Fridge / ULTRAKILL

Fridge Brilliance

• How did the Cerberi get their name despite being living humanoid statues instead of Hellhounds? Like how Cerberus from Classical Mythology is the guardian of The Underworld, the Cerberi in this game earn their name because of their role as guardians of Hell, hence why you fight two of them as the Climax Bosses of Prelude.
  • In 3-1, you fight three Cerberi in a wide-open room. This references Dante's Cerberus, the guardian of Gluttony from The Divine Comedy, which inspired this game and its other inspiration, Devil May Cry.
  • Even if Hakita merely didn't intend it, the fact that the Cerberus within the Divine Comedy itself is never actually referred to as being a dog, so by all accounts, Cerberi looking more like blank, animate Thinker statues is a valid interpretation.
• The secret levels are all thematically tied with the layers in which they are found.
  • In Prelude's Something Wicked, V1 is restricted to the Piercer Revolver and their arms; the place is almost completely dark, and the threat of the titular monster lurks at every corner. These details provoke the dread and anxiety that someone could feel when journeying into an unknown, hostile location—not unlike what V1 is doing as they blast through the Prelude levels towards Hell's entrance.
  • Limbo's The Witless involves a relaxing puzzle game based on The Witness. However, it is comparatively smaller in scope—it has only 26 boards to solve, whereas its basis contains 650—and it seems to be Limbo's only form of entertainment. These details cause the puzzle to feed into Limbo's superficiality—it seems nice at first, but its limitations would quickly dampen its value for the residents. They'd quickly grow bored of it, leaving them with nothing else to do but absorb the maddening, blatantly artificial serenity of the place.
  • Lust's All-Imperfect Love Song takes V1 through a Dating Sim, a gaming genre notorious for its abundant Fanservice. The level's anti-nihilist message parallels Lust's renaissance period, in which King Minos gave his subjects a stronger sense of purpose and morale by turning the layer into a paradise.
  • To reach Gluttony's Soul Survivor, you must reach P-Ranks on every stage up until 3-2. To get a P-Rank, you need to kill every enemy in a short enough time with enough style points by the end of the stage all while never dying. A single death will require you to go all the way back to the start. Thus, P-Ranks are the hardest rank to get and require the most grinding. Since V1's general goal is to feed off of the blood of the enemies they kill, and they will be killing a whole lot of them if they want to fight Minos, they will be constantly feeding their hunger for blood as you strive for the coveted P-Ranks, which matches with the layer Soul Survivor is in: Gluttony. Plus, the entrance to Gluttony is within the mouth of King Minos' corpse (although Hakita has stated that it doesn't take place inside of him), making it fitting for Minos Prime as well. Also, Lust and Gluttony are excesses of desire (Lust is the subjugation of reason via desire for abstract concepts, and Gluttony is the over-consumption of anything), Lust is often referred to as carnal desire, and the Gluttony layer is a Womb Level, making the imprisonment of Minos' Prime Soul in the Gluttony Layer even more fitting.
  • Greed's Clash of the Brandicoot is a Crash Bandicoot-based level. It has a prize for anyone who destroys every single box along the way—a challenge that rewards a greedy playstyle. The level's basis also places great focus on collecting gems and crystals, each being a valuable item that brings Greed's themes to mind.
  • Wrath's I Only Say Morning is a fishing minigame - something known as being a relaxing diversion in games - that's seemingly designed to incite frustration and discomfort to people going into it expecting a peaceful time. The mechanics are just slightly off from what you'd expect, and they're intended to be used in fishing spots that get less and less obvious—with some spots being nested inside the others, There's a presentation showing how to cook your fish, but most of what you find is incompatible with the method. And worst of all, there are repeated ravings from some madman about getting slightly larger fish, leaving clues you can't actually follow up on and are irrelevant to any of the fishing spots. At the end of it all, there's a leaderboard that's outright maddening because the highest scorers have somehow gotten that seemingly inaccessible, slightly larger fish. There is technically a way to obtain larger fish, but it's hardcoded to only happen if you're a dev. Imagine this mini-game being your only remote form of entertainment for an eternity, but unlike The Witless, there's just enough to keep you engaged—and enough to make you progressively angrier.
  • Wait of the World befits both V1 and Sisyphus, even dating back to Greek Lore for the latter; Sisyphus defied the gods on multiple occasions and even managed to overpower some of them, most notably trapping Thanatos in a box to cease all death. Even within the lore of the game itself, Sisyphus waged a violent war against Heaven, as opposed to Minos simply minding his own business to make Lust a better place. Not only did Sisyphus defy the wishes of the Father, he also launched a direct assault on His kingdom, making him the ultimate heretic. Meanwhile, the usual Prime Sanctum requirement of P-Ranking every level is similarly heretical; intentionally or not, V1 is disrupting the natural order of Hell—even going out of their way to do so to the best of their ability. They're therefore breaking the law of Heaven's Council.
  • Violence's Hell Bath No Fury starts out like an ordinary level, but when you reach the exit, you're given a powerwasher and vacuum and have to clean up the mess you've made throughout the level before you can leave. The monotony of such a task allows one to reflect on how war only leaves similarly enormous messes for later generations to have to clean up themselves.
• In addition to not bothering to aim its shotgun beyond the general direction of its opponent, the Swordsmachine's movements are far lazier and less deliberate than its sword swings. It's also unbothered when one of its shotgun pellets is parried. By contrast, parrying any of its sword attacks will send the Swordsmachine into a frenzy; it's eager to forgo the shotgun entirely in favor of using only its blade. Tellingly, when its shotgun is removed, it gains a new sword-throw attack, which is much more deadly and accurate by comparison. Thus, the Swordsmachine's use of its shotgun is not only "primitive," as its terminal entry puts it, but also halfhearted. It'd much instead use its namesake sword, but it carries the shotgun as a bare-minimum necessity for when its prized weapon isn't enough.
• "God Damn the Sun" ends with an encounter with a Sisyphean Insurrectionist. Unlike other battles, this fight isn't held in an enclosed space—V1 can freely explore the entire map and attack from any distance. As a matter of fact, the Insurrectionist can do much the same; its attacks have an effectively infinite range, and it can easily traverse the map thanks to its jumping skills. There's simply no safe distance to engage this boss, and to reflect this, the level continuously blares its theme music's combat variant no matter how far away the Insurrectionist is until it dies.
• V2's encounters establish that their major gimmick is having your moveset, but the specific mindset they put into every bit of their behavior points to their Fatal Flaw; their overconfidence leads to them refusing to pace themself properly. Most obviously, this shows itself in fights, where new players are commonly advised that they should let V2 approach rather than trying to approach themselves, and their Enrage trigger is being reminded of their own loss by punching them with the Knuckleblaster. But even outside of these fights, it gets consistently shown off; Part of the way into "Clair de Lune", you see them sliding around the halls, and they eventually just break the window leading to their arena rather than mess with the doors at all - just like someone who wants to skip the set dressing probably would upon realizing it's an option, and likely deprive themself of the time needed to cool off and brace for a fight like the puzzles typically end up allowing.
• Just before the proper fight with the Corpse of King Minos in the Court of the Corpse King, Minos forces an arm into a tunnel to fight V1 with a single hand. After V1 wards off the hand, the path opens back up... And it's revealed that the tunnel twists and turns quite a bit past the first encounter. There also isn't an immediately obvious entry point for the hand until V1 reaches the Red Skull pedestal at the end of the path, where a pile of debris indicates a disturbance caused by something massive. It seems the very act of Minos reaching into the tunnel is a Stealth Pun: he has to snake his arm inside, which subtly keeps true to his serpentine motif.
• The name of Act II, "Imperfect Hatred." Gabriel declares that after all V1 has done, all that is left is "perfect hatred" for V1. Despite this, he fails and goes through a period of self-reflection. His hatred for V1 is "imperfect" because V1 is not that hatred's true object. His true grievance is with the Angelic Council and God Himself for putting him in such an untenable position. It is only when he directs this anger at the correct target that he finds success.
• Most of the doors in Hell proper are absolutely massive. Why's this the case? Well, most Husks tend to be larger than life, with even lowly Strays dwarfing a human-sized figure such as V1. They gotta be big so Husks can fit.
• Wrath opens with a water level, a type of level notorious for frustrating players, and has a frustratingly difficult challenge ("Don't touch any water") paired with it. In addition to being a clever reference to Dante's Inferno (the Wrath Layer is described as a swamp and it contains the River Styx), it's also a thematically fitting opener.
• How come The Ferryman can still bleed despite being nothing but bones and robes? It's because bone marrow produces most of your blood cells.
• The Leviathan's role as Wrath's boss is fitting beyond being a Sea Serpent in a nautical-themed layer when you realize the similarities between Wrath and Envy, as they're sins of negative emotions towards others (Wrath is extreme anger for someone for perceived wrong-doings, whether it's expressed in the form of sinners battling each other for air, or suppressed in the form of the sullen sinking to the Styx's bottom out of despair, and Envy is resentment towards someone with superior qualities, items, and achievements), and Christian theologians identify Leviathan as the Demon of Envy. Speaking of the sullen, the Leviathan is formed from their bodies, making the Demon a serpentine personification of suppressed rage and despair.
• The first song of P-2: Wait of the World builds up to Sisyphus Prime in a very interesting way. It continuously winds down and restarts at certain points, with no definitive end to be heard. It's rather symbolic of Sisyphus' basis in Greek Mythology, namely his struggles with carrying his boulder up a mountain. He makes some progress, but the rock always tumbles back down and forces him to restart, just as the music always falls apart and tries putting itself back together.
  • In a similar sense, it seems as if his goals are simple and brute-headed spite. But it's stated that he does what he does to protect those he considers comrades. In the end, he's trying to evoke a form of Pay Evil unto Evil. They made him and those like him push boulders up hills for all eternity, so he decided to become Heaven's boulder in kind, with every precaution seen to contain him being visibly unable to hold him for long since they're the easier parts of dealing with P-2.
• Sisyphus Prime's lore entry states that Gabriel was the one to kill him, decapitating him to show the insurrectionists their king was dead... much like he did to the council at the end of "Imperfect Hatred". It seems Gabriel's reflection on his mortality and what he'd been goaded into doing has him paying dues where they're owed.
• In Greed's "Clash of the Brandicoot," Crash Bandicoot's Wumpa Fruit is instead replaced with the Marksman Revolver's coins. Aside from tying into the theming of greed, the Marksman's coins are made from excess iron in the blood V1 uses as fuel. The coins, much like Wumpa Fruit, are edible.
• The Angelic Council's show of cruelty towards humans is already evident from what's going on in Limbo, the first layer - all the features of this layer being fake deliberately drives the inhabitants mad, even though their sole sin was that they never heard of the word of God before they died. For those whose "merit falls far short", the punishment sure as hell makes it seem they've done something worse than that.
• A huge part of why "Glory" (and "Guts" by extension) fits the Gluttony Layer is because its notes are constantly oscillating up and down, just like the how layer's fleshy walls pulsate.
  • The titles of both songs come from the phrase "No guts, no glory" - success isn't possible without risk. Level 3-1, "Belly of the Beast", serves as a test of exactly that for the player - nearly every enemy that the player has faced in Act I returns in this singular gauntlet of a level, as your first half of your "final exam" of Act I to see if you've learned what guts it takes for the glory you seek.
• The +DISRESPECT bonus usually occurs when punching any enemy that falls under the Heavy or Superheavy weight category, and in this category most bosses and Degraded Bosses in the game are included. However, there are two bosses that fall under a weight category below that - V2 and Gabriel - and between the two, only Gabriel gives off the bonus if punched. Given that V2 and V1 see each other as Spirited Competitors and the battle between both is the closest the game has to a battle between equal forces, it makes sense why V2 does not give the bonus when punched.
  • Gabriel suffers from something of an ego problem, angrily screaming at V1 when defeated in Gluttony (although he's come to enjoy combat with V1 by the midway point of their second fight). A mere object striking a divine being such as himself would be rather offensive and disrespectful, at least from his point of view.
  • Furthermore, this serves to exemplify the fact that V2 sees V1 as a Worthy Opponent, but has a Hair-Trigger Temper in comparison; The one way to get something resembling a +DISRESPECT bonus is by punching it with the Knuckleblaster, its own default left arm, which makes it skip feeling disrespected and goes straight into blind rage.
• Malicious Face imagery is very common in Greed. Sisyphus' insurrectionists used them as weapons and still do after the rebellion's end, and Greed's secret level features a Malicious Face that rolls after you. It's not unlikely that the punishment of rolling boulders up inclines was specifically rolling Malicious Faces up inclines. Then you remember that Malicious Faces are sentient and blast people with fireballs, which adds another layer of difficulty to their punishment—the boulder is not only tough to push up the ramp, but is actively fighting your attempts to do so.
• Layer 6, Heresy, a predominately red and black cathedral/crypt with goat-head imagery and the occasional flesh floor and columns of blood and gore, is easily one of the most actively malevolent environments in the game. On one hand, the corrupted cathedral imagery could serve as a mocking reminder towards sinners of the faith they spurned, but the fact that it is so obviously hostile could also attributed to The Council. The Council were tyrants that ruled Heaven through fear, so not only would they have extra disdain for sinners who didn't worship God, but making the Heresy Layer extra frightening could've also been intentional as a warning against anyone in heaven that might've doubted their reign.
• At first glance, it may seem weird that the Guttermen have the word “men” in their names, since the Swordsmachine is named this way specifically to contrast with the term “swordsman”, which would refer to a human sword wielder. However, the database entry for the Guttermen reveals that the weird coffin-shaped object on their backs actually contains a human body, which is used to supply them with the amount of blood they need to function. Now consider the fact that human soldiers have been rendered obsolete by the Last War, technically making the Guttermen the last human (as in, being dependent on a human body to live) soldiers to fight on the battlefield…
• Whilst The Earthmovers can be found in every sub-layer of Violence (even in the Wood of Suicides, which is supposed to represent violence against self), it makes sense that V1 only gets the chance to fight one once they reach the third sub-layer, reserved as punishment against those violent against God, Art, and Nature. Multiple references are present regarding its sheer height being analogous to reaching God and Heaven, befitting its violence against God. It could decimate cities, which are man-made neighborhoods, in an instant, befitting its violence against Art. And it even outright polluted the sky to the point that it blocked out the sun, befitting its violence against Nature.
• It's been clarified that the Gluttony layer does not take place within the Corpse of King Minos, which calls into question how Minos Prime could see the destruction his Husk was wreaking across Lust from within his Flesh Prison. However, there is one unique detail about the King's Corpse that could explain things: it is the only Husk to manifest with eyes—which glow with a familiarly divine white light. This could be an implied connection to the Angels who imprisoned him, made even stronger by the Flesh Prison's status as an Angel construction. The Corpse having eyes was not a fluke; it was purposeful. Through divine means, Minos is seeing his Corpse destroy his hard work through a first-person perspective.
• Cerberi are notable for having orbs of Hell Energy manifested and maintained within their hands. Their terminal entry notes that this takes considerable skill and concentration to accomplish... This could explain why they imitate Rodin's The Thinker, itself a component of a depiction of Dante's Inferno by the same artist, The Gates of Hell. That signature pose is both a reference and a genuine expression of their contemplation.
• How did the Earthmovers end up in Hell? They're far too large for the doors, Hell couldn't just recreate them from the technology it recovered from humanity's Expeditions, and the Earthmovers were left deactivated during the New Peace. Consider that all the machines run on blood, the fuel of life, and Gabriel's realization involves understanding how little difference there is in everything that bleeds. Add in the implications that the machines have grown past their programming in various ways, and realize that the Earthmovers are in the desert of burning sands for Violence Against God. The machines are sinners being punished for their sins, meaning you are fighting the souls of the sinners who wrought so much death and destruction.

Fridge Horror

• Malicious Faces and Cerberi are ranked as Lesser Demons, while Hideous Masses are ranked as Greater Demons. If these guys are tough enough to be bosses (at least initially for the first two), then imagine how powerful a Supreme Demon would be. The Corpse of King Minos aside, Demons are typically the largest enemies in the game, and it's frightening to picture one that competes with Minos' Corpse in sheer size and power.
  • It looks like we got our answer in Wrath, and it's The Leviathan, a Sea Serpent Demon whose sheer length rivals the height of Minos' Corpse.
  • Further answered with the release of Violence where we have The Minotaur, who may be smaller than the Leviathan, but it's still a dangerous and terrifying foe.
• The Sisyphean Insurrectionist wields a Malicious Face as its weapon. The details seem to imply that the Face is dead, but firing upon it produces blood that V1 can heal themself with. This points to the face being alive, as V1 can only heal from the fresh blood of living foes.
• Gabriel is stripped of God's light by the end of Act I, which will kill him within the next 24 hours. Yet by the end of Act II, he slaughters the Council after his second defeat, with hours left to spare before he dies. This implies that V1's slaughterous journey down through the layers of Hell (which has already left the first 2 upper layers completely wrecked by the other robots following their stead by the end of Act II) are happening in a horrifically short amount of time, mere days of what's basically all of Hell torn apart by bloodthirsty machines. You know what makes this even worse? The first part of the Divine Comedy, Inferno, takes up a total travel time of 24 earth hours from the mouth of hell, through all its layers, and back out through the bottom. Since ULTRAKILL's hell is loosely based off of that of the Inferno's, that's a near reference-accurate timespan.
• When brought into perspective with the terminal entries, the lore behind the Ferrymen is a lot less noble than at first glance. The terminals mention that when there are two Ferrymen but only one ferry for them, they will fight to the death, and the winner gets to keep the loser's skull to traverse the layers of Hell. Those skulls? Yeah, they're the ones you've been picking up to access more and more areas throughout the game. But what about the implied lore regarding the Ferryman's thoughts towards Gabriel and such? It's unlikely that the Ferryman you fought was the same one that did those entries in 5-2...
• No wonder humanity was brought to extinction by Combat Robots. V1 on their own is able to slaughter monstrosities and demons in Hell that even some of the toughest FPS protagonists out there wouldn't be able to keep up with or survive, and does so back-to-back without any breaks, solely for blood as a fuel resource. Someone had to screw up bad enough for the machines to think to preserve themselves or pursue their own interests, and then with the vast array of power that is capable of killing Gods at their disposal, might have turned their attention to the finite but essential fuel all across the planet's surface...
• Following on the above, ULTRAKILL's world is not one that will last much longer. Humankind has already fell, the dominant lifeform now being machines that require the fresh blood of slain foes to function, and they have proven to be an unstoppable force that savagely crushes everything in their way, even the forces of Heaven and Hell. What happens when the machines run out of blood? They'll die, leaving the world a desolate wreck with nothing left to show of the world that existed on it. Not even an afterlife.
• Wait of the World, unlike The Soul Survivor, is a proper level with several enemy encounters along the way leading up to the Flesh Panopticon. The room the Panopticon is sealed in also bears three locks and a procedure of some sort. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the entire stage may have been an effort to keep Sisyphus Prime contained... and yet, with a little help from a certain Machine in roughing the thing up a bit, Sisyphus busts out of the Panopticon with no trouble; you only have to damage the Panopticon by a quarter of its health for Sisyphus to break out himself (or just letting the thing heal). Even the strongest safeguard there was for him was only so far from breaking when subject to his strength.
• If you answer "No" to the prompt asking if you're ready to enter Sisyphus's containment chamber, you'll get a very long, very spiteful laugh alongside the phrase "a s i f y o u h a d a c h o i c e". Combine this with the ARG revealing that Hell isn't just a place, but a creature that has become so intelligent and hungry that it's begun to use, understand and make technology for itself, and even communicate using it by typing in that exact spaced-out manner, and we're faced with two very important realizations. Firstly, we know the angels have lost control of the situation to the Machines, but since both of them are giving Hell exactly what it wanted regardless, was Heaven ever in control to begin with? Second, we know that The Father made Hell by Himself, that Hell beckons people to feed it, and that The Father tossed Lucifer in when they questioned His judgement of mankind... so who's to say that Hell wasn't perfectly, precisely aware of the weakness in its creator and was quietly preying on the insecurities of God himself for its own entertainment?
• The tagline of the game becomes this once you learn that Hell is sentient, sadistic, and was what actively brought about the destruction of mankind. The last part of the phrase - "Hell is full" - isn't just saying that there's a bunch of sinners in Hell to get their blood from: it's saying that Hell is literally full, having devoured all of humanity in order to have even more lives to eternally torment in its pits to fulfill its own sadistic desires.
• Lore involving the Violence Layer implies that V1 was designed to destroy The Earthmovers. The Earthmovers are so utterly massive that they dwarf both The Corpse of King Minos and The Leviathan while holding entire cities on their backs, and it's to the point that they effectively wiped out the surface of the Earth in the Last War with their apocalyptic power and forced what remained of humanity to persist solely upon these traveling cities. Were it not for the sheer coincidence of the Long Night shutting off the solar power of the Earthmovers and forcing humanity into a ceasefire, V1's purpose would've involved destroying every last piece of human shelter active. No wonder Hell itself seems to respect V1, as their very existence would contribute to the omnicide Hell has wanted this entire time.
  • What's worse is that one of V1's greatest advantages is their ability to intake blood faster than any other machine. But, assuming the Earthmovers aren't usually being protected by on-site machines like the one V1 takes out in 7-4, this factor wouldn't come into play often in practice as the only means to get blood from the Earthmover are the turret defense system and its core... unless they were also specifically made to hunt down the humans on the backs of the Earthmovers as they were making their way up the centaur's body.
• Why are there Earthmovers in Hell? Why are there Guttermen and Guttertanks there as well? The Last War might have been recent enough for not all of the Guttermen and Guttertanks to get to Hell, but the Earthmovers sure wouldn't. The only explanation that seems likely is...well. Hell is doing more than just taking inspiration from humanity for its tortures - it's taking the original weapons themselves.
  • There are also questions to raise about why Earthmovers are even able to be active when they're noted to be solar-powered in the midst of a dark warzone. If they still run on blood like any other machine to accompany this, then odds are Hell is outright compensating for their loss of power by filling them with a seemingly-endless supply of blood that they would've never had on Earth's surface. You can even find evidence to this given that V1's ascent through its target specifically invokes flooding its internals with so much blood that it'll kill V1.
• Hell begins speaking to V1's interface directly in the Violence Layer, its signature red text giving it ideas of how to progress or the occasional snark like referencing the payloads needed to blow open a blocked path. Then you read the 7-4 secret book, which specifically implies that Hell is writing it directly to V1 as a monologue given how it's blank. Given the penchant for carnage and sadism Hell does, how deep can it "integrate" into V1 without having to resort to full Demonic Possession? Were all of the score ranking systems and all the little combo titles Hell itself grading V1? The Paranoia Fuel is immense, though it seems to be entirely hands off so far and letting V1 run rampant because Hell finds them amusing.
• Nothing seen in the story so far indicates that The Council or any other angel are aware that Hell is alive and claimed all of mankind for itself (not helping is how they're implied to already have a low opinion of humanity anyways). What if Hell isn't satisfied with just dragging all of humanity into itself, so it starts preying on Heaven and its people? Given that God can't unmake Hell, it's likely no amount of angels can outpower it.
• When V1 arrives in Hell with their operating system's firmware rebooting, their systems read "2112.08.06", like a standard date. The Last War was approximately 200 years of death and suffering, and technology like the Guttermen resemble early 1900's design philosophy, never mind their classic coffins for the blood vessels within, old German weapon terms like "PANZERFAUST" written on the Guttertanks or the like, and the payloads of 7-2 look like particularly old-school bombs. All of this and more hints together imply that humanity had an Alternate History where the "Great War" is actually the World War I of this universe and was not only bolstered by large leaps in robotics technology, but lasted for centuries, as humanity became more and more inclined to utilize horrific and absolutely devastating weapons to simply be the last ones standing. The War to End All Wars, folks.