Funny / NieR: Automata

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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• After the first (scripted) death, 9S wakes you up on your bed.
  9S: The Commander's put me in charge of your maintenance, ma'am. That means I'll be performing regular checks on you from now on.
  2B: ...I see.
  9S: Oh, don't worry. We 9S models are the best around, you know ...though I suppose we're not exactly known for our modesty.
  • You can troll 9S by repeatedly refusing to follow the procedure during 2B's routine diagnostic checks. Which comes around to bite you in the ass when you play as him in the second playthrough.
  • In a small touch that's both adorable and funny, you have the option of telling him that there's something very calming about his voice, which causes him to get flustered and start stammering.
  • Try disabling the self-destruct function during the sequence.
  • During the diagnostic checks, if you turn your vibration settings on, 9S will test if they work by tapping 2B on the shoulder. Should she say "No", 9S will be confused and test again with her hand. If she says "No" again, 9S will run another test this time not specifying where he's touching. It becomes even funnier when you play as 9S in the second playthrough and you get to hear his inner monologue during the entire process.
• Among the idle chatter you can hear on the Bunker is one Operator unit telling another about the fact that she's been working out lately, and asks her how her waistline looks. The second Operator sheepishly tells her that she hadn't noticed a change. They're androids, so they can't visibly put on or lose any muscle.
• The Access Points where you can save your game and acquire new bodies (loading quick-save) in case you die in combat, are scattered around the map, disguised as vending machines. Granted, they are meant to be hidden from the Machines, but still.
  • After a while (as in, several hours in and after five boss battles), you can use the majority of the Access Points as Transporters. 9S then complains about why the Resistance didn't implement the function sooner.
• The Strange Resistance Woman wearing a Machine's head. You can talk to her for game-related advice, including this dialog option:
  This game is too difficult!
  • She's later joined by a man sporting the same head and boasting that he can see far better now.
• After destroying the Engels-class Goliath in the city ruins, you have the option of repairing it with machine parts in order to access its memory database. After retrieving the parts and bringing it to the massive wreck of the Engels, you get a button prompt to repair it, probably leading you to expect it be fixed instantly. A title card instead appears reading "47 minutes later...."
• You can repair the android body you left behind when you died (or other players who've died there) so that it serves as another ally. One of the animations that play when you repaired the body is the android jumping in place for a moment acting all giddily at you.
  • On the subject of death, you can edit the message you left behind on your corpse. Hilarity ensues. Randomized ones can lead to funny results too.
    Little android was too damn lazy at YoRHa HQ.
    A girl tripped and fell at the garbage dump.
• How you taunt enemies in this game: you flicker your flashlight at them until they get angry.
• At one point 2B and 9S came across one of the machines fleeing deeper into the Desert City. A cutscene has it running away from the pair, but soon realized he's heading in wrong direction towards the androids.
• The machines' play of 3 Romeos and 3 Juliets; it ends in a brawl that descends into absurdity.
  Romeo 3: Pisseth off!
  Juliet 2: I'll tear the shit out of thee!
  • Then instrumental version of Song of the Ancients starts playing...
  • The Receptionist afterward is even momentarily baffled. He either didn't know, or that wasn't how the play was supposed to go.
  • The audience's reaction is also funny, as some are deeply impressed by the play's Faux Symbolism, while at least one machine admits that the whole thing was a nonsensical mess.
  • Technically, this production was a pretty accurate summary of the original play (Barring a few misnamings, Romeo and Juliet meet, profess their love, there are a couple of fights and deaths between both their families, Juliet [accidentally] causes Romeo's death, and then kills herself).
• Several of the "bad" endings are hysterical due to the absurdity of how they're achieved.
  • Ending K, a.k.a. death by mackerel. Yeah. It's a joke ending where you need to catch a mackerel and eat it. Mackerels are an instakill for androids due to the chemical reaction the mackerels have when they're ingested. According to the text box, though, the mackerel was delicious...
  • Ending U, which you get when you self-destruct in the command bunker. The flavor text goes on to say that the Bunker exploded, but it looked pretty from Earth! It also says that the Commander still floats in space with a stern look on her face.
  • Ending T, where you disconnect your own OS chip, which naturally kills you instantly. You can even sell it! (for an insultingly cheap 28G, no less). Oh, and the interface explicitly warns you about it too:
    Caution: Handle With Care!
    Removal of the OS chip will result in death.
  • More than a few of the joke endings involve the playable characters just going off to do their own thing rather than actually finishing the plot. Special mention should probably go to ending L, where 2B spends ten years on the run from both android and machine assassins so she can keep playing the fishing minigame, and ending O, which has the snarkiest narration of them all.
    Some YoRHa units abandoned their mission, the operation failed, and every android met their demise. ...Well, except for the really selfish ones. They were fine.
• Speaking of fishing minigame, unlike in most games where you usually use a fishing rod and bait, here you instead order your Pod to float in the water waiting for something to drag it under before you can pull it out, all the while your android character just stands there doing nothing.
• Pod 042 increasingly getting on A2's nerves after 2B dies (though not before relinquishing ownership of her pod to A2). It's pretty obvious how badly A2 just wants to destroy the pod within the first few minutes of it rambling away at her.
  • When A2 finally concedes to the Pod's request to "state her intentions:"
    A2: My intention is to beat the hell out of every goddamn machine I can find. Is that enough for you?
    Pod 042: Affirmative. Scanning and marking of nearby machine lifeforms complete. Goliath-class enemies detected in desert area. Proposal: Goliath-class enemies should be destroyed.
    A2: Don't tell me what to do.
  • When visiting Pascal's village for the first time as A2...
    A2: (snarling) There's machines everywhere...
    Pod 042: Analysis: This is a colony of pacifistic machine lifeforms led by the unit known as 'Pascal'. It is therefore logical to expect machines to be present. This unit is developing doubts on Unit A2's predictive skills.
• Robots are evidently not much for classical philosophy, based on Pascal's opinion on a book by Friedrich Nietzsche.
  "Where the state ceaseth, there only commenceth the man who is not superfluous." Hmm... I see. It seems this Nietzsche was quite the profound thinker. ...Or perhaps he skipped right past profound and went straight to crazy instead. Ah well.
• The sheer fact that there's Clothing Damage when you self-destruct as 2B, as well as 9S and A2. You would think after thousands of years, the androids would wear clothing that wasn't easy to destroy...
• One sidequest ends up with you teaching a machine the concept of being a shut-in. 9S is not quite sure what to think about that. Better yet, on the C Route attacking his home reveals he's still alive and unharmed. Turns out being a shut-in saved him. Well, until he blows up from A2/9S attacks.
• Eve asking Adam why his name is Eve, a woman's name, when he's a man. At least he's aware that his name is feminine...
  • Eve acting like an obnoxious little brother to Adam is really funny all around, from him asking why they have to cover their crotches (even though they were born without genitalia) to reading books when they can assimilate data way faster with their scanners, only for Adam to basically tell him to shut up or he won't play with him later.
• The trophy that you get after Eve emerges from Adam's skewered body in the desert area is called "It's a Healthy Baby Boy!"
  • Speaking of trophies, you can get two trophies involving 2B, 9S, and their clothes. 2B's is "What Are You Doing?", which involves angling the camera just right so you can sneak a peak under her skirt 10 times in a row. 9S's, on the other hand, is called "Not That I Mind...", a Call-Back to his comment about modesty where you need to play as him in his short shorts for an hour.
• Regularly scheduled contact mail from 21O to 9S went from "If you have nothing to report, then do not reply," to "In any case, reply anyway, although we YoRHa might not use the information you provide."
• 2B and 9S's first meeting with Emil is hilarious. Emil's head pops out from the head of a defeated machine. He politely greets the androids, only for 9S to declare "This thing's weird. Let's kill it!" Emil then rolls away frantically while screaming "Nooooooooooooooo!" and smashes through a gate with a huge cloud of dust and debris, leaving 2B and 9S completely bewildered.
• It took the machines in the forest over 128 years to realize that machines don't grow up the way humans do...so their Forest King will always be stuck as a baby. Oh well, at least he's cute!
  Small Machine Lifeform: How do we make him bigger?
  Small Machine Lifeform: I don't know. We are too dumb to figure that out.
  • Every other flashback scene in this segment is marked as taking place several hundreds of years ago. This one? 4 hours ago.
• The first encounter with Father Servo. When you first get close to him on top of a building, he lets out a shrill cry as walls suddenly go up and he charges at you — as a Small Stubby with a karate gi paint job. All the while, "Birth of a Wish" plays in the background. The contrast between the dramatic music and silly fight is what makes it hilarious.
• The song that plays around Emil's shop. It's so cute and spirited, but the real gut-buster is when the lyrics kick in.
  Everyday's a sale
  Every sale's a win
  Better buy now or you'll cry all night
  • It's highly likely that he will lead you on a wild chase around the City Ruins into some Goliath Biped.
  • What's more is that this song will override the usual city ruins music whenever he's in the area. If you can time it correctly, you can make it so that his song plays loudly over the serious music that plays when Devola and Popola are holding off the machines for 9S in Route C/D/E.
• How you get Emil to stay still, since he's a traveling merchant. You have to attack him, which flips him a few feet away... before tipping back into an upright position.
• 9S desperately trying to get out of having to explain how children are made to the child machine he and 2B are escorting in The Lost Child side quest. When pointing out that machines and androids can't have children doesn't work, and 2B declines to help, he ends up loudly and obviously changing the subject.
  9S: 2B, a little help here?
  2B: Huh? You're the chatty one. Work it out.
• This one is funny in ways that might not be wholly intentional, but one of the lines Eve can scream during his boss fight is "WHY...WHY DID YOU KILL MY BROTHER?" It's not hard to imagine 9S replying "Uh, maybe because he fucking crucified me?"
• It edges into Black Comedy but if you choose to kill Pascal in Route C/D/E, you receive his core afterward which can be sold for a lot of money. Well, if you're ever strapped for cash in the game...
  • An even better example of this if you choose to delete his memory instead: he'll spend the rest of his days happily trying to futilely clean up the remains of his village and will sell you the cores of the very machine lifeforms that he failed to save, as well as a set of bracers made from machine lifeform heads without a second thought.
• It's both adorable and hilarious to see 9S growing exasperated at the beginning of Route C when it becomes increasingly obvious that Operator 21O is basically trying to be his mom (and her increasingly poor attempts at hiding this fact)
  9S: Why are you treating me like I'm a child?
• At the beginning of Route C, Operator 21O tells 9S to stay away from the battlefield because "Scanner models are not designed for combat." It's a rather sweet moment, until...
  9S: (smugly) Awww, are you worried about me?
  21O: No, I'm simply pointing out that you would be a liability in combat.
  9S: Wow, that's....harsh.
• The "Machine Research Report" document you get towards the end of Route C/D. Jackass remains collected, composed even, and professional during the bulk of the report, but she loses it during the summary:
  Jackass: So then! To sum up: For hundreds of years, we've been fighting a network of machines with the ghost of humanity at its core. We've been living in a stupid fucking world where we fight an endless war that we COULDN'T POSSIBLY LOSE, all for the sake of some Council of Humanity on the moon that doesn't even exist. I don't know what the point is to all this, but I swear I will kill every evolutionary dead-end machine lifeform, as well as every single asshole behind Project YoRHa. I'm coming for all your heads. Fuck you.
• Early on in the game, after visiting Pascal's Village for the first time, 2B and 9S receive a transmission from Operator 6O as part of 2B's regularly scheduled status report. Except this time, the Operator is bawling her eyes out because a girl that she likes rejected her. 2B attempts to comfort 6O in her own awkward way before eventually just giving up and saying that she's not the right person to ask for comfort in an exasperated manner. And yet... this is still enough comfort to make 6O shift her affections over to 2B later on, which results in even more hilarity.
• Heritage of the Past side quest is your usual item search errand with nothing notable to write about except as soon as you grab the last treasure, a couple of over-leveled machines popped out of the sand to 'rob' you, complete with old human bandit garb ala a western flick. Your pod even lampshades it.
  • 9S's concept of tact:
  According to client, the relics belong to a country that used to exist in the desert. Keep looking for more old crap buried in the sand!
• Whenever you find a Lunar Tear during the quest "Emil's Memories", Emil will tell you to stay right where the flower is until he arrives. 9S always tells Emil that he doesn't have all day...before being surprised by how fast Emil arrives to where 2B and 9S are. 9S lampshades this the third time around by saying "Damn, you're fast!" By the time you get to the last one, 9S doesn't even have a chance to call him before he's right there.
• Emil's story of how he fought against the aliens years ago is meant to be dramatic, but if you look closely at the image that's displayed when he tells his story, you'll notice that the aliens all look like penises, including one with veins and one with a foreskin!
• While the deeper meaning as to why this is out of character isn't funny, 2B's Clingy Jealous Girl antics towards 9S during the "Amnesia" quest in Route B is hilarious. 9S's confusion is just the icing on the cake.
• The "Recluse" line of quests in Pascal's Village. All of it. The taker, though, is during the last quest of the line, "The Permanent Recluse" where the child machine says that he finally has a goal thanks to 9S: to be the best shut-in that ever existed. Then the next exchange seals the deal:
  Machine Mother: Did you hear that!? My son has a goal now thanks to you!
  9S: (weirded out) D-don't mention it... Why do I have a feeling that we're back to square one?
  • Then when the C route gets going, the above turns into total Black Comedy when the shut-in ends up surviving the logic virus attack on the village unaffected and remains oblivious to all the carnage that was going on outside.
• The ending of Speed Star sidequest is either a tearjerker or a funny joke (or controller-throwing rage inducer) depending on who you ask. The flag-waver for the quest, though:
  Machine lifeform: What the heck is up with that guy anyway?
  (Self-destruct.)
• Many fans have noticed that the final machine bosses of the game (Ro-Shi and Ko-Shi) look like a pair of boobs (with their 'eyes' as the nipples) when they've fused together, due to their spherical shapes.
• The Twin's Request sidequest-line sees you retrieving Desert Roses for Devola, who proceeds to make booze with them and get herself utterly smashed.
  Popola: You're welcome to try some if you'd like.
  Devola: Huh? Whuzza? NO! Keep yer goddamn handsh off my BOOZE!
• The "Compressed Conversation Mode" between Pod 153 and Pod 042; it's a long and rapid string of Wingdings gibberish.
• What a Tall Machines in Pascal's Village has to say in regards to the sudden appearance of Goliaths in City Ruins and the earthquake that came with it:
  Tall Machine: "That earthquake really caught me off guard! I actually dropped one of my torsos."
  • One of the kids there said it was scary, but also kind of exciting.
• Eventually one of the aforementioned Tall Machines loses one of their torsos, with no idea where it went. Conveniently, the Tall Machine right next to them just so happened to find a spare torso lying around.
• Apparently modesty is a thing among the machines.
  Pascal: (during The Wandering Couple sidequest) This android is female. You are male... Perhaps you might close your eyes until I'm done?
• Description text for Simple Gadget item.
  A gadget so simple you don't know what it is for.
• Pod 042 stating that he feels silly because he didn't die during his suicide mission in Ending E.
  Pod 153: Being alive is pretty much a constant stream of embarrassment.
• The DLC was revealed for a May 2nd release on April 17th. The funny part? You can fight Square Enix's CEO. Again. And when you get his health down to half, Kenichi Sato, CEO of PlatinumGames, joins in the fun!
  • The DLC is named 3C3C1D119440927. Yes, you read that right. While it may look like gibberish at first glance, it's a Meaningful Name: it refers to the fact that there are 3 Costumes, 3 Coliseums, 1 Dream, and the date 11944/09/27 (which appears twice in the "amazarashi - Deserving of Life" music video.
  • During the DLC the game will spawn a Shop NPC as one of the combatants in a fight.
• One of the sidequests has you funding a scientist. After the final lump sum of $100,000, he failed his attempt to go to the moon. Instead, he went to Mars. You'll probably either laugh your butt off, or say What the Hell, Hero?, since he considers going to Mars a failure, even though we've been trying to get there on much more than $100,000.
  • Pretty funny, considering what's happening on the Moon.
• The end of the Lord Of the Valley side quest has 2B and 9S briefly discussing the afterlife. While not funny in of itself 9S calling 2B out for being morbid definitely is.
  9S: Souls and Heaven, huh? Do either of those things exist?
  2B: They'll find out in the end. (Beat) And so will we.
  9S: Okay, that's grim.
• It's a bit of Black Comedy, and possibly Crosses the Line Twice, but in the DLC we find out about Plato 1728, a Machine Lifeform who was routinely mocked for being a weakling of a combat unit who hated fighting. Eventually, he discovered some dolls that gave him joy, only for one of them to be damaged in a fight between androids and Machine Lifeforms, whereupon he went berserk and killed everyone present, friend or foe with his hidden power. The conclusion the Machine Network came to? Not "don't bully the superpowerful ones who want to be left alone". It was "destroy all dolls".
• Apparently, it's not uncommon for Emil, after A2 spares Pascal, to swing on by.
  • From the comments:
  2B: "Nice going, Emil."
  Emil: "But I was..."
  2B No. shut up, Emil,; Pascal and I were having a moment and you made it weird."
  Emil: "But..."
  2B: "YOU. MADE. IT. WEIRD. EMIL."
• The first time you visit the Machine Village everyone there is waving white flags to signal their peaceful intent. Speaking to the machines, most of them will say lines like "The white flag means we surrender" and "Please be calm. We are not your enemy." Except one who says "Waving the flag is fun!"