a number of enemies resist or nullify the rockets, like Soldiers and Mannequins taking reduced damage from it or Streetcleaners and Malicious Faces deflecting it. Until the addition of the S.R.S. Cannon's cannonballs and the Firestarter's gasoline spray, the only real reasons you'd use it are for novelty's sake or for niche tech in speedrunning and the Cyber Grind, and even since then its primary fire's use is limited across the board.
• Self-Fanservice: The protagonist, V1, has gotten some... interesting fan art, despite being a sexless Killer Robot who is only ever seen from a first-person perspective in-game until 4-S. In fact it's not uncommon for fans of the game to make jokes abut Thicc V1. The devs are acutely aware of it: Gabriel's voice actor has referred to them as a "hot robot", official merchandise exists of a V1 bodypillow lying in bed with a rose, and in-game, the third bonus level is a visual novel starring an illusory duplicate of V1 named Mirage as the main heroine wearing a Sailor Fuku of all things.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: One fairly common way to play ULTRAKILL on YouTube is doing some challenge every day until some condition is fulfilled. These range from standard challenges (like playing the Cybergrind daily until Violence releases or doing random challenges until the game's story is complete) to the more esoteric conditions (like daily Cybergrind runs until the player gets a girlfriend or fighting the Earthmover daily because the fight is cool).
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Thanks to the fancomic DREAM'S END COME TRUE, V2/Mirage became common. This is despite the fact that in canon, Mirage only appears in one non-canon level that has absolutely nothing to do with V2.
• That One Attack:
  • Multiple bosses have the ability to summon a large dark orb that, when touched by V1, will reduce their health to 1 (unless they're at 10 HP or less, in which case it flat-out kills them) and block them from healing off enemies for a bit. While the attack can be a nuisance in the Corpse of King Minos fight, it's especially troublesome in the Flesh Prison fight, which has a lot more stuff to focus on, often leading to situations where you accidentally run into the orb and cripple yourself.
  • Gabriel in general is a challenging opponent, but his spear attack is easily the most lethal in his arsenal. He'll teleport directly above V1 and slam into the ground, then throw his spear to cause an explosion. The sheer speed at which he does the ground slam necessitates abusing the invincibility frames from the dash, and the spear throw's hitbox is deceptively large, although the spear can also be parried with careful timing to tear off a huge chunk of his health. His enraged state makes the attack even more lethal by adding another ground slam. Brutal makes it even harder by making the ground slams able to come from any direction.
  • Two of Minos Prime's attacks stand out in particular. The first is his "Judgement" attack, in which he teleports towards V1 and delivers a kick that triggers a massive explosion. While the attack is well-telegraphed, the only way to avoid it is to counter it with a very precise parry (which most often requires you to be on the ground and standing still, and stops working in his second phase on Violent or higher) or abusing i-frames, and doing so still allows Minos to pull off another attack at point-blank, which includes his ground slam attack. The other nasty attack is the ludicrously fast homing projectiles he fires, which require a parry or very careful movement to dodge, and are spammed much more in the second half of the fight.
  • Sisyphus Prime's "This will hurt." explosion, will indeed hurt. It has such a large radius that it's basically impossible to dash out of before it goes off, meaning the only way to avoid it is by performing a carefully-timed dash or parrying it, and parrying it requires you to be up close. Oh, and it does half your health bar during a boss fight where the boss can kill you in three hits.
• That One Boss:
  • Gabriel, the Final Boss of Acts I and II, is generally considered to be an extremely difficult fight, with many players claiming to have had to retry the fight upwards of twenty times. He is fast even by the standards of Ultrakill bosses, boasts two HP bars that both must be depleted to clear the fight, and his moves can quickly drain the player's health, especially at close range. He doesn't give much room to heal, either, as he is aggressive and often teleports to quickly close the distance. After his first health bar is depleted, he gains a faster and even more aggressive moveset, and on Violent and higher also gains an Orbiting Particle Shield of spinning blades that make going in for healing risky (however, the swords can be parried).
  • The Sisyphean Insurrectionist, introduced in 4-2, is quite the imposing presence during a fight. Its attacks, while having a distinct windup, are hard to dodge due to its flail being able to strike from odd angles with only slight differences in their tells, especially with the timing on them varying depending on how far you are from it, and its attacks have limitless range, preventing V1 from leveraging any range advantage. It was so overbearing that it was nerfed not a day after Greed's release, reducing its HP and attack speed; but they still are among the most dangerous enemies in the game, especially when multiple of them show up in Cyber Grind or certain later encounters.
  • The Minotaur from 7-1 is an extremely aggravating and difficult encounter in at least its first phase, to say nothing of its second. It's easily capable of three or four-shotting V1 as well as knocking them off the moving carts and further damaging them, is extremely resilient to damage due to its high health and the armor covering most of its body, and provides very limited ways to heal off its blood due to it being unreachable if you attack from the platforms, meaning the only way to heal is to wait for some Mooks to pull up on another cart, or try and briefly ride the Minotaur (and risk further punishment). This in and of itself is incredibly distracting and aggravating if you keep dying while trying to heal up or getting thrown off the cart, but the Minotaur is also capable of removing some your safe ground to work with, forcing you to multitask and carefully manage dashing between platforms while avoiding the Minotaur's blows, none of which can be parried. Then when you finally think you've won, the game throws you a Victory Fakeout in the form of its second phase which, while squishier and more generous with healing, is still an incredibly tense and stressful battle as the Minotaur gains much quicker attacks and longer combo strings. It's even worse if you're trying to P-rank the level, as fighting it the intended way by patiently whittling down its health will lose you valuable time and style points you can't spare.
• That One Level:
  • 4-2 AKA "God Damn the Sun" from Greed. It's a relatively long level, introduces the "covered in sand" mechanic that means certain fights have no way to recover any HP in them, and just when you think you're done The Sisyphean Insurrectionist (see above) shows up for the very first time and, most likely, kicks the hell out of you. The boss on its own was hard enough that it was actually nerfed just a day later, but the level remains a huge wake up call for anyone who thought beating Gabriel meant they could let their guards down.
  • 5-3, Ship of Fools. Easily the longest level in the game, it also features multiple grueling multi-wave arenas that include the strongest enemies in the game and will make even the most skilled player break a sweat. Good luck if you try to P-rank this behemoth.
  • 6-1, Cry For The Weeper. As the Crescendo for Act II, the game pulls out all stops in this one, featuring arenas that combine complex encounters with platforming, and culminating in a fight with two Hideous Masses supported by a Swordsmachine, Cerberuses, and all kinds of nastiness. And that's without mentioning the secret encounter against two Sisyphean Insurrectionists, which is as difficult as it sounds.
  • P-2, Wait of the World. Were you expecting a leisurely stroll to the boss gate like in P-1? Too bad! P-2 features some of the toughest enemy encounters in the entire game, including a tiny room filled with four Cerberi and a Ferryman along with two initially inaccessible Virtues, a fight with two Sisyphean Insurrectionists at once, an encounter with a pair of idol-protected Mindflayers where the idols can't be destroyed until clearing the room of every other enemy (one of which spawns two encounters prior and harasses you for the whole time), a tight tunnel of damaging blood stuffed with ranged enemies on limited ground, and a final battle with an idol-protected Stalker who walks around covering enemies in sand until you defeat them all and expose the idol. And it's not just one or two waves of enemies, it's three - starting with two Swordsmachines and a Ferryman with Strays for backup, followed by four Sentries and a Hideous Mass, the latter of which is protected by another idol until the Sentries are killed, and finally three Virtues and Cerberi. And those are the warm-up fights for the actual boss encounter of the level, Sisyphus Prime, who is not only a powerhouse surpassing Minos, but also comes after a fakeout battle with the Flesh Panopticon that can still kill you in seconds. This level will put everything you've learned so far to the test and then push you further, and you'd better pray you make it out the other side. It was so hard, in fact, that the devs put out a patch a few days later to reduce the difficulty.
  • 7-1, Garden of Forking Paths, lives up to its name with a confusing layout that involves passing through the same rooms multiple times while reusing the same blue skull for four different pedestals, making it easy to get lost. This is also the level that introduces Mannequins, and to corroborate this, this maze is infested with them, with the stark white walls providing an excellent environment for you to lose track of them in a brawl. Just in case all of that wasn't bad enough, the Minotaur is waiting for you at the end of it all.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The side objective in 4-S is to break all of the boxes in the level; doing so unlocks the Clash Mode cheat, which lets you play any level with the Crash Bandicoot controls that this level uses. While playing the level normally is pretty fun, this unlock is universally despised because Clash Mode's movement is extremely slidy and finicky, which makes it inconducive for the precise jumps and movements needed to break the boxes, often resulting in V1 plunging to their death. The biggest issue is the final room of the level, where you have to outrun a Malicious Face rolling after you. The Face will break all but one of the boxes for you, but the vast majority of the people playing the level don't realize that this counts for the objective, meaning most players end up frantically trying to break the crates manually while operating on wonky controls.
  • "Don't touch any water" in 5-1, a level whose largest rooms are entirely filled with the stuff. After finding the hidden valves (or, more likely, looking up a walkthrough online), you can drain the water in the underwater rooms; however, it doesn't drain fully, giving you very small sections of dry floor. Did we mention there are shallow, easily missed pools of water in the last room of the level, along with swarms of Sentries that force you to stay on the move? Thankfully, these rooms can be skipped around by leaving the level through the secret exit, but getting there is still a pain. It used to be even worse, as the game used to remember if you touched the water even if you loaded the checkpoint over again.
  • 5-3 has an identical challenge, which is either easier (more of the level is dry) or worse (it is already That One Level without the challenge). Special mention goes to the L-shaped hallway near the end of the level, which is where this challenge usually fails for most people, due to the fact that it requires crossing a fairly large distance with very little room to actually move around before reaching dry land.
  • "Don't kill any enemies" in 7-2, a level where some of the most common enemies are powerful Lightning Bruisers. Whilst the level itself is open-skied similar to some of the previous levels, a major difficulty at hand lies in both the level being mostly dark - so you'd often not have much of an idea of where specifically you must jump to - and the a portion of the main progression of the level itself involves bringing a train to a bomb disposal and bringing it back, which is both hard because of an area in the middle of the tracks where the Guttermen are likely to spray lead at you (especially since there's a train stop at that area too), and also another area which must be accessed outside of the normal route to avoid drawing aggro of the Guttertanks that await. The final room also requires a specific pattern of directions to follow to avoid spawning the last set of Guttermen and Guttertanks, and the only hints to it are available in a book you'd likely dismiss at first.
  • "Become marked for death'' in 7-3, which means beating the final gauntlets with every enemy specifically focused on you instead of fighting each other, flipping that section from Catharsis Factor to an absolute nightmare.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: How a big part of the fandom feels about the death of V2, feeling that they should be kept around so that they can have a third final battle with V1 and putting the player at test.
• Too Cool to Live: ULTRAKILL has a habit of creating awesome characters that don't stay for long.
  • Poor V2, meeting their fate by falling off a giant pyramid. V2 is the only character that truly rivaled V1 in skill and style, and many cried at their death in Clair de Soleil.
  • Many feel this way about Swordsmachine. It has an awesome design, extremely fun boss fight, and the lore behind it is interesting as it introduces the idea that the Machines have something of a culture on the surface where Swordsmachine is treated akin to a celebrity or prizefighter. Unfortunately it dies during its boss fight level almost right after being introduced. Fortunately, it returns as a normal enemy in Heresy and onwards.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: The Mindflayer is often interpreted as transgender by fans, due to the machine's lore stating that they created their own female form for themselves, despite the fact that building and maintaining this form is an objective "waste of resources". This draws comparison to the large time, cost, and effort that transitioning takes in real life. Mindflayers are also notable for being the only machine to have (deliberately) taken on a gendered form, as machines are agender otherwise.
• Unfortunate Character Design: For whatever reason, the Easter bunny ears that're given to every enemy whenever it's Easter day shows up incorrectly on the first P-2 boss The Flesh Panopticon. Where the ears would supposedly sit atop the boss as usual, it sits on the base of it instead, and only one of the ears are visible when viewed normally, making the singular bunny ear look accidentally phallic◊
• The Woobie:
  • King Minos' story is heartbreaking. After feeling sorrow for the sinners in the Lust Layer, King Minos turned the circle of Hell into a paradise because he believes eternal damnation is an unfair punishment for the sin of loving another. King Minos' peaceful revolution is seen as defiance against God by The Council, angering them to the point of sending the Archangel Gabriel to kill him. King Minos tried to reason with Gabriel, but the angel refused to listen, ending the renaissance by killing its beloved king. Then the angels sealed King Minos' soul into the Flesh Prison to prevent it from becoming a Prime Soul. As King Minos is imprisoned in his own body, he helplessly watched his undead corpse, now controlled by parasites, undo all of the good he and his people worked hard for. After spending an eternity trapped in his prison, King Minos was freed by V1 and becomes a Prime Soul. While grateful for his freedom, the king battles the robot for their involvement in humanity's extinction, but he was defeated. Before he truly dies, King Minos sorrowfully apologizes to his people for failing to bring them salvation. And then according to Gabriel towards the end of Act II, the legions of machines invading Hell have completely annihilated the Lust layer, leaving the circle of Hell King Minos once tried to turn into a paradise a barren wasteland. A kind king who was unfairly punished for his compassion, only to be completely killed upon his short-lived freedom, King Minos lived an afterlife of tragedy.
  • The Minotaur, though we only get to know it for one level, is full of its own pain as well. Imagine being sculpted and presented as a gift, a symbol of potential friendship, only for the person you're being gifted to to reject you. Appalled by your presence, you are casted into an endless Labyrinth. Now imagine wandering this labyrinth for potential millenia, running and raging in a desperate attempt to escape, with the years grinding you down into almost nothing. That's the state the Minotaur is in by the time V1 reaches the Garden of Forking Paths. But it gets worse. The Minotaur follows V1 as it attempts to escape, but the machine starts attacking and killing it. Right as the both of them reach the exit, only one of them can leave. As the Minotaur falls, it desperately reaches up to the ceiling, regretting that it could not see the sky for one last time before it died.

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