As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- As in the first game, the player can learn a number of unarmed moves that can easily make no weapon an especially deadly weapon. Some of these moves include:
- The grapple escape skills DDT and Backdrop. Both of these crush the zombie's head, and if you escape fast enough, you can pull these off without taking any damage at all.
- The Haymaker, which is a one-shot kill on any zombie.
- The Curb Stomp and Field Goal. The Field Goal can even turn a zombie's head into a soccer ball!
- In Off The Record the Disembowel move makes its glorious return from the original, allowing Frank to firmly grab a zombie's shoulder with one hand and kill it by ripping out its guts with the other hand.
- The Final Boss fight against Sullivan, especially if you've been working on your hand to hand combat moves and have acquired the haymaker and double leg drop kick. A hand to hand battle against the Big Bad on top of a building surrounded by a sea of zombies while an AC-130 blows holes in the building in the background... epic. Then there's Sullivan's death. How many other villains get ripped in half by a plane!?
- One of this game's biggest features is the ability to create and use combo weapons. Some of them are as simple yet effective as nails in a bat, or drills in a bucket, but many are all sorts of awesomeness, including:
- The Blitzkrieg. It's an electric wheelchair with machine guns attached that taunts zombies in the voice of Stephen Hawking!
- The Freedom Bear. A robotic bear with a machine gun. Better yet, it's dressed up like Rambo and spouts all sorts of Eagleland quotes as it fights!
- The Blambow gives you an opportunity to be just like Rambo.
- The Laser Sword. Yes, you can use a Lightsaber against the zombies and psychopaths!
- The Defiler. A medieval-era melee weapon recreated using modern-day tools.
- The Parablower. Parasol of Pain taken to a whole new level through combination with a leaf blower.
- The Gem Blower. Gems are combined with the leaf blower and used to shred zombies like shotgun pellets.
- The Snowball Cannon. A water gun suddenly becomes lethal in combination with a fire extinguisher.
- Several combo weapons involve fire as their main component, including:
- The Blazing Aces. A tennis racket that sends burning tennis balls at targets!
- The Burning Skull. Combining Incendiary Exponent with Use Your Head.
- The Fire Spitter. This time the Incendiary Exponent is combined with More Dakka.
- The Flamethrower. The Snowball Cannon's polar opposite, yet just as deadly.
- The Flaming Gloves.
- The Molten Cannon, shooting flaming tennis balls, just like the Blazing Aces.
- Every single one of the psychopaths. However, a few stand out in comparison to the others...
- Leon Bell. A contestant along with Chuck in Terror is Reality. Lost his mind not to fear but to pride. He uses a motorcycle with chainsaws attached to try to either slice or run over Chuck. He gets his comeuppance when his hubris for Chuck gets to him and he performs a burning wheelie.
- Brandon Whittaker. Putting Shaggy memes aside, he is without a doubt one of the most awesome psychopaths. Though optional, he is terrifying. His intro is terrifying, his character is terrifying, his boss fight is (while awesome) terrifying. Though it's a bit sad to see that though he does gain his sanity again, it's too late. He's already been bitten. Now, Whittaker might've been supporting zombies but becoming one is going a bit too far. He slits his throat before he turns.
- Sullivan. He's a colonel who works for Pheno. His gameplay is to (Please excuse the profanity.) fuck your shit up. Fisticuffs might've been your only weapon before, but now? You might be rusty after using weapons and Sullivan just does not take anything you throw at him. Gun? Blocks it and mocks you for cheating. Melee weapons? Block then counter. Fisticuffs? Kick in the teeth and punch in the gut. Luckily for the players his death is anything but subtle. After Chuck smacks the living hell out of him, he calls a plane to pick him up. However, Chuck attaches a buckle to a surprisingly sturdy gate and Sullivan is ripped apart.
- One of the possible conclusions to a sequence: Delivering the final blow to blow up Tyrone King's helicopter with a book.
- TK took advantage of the zombie outbreak to rob the place, so you can also use his Briefcases Full Of Money to kill his helicopter!
- Tear Jerker moment aside: Frank West taking on Chuck Greene in Off The Record. Both of Dead Rising's protagonists taking each other on to determine who kicks more ass.
- Making it better would be to have a co-op player join you for a good ol' Mirror Match.
- Somewhat dampened by the fact that Chuck's already gone insane before the events of Dead Rising 2, meaning he hasn't taken any levels in badass. Due to this, his boss fight is more or less the exact same as Leon's.
- Before the fight, Chuck tells Frank that zombies are just a nuisance and people are the real danger. He proves it by casually Neck Lifting a zombie, holding it in place while he continues to talk, and then snapping its neck when he's done.
- Making it better would be to have a co-op player join you for a good ol' Mirror Match.
- The final boss fight of Off The Record. To put it into perspective, Stacey knew that she had to deal with Frank West. You know, Frank West, a guy who's covered wars and killed more than 100,000 zombies, insane military officials, Ax-Crazy clowns, corrupt cops among others. So she decided to bring in a freakin' giant robot to kill him. He manages to own it.
- You can give the survivors in your party rifles and watch them give the evil redneck snipers a taste of their own medicine.
- The survivors and their AI overall have vastly improved from the first game. Some even get their own moments of Awesome, as seen below.
- A good survivor example would be the band Angel Lust who are found playing a concert, having apparently not even noticed that everyone has become a zombie. After Chuck climbs up on stage to get them to follow him they finish the show by rocking so hard that the crowd of zombies who have gathered below all die from a headsplosion! Then they give you a combo card that allows Chuck to do this!
- They also frequently show up right before you fight off TK's mercenary goons robbing the casinos in Fortune City. Give 'em all the dead merc's rifles you have been picking up along the way, and they become your very own elite squad of mercenary-killing British rockers.
- Another survivor example includes the three female survivors from the "Fetching Females" scoop. When you first meet them, you have to pay them $10,000 just to get them to start following you. While this may seem like yet another instance of Too Dumb to Live, it's well worth the price, and they don't even need weapons. They're members of Guardian Angels Personal Security, and are able to kill zombies with just one or two unarmed strikes.
- The next survivor example is an Offscreen Moment of Awesome variety. In the mission Wax On Wax Off, Tomomi Miyamoto is an unarmed karate master that is hiding from three mercenaries after killing another seven. Her notebook description mentions that she almost didn't need any help.
- When Chuck faces down the man behind the outbreak in Fortune City, the traitorous city guard Sullivan. After a brutal fist fight in which the odds are stacked against Chuck, he knocks Sullivan down but before he can finish him is blasted off his feet by a missile from Sullivan's extraction plane. The agent sends up a skyhook and taunts Chuck, but when he glances at the plane Chuck handcuffs his belt to an iron bar on the roof...just before the plane catches the skyhook. Chuck was right: Sullivan wouldn't make it out in one piece.
- The DLC "Case West" has a moment that is the absolute embodiment of this trope. Frank West and Chuck Greene are in the main Phenotrans production facility trying to uncover evidence of the pharmaceutical company's involvement in the outbreak. A lockdown is preventing them from getting to a certain so they have to destroy a generator. After getting the components they need and rigging a bomb on the generator (with a ridiculously short timer, for some reason), they sprint out of the room and are sent sprawling by the explosion. Frank and Chuck slowly pick themselves up off the floor, turn to look back at the burning room, and simultaneously go for a high-five.
Dead Rising 2: Case West
- The ending. Chuck, despite butting heads with Frank a few times, returns the Zombrex Frank trashed out of anger when Frank realizes it's time for his dose.Chuck: Take it. The world needs Frank West.
