VII | X | XIV
All spoilers will be unmarked ahead. You Have Been Warned!
- Lalafell are meant to be some intentional levity in the world design, like their predecessors in the Tarutaru. The problem is the game crafts unique animations for the Lalafell interacting with taller characters or vice versa, since the Lalafell are only about half the size of the average Hyur at their tallest. The result is many scenes involving Lalafell characters are hard to take seriously, either because of their smaller size or because some of these animations come off as unintentionally funny.
- The Ul'dahn Lalafell are corrupt politicians that try to screw over the player. The result is story scenes involving Lalafell characters falling apart at the seams the moment it expects you to take one of them as a Card-Carrying Villain or a Smug Snake at face value. Admittedly, some of the Lalafell characters do end up committing utterly horrible crimes and show some supremely sleazy behavior. But they do it while looking like a child with a fake mustache, which makes it hard to take them seriously.
- Almost none of the cutscenes are rigged with a Lalafellian Warrior of Light in mind, making the few that stand out really become that much more unintentionally funny. But it gets better when the camera dramatically pans over to a character that comes up to everyone's thighs all the time as the savior of Eorzea, or if you happen to have a cutscene that has other players in the background like the Praetorium. Play a normal-sized race while you're in a Lalafell party, and observe as the camera literally flies right over their heads.
- You can max out the height for a Lalafell when making one, but the game generally uses the default height for all NPC Lalas and most players do the same. The result is still being super short for some of the more dramatic cutscenes — but when you're next to other Lalafell, suddenly your Warrior of Light looks like an abnormally larger giant in comparison.
- A lot of lalafell have a little animation where they throw a little tantrum. The problem is, this plays on almost everyone - and it makes it very hard to take seriously when someone is simply flustered but is throwing a tantrum.
- The Post-Final Boss of Endwalker is already rather silly, since it involves a Combat Breakdown of the Warrior of Light and Zenos slugging it out. But the animations were clearly not adjusted for the difference in size between Zenos and a Lalafell. Multiple blows from the Warrior appear to either miss entirely or have some sort of shockwave effect, whilst at least one punch from Zenos that would have slugged any other race in the stomach instead smashes the Lalafellian Warrior in the nose.
- The moment in Stormblood where Asahi reveals his true colors to the Warrior of Light and gets close to their face while revealing his hatred of them looks fine with most races. But if you play a Lalafell, Asahi has to awkwardly hunch over to get close to your face,
◊ and it just looks goofy with your allies all looking in opposite directions.
- Au Ra men have a particularly goofy run cycle that many people have compared to Crash Bandicoot.
- There are many times in the game where a character will directly ask the player character something, but because the player character is basically a silent protagonist save for dialogue choices, this can result in just outright hilarious moments. A notable example is in the Praetorium dungeon, where before your fight with Gaius, he gives a lengthy monologue and rant, asking the Warrior of Light questions regarding their motive. Due to a patch removing the dialogue options, the player character just stares back at him in response and the game acts as if they responded to him somehow. The game gets much better at averting this issue as it went on, but moments like that still happen and are outright hilarious.
- The dramatic revelation that Thancred has been possessed by an Ascian is quite a twist — up until the heroes fly away as Minfilia delivers with a Dull Surprise not quite at a shouting volume, "Thancred, nooooo!" The voice acting can veer into Chewing the Scenery for the original A Realm Reborn content, but this moment in particular became a minor meme in its own right.
- Just before fighting the Final Boss of the Praetorium, your Warrior of Light talks on their linkpearl with Cid about the upcoming fight. During this conversation, another player will be standing behind your Warrior, and will eventually make an awkward look towards the left side of the screen, where there is nothing in particular to look at. It turns what should be a pivotal cutscene into an unintentionally funny one because of how out-of-place it is, especially considering it is completely random who appears.
- Earlier in the same dungeon, the first boss fight of a colossus enemy originally marched in from behind closed doors after Gaius proclaims the Warrior of Light and Cid can no longer be allowed to live as threats after they turned down his offer. Suitably dramatic. Cue the 6.1 patch, where instead he calmly walks over to the room's elevator as everyone stares at him, has it go down, and then everyone stands there for the next several seconds quietly as the elevator brings the boss back up. A tense scene is utterly deflated by no one doing anything instead of being ambushed by surprise.
- The Realm Reborn Main Scenario Quest "All Good Things" features the player character returning to the Scions' home base to find it sacked by the Empire and nearly everyone dead. We see a flashback of what happened, including Imperial soldiers killing the survivors. It's a serious, horrific moment punctuated in the middle by a comical "g-huh!" sound as someone is stabbed to death.
- The journal and item descriptions' tendency to snark at everything never once drops, even for serious scenes such as this, leading to the Mood Whiplash of one of the corpses having a description talking about its now-calm expression, while the other seven all wonder how you fit the corpses into your bag. Not to mention the very fact that you're personally hauling corpses to a very nonchalant cart driver creates some comedy that contrasts with the drama of the preceding scenes.
- The end of the Tam-Tara Hard questline, "Corpse Groom". So you've destroyed the Avere monstrosity, cleansed the Deepcroft again, and seen Edda fall to her doom. Paiyo is pretty much ready to hang up his adventuring spurs for good after all that... then he glances over to a lighting fixture, and Edda is standing there. The animation for this is insanely creepy in the best way, and ends with "Edda" giving Paiyo an amazing Slasher Smile, which makes it legitimate Nightmare Fuel. Then the narm sets in with Paiyo's face. The devs clearly wanted to convey that he's horrified at seeing a ghost, which is an understandable reaction. But between Paiyo being a lalafell to start with and Square hitting the limits of what the XIV real-time facial animation tech is capable of, Paiyo's expression is more "ridiculous" than terrified. His mouth just kind of hangs open, and his eyes stay more-or-less the same, which just makes his face look unintentionally silly instead of terrified.
- This can actually be invoked by simply playing an Au Ra. Yugiri was originally the first Au Ra that players met (as the race was not added until Heavensward) so she concealed herself since many people in this part of the world have never seen an Au Ra. However, this will still happen despite the hundreds of Au Ra running around and even if the warrior of light is an Au Ra themselves with a lore-appropriate name. This becomes quite hilarious and makes one wonder if Yugiri Failed a Spot Check.
- During the A Realm Reborn patch cycle, Raubahn gets fed up with the constant political infighting in Ul'dah and loudly announces to the spies he knows are listening that he will root out their masters and promises there will be a reckoning. Stirring music tries to hide it, but the scene is still a man angrily screaming at an empty room, complete with a wordless roar of fury, again, while completely alone. Instead of coming off as heroic and determined, Raubahn seems almost comically deranged.
- The developers run into this problem again with the Realm Reborn climax. Teledji, Raubahn and Ilberd all run into some serious expression issues that end up being more goofy than anything and pull you straight out of the action. Teledji is especially bad about this, but all three have some problems. The overdone lighting also doesn't help.
- For some reason, the Heavensward and King Thordan are given a voice filter that gives a Voice of the Legion effect. Instead of being intimidating, it makes them sound comical, especially when they say certain lines because the filter practically drowns them out.
- During the epilogue of Heavensward, Ishgard is lit on fire due to riots. And yet you see none of this, while the characters act as if some horrific disaster has befallen the city. In fact life seems to go on as normal for Ishgard.
- The conservative forces of the True Brothers of Faith are supposed to be characters the heroes are trying to reason with, despite setting riots and assassination attempts on Aymeric. Then their leader in 3.1 attempts to murder a child hostage while sporting the most obscene Slasher Smile the game's limited graphics for the time could offer, so an extremist faction borne of the Warrior and Aymeric being forced to push changes in Ishgard too fast instantly flips over into an Ax-Crazy strawman group that are unconditionally and comically pathetically spiteful, deflating the entire tension to cartoon villains getting their due punishment.
- Alisaie's redesign in Heavensward makes her look like she's walking around on a pair of ice skates. There's also a part in Stormblood where she is stabbing some enemies to buy you time... unfortunately due to her height, she's stabbing them in the crotch.
- Any class-specific animation, when performed on a class without an explicitly defined version, will default to the Gladiator/Paladin version. Frankly, the weapon-drawn animations for Disciples of the Hand/Land look silly enough before you realize this.
- Carpenter saws are big enough that they are actually placed on the character's back like a weapon... and when you combine this with the utterly ridiculous design of some saws◊, it looks hilarious. Especially since as demonstrated, putting the weapon on your back clips through things such as tails.
- The very idea of your character literally whipping out a spinning wheel is just too hilarious.
- Carpenter saws are big enough that they are actually placed on the character's back like a weapon... and when you combine this with the utterly ridiculous design of some saws
- The end of Stormblood's main story has the death of Zenos and the freedom of Ala Mhigo, symbolized by every Ala Mhigan singing "The Measure of his Reach", their nation's anthem prior to Garlean takeover. The problem is that the music starts out of nowhere, and their way of showing the singers completely stonefaced and stoic undermines the moment, as the only characters averting Limited Animation are Arenvald and Lyse. Meanwhile every other nation and the Scions just stand there, several of them like Aymeric or Alphinaud being off-center like they really don't care at that moment.
- After banishing the Light from Il Mheg in the First, Emet-Selch appears at the Crystarium and will extol the incredible spectacle of the restored sky. Except, this doesn't take place in a prerendered cutscene, nor does the game adjust the skies for the sake of the cutscene (like with the two previous times Night was restored), so it shows the cities current weather condition at the time. Meaning there's a decent chance Emet-Selch will be praising the beauty of the sky while it's gray and muggy out, raining, or experiencing some other form of inclement weathe, which makes the scene unintentionally funny during a fairly tense introduction.
- The characters also never acknowledge weather at all - which can lead to some amusing implications like the characters are standing in the streets of a city while it's pouring buckets.
- Emet-Selch shooting the Crystal Exarch to prevent his Heroic Sacrifice and capture him becomes this when you realize that one of the most powerful mages to ever exist, being a fully-intact Ancient who brought an Aether-ized Y'shtola back to life with a snap of his fingers, decided to just shoot the Exarch with a random gun for dramatic effect instead of bother with a single spell.
- During the Seat of Sacrifice Trial from Shadowbringers, there is a moment where the Amaurot version of Emet-Selch appears to save the party by summoning them back to the fight. Its a great moment, but the scene becomes unintentionally hilarious when players realized the characters don't actually get placed in the circles that summon them, meaning they all are either only partially in it, or awkwardly to the side of it. It makes the scene funny because it comes across as Emet-Selch going "Eh, good enough", especially compared to the cutscene leading into the fight where the other party members do appear in the circles. To a degree it also is a bit of Narm Charm for that reason because it almost fits his character.
- At the end of the Weapons storyline, Valens is grabbed by the Diamond Weapon (who is actually Alfonse due to Valens having lobotomized him and stuffing his consciousness into the mech's core) and squeezes him until his head pops off screen. What should have been a very dark moment becomes a completely silly one due to the sound effect of the pop being a stock cartoon balloon popping sound effect, followed by the "spilling" of the man's guts whose sound effect sound like someone is pouring a glass of water.
- This is not helped at all when the player was likely already predisposed to Narm by the preceding scene, wherein Gaius surprises Valens with a brand new skill the latter has never seen before. Cue the panicked imperial pulling up his tablet and sifting through his Gaius data with a comical look on his face as if he were looking up boss strategies on the internet. The fact that there are multiple websites and very famous YouTube community channels/influencers that specialize in FFXIV boss guides makes it funnier.
- Near the end of the trailer cinematic for Endwalker, Y'shtola is seen walking away from Fourchenault, a high ranking Sharlayan, who made it clear that Sharalayan was going to remain neutral even as the world falls apart. A pretty cool and dramatic moment, except based on the direction she is walking in and a shot of the room she's in that shows that the room is a spiraling table, logically she is going to walk straight into the table◊. Jokes about her blindness abounded when people realized.
- In the scene when Vritra reveals himself to the people of Thavnair, one of the voiced NPCs is a nameless male child. The problem is that said child is clearly voiced by an adult male who is trying his hardest to give the highest-pitched falsetto he can. It sounds incredibly jarring in an otherwise well-acted scene.
- In the final area, just about all of the Warrior of Light's companions perform some kind of a Heroic Sacrifice so that you can keep moving forward. Unfortunately, they happen so rapidly that it stops becoming sad, and just becomes hilarious - especially when the characters start behaving so casually as they move on. Absolutely nobody thought for a moment that they would be Killed Off for Real, yet the narration was trying to make it sound like you really were possibly saying goodbye forever.
- Y'shtola in particular acts so casual as she does it, mentioning the warrior can just use the crystal of Azem to bring them all back. She does it in such a way that it sounds more like someone saying "Just go on ahead - I'll catch up in a bit" rather than the words someone would make before a Heroic Sacrifice. Almost like she was aware that they were making a Comic Book Death.
- And then Urianger joins in, almost like he just wants to get it over with.
- The Mood Whiplash of the warrior using the crystal and summoning Hythlodeus and Emet-Selch against Meteion, and when Emet-Selch decides to just bring everyone else back. After the emotional scenes before, instead it can come off as more humorous than sad or awesome, especially since the other Scions were probably "dead" for only a few minutes.
- Y'shtola in particular acts so casual as she does it, mentioning the warrior can just use the crystal of Azem to bring them all back. She does it in such a way that it sounds more like someone saying "Just go on ahead - I'll catch up in a bit" rather than the words someone would make before a Heroic Sacrifice. Almost like she was aware that they were making a Comic Book Death.
- The final duel with Zenos is truly epic if you are a martial class - especially a Paladin, Dragoon, Monk, Warrior, or Reaper. Play a class like a Scholar, Black mage, Dancer, Astrologian, or just any class that doesn't want to at all get into melee range? It becomes quite funny to watch your character suddenly start slugging Zenos even though they've got no physical moves at all.
- The game attempts to hand-wave the existence of other players by implying they are adventurers. While it makes sense for most of the world (ie, cities), sometimes seeing other players running around just becomes unintentionally funny when you think about it for one minute - such as for example distant areas in Heavensward or remote parts of Ala Mhigo in Stormblood. It gets even more funny in Shadowbringers in that the world seemed utterly thriving with the amount of people running around. Endwalker on the other hand takes the cake - running into people on the moon or literally in the furthest known reaches of outer space when the story presents you and the Scions as the only one(s) there can come off as hilarious.
- Many players invoke this thanks to the use of goofy glamours and silly names - It can become quite humorous to see a character with a lore-appropriate name and a Roleplayer in the same group as someone named "Po'Tato Chip" or "Jed I Knight"... and a slutty glamour in the middle of an icy dungeon.
