History VideoGame / Bulletstorm

* AbsentAliens: Averted. Grayson mentions 'alien hordes on war world' in Last Train To Explosion Town, and Trishka tells Gray and Ishi that much of the carnivorous plant life on Stygia is actually sentient. None of it tries to communicate with the player in any method other than eating you, though.

* AllThereInTheManual and GuideDangIt: Averted both of them: whenever you get a new weapon, the skillshot database shows how to do them, except for those weapons you don't have yet.

* ArtificialStupidity: Unlike GearsOfWar, your teammates are invincible in combat and thus, don't turn the game into an escort mission. However this doesn't change the fact that half the time they only serve to rob you of Skill Kill points by spraying gunfire into the slowly floating enemy you were about to load up with explosives and send into his buddies.
** Burnouts, as part of their mutation, seem to have [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoG0UppbYV0 mentally regressed into lemmings.]]
*** Actually lampshaded. One of the hints displayed on the loading screen encourages player to take advantage of Burnouts' stupidity.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Thoroughly averted. Even the cool stuff with relatively small amounts of expensive ammo can be used again and again between drop pods as long as you rack up enough points to pay for it with good skillshots.
** The sniper rifle. Shooting tiny guided missiles sounds like that gun from {{Singularity}}, but the Seeker's shots didn't dissapear when you lost sight of the guy you were originally shooting at.

** Averted by the enemies, indeed causing them to kill eachother gets the "Friendly Fire" skillshot.

* HideYourChildren: Averted if you pay close attention. Some of the Burnouts are noticeably smaller than a normal human, being about child size. Presumably they're mutated tourist kids, just like the big ones are mutated tourists.

*** On the "Grand Central" Anarchy map, kill an enemy using a revolving door: [[spoiler:[[ShockSite Meatspin]].]]

* AbsentAliens: Averted, maybe-Grayson mentions 'alien hordes on war world' in Last Train To Explosion Town.

* {{Deconstruction}} / {{Metagame}} / HiddenDepths: For a game about raping the Geneva Convention's bullet-riddled corpse, it's remarkably subtle about this. Firstly, it's a deconstruction in that Sarrano is universally agreed to be a psychopathic manchild, and a deconstruction of the Mall Ninja/12-year old Call of Duty player crowd. Firstly, he's a deconstruction of said crowd as they, being obsessed with the military, often dream of being in it—and Sarrano shows just how they might be in real life. Secondly, with his constant swearing and childish mannerisms, he acts like an especially psychopathic 12-year old cursing at you over your headset. Thirdly, he's a sociopath, and not the heroic kind, and thus outfits his team with weapons he sees as 'cool' and causes absolutely horrific amounts of destruction. The Skillshots system? Those are used to earn resupplies. If the men don't do well enough, they do not get ammo, and are left to die. Rewarding people for killing enemies in cool ways sounds a lot like COD. The main character, his enemy, is the opposite, fighting enemies in creative ways (No offense to... okay, we totally are offending the COD players. Nevermind.) and is visibly having fun, the former of which is bloody impossible in COD, so it's can be interpreted as a struggle between realistic FPS players and FPS players who just want to have fun.

* IKnowThatGun: The Peacemaker Carbine bears both a resemblance to the [[GearsOfWar Lancer rifle]] and the modified [[http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Element#AK-47 AK-47]] from TheFifthElement.

* CoopMultiplayer: "Anarchy" Mode, where up to four players control members of the Final Echo team and battle waves of enemies. Much like the Single Player, the only way to succeed is to get creative with your kills. [[UpToEelven But doing this alone isn't even enough!]] You must work with your teammates to get cooperative skillshots, which are worth huge amounts of skill points. If the team gets enough points, they'll progress to the next wave.

* FreudWasRight: [[http://www.gametrailers.com/video/weapons-echoes-bulletstorm/709312 This trailer]] says the minigun is essentially an extention of Greyson's penis. Cue him yelling "Suck it!" after killing people with it.

* AscendedMeme: In his ''{{Painkiller}}'' review, [[ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] theorized that the only way a gun that shoots shurikens and lightning could be more awesome was "if it had tits and was on fire." Since said review increased ''Painkiller'''s sales by [[BeyondTheImpossible 7403%]], the developers decided to give ''Bulletstorm'' an unlockable gun skin in that features flaming breasts.

* BeyondTheImpossible: Just how insane a skillshot & kill combo can you get? You thought that last one was pretty good? Bet you can score more if you try!

* CoopMultiplayer: "Anarchy" Mode, where up to four players control members of the Final Echo team and battle waves of enemies. Much like the Single Player, the only way to succeed is to get creative with your kills. [[BeyondTheImpossible But doing this alone isn't even enough!]] You must work with your teammates to get cooperative skillshots, which are worth huge amounts of skill points. If the team gets enough points, they'll progress to the next wave.

** YMMV on this. It is not the first time Gray encounters this boss, and it is not difficult to beat anyway.

** The game's {{sniper rifle}} also plays with the trope by drastically slowing down for the last few feet of every bullet's path, allowing the player to control its trajectory, while still being an InstantDeathBullet. It looks like this trope, but any allies visible at this point will move at normal speed.

* ChekhovsGun / ChekhovsBoomerang: Remember when you drop the train on the Hekaton shortly after Last Train From Explosion Town? ''That'' is why it has the sore later on!

* ImprobableAge: Trishka can't possibly be older than in her very early 20's, given how Grayson sees her as a pre-teen child in a flashback and doesn't seems to have aged significantly since then. Yet she already holds the rank of Commodore[=/=]Squadron Commander and is the leader of what is supposed to be the galaxy's most elite spec ops unit. Then again, her entire character is based on BellasariosMaxim, so it's not particularly egregious.

** The game's {{sniper rifle}} plays this somewhat straighter by drastically slowing down time for the last few feet of every bullet's path, allowing the player to control its trajectory. This is actually necessary due to the fact that mooks gain ridiculous dodging skills during this short period, often beginning to evade when the bullet is merely ''[[BeyondTheImpossible feet]]'' away.

* BlackAndGrayMorality: Grayson is the most heroic character in the story, and he's basically a drunken BloodKnight who sees murder the way other people see [[WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer hammers]].

* AnticlimaxBoss: Aside of [[spoiler: Sarrano]], [[the second Muta-Burnout]] is worse. After making a hugely dramatic entrance, the vibrations he creates loosen some sewage pipes above which promptly fall on him, causing him to lose his balance and fall headfirst into [[NoOSHACompliance a huge pool of radioactive waste in the middle of the room.]] Possibly lampshaded by Grayson right afterwards:

* [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Video Game Cruelty Mandate]]: The word "potential" implies it's not the point. You get points for [[TheJoysOfTorturingMooks sadism]] and [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]]. Not only is it entirely possible to wrap a pair of chain-bound grenades around an enemy's head and detonate them, sending other bad guys flying into space, you get ''rewarded'' for it. [[ItGotWorse Those are some of the less creative ways to off people.]]

* [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Video Game Cruelty]] [[strike:[[VideoGameCrueltyPotential Potential]]]]: The word "potential" implies it's not the point. You get points for [[TheJoysOfTorturingMooks sadism]] and [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]]. Not only is it entirely possible to wrap a pair of chain-bound grenades around an enemy's head and detonate them, sending other bad guys flying into space, you get ''rewarded'' for it. [[ItGotWorse Those are some of the less creative ways to off people.]]

** Stygia is derived from Styx, the river of the dead in the Greek underworld. Although it sums up the planet's current state perfectly, it's not what you'd expect a paradise to be named.

** Many can be found in the Skillshot names, such as DasBoot, [[{{Ferngully}} Toxic Love]], [[{{Metallica}} Whiplash]] and [[Film/TheWizardOfOz Not In Kansas]].

* DoubleEntendre: One of the loading screen tips: "Reload often. No one likes [[IfYouKnowWhatIMean getting down to business half-cocked]]."

** An irradiated dump? Nah. Pripyat is an irradiated dump. Stygia is like Pripyat with the radiation supplemented by heavily-armed convicts, cannibals, and mutants.

** Grayson says "It goes down like a [[LedZeppelin lead zeppelin]]!", paraphrasing the quote LedZeppelin got its name from.