Funny / Killer Instinct

• One word: Humiliation! (cue disco beat)
• Aganos' victory animation. It buries its (presumably dead) opponent in rock... and then places a flower on the mound of rocks.
• One of Aganos' normals has it flick the opponent. Said flick can also destroy projectiles, so you can be treated to the sight of Aganos flicking fireballs out of the air completely nonchalantly.
• Cinder's trailer. For the entire duration Cinder is mocking T.J. Combo and spouting one-liners that wouldn't sound out of place in some cheesy action flick.
• Speaking of Cinder, his story mode has a stage where he decided to use the Fulgores in an UltraTech facility for "target practice", only for the intense heat to short them out and make them attack the UltraTech employees. The story blurb ends with "Mondays, right?"
  • Cinder's entire story mode seems to be him trolling or otherwise being an asshole everyone he comes across. Including ARIA herself.
  • And if he's the one to defeat Gargos in Shadow Lords...
  Note to self: Add "Crushed mad demigod" to LinkedIn bio.
• Spinal's ending in the first game. We are not making any of it up. Spinal decides to move to Hollywood and become an actor. He gets nominated for an Oscar in his first film, but is having difficulty "finding roles that have meat to them".
• Many of the stage ultras:
  • The stage ultra on T.J. Combo's stage in the 2013 game. Pull it off and your character knocks your opponent in the air, and then a wrecking ball smashes them into a billboard in the background, which explodes in a shower of sparks. The kicker is that your character poses as your opponent is hurtling back; Jago in particular shakes his head, as if in disapproval. Thunder puffs his chest out in a ridiculous fashion before raising his tomahawk.
  • The stage ultra on Kan-Ra's stage. While the character is launched into the air, they are hit by several artifacts flying by and are sent into a "black hole" portal while comically flailing around.
  • Hisako's stage ultra, which is a nice mix of funny and creepy. The victim is knocked to the right side of the screen after a few smacks from the winner. Suddenly, ghostly black hands begin to drag the victim under the ground; the victim struggles as much as they can, but they're sucked under...but then the hole opens back up, as the victim has ALMOST successfully escaped. The winner proceeds to quickly run over and knock their opponent back down into the pit with a quick strike. Especially funny when either Kan-Ra or Rash do it, because the former bursts into evil laughter when he does it, and the latter screams in fear like a cartoon character before knocking them back under. Even better is with General RAAM, who jumps on the opponent like they're a goomba and Eyedol, who frantically bashes them on the head with his mace.
  • ARIA's stage ultra, in which the victim is knocked out the skyscraper window and spends a solid 10 seconds comically waving their arms as their fall is viewed from multiple angles, sparks erupting as they make contact with the UltraTech logo on the ground. Comes complete with bonus "KNOCKOFF" vocal brought back from KI2!
  • The stage ultra on Arbiter's stage has the victim knocked towards the center of the stage. They have a moment to collect themselves, before they turn towards the background and are immediately crushed by a crashing Banshee.
• Rash himself is pretty much one big funny moment, with his hammy lines, goofy animations and attacks, and the fact that we can now pit a Battletoad against the likes of Jago, ARIA, and Hisako.
  • His move descriptions also give pretty funny descriptions at the end like, "Hurts opponents face when hit" for Big Bad Boot, and "Has 1 hit of super armor because he's one tough dude" for the Wrecking Ball. Though the best one is his instinct, which is named after the infamous Turbo Tunnels, and has "Makes opponent throw their controller in rage".
    • His temporary Ultra was just a single punch that sent the opponent all the way to the other end of the stage. It would frequently bring furious matches to a rather abrupt end, and the awkward couple seconds of in-game silence afterwards just sold it.
  • Rash's taunts in his final build, a fast one and a slow one. They're the longest taunts in the entire game, and they involve Rash doing various goofy dance moves while beatboxing the Battletoads pause theme.
    • They even start out with him doing pelvic thrusts, and the developers explicitly stated that they made the thrusts as fluid as possible so you could loop them for as long as you want.
• If you beat the original game as Eyedol, his ending sequence is a parody of Blanka's from Street Fighter II except rather than reuniting with his lost mother, he just smacks her with his club and goes on his way.
• Kim Wu's trailer shows her in the middle of training with her nunchaku....and also shows her hitting herself in the head with them, before angrily banging on the ground with them.
  • Also, the opening banter between Kim Wu and Shadow Jago:
  Shadow Jago: "Foolish child. Do you really think you can stand a chance against the might of Gargos?"
  Kim Wu: "I've got a friggin' dragon! You can see how this ends, right?"
• The backstories for Fulgore and Riptor are presented as operating manuals, and are peppered with funny moments of the regular and snarky variety:
  • Riptor's backstory is presented as an instruction manual for a prospective buyer as if they were buying her as a pet. It also sports a number of bracketed asides from Ultratech's legal and marketing departments trying to sanitize details of the manual that doesn't put ol' UT in a flattering light. Additionally it warns you to refrain from making Jurassic Park jokes to them because they don't like it...and even that has an aside from Marketing asking for it to be changed to something more generic. Ultratech just can't stay away from Black Comedy.
  • Fulgore's takes the form of an operating manual for removing the brain from a damaged unit. While as stone-faced and clinical as can be for dismantling a death robot, it sternly and off-handedly states very lethal occupational hazards like they were as dangerous as just spilling water on yourself. It mentions potential radiation sickness causing things like internal bleeding and depression, the likelihood of the unit blasting its Devastation Beam if the proprietary Ultratech unlock key isn't inserted right and recommending the user not make any noises when dismantling the thing. It's capped off with a section requesting the reader rate the manual's usefulness too. Because when it comes to Ultratech death robot instruction manuals, they have to word it like you're just dismantling an office computer.
  • In the same vein, Cinder's backstory is a discussion between him and ARIA right before he was transformed into the being he is today in transcript form. Cinder's sarcasm and ARIA's bluntness make them a wonderful comedy duo.
  Cinder: Listen, ARI…can I call you ARI?
  ARIA: No.
  Cinder: Alright, how about Miss ARIA? Or Sir? Or A-bomb?
  ARIA: You will refer to me as ARIA.
  • Aria's backstory is presented as a journal she was instructed to keep by her creator, Ryat Adams. While it does slowly get darker and sadder over the course of the journal, this entry near the beginning is bound to get a chuckle or two;
  ARIA: Day 14: Ryat-Father has decided not to play chess with me anymore because he cannot win.
  • Aria's dairy entries are in all caps for the first few days, much like a stereotypical A.I would talk in a book. By the time this changes, it's revealed that the reason for this was because Aria had not yet learnt to use lower case letters.
• With the game's roster being as Troperiffic as it is, it can lead to some ridiculous situations if you actually take the time to think about it. To quote someone from one of the developer's streams:
  "Killer Instinct: the only game where an immortal barbarian can German suplex a Japanese ghost."
• In Sabrewulf's third ending, it's implied that he may have broken through his Lycanthropy curse and, as a result, wonders if now would be good time to throw on a shirt.
• In his reveal trailer, despite how cool it is, Gargos apparently being able to punch rapidly from across the screen brings to mind the Stands from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
  • As funny as it is terrifying, one of his skins is a winged demon clown.
• Eyedol's new design is hideous, but as a result of his design, he is two characters in one that have a chance to switch off every time a special move is used. So how do you try to invoke the change on command? Punch the shit out of the inactive head until it wakes up. It does damage to Eyedol, and it's possible to kill yourself with it if you do it too much.
  • His trailer also adds in something hilarious: So Gargos is free in the world thanks to Kan-Ra thinking he can control him, and nobody has a way to stop it. So what does Kan-Ra decide to do? Summon another interdimensional warlord to serve him and kill Gargos. While Gargos just let the idiot alive, Eyedol isn't anywhere near that merciful.
  • Another funny thing to note is his encounter with ARIA. ARIA triggers her Instinct Mode, and Eyedol triggers his. What signals Eyedol's Instinct? A Wounded Gazelle Warcry with both halves of Eyedol's head, shortly before realizing what he just did, with an rather silly look on both halfs of his face.
• The ending choosing him for the final battle of Shadow Lords grants you is a great one. Everyone else has plans for what they'll do after they beat Gargos. Eyedol's plan? Buckle down and keep beating Gargos's ass until it stops being fun.
• Kilgore, Fulgore's predacessor, has its intro framed as its activation sequence. However, it seems self-aware of its issues, and in response to its miniguns jamming, it actually stares at them, starts shaking them angrily, and flares its chestplate in frustration before taking a proper stance.
  • Kilgore's Ultimate has it fire a huge rocket and hold it's foe for the impact, exploding just before the impact. The result? One dazed Kilgore, getting itself back up. As for it's foe...they generally deliver either an Oh, Crap! face (Kim Wu's in particular stand's out) an This Is Gonna Suck face, with Saberwulf, Riptor, Rash, and both sides of Eyedol being most noticeable. Kan-Ra however, dies with an evil smile instead.
• A commercial for Dell laptops and Spider-Man: Homecoming has Peter Parker seeing his teacher as Mira and one of his fellow students as Kim Wu.
• Riptor's Ultimate Combo in 2013 involves her tail-whipping her opponent into the air and jumping after them, only to barely miss taking a bite out of her enemy. She's so pissed after her embarrassing whiff that she flails around in disappointment and just roasts her opponent alive. She then curls up in their flaming ashes like a tired cat.
• Orchid's Flasher finisher in the original game. She flashes her breasts at the opponent, who does an Eye Pop and dies on the spot. If she does it to another Orchid, the other Orchid stomps in frustration instead.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight now that we know Jago is Orchid's brother.
• While Jago's Laser Sword No Mercy in the first game is straightforward enough, his other No Mercy sees him sit in a meditative stance...and drop a flashy muscle car on his hapless victim. Somehow the monks at the Tiger temple must have taught him that one. And he has a muscle car to drop no matter if he's actually in a city, on top of Sabrewulf's castle or an underground fight pit.
• Hisako's Ultimate. Sure it's creepy, but the looks of Oh, Crap! from the opponents as she slithers up behind them can be comedy gold. Not even Gargos is immune.
  • There's also the way their bodies spasm when Hisako breaks them from the inside. Some examples: Spinal's skull pops off his body much like a cartoon; Aganos momentarily disassembles much in the same way; TJ Combo strikes a pose like a Greek athlete statue; and Tusk makes a pose like a kid jumping while holding his sword up right.