Funny / The Stanley Parable

Suddenly, the reader was warned that a large portion of The Stanley Parable is the jokes. Likewise, they were warned further of the unmarked spoilers that lay just below.

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• Stanley taking the right door with the Narrator dismissing it as him wanting to visit the employee lounge before he goes to the meeting room. When you get there, the narrator describes how amazing this minimalistic room is while simultaneously growing annoyed at Stanley's lingering.
  • On subsequent resets, Stanley visiting the employee lounge over and over causes the Narrator's commentary concerning the room to become lazier and more sarcastic until he simply says "It was okay."
• At one point when Stanley is going through the Half-Life 2 map, the Narrator gets so angry, so he starts making fun of Stanley, giving us one of the best lines on the mod:
  Narrator: Stanley was fat and ugly, and really really stupid. He probably only got his job through some sort of family connection, that's how stupid he is. That, or with drug money. Also, Stanley is addicted to drugs and hookers.
  • In the HD Remake, this line is moved to the broom closet (see below).
  • It's worth noting that Kevan Brighting, the voice actor for the Narrator, revealed that's his favorite line from the game. Even more is that the Narrator even cites the line as a literal classic in the Bucket Destroyer Ending.
• After losing the "Save The Baby From The Fire" game.
  Narrator: You heartless bastard. Did you do it because you hate babies or purely to spite me?
  Narrator: Thank you for playing. Your input was extremely valuable. Oh, hey, since my game was so awful, why don't we play someone else's game, just to ease the pain?
• In the grip of panic, Stanley wonders, "Why couldn't he see his feet when he looked down? Why did doors close automatically behind him wherever he went? And for that matter, these rooms were starting to look pretty familiar. Were they simply repeating?"
• If you stay in the boss' office for too long, the Narrator gets increasingly impatient and irritated, repeating the code insistently to make you get a move on.
  "One. Nine. Five. Seven.
  Two. Eight. Four. Five."
  • Inversely, if you do the code before he says it, he'll get agitated and then suggests you calm down for a few moments and listen to new age music. On your next run through, he starts opening the secret door as soon as you enter the office, and then on the runs after that he starts opening it as you approach the office.
    Narrator: Here's the door, just go.
• The first trailer for the HD Remix is pure Nightmare Fuel. The second is (largely) not.
  • The "A sneak peek" trailer manages to find a very effective balance between the two, while also parodying Let's Players everywhere.
• In the demo for the remake, you'll eventually come across a room that has nothing in it but a button with a number 8 on it, that causes a voice to say "eight" every time you press it. If you keep pressing the button after the narrator tells you to leave, he'll grow increasingly bewildered about how enthralled you are with the "game".
  • Amusingly, this room makes a return as an Easter Egg in Ultra Deluxe when the sequel number on the title screen is 8.
  • There are also unique demos given to Revision3 games and Steam Train, with additional narrator comments towards Adam Sessler and Danny and Ross respectively.
    [when Adam tried to access the Final Choice the first time] No no no no no, Adam! What are you doing? You can't make that decision yet! We haven't played the demo! Is this what they call 'journalistic integrity'?
    [when the Steam Train conductors "crash" the demo] Did the two of you do this? Goddammit Ross!
• In the HD Remake, you can get into the broom closet, which annoys the narrator the longer you remain in there, until he concludes that you have died from some sort of malady and picks off where he leaves off "with a second player" when you leave it.
  Narrator: (raising his voice) Hello, anyone who happens to be nearby: the person at this computer is dead. He or she has^note in the HD version/They have^note in Ultra Deluxe fallen prey to any number of your countless human physiological vulnerabilities. It's indicative of the long-term sustainability of your species. Please remove their corpse from the area and instruct another human to take their place at the computer.
  • Going back in has him just give up on everybody.
  • If you restart the game and enter the broom closet again, the Narrator gets very upset and doesn't even try. On the third time you pass the closet, the broom closet is boarded up.
• The Confusion ending from start to finish. The game goes increasingly off track and the narrator becomes more bewildered as you progress.
  • The Stanley Parable Adventure Line™ from said Confusion ending. If the subtitles are turned on, every reference to The Line™ has a trademark symbol following It™. The Line™ starts off seemingly normal, going across floors with Stanley following It™ while the Narrator starts playing adventure-like music in the background. But then It™ starts going crazy, going across walls and taking small detours, even through a corridor in between a set of pillars bigger than the room It's™ in at one point. Eventually, It™ betrays the Narrator by leading back into the Monitor Room, in which the Narrator stated that Stanley was not supposed to be there yet and considered it a spoiler.
    • And then after the next restart, when the Narrator takes Stanley into unexplored territory, The Line™ manages to burst through the ceiling and down through the corridor, but leaves in the same way after a while.
    • Made even funnier since the narrator tries to ignore It™ and tells The Line™ It™ had Its™ chance.
    • Interestingly, in Ultra Deluxe It's™ more willing to work with the Narrator by luring Stanley to the Bucket Destroyer in the aptly-named ending.
  • Another funny note about the extra-dimensional corridor mentioned above? It connects to a seemingly infinite storage locker set aside for nothing but peer reviews of Employee 432! (Thank goodness that isn't you!)
• The Narrator's song, unlocked if you hop onto a co-worker's desk and out the window as soon as you leave the office.
• The game's soundtrack on Bandcamp has a transcript of the lyrics of the song "Following Stanley" (the adventure music in the Confusion ending).
  Damdadaadam daadamdaa, damdadaadam daadam daadam / Damdadaadam daadamdaa, damdadaadam daadam daadam / Damdadaadam daadamdaa,/ damdadaadam daadam daadam / Damdadaadam daadamdaa, damdadaadam daadam daadam / Babababum bum bum doo doo doo doo / Babababum bum bum doo doo doo doo / Babababum bum bum doo doo doo doo / Babababum bum bum doo doo doo doo
• The "Click the door 5 times" achievement. The Narrator decides that's not worth an achievement, and sends you running around the office to click various other doors, copy machines and jump on Employee 419's desk, getting increasingly excited as it goes on.
• The "reviews" in the "Raphael" trailer.
  "I've played thousands of hours, and had my heart touched 176 times so far. It really hurts. How do you turn that off?" -John Gamerson
  "This place has shoes! I love shoes! Oh. My. God. Shopping! Shopping! Shopping! Shopping! Shopping!" -A Woman
• It may be Black Comedy but the way the Narrator completely loses his cool in the "Real Person" ending and proceed to deliver a temper tantrum to the player made a lot of people laugh. Maybe it's because he delivers it like a whiny child that has their own work ruined.
• The advertisement for the Collector's Edition.
• The Narrator's reason for releasing the Ultra Deluxe edition.
  The Narrator: Come, come. Daddy needs a third swimming pool.
  • And The Stinger of the trailer, after alluding to the fact the original game lost most of the awards it was nominated for to The Last of Us:
    The Narrator: What do you mean, The Last of Us II is also coming out next year?!
• On the official website, you can sign up for updates on the upcoming Ultra Deluxe version of the game, where the confirm button simply says "sign up". But, if you click the bubble saying "Inform me about other projects from this company as well"...
  Sign me up for that good shit
  • Furthermore, if your email address contains an 8, the voice says "eight" just as you type it.
• The player scoring just above you on the (fake) leaderboard, picture and all: "A dead rat."
• In Ultra Deluxe, the idea of getting out of the Rocket League area while the Narrator's scolding you, so you can laugh at his surprise in you leaving before he can leave himself.
• How do you access the majority of Ultra Deluxe's new content? After finishing enough endings, you'll find that the door to room 416 has been replaced with a slightly-ajar door literally labelled "NEW CONTENT".
  The Narrator: Ohh! New content? What does that mean - new content?
  • Said new content? A 'jump circle' and a hastily written "thanks for enjoying the new content" sign.
  • And then, after going through that door and finishing the Skip Button ending, you continue along this path by returning to the door, now with a big neon sign of an arrow labeled "NEW NEW CONTENT" pointing at the door.
    The Narrator: Oh good, you noticed my sign.
• The Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket in Ultra Deluxe. For some reason, taking it with you will alter every ending you can come across, and it can turn even some of the most terrifying endings into hilarity. To wit:
  • The Insane ending transforms from Stanley going over the Despair Event Horizon in a rather intense scene to him simply going mad because he accidentally grabbed the wrong bucket, which is played just as seriously to great effect. A special mention goes to the Narrator's new description of Mariella (who, it should be noted, is now also carrying a bucket).
    The Narrator: "'Heck yes,' she thought to herself, 'my life kicks ass!' And she backflipped all the way to work."
  • The Countdown Ending can be triggered the same way, which prompts Stanley to angrily throw the bucket away due to apparent betrayal... only to find out the facility was for viewing videos of silly birds. What a twist to a normally intense ending.
  • The Confusion Ending is replaced entirely with the Narrator holding an intervention for Stanley, trying to convince him to get rid of the bucket via the aptly named Bucket Destroyer, which he insists is a character in its own right. Of course, there's no way to let go of the bucket, and thus the machine explodes, leaving the Narrator to lament the loss of the Bucket Destroyer.
    • Said intervention has an intervention group consisting of the Narrator, The Adventure Line™, the broom closet, employee 432's electric pencil sharpener, Stanley's computer, Stanley's "wife", the fern from the Confusion Ending, and the baby from the baby game.
  • The Real Person ending instead has the Narrator ask if you seriously thought the bucket was talking to you, before lamenting on how he may have not led up to the punchline with good enough comedic timing. Instead of the Narrator begging for Stanley to make a choice as the credits role, here he is doing research on comedic timing, saying how he needs to look up more instructional videos to become the King of Comedy.
    • The instructional video the Narrator watches advises that you start by telling the audience exactly how the joke will play out before you tell it, and end with "I'm doney with the funny."
  • The Zending, Art Ending and Games Ending are all inaccessible with the bucket, as no buckets are allowed past that zone, which leads the Narrator to give Stanley a quiz about buckets. This eventually leads to him planning to delete all buckets from the game, but this backfires when everything is deleted except for Stanley and the Narrator, which prompts a hasty restart to put everything back to normal. Arguably Gone Horribly Right, as if you take the Stanley Parable Reassurance Bucket on a second visit to the original Ultra Deluxe Content, the Narrator says that "the Stanley Parable is a bucket" while bragging that his additional content is indeed worthy of the game's legacy. He should have chosen a better way to word that.
    • Speaking of the quiz, it's absolutely hysterical in its own right. The first three items are all identical-looking buckets... except that marking the first two as buckets will get an incorrect result, as the first is apparently a hologram of a bucket and the second is a 3D printed recreation of a bucket (which apparently doesn't qualify as a bucket). The fourth item is a running tractor, and guessing that it's a bucket will lead to the Narrator being absolutely flabbergasted at the fact that Stanley apparently thinks a tractor is a bucket. This immediately leads into the fifth item, which is an identical tractor... that the Narrator claims is a bucket, with no reasoning or explanation given. The one after that is another bucket, which is a trick question (the Narrator will declare that the correct answer is "both"); and there is absolutely nothing there for the final question. Depending on your response, the Narrator is left questioning whether nothing or everything is a bucket.
  • The Escape Pod ending results in Stanley tenderly putting the bucket into the escape pod, gently shushing it and wiping away a tear from its (non-existent) eyes, before giving it a heartfelt farewell and sending it off. The bucket is missing from the pedestal in the following playthrough.
    • Amusingly, a couple of resets after the aforementioned ending, the Narrator gives Stanley a replacement bucket, and asks him not to end up losing this one as well, calling him a "dolt" as he says this.
  • Some players, like this one, actually discovered that there's dialogue for players who decide to ignore the bucket after unlocking it. Do it enough times and the Narrator will shut the outer door in the hallway next to Room 417 and sternly tell Stanley to pick up the bucket.
• During the updated Game Ending in the Ultra Deluxe version of the game, when Stanley attempts to explore after ending up in Firewatch, the Narrator realizes with horror that they're in an open-world game, and hurriedly spawns walls to stop him, reacting with quite visceral upset and disgust at the mere idea.
  • Bonus irony: Firewatch is extremely narrative-driven and merely disguised as a big open game, but the Narrator never stuck around long enough to figure that out. Whoops.
• When looking at the awards the game got, you'll find one trophy that's actually for The Last of Us, but with a Stanley Parable label hastily slapped over it.
• The developer offices for the sequel route has a list of sequels justifying the "sequels are good" statement. Most of them are in fact good examples, but the last two are hilariously very much not - Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, while of debatable quality, is infamous for kickstarting the trend of mediocre-to-terrible direct-to-video Disney sequels, and Dark Souls II is one of the most notable examples of a Contested Sequel in gaming history. Also, the titles without a 2 in the name are retitled to have a 2 in them, including the aforementioned Aladdin sequel and Batman: Arkham City, which is instead called "Batman Arkham Asylum 2 (City)".
• In console versions of Ultra Deluxe, the Narrator will identify Steam reviews as being from "Pressurised Gas", in the exact same seriousness as in the Steam version.
  • Then there's his reaction to said Steam reviews: complete indignant fury.
    Narrator: [Reading the review] "Honestly, could not be bothered to play this game to full completion. The narrator is obnoxious and unfunny with his humor and dialogue proving to be more irritating than entertaining." UNFUNNY?!
• When falling through the Infinite Hole, the Narrator will get quite insistent you use the convenient Teleport Button to get back out. It's not actually infinite, and keeps getting shorter the more you jump into it.
  • The Narrator gets more and more frustrated with your obsession with the hole if you keep jumping in, and will eventually leave you there. Even though, by this point, it's so shallow you could climb out if not for the lack of a game mechanic to actually do that. At least, until the bottom of the hole starts going down again...
• One of the promotional posters you can find in the developer office for The Stanley Parable 2 takes it to a logical conclusion: two Stanleys, sitting at the same desk, with their own computers.
• The Figurines ending in Ultra Deluxe sees the Narrator become increasingly invested in the player's accomplishment in collecting all six Stanley figurines...after telling the player there was no reward. The Narrator takes the player back to the Memory Zone to go through the collection of the figures. The fourth figure you collected is depicted in a pink gallery with a golden apple that does not represent any of the locations they were hidden in (with the Narrator admitting he's not sure he remembers the room but it's in the Memory Zone so it must be correct), and the fifth you collected is commemorated with a video montage...made in low-res 2006-era Windows Movie Maker with all its requisite editing cliches. The Narrator is very proud of the eight minutes he spent on it. Then, he puts the player backward through the Memory Zone to look through the memories all again. The whole time, the figures in the Memory Zone been adding up to your total, well exceeding the limit of six.
  • Even during the Epilogue, there are more collectibles that you can get, and it keeps adding to the total collectibles that were obtained from the Figurines ending.
  • The fact that all of Stanley's co-workers have become obsessed with finding and retrieving them, to the point where the meeting room has become the main meeting area for the figurine finders, complete with writing on the walls.
• After completing the Epilogue, you will unlock the option to make your own "sequels". The only differences from the original game is the customizable title screen, which advances the sequel number by one and ask you to create a new subtitles. Not only are the subtitles that you can possibly create beyond ridiculous, such as "Beyond Ice Cream", "Destruction of Hole", or "Temple of Gun", but the title screens themselves, chosen based on the sequel number, are ridiculous as well. Examples include a fat and ugly Stanley drawing with the Real Person ending room behind, a giant Stanley astronaut robot floating in the middle of the mind control facility, or Stanley dancing in flames with the employee lounge behind him, not to mention the silly music that plays during these title screens.
  • If you always keep the time at 12:00am when asked to set the clock, the unseen entity begins to wonder whether you're too lazy to change it, or are simply messing with it to see what happens.
• The Narrator will a couple of humorous lines if you choose to simply stay in the one spot for a while.
  "Stanley just stood there doing nothing at all. He seems to think I have nothing better to do with my time than to sit around and describe every fascinating little detail of his inability to do anything. This is why Stanley and I are on such good terms."
  "Stanley stood for a long time in one spot. It's part of a game. He likes to see how long he can go without dying. So far, he's doing excellent, and if he just stays right where he is, I'm sure he'll keep up that good momentum. Let's observe the genius at work."
• The Anniversary Update to the game, while adding a creepier variant of the Heaven ending for the bucket and a way to replay some Progression endings again, also has an amusing variant of the Coward ending if the door remains open, you go get the bucket and THEN shut yourself inside the office. Self-Deprecation at its finest concerning the additional Sequel content, especially for those who aren't fans of the Bucket variations on the endings.
  "The pressure of going out and finding another bucket variant on one of The Stanley Parable's classic endings was simply too much for him. "It's nothing but swapped out dialogue describing a bucket!" he screamed to himself. "It's not nearly enough to be considered a sequel!""

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