Funny / Assassin's Creed: Unity

• A bit of Fridge Humour hits in the Sequence 1 memory, "High Society". In most stealth missions across the series, including in this game, you get desynchronized if you enter 'conflict' with the tailing target - which means that the Assassin in question never got noticed. However, if you enter conflict while sneaking through the party, Arno just gets kicked out of the gates - which means that Arno canonically got noticed at least once trying to sneak into Elise's initiation ceremony.
• After Arno climbs into the building that Elise's ball is being held in, a certain someone notices him from below.
  Robespierre: Get down from there! Now!
  Arno: If I do, will you let me back in?
  Robespierre: What?! Certainly not!
  Arno: Then, if it's all the same to you... I think I'll stay up here.
  (Arno shuts the window)
• Elise is asked if she's seen an "interloper" (Arno!) that the exceptionally French guards are looking for. Her reply?
  Elise: "No! I shouldn't think they can climb stairs, not with those little hooves! And how did they get out of the royal menagerie?"
  • Basically, she's pretending to have heard "interloper" as "antelope", given their French accents. Then she asks to be taken to the Billiard Room. Credit where it's due: that's gold.
• Completing Rift missions give you access to Assassin Intel. One of these is a list of potential Sages. One of the entries reads: "David Jones. Nationality: possibly English. Born: Mid-20th century. Status unknown, In the 1970s and 80s a few scattered reports of a man resembling a Sage surfaced. He was said to be "otherworldly", "extraterrestrial", and "possessed by multiple personalities." So far, these reports have proven inconclusive." David Jones happens to be the real name of a certain David Bowie.
• Napoleon snarking about Arno's outfit, and how it becomes more and more conspicuous the further the series gets from the Third Crusade:
  Napoleon: You certainly don't look like a blood-crazed revolutionary. The hood... is a bit sinister though, if you don't mind my saying.
  • Shortly afterwards, Napoleon has his troops get him and Arno out of an otherwise sealed room... by shooting out the wall. With a cannon. And claiming it's "just a drill".
• "The Escape", the last mission of Sequence 9, which is one concentrated Funny Moment. It begins with Elise running in away from Jacobins for reasons she refuses to explain, and escalates very quickly to stealing a prototype hot-air balloon in the middle of a thunderstorm with Arno desperately trying to catch up with her.
• Shaun's database snarking is back, now in the form of footnotes added to [what is most likely] Abstergo-written information. From the entry on Jacques de Molay:
  Jacques de Molay was born between 1245 and 1250.*
  * Now that's a long labour.
  • The entry on Les Misérables is essentially a rant about how much Shaun hates the musical and the French Revolution in Unity is not the French Revolution in Les Mis. And anyways, he prefers Cats. Much more believable.
  • Every paragraph in the story about the Red Ghost of the Tuileries is accompanied by increasingly incredulous notes about the ridiculousness of the story.
    I bet you didn't expect to read the phrase "expelled a German butcher" just then. I know I certainly didn't.
    I think this is the weirdest story ever. An expelled German butcher, with a French name, gets so annoyed he swears revenge. Okay. And then what?
    Is this a dream? An angry German butcher stayed so annoyed he'd once been expelled from a site that he died and then haunted a palace? What?
    Marie-Antoinette asked a MAGICIAN to PROTECT HER AGAINST THE GHOST OF AN ANGRY GERMAN BUTCHER?
    WHAT IS HAPPENING? Am I HIGH?
  • One of the entries is on the Phrygian Cap, which gives us an interesting look at Shaun's... past achievements.
    The Phrygian Cap* was originally a symbol worn by Paris (son of Prima, from Phrygia) that would be taken up in late Roman iconography, well before it became a symbol of the Parisian sans-culottes.
    * For two years I made someone at school believe the Phrygian Cap was a form of birth control. No real relevance here, I'm just proud.
  • That being said, it seems that not even Abstergo workers are immune to snarking in their databases. From the information on Village de Versailles:
    Between 1665 and 1680, some 25,000 men and 6,000 horses busied themselves daily. One team worked days, the other nights by torchlight (the Church apparently tolerated work on Sundays).
• As you renovate Café Theatre, new rooms are unlocked, each of which holds Assassin records from times older - most of which are highly amusing.
  • In a hidden room in the main hall is the "Report on the Recruitment of Mlle. La Maupin", penned by a rather daft initiate... and commentated by the Master Assassin who sent him on the mission. Brother d'Albert starts off by talking about his horse, at unnecessary length (M. Maréchal excises it from the records) before he goes to seek La Maupin (who he assumes to be male despite Maréchal having told him she was a woman, the fencing boards proclaiming she was a woman, and her name being feminine). He claims to have complimented her and had her take offense, whereupon she took their misgivings to fight a woman as a sign of weakness, drove her sword into his shoulder, and fled in terror (his companions reported that he tried to flirt, she kicked all three of their asses, and went to the bar for a drink).
    d'Albert: Based on this irrational and illogical reaction, I must conclude that Mlle. Maupin would be a poor choice for recruitment.
    Maréchal: And having tutored the mademoiselle personally in the arts of the stage, I must conclude that Brother d'Albert is a great ass and should no more be in charge of recruitments than an Ourang Outan should be in charge of the crockery.
  • In the well is the "Progress Report for Initiate Charles Dorian", which makes it abundantly clear who is writing even without the signature.
    (The letter is written in a crude hand, as though the scribe were not used to writing)
    Here's your goddamned progress report.
    Initiate Dorian is showing progress.
• We find out that "Devils of the Caribbean", the fake movie they devised at the end of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, was released commercially and did pretty badly. Their internal marketing from the Helix Rifts tries to make the best of a bad situation:
  Never speak badly of past projects. Spin negatives into positives, E.G. If they say "The film 'Devils of the Caribbean' was a frightful mess of clichés, dime-store moralizing, and pandering stereotypes. Who thought this bucket of bilge water was a good idea?" You say "Certainly we realized very early in production that 'Devils of the Caribbean' would not be the ideal experience for everyone. But for those who want a fun, exciting, and lighthearted look at the Golden Age of Piracy, their ship has come to port."
• Another piece of Abstergo intel is a discussion between Lemay and Gramatica on the Sage hunt, discussing the first three leads they have on finding a Sage. Case 1: a Sage in 500 CE, at the height of the Hun Empire. Gramatica figures it'll be hard to find an intact sample. Case 2: Arno Dorian, who's met a Sage. They'd rather find a Sage than someone who's met one. Case 3: a singer named David Jones in the mid-1900s. Gramatica figures that'll be a Needle in a Stack of Needles, and tells Lemay to go after Arno, hence the Assassins cottoning on.
• During the Rise of the Assassin memory, if you take the "let's pretend I'm going to be executed and then stab La Touche in the throat" Assassination opportunity, you get this exchange between Arno and his escorts.
  Brute: Don't I know you, boy?
  Arno: I doubt it.
  Brute: No, no, I do. You're the town drunk.
  Arno: I... (realizes that his sorrow-drowning is known all over Versailles) Oh, god. I suppose I am, aren't I?
• During the search for details on Germain, Arno and Élise come across a locked door within his last known location. Arno (despite likely having a ton of lockpicks on him) starts to suggest an alternative approach, only for Élise to just kick the door in. Arno doesn't even complain.
• The infamous varied graphical bugs (when they're not ensuring your future therapist will live comfortably for the rest of their life) are hilarious. Example
• As horrifyingly badass as it is when you realize Germain has the Sword of Eden, Arno's reaction is pretty funny; the Sage raises the sword, lightning rips out of the tip of the blade, Arno leaps aside as though he dodges magic every day... and then pauses for a moment, realizing he just dodged lightning. "What the hell was that?" indeed.
• Shay's Templar Outfit and Bellec's Assassin Outfit lack Arno's Hidden Blade - purely a graphical effect, but still kind of distracting. If you're using one of these outfits during the last mission and you have the Blood FX turned off, Arno looks like he's Force Choking Germain at the end.
• During one mission, Arno and Elise approach the Marquis de Sade for information, and he asks for... Creative advice.
  Marquis: (Sees them approach) Ah... Which is a more incisive commentary on corruption in the bishopric? Seven nuns seducing a parish priest into debauchery, or an enourmously-endowed Benedictine sodomizing a goat named Pius?
  Arno: No force, in heaven or on earth, will make me answer that question.
  Marquis: Quite right, Arno, the goat it is.
  • What makes it especially funny is that Arno just doesn't even seem especially fazed or disturbed by the idea; he's gotten used to the Marquis.

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