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Fridge Brilliance
- So, Suda couldn't get Travis into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (aside from a Mii Swordfighter costume and a Spirit). Next best thing: put Smash in NMH3 for the True Final Boss fight!
- FU's immature personality is a fitting Foil to Travis at the beginning of the series. He's a reckless jerk who thinks he can get away with whatever he wants, and his combat abilities actually justify it. However, unlike Travis who comes to recognize the horrors of battle and somberly accepts his new life as an assassin, FU remains a wild child who hardly bats an eye at death. Because of this, he never truly grows up, which is especially exemplified by his regression into his child form at the end.
- Before the fight with FU, Travis works him up as much as possible by insulting and belittling him every way he knows how. This could be a call-back to the fight with Jeane at the end of the first game, where she similarly feeds Travis with rage before their fight; however, back then Travis responded with grim acceptance and a clear mind. Meanwhile, FU flies into a hissy fit and begins screaming like a monster.
- Travis' strategy against FU could also be summed up by this line against the final boss of NMH2:
Travis: "Come on, prez! Unleash your hate! Your anger! Everything! I'll take it all and fucking kill you with it!" - Travis also discusses the concept of fear with him. FU claims to be incapable of experiencing fear. This is a callback to the fight with Holly Summers in the first game; when she asked Travis if he liked fear he replied: "Can't say. Never felt it." This shows how much Travis has matured since his first crusade, and how he has learned what it means to be surrounded by death, unlike FU.
- Before the fight with FU, Travis works him up as much as possible by insulting and belittling him every way he knows how. This could be a call-back to the fight with Jeane at the end of the first game, where she similarly feeds Travis with rage before their fight; however, back then Travis responded with grim acceptance and a clear mind. Meanwhile, FU flies into a hissy fit and begins screaming like a monster.
- FU's Villainous Breakdown causing him to regress into being a child works on both a physical and mental level:
- While he has a Healing Factor capable of letting him survive all sorts of mortal wounds, the final battle against Travis shows that even it seems to have limits given all the punishment he takes. It's entirely likely that FU turning into a kid was all that he could physiologically muster to simply survive - albeit in a form that wouldn't be able to fight back against assassins that wouldn't think twice about putting him down for good, his actual age be damned.
- FU is also left babbling like a pre-schooler in his final moments, which could also reflect the final vestiges of his mind being broken by his entire life's purpose being undone. When he returns to Earth as an adult, FU claims that he was plotting to take over the Earth even as a child, and spent many years conquering other worlds before setting his sights on it again. Seeing as everyone he's recruited is dead (or in Midori's case, defecting to Travis' side) thanks to a human whom he'd only recently met, and nearly getting killed by said human and his friends despite being a Physical God by the standards of the series — all of which had happened within a matter of days since coming to Earth — ended up being too much of a strain for his mind to take, making his mental state match the child-like form he assumes right before the best friend he repeatedly stated to have loved over and over betrays him.
- As a fitting bit of Irony, one of the final blows dealt to FU before he regresses back into being a child was landed by Bad Girl, a Psychopathic Manchild whose personality regressed from the relatively well-spoken killer she was in the first No More Heroes to an actual child stuck in a grown woman's body.
- After defeating Gold Joe, Travis states "It's the ones who don't look like bad guys who are the real bad guys". This is true for several of the game's antagonists, from the cute infant FU to the normal-looking human Damon.
- Kimmy Love's desire to kill Travis is a reflection of Travis' encounter with Jeane at the end of the first game. Killing an old part of your past who you once looked up to and even fell in love with? Check. The only problem is that Travis wins, and thus Kimmy failed at killing her past.
- Travis kills Kimmy by stabbing her through the groin, reminiscent of how Jeane killed Dark Star by punching through his.
- Henry's change of voice actor, and the loss of his Irish accent, works when you think about The Reveal that his memories of living with the Cooldown family in Ireland were implanted.
- Once Damon activates the Thunder Break mecha, Travis can't use the Glastonbury and is pretty much out of options. What's the thing that saves Travis now? A Deus ex Machina! Or rather, a Daemon X Machina in this case. It also works two-fold, since it's also being used against the True Final Boss, the similarly named Damon Riccitiello.
- Despite contradicting comments in interviews suggesting that a sequel might happen another decade down the line, as well as Suda having walked back once already on the decision to not make a sequel, along with an ending that leaves itself open to a far future entry, taking Suda's public comments at face value about how this is Travis Touchdown's final battle and the final entry in the series makes sense when you realize that the game ends with Travis successfully becoming the strongest hero in the galaxy. It is the end of "No More Heroes", because now the world has a hero.
- Vanishing Point tells FU to "forgive his enemies and make them his friends" when he's informed that the public has a low opinion of him and regularly talk crap about him. This is exactly the kind of attitude that Travis has grown to adopting, having successfully befriended former foes like Shinobu, Kamui, Badman, Bad Girl, Native Dancer, and Midori, who all come to his aid and allow him to prosper. Conversely, when Travis gives FU a "The Reason You Suck" Speech during their final confrontation, FU doesn't take Vanishing Point's words of wisdom to heart and throws a temper tantrum about it, having learned nothing - an inevitable response perhaps because Vanishing Point would not wind up sticking around to "keep being honest with FU" like he had requested.
- Destroyman's characterization could arguably border on Flanderization with how his behavior is repeating verbatim his most infamous sequence, and without getting any deeper or nuanced than saying he fights the evils of the world (considering Travis such by extension); until you realize that these Destroymen are just robots who are most likely following rigid programming, and that they're more or less designed to repeat the one thing they were ever known for doing. They essentially become an in-universe invocation of Never Live It Down.
- Damon never was a warrior. FU calls him out on it just before the game's climax, telling him that he doesn't truly understand Travis because he's not a fighter. This is exemplified in-game by his Press X to Not Die first form not actually involving combat, and his Platform Fighter second form reminiscent of the party fighting game Super Smash Bros.. Even afterwards, his final words are a repeated "I don't want to die!", a stunning change from the rest of Travis' opponents in the series who often wish for death or at least face it with some dignity. Even Travis seems irked by Damon's pathetic end.
- Dr. Naomi is back, except she's transformed herself into a sakura tree. She doesn't develop any tech for Travis, but she still helps him acquire some upgrades and learn new techniques in battle. She's a literal skill tree.
- How did Deathman bring Travis back to life? Likely something to do with the Death Drive Mk II (hence the name). The scene where he talks to Travis is nearly identical to the conversation with Winter at the end of TSA, complete with Travis' decapitated pixel head floating through a technicolor world.
- Midorikawa's comment that she could notice the "dark world" in FU's eyes when they first met makes a lot more sense when you consider that one of the cut scenarios in No More Heroes III was supposed to feature Travis going to Blackhole Prison and meeting Fleming from Shadows of the Damned, who was to be revealed that he's Midori's biological father. Fleming most likely had some sort of impression on FU.
- The "Goddamn Superhero" title, representing FU's story, standing in contrast to Travis' story being "No More Heroes".
- While the story initially suggests that it's going for a vicious super hero deconstruction in the style of The Boys, it opts on the surface to eschew the concept of the villains fabricating heroic virtuosity to focus predominantly on Travis having to battle a bunch of evil aliens aiming to take over the world. However, while that standpoint is viewed from an Earthly perspective, and while there are a few interlopers that thrive on pure instinctual destruction, the ladder that's being climbed is the "Galactic Superhero Rankings", and every alien and ranker comes from a different planet, many of which hold a genuine admiration for FU. His conversation with Vanishing Point also suggests that he wants to be looked up to by his people, and during Sonic Juice's boss battle, Sonic Juice objects to wanting to fight Travis because he can't see any inherent evil in Earth, implying that multiple aliens have most likely been indoctrinated to believe that Earth is evil. When you factor in the part where it's revealed that FU is mainly acting upon Damon's wishes, and that the aliens' frame of reference is Damon's disdain for Travis Touchdown and his crew, the interpretation of the aliens as heroic entities take on a whole different meaning.
- Even though FU and Damon are supposed to be childhood friends, most of the exposition that shows FU exhibiting anything resembling friendliness (considering he ultimately views "friends" more so as servants) is all from scenes between him and his alien entourage. Him being Damon's close friend is only told rather than shown, since all the scenes Damon and FU share together have them at odds in an extremely tenuous relationship. It makes sense when you realize Damon is revealed to consider FU as a pawn more than even FU thought of his own crew.
- Why didn't Midori join in the final fight to attack FU? Because that would risk getting her children in danger. Given that they're the source of her power, if FU crushed them, she would not only be defenseless but the trauma of seeing her little guys die in front of her would make her unable to do anything else. Moreover, she already taunted FU before her boss battle against Travis; if he found out she betrayed him out of sympathy or an excuse of her children, given how he killed Sonic Juice so he could return to his people, then he'd have no qualms on also killing her. This also means that Kamui would also be too distracted with his girlfriend in peril to fight back, essentially losing two allies in one.
Fridge Horror
- The genocide of an entire city is treated quite casually (by everyone except Damon). What other massacres have FU and his squad committed?
- Turns out they've done this to plenty of planets. Mr. Blackhole only works for FU because he ransacked his homeplanet, and Sonic Juice fears that his home may share the same fate if he abandons FU's service.
- What happened to Henry that made him become a Hive Mind hell bent on allying with aliens to the point that his own niece and nephew want to take him down?
- He watched Thor. Not even joking (though it's likely something else is also going on).
- Henry's dream encounter with Mimmy in 2 was a manifestation of his fear and hatred of Travis' otaku ways, showing that Henry has always resented his brother. In this game, Henry also brings up his past with Travis and Jeane for the first time. Maybe as the Cooldown brainwashing wore off, he slowly remembered more and more details that made him hate Travis further.
- In Henry's first conversation with Damon over the phone, he asks Damon if he's ever doubted that his thoughts are really his. This hints even further towards an existential crisis of sorts.
- Don't forget that Travis married his ex-wife, Sylvia, and now has two kids with her. That oughta hurt a man's ego, assuming he loved Sylvia at all.
- Really, Henry and Travis have never been friends. They may have helped each other out in No More Heroes 2, but every other time they are constantly antagonizing each other. Henry is always trying to drag Travis into the life of an assassin, into violence and killing. This is just an escalation, it's him trying even harder to keep Travis in the game.
- How telling is it that as soon as Henry strikes, Travis just accepts it and fights? No attempt to negotiate or mourn what has been lost, like back in the day with Jeane. No, the life of an assassin has truly changed Travis. As pissed as he may get, Travis is not at all surprised that those he's worked with in the past, even his own family, can turn on him. That's so sad.
- Also, one of the reasons Henry is so pissed at him is that he was always crying as a child, which considering what their father was like, is pretty justified. Considering how much adult Travis shrugs off or treats as a joke, it makes one wonder how much repressed trauma the guy has.
- How was Henry able to glitch Travis' save in the bathroom and make clones of himself? Remember, he broke the fourth wall in the first game. It seems Henry is learning to mess with the game's code. He is becoming a case of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
- If hacking the save screen is just the start of Henry's fourth wall breaking powers, what powers does Future Henry Cooldown have?
- He could be using powers similar to Agent Smith from The Matrix.
- If hacking the save screen is just the start of Henry's fourth wall breaking powers, what powers does Future Henry Cooldown have?
- How hard did Travis have to punch Damon to make him look like a ridiculous purple zombie?
- It seems more likely that Damon's whole face thing was a side effect of FU's power-sharing that he tried to disguise, rather than just being from Travis's beatdown.
