Video Games - Television Tropes & Idioms

...YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT.

"Rhinos...RHINOS! Our enemies hide in METAL BOXES! The cowards, THE FOOLS! We....we should take away their....metal boxes!"

— Lord Firaveous Carron, Dawn Of War: Soulstorm

"The six-foot bird-steeds known as chocobos are a nice addition to the cuter incarnations of Final Fantasy. However, tradition demands that they be included in every installment, even the angst-suffused grimfests. So you get characters saying things like "Who are all of us really? Can you ever know your own soul?" and in the background someone's riding a giant chicken."

—Lore Sjoberg, The Book Of Ratings

Whether it's because of their perceived kiddyness, So Bad Its Good voice acting, flimsy translation, or just low production values when it came to the script, video games tend to have more badly executed drama than you can shake a joystick at.

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Castlevania

Any time there is dialogue in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Alucard's voice actor is surprisingly good, but the script makes one want to cry. The most infamous examples are Richter's "Die Monster! You don't belong in this world!" and Dracula's "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk, have at you!"
- I Wanna Be The Guy parodies this by making it even more narmful. It repeats the lines verbatim, but The Kid's squeaky high voice makes it even more hilarious.
- Another parody, by Kajmaster Kajet:
  "What is a man? A miserable little pile of ~~secrets!~~ BULL SHIT! THAT'S WHAT IT IS! YA FUCKIN' ASS."
- In the Dracula X Chronicles remake for the PSP, the above quotes were retranslated:
  "Dracula, die now and leave this world! You'll never belong here!"
  "Ha! Mankind. A cesspit of hatred and lies. Fight for them, then, and die for their sins!"
- The "What is a man?" Line is a quotation from the French Philosopher Sartre.
- "What is a man?..." is cheesy enough, old enough, and mocked enough to be a classic, much like "I shall knock you down".
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night also includes the scenes where a defeated Succubus is promised a Fate Worse Than Death by Alucard and lets out a final scream of terror/orgasmic moan that may even trump "What is a man?" for sheer Narmfullness.
In Castlevania 64, a nearly-functional jump shock is spoiled because the vampire in question must have jumped straight out of a solid oak table in the middle of the room to attack the player from the angle he does. To conceal this, in the next shot, the table vanishes.
Who could forget the dramatic line "I'll kill you, AND THE NIGHT!" from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence?
- Adam Sessler commented on that line:
  "He's going to kill an entire time of day."
- Almost ALL the "Lament of Innocence" dialogue is Narmtastic; but much like "Symphony of the Night," it's usually So Bad Its Good. The exception to the Narmfest is Mathias, but he becomes Dracula, and so his Narm-free days are short.
Some of the Mistranslations and Engrish are funny enough on their own to be level-breakers despite having no Story-line importance.
- The infamous Cthulhu/Malachi name switch. Even in subsequent games, Malachi (who is supposed to be Cthulhu) kept the wrong name.
- In Aria, Lubicant should have been Rubicante, and Curly should have been Kali. Lubicant tends to suffer major confusion with the word Lubricant.
- During Symphony of the Night 's ending, Alucard loses about 10,000 points when he says the word "love." It's all the way at the end, so he gets away with it:
Dracula: H...how... how, how is it I've been so defeated?
Alucard: You have been doomed ever since you lost the ability to love.
- "Matthew 16:26, I believe."
Dawn Of Sorrow has a player induced one. One of the bad guys, Dmitri, has the ability to copy any attack used on him and will keep using that attack. The Apprentice Witch bullet soul shoots out a purple cat that will give a high-pitched meow. During the battle, dramatic rock like music plays. Thus, it is possible for the entire battle to consist of two people throwing small purple cats at each other to epic battle music, while the player is jumping and firing...cats.
The PSP tactical RPG Jeanne D Arc features "Die, monster! You don't belong in this world!" verbatim when Jeanne and her cohorts storm Gilvaroth's throne room. It ruined the dramatic entrance with unstoppable laughter.
- Hector's 'oh shit' moment just after the second brawl with Isaac skirts the border of Narm... until he thuds onto his knees and clutches at his head like Cloud Strife experiencing a migraine. Then it leaps gleefully headfirst into Narmsville. That doesn't destroy the moment, though - this is Castlevania we're talking about.
  - Any dialogue between those two is a Foe Yay fueled Large Ham competition anyhow.
  - Isaac usually wins these. Probably because Hector's distracted by those frigging pants.
Order of Ecclesia: The SHOOOAR war/deathcries of Brachyura and Gravedorcus. It sounds specifically like a person trying to sound like a monster and failing hilariously.
- Those SHOOOAR remind him of Bowser...
- Barlowe telling Shanoa, "Now die, and YIELD [DOMINUS] TO ME!" lost some of its drama with the CAPSLOCK shouting, and more when Dominus is bracketed.
- DIE SHANOA!
  - HOW DARE YOU!
  - EVER FORGET!
  - WHO RAISED YOU!
  - YOU!
  - STUPID DISCIPLE!
- Shanoa saying "I am the morning sun, come to vanquish this horrible night!" — a callback to a poorly written line in Castlevania: Simon's Quest, while preparing to storm Dracula's castle.
  - What a horrible night to have a curse.
  - The new owner of the castle's death cry in Portrait of Ruin: "[SCREAMS]"

Close Castlevania

Final Fantasy

In Final Fantasy IV, Tellah's cry of "you spoony bard!" has become beloved by RPG players worldwide. The original Japanese meant something a leetle bit more crude; it was edited out, along with anything else objectionable. When the game was rereleased in America with a retranslated, far more faithful script, "You spoony bard!" was kept in for nostalgia's sake.
- Three times.
- Hell, even Phoenix Wright catches onto this; the Judge says he's not a spoony bard at one point.
  - And Final Fantsy Tactics A 2 as well, using the spoony bit as an insult where one character calls another "A spoony Seeq".
While the scene was believable in the other versions, the scene in Final Fantasy IV DS where Cecil unintentionally destroys Mist was pushed too far. They actually decided to go with a Skyward Scream, with him yelling "WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!" and then "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!". Combined with his armor, it made him seem like Darth Vader.
- This Troper found herself giggling when, right after aformentioned screams of anguish, he begins to cry... and the word "[sobs]" appears on screen.
As was Garland's infamous threat, "I Garland, shall knock you all down!", from the first Final Fantasy. 8-Bit Theater, of course, had a field day with this one.
- It was also in the GBA rerelease. It's not in either of the Playstation versions, though - after the original game, the line's no longer true Narm, and Sony has limited tolerance for deliberate silliness in its RPGs.
  - It was, unfortunately, editted out of the European release of Dawn of Souls but left in the American version.
Overly dramatic delivery (in text form!) hurts a flashback sequence in Final Fantasy V in which the main character's mother dies unexpectedly. Her name is Stella.
- When Exdeath, the game's Big Bad, meets Guido, the turtle sage. In the old Super Famicom version, the depicted sprite fight between them has to be seen to be believed. It's a bit "DBZ action turtle." (The scene is similar in the GBA version, but the turtle aspect is lampshaded.)
  - He even declares that he didn't sit in a sewer eating pizza all these years, which in and of itself is narmy.
- Then there's Neo Exdeath's nonsensical garble: "I am Neo Exdeath! All memories...dimensions...existence... All that is shall be returned to nothing. Then I, too, can disappear...forever!
- In the Anthology translation, when the last crystal shatters and the world begins to fall into ruin, Bartz decides to respond with the distinctly underwhelming statement of "Oh Crap!". It's an especially great source of Narm when you haven't even played the game and you already know it'd throw you out of the moment.
- Gilgamesh is made of meta-narm. He's so over-the-top nobody besides himself takes him seriously.
Certain dramatic scenes in Final Fantasy VI would have been much easier to take seriously had an important character in them not been named Madonna. This was probably meant to draw a Virgin Mary parallel, but if one knows that her Japanese name was the relatively normal "Madeline"... (And if any gamers make parallels with the other Madonna, it's even worse.)
- Also from the original Final Fantasy VI: the unintentionally funny Bum Rush. (Changed for the GBA.)
- Also also, the Opera Scene. Its meant to be a beautiful tearjerker, but the "voice acting" was so bad (saying "oh oh oh oh" in time and tune to the music) that it causes one to laugh out loud. It reminded me more of a dog barking than a person singing.
  - Thankfully, the Anthology version handles this much better, adding a much more dramatic FMV and actual vocals.
  - It doesn't help that we've just seen a fanged, letter-writing octopus lying in wait.
- Kefka revealing his evil plot of reviving the statues to no one in particular (except the player who is conveniently hiding to hear him reveal his plans).
- The Remake on the GBA featured a scene where Banon is addressing the Returners in their hideout, and promptly kills the tension when he explains that the Empire is amassing "weapons of Magitek destruction." This troper actually had to reset his Gameboy to make sure he just read that.
Final Fantasy VII's most notorious moment was spoiled by a typo. In the pit of despair, Cloud screams out, begging Sephiroth for a justification, berating him for what he did - all this with no small amount of self-hatred, as he had been possessed previously by Sephiroth to kill Aeris himself and only failed to do so because his Nakama called him back. It's incredibly moving until Jenova answers, "Beacause you are a puppet." Final Fantasy VII had a Good Bad Translation to start with, but the sheer mood of the scene this was in made that tiny 'a' jar more than it should.
- A screenshot of Aerith's death; the chibi art style of the game causes all the characters to look ridiculous.
  - Hell, the whole "Aeris's Death" scene was full of Narm. From impossible sword movement to the pathetic animation to Cloud's nonsensical dialogue, it's all Narm, all the time. "The way Cloud's talking, it's like Sephiroth just entered the room after she died." And right after she's stabbed, the materia falls out of her hair and proceeds to bounce around for a good twenty seconds...
- In the scene preceding, (un)intentional hilarity oft occurs when a new player attempts to buttonmash Cloud out of the mind control; this invariably results in a great deal of SD pixel hip-thrusting. When Cloud is holding his sword at groin-level...well.
  - Vincent sucker-punches Cloud with his metal gauntlet to stop the SD pixel hip-thrusting.
  "Aeris will no longer talk, no longer laugh, cry...... or get angry......"
  - Your Mileage May Vary on that last quote. This troper found it effectively summed up how Cloud felt about the situation; Sephiroth's reasons for what he did hardly matter in the face of killing Aerith.
  - Very much so, as this troper felt it came off extremely stiff, even given Cloud's mental state.
- I call King Hit considering it drops Cloud like a rock. That aside, after seeing Vincent, Mr Stoic Angsty-for-a-reason, do that, it's virtually impossible to take Aeris death seriously with tears of laughter rolling down your cheeks.
- Also: Cloud in a wheelchair, twitching like a two-dollar whore. Cosplay that, fanboy.
  - We have.
  - ...and that makes it even funnier.
- The following scene, in which Cloud and two of your party members pay their last respects to Aeris. If you have Vincent in the party in the PC version, he will do a little dance due to glitchy programming.
- Super Nova, International version. Sephiroth does destroy the Solar System in the original Japanese version (it's harder to see because the explosion happens so far away); but for the International Version, they not only redid the attack to have much better animation, but they also made the attack incredibly over-the-top, showing the destruction of several planets (with their names in case you don't know what Jupiter looks like), with the Sun being a whopping two feet in front of our heroes before going Super Nova. It's even worse with the knowledge that it is a percentage-based attack - it will never directly kill the party.
  - What truly puts it in Narm territory is the fact that Sephiroth can cast it multiple times. I see that planets reproduct by binary fission in the Final Fantasy VII universe, or so it would seem.
- In Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, there's a minor but horrible one when Cloud and Zack are bonding. They reach a facility they're about to infiltrate, and Zack suddenly says, "Cloud, look". If you know why that's horrible, you've been on the internet far too long.
  "They're not the wings of a monster! They're the wings of an angel!"
- Intentionally invoked for effect with Genesis, who was intended to be a ridiculous over-the-top drama queen.
  "No way! He just ate my haaaair!"
  - "DAMN YOOOOOOOU!"
- Another minor one here. During the otherwise well-done ending FMV of Crisis Core, Cloud's scream was jarringly cliche and pathetically delivered. Luckily, it didn't ruin the scene completely, and most people only cringed slightly before continuing to let the tears stream down their faces.
- "Rate hike! Rate hike! Tra, la, la!" accompanied by a kangaroo impersonation does convey that Palmer is an idiot, but I don't think we're supposed to laugh in the middle of a tense plot-advancing scene with our heroes in an air vent spying on the enemy's top brass.
- The burning of Nibelheim is a dramatic scene, that would probably have been a lot more had it not featured a man who looked like Frank Sidebottom.
  - Adding to that, in the previous scene where Cloud confronts Sephiroth in the basement, and Sephiroth gives Cloud a whole You Suck speech, the impact of what's he's said is rather deadened when Sephiroth says he's going to "see [his] mother", and leaves. Although he's probably meant to be running, Sephiroth's running animation (coupled with the strange camera angle) instead makes him look like he's skipping out of the room.
- "Finish... Sephiroth... off...". Try saying that three times fast.
In the end of Final Fantasy X, the moment when Yuna runs into Tidus arms'... and ridiculously falls onto the floor because she went through him. Considering that Tidus is fading from existence at this point, it's probably supposed to be dramatic.
- The infamous 'Laughing Scene' is another good example.
  HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA. HA.
  - OH GOD THE LAUGHING!
  - It wouldn't be so bad, but the sentimental music pushed it straight into narm territory.
  - There are some really good Youtube Poops of that, too. ...
- If you can believe it... it's worse in the Japanese version. Tidus sounds like a crow.
  - It's the stupid Dog-paddle hands. You cannot take anyone seriously if they flap their hands around like they were trying to swim! This combines with Rikku's ridiculious Genki Girl voice.
- And then there's the scene in Home where Tidus learns what is going to happen to Yuna. Though it is clearly supposed to be a touching and dramatic moment, some people laugh at Tidus' hysterics. Thank you so much, James Arnold Taylor.
- A big one was Rikku's "Ah-HAAAA!" when Tidus brags about being "Star of the Zanarkand Abes! Didn't anyone tell you?". But also the way Tidus and Yuna had a tendency to say "Okay" really fast, like they were trying to fit lip movements. And Lulu's lines for spells, like "Need a light?" and "Thirsty?" were pretty cheesy. For Bio, she says "It's good for the complexion". Oh boy.
  - You think Lulu's were bad? Did you hear some of Yuna's spell lines?
    "Shield us from watery woe!"
- It seems that Tidus tends to move and act like he's buzzed out on caffeine or cocaine, maybe both, such as the first time they defeated Seymour.
- "I don't like your plan. It sucks." from Final Fantasy X-2, which is an understatement, especially since Yuna then goes on to say that Nooj's plan to sacrifice himself, and potentially Baralai, to kill Shuyin is no different than the way Spira had fought Sin, and that there had to be a way to save the world without sacrificing innocent people.
From Final Fantasy III: "Light and darkness: one cannot exist without the other, much like the sun and the world.
- In the DS version, it's a bit hard to see the villains as genuine threats when they're in chibi style, especially for Big Bad Xande. The Cloud of Darkness mostly evades this by being a sphere of light, though.
Final Fantasy VII: Dirge Of Cerberus. The whole thing. Vincent rescues small children, and then he walks off, flipping his cape with panache. When he dies, he mutters, "Now...I can finally...rest...". It doesn't help that the extreme case of Cutscene Power To The Max the game suffers from, where every shot involves him running around and flipping upside down and shooting things in mid-air, cause his rather awkward in-game actions to seem hilariously stilted. The original game didn't take itself entirely seriously, but Dirge is melodrama from beginning to end.
- Indeed, while the majority of video game Narm seems to fall under the "endearing flaw" category, Dirge of Cerberus is a game that Narmed itself straight into Discontinuity for many fans. Granted, it's not the only reason (Ret Con, anyone?), but it's a huge part of it. This troper dares anyone to listen to Rosso the Crimson speak for more than twelve seconds without cringing, cracking up, or both. Even Vincent is unimpressed.
  - Where did she pick up a Russian accent underground!?
In Dissidia Final Fantasy, you get this awesome opening to one of the story modes, spoken in deep bass narrator voice:
The boy is known by the legendary title of...
"Onion Knight".
- Later on, Cloud of Darkness even says to Onion Knight that he is not "worthy of his title". Why the heck is everyone acting like being called an Onion Knight is something to be proud of?!
- Tidus lands one in his story mode where he narrates, stating that he has a sudden urge to yell for no reason. He than suddenly runs ahead of Firion with a scream as if he's dieing.

Close Final Fantasy

Metal Gear

Eight-bit Metal Gear

Natasha's amazing Final Speech in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. She manages to directly contradict her own ridiculous metaphor, twice.
- Don't forget, "The ice...the ice grew cold."
The "deadly poisonous Zanzibar hamsters" (see the ridiculous line in all of its glory in the above picture).
- Heck, it's got Snake(?) himself going WTF?
- No, he just always looks like that in Metal Gear 2.
The owl puzzle, which involved hatching an adult owl from an egg and making it hoot to trick a guard into thinking it's nighttime.
Snake's response to having to beat his best friend to death: "FOX! I'LL KICK YOUR TWISTED MIND OUT OF YOU!"
The whole game becomes one long Narm if you're more used to the Solid series. If you are, you will be familiar with Snake as a Badass Shell Shocked Senior-slash-Cool Old Guy and accustomed to the heavy melodrama. It's jarring to pick up a Metal Gear and see exactly what traumatised Snake into Heroic BSOD in Metal Gear Solid.
In Metal Gear 2, Fox, on his deathbed, talks about his failed relationship with his true love, Natasha. Unfortunately, the words he chooses to describe this make it sound like he's just dreadful in bed. You can't "make women fortunate", Fox?

Metal Gear Solid 1/ The Twin Snakes

Each of the alternate endings in the original Metal Gear Solid had a handful, so there was no escape. Upon failing to save Meryl, Snake - sounding on the edge of tears for the first time so far - rants at himself for being too selfish to save her; it's genuinely moving until he cries, "I'm a loser!" If he rescues her, you then get to sit through one of the most gloriously cheesy romantic scenes ever written.
"It's so beautiful. The sky, the snow, the caribou...and...most of all... you."
The usage of stock footage in both Baker's and Otacon's long speeches. It completely pulls me away from the action in that "...Did they actually USE THAT?" sort of manner.
The Twin Snakes had awful facial expressions, especially when you consider that MGS2 contained some strikingly subtle ones three years prior (for a good example, watch Snake's face during Emma's death scene). Snake, in TTS, has a permanent facial expression of mildly-annoyed confusion, which is all the more hilarious because it unintentionally suits his character. It hits rock bottom when Gray Fox is being crushed by Liquid, and Snake gives an impassioned scream of FOOOOOOOOOOOOX! - his face looks so terrible that it becomes immediately funny. And the Say My Name abuse was funny in itself.
- The scene immediately before becomes Narmful too, if you're a psychopath who enjoys mashing the Square button to hear Snake complaining. "No! I can't do it! -" "AFTER ZANZIBAR - " "It's no good! I can't do it! -" "I WAS TAKEN FROM THE BATTLE - " "No! I can't do it! It's no good! I can't do it!" - "AN UNDYING SHADOW - " etcetera.
- While the inability of a professional killer to Shoot The Dog, having learned from his past mistakes, is arguably powerful, try destroying the radome with your last missile. Snake's dialogue changes to reflect this: "It's no good! I'm out of missiles!" So much for character development, Snake.
Anything involving Liquid and genes.
The DARPA Chief, Anderson, dies of an apparent heart attack right in front of Snake, complete with trying to voice his final words while clutching at Snake's shirt. After he falls to the ground, Snake takes his pulse, and simply says, "Huh. Dead." Funnily enough, Snake's justifiably freaked out in the codec conversation immediately afterward.
The conversation between Otacon and Snake in the elevator of invisible soldiers is rather scary, with the music growing in intensity...right up until Otacon leans into the screen and starts screaming at Snake to get out while the music swells in volume. There's just something about Otacon screaming combined with his zoomed in, terrified face that is hilarious.
"A rat must have eaten it!"
"Now who's being ridiculous?"
Snake's wonderful description of why it's unlikely that Liquid would survive:
"He'll be sliced up faster than an onion in an infomercial."
"Can love bloom Snake? Even on a battlefield?"
"Snake? SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!?"
"A surveillance camera?!"
Contrast and compare: Exhibit A: Colonel Trautman in Rambo 3 being electrocuted on a metal bed- pained expression with suppressed cries of pain. Exhibit B: Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid being electrocuted on a metal bed- NNNNNNAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
The death of Sniper Wolf (I know, I know). I wouldn't have found her long speech half as amusing if she hadn't stated at the beginning that she had been shot in the lung.

Metal Gear Solid 2

Whenever someone says "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" in Metal Gear Solid 2, it undermines the drama of the scene. The voice actors had a decent stab at appropriate enunciation, at least. The same can't be said of the excruciatingly corny Russian accents.
- The La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo thing makes a cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl in all its deadpan glory (at least in the English version). It's in Snake's codec of Luigi.
  - Said Brawl Codec also mocks the death scream:
    "Colonel? COLONELLLLLLLLL!"
MGS2 also had Jack and Rose's relationship drama, which, despite aiming at meaningful and moving (and succeeding a handful of times), has been known to send many gamers into fits of hysterics. An often-misquoted line is when Rose accuses Jack of never letting her into his room, and how it has nothing in it - 'like your empty heart!' Rose repeatedly attempts to get Jack to recall why the, er, Arc Date April 30th is important to her; while some of her nagging was intended to be funny, it meant that, when it took a darker turn, it got funnier.
- There's also the classic Raiden delivery of "We've managed to avoid drowning!" as if it's something to be terribly, terribly proud of.
  Campbell: You have to go and connect to the Node.
  Raiden: Did you say "nerd"?
- Apparently, the narm of the MGS series has reached the point that things like having a terrorist squad with a freaking vampire and a fat demolition expert that runs around on roller skates is par for the course.
- "OK, now I remember! April 30th is the day Hitler committed suicide, isn't it?!"
  — What SHOULD have been in there.
"By the way, Jack, I was the one who killed your parents."
- Directly ripped from legitimately dramatic revelation in the previous game, where Gray Fox has good reason to be holding back the fact that he met Naomi Hunter as an orphan because he had killed hers during the Mozambique civil war.

Metal Gear Solid 3 & Portable Ops

Metal Gear Solid 3 has an example similar to the Cardcaptor Sakura one noted in Narm/Anime. It would be much easier to take The Boss seriously if she wasn't voiced by Diane Simmons. (Though it didn't make her any less badass.)
The theme song, "Snake Eater", done in a James Bond-esque style, is both Crowning Music Of Awesome and Narm at the same time. The music is great, but the lyrics contain lines like "Some day you go through the rain, some day you feed on a tree frog"...
This troper always assumed that the lyrics were intentionally funny.
- As well as the title— "Snake Eater"... well, we'll let you guess what "snake" is code for in porn.
Some of Ocelot's cred as a hyper-Badass is undermined by MGS3 when he calls for support.
''MRRRROWR!'
- The Last Days of FOXHOUND had a field day with that one.
- "SELF-ESTEEM TEAM!"
The scene where Snake, disguised as Raikov, is caught by Volgin and The Boss, and the latter asks "What is this fairy disguise?". And let's not forget that just a few seconds ago we saw Volgin see through the disguise by grabbing Snake's crotch, and it is realized that Volgin isn't exactly what he seems. And then we go from Narm to one of the most horrifying and gruesome torture scenes ever!
- MGS3 actually exists for two reasons. One is to be a prequel to the Metal Gear series. The other is to make fun of Raiden.
Really, everything and anything about the Boss. Her hackneyed attempts at some vague anti-nationalist (and of course anti-nuclear) philosophy that go on for over five minutes are a terrible, terrible example of self-indulgent infodump, and they're neither convincing nor inspiring anyways. Then there's the creepily Mary Sue-ish way everyone fawns over her despite her never really doing anything, or her also (like far too many MGS characters) being needlessly raised for her not-that-complicated job by a token evil conspiracy, or the utterly inane idea of her giving birth on the battlefield of D-Day... This wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that literally every single other character is constantly gushing about how awesome, intelligent, and all-around Christlike she is.

Metal Gear Solid 4

Metal Gear Solid 4 has Raiden whining that "IT EVEN RAIINNED THE DAY I WAS BOOOOORRRRNNNN!".
- Snake's response was arguably worse: "You've got it all wrong! You were the lightning in that rain! You can still shine through the darkness!" Careful Snake, you'll make Otacon jealous...
The hilarious scene where Otacon breaks down in tears while clutching to his chest, of all the goddamn things in the world, a ~~laptop~~ MacBook Pro.
Snake's impassioned cry of "LIIIIIQQQQQQQQUUUUUUUIIIIIIIDDDD!" during the final fight.
- The fact that it looks like he's crotch thrusting adds to it.
Raging Raven/Beauty's crazy speech that establishes her personal fears and psychoses is ruined by one line: "The Ravens are pecking at my flesh! And my soul!" The speech is perfectly fine and disturbing otherwise.
- Whereas Laughing Beauty's speech is ruined right at the outset, as it begins with "I...am an octopus. An EIGHT LEGGED BEAST!" complete with striking a pose.
  - Completely acceptable if you make sure to tell yourself that she's completely insane, and wouldn't give a damn about biology anyway.
- Also during Raging Raven's fight, when you manage to get her out of her robotic suit, she begins ranting, and it's kind of creepy. Then you get an R1 (first person view during cutscene) moment when she turns away from Snake, and he's looking directly at her well-shaped but fucking crazy ass. Made this troper laugh so much he was subsequently killed.
The backstories of the members of the Beauty and the Beast Unit were too over the top to take seriously. Except for Crying Wolf's.
When Naomi dies, what would have been an extraordinarily sad scene is ruined because Otacon is present in the form of a little robot that flails in a cutesy manner as Otacon is crying.
- Her dying words are spoken outside the hearing range of Otacon and Snake.
  - “Hey come back you bastards, I’m not finished dying yet!” Snake and Otacon have a big emotional moment and drive off into the sunset together before she even lost consciousness! Charming.
  - She totally dereved it, her whole thing was one of the head-basingly worst parts of the game
- Rather than reflexively reaching out toward the dying Naomi, Otacon must be using the unquestionably complex remote controls to manipulate the robot into a simulation of a simple human gesture. It kills the drama when it is understood that the character, by necessity, must be making a conscious and complicated effort to create the appearance of an instinctive human reaction.
  - That makes it even sadder, but for a different reason - it makes it seem like Otacon is forcing his love for her, too, which makes perfect sense in context.
Examples of Narm that happen repeatedly:
1. Meryl mentions "the System."
2. Snake says "huh?" or repeats what was said back. (If a coin was given to Charity every time he said "huh?" then there would be no need for charity anymore).
The whole scene with one-armed Raiden illogically deciding to hold a WARSHIP IN PLACE (so it wouldn't crush Snake) when he could have (considering his implied strength at this point) picked up Snake and taken him to safety.
- Considering he had just cut off his own arm, it's possible that blood loss could have affected his judgement.
- He made pretty clear that he didn't want to live anymore.
Then there is the cutscene immediately preceding the final hand-to-hand battle between Old Snake and Ocelot: while the beginning of the cutscene and the interactive portion of the battle keep two geezers beating the crap out of each other outside the realm of Narm, it goes completely to hell once Snake collapses and has to use his syringe to get back on his feet. After some more fighting, OCELOT collapses and uses ANOTHER syringe to get back up. After some more fighting, BOTH men collapse and use their respective syringes AT THE SAME TIME. Then after some MORE fighting they start collapsing and STAB EACH OTHER with the syringes. Yeah, don't try this at home, kids.
- On the other hand, certain people find that scene to be a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
During the horrific microwave scene, Snake's prominent buttocks glow.
- His entire Octo-Camo was glowing; the color was fleshlike enough to make it seem that Snake was in a bunch of leather straps.
Snake describing the Outer Haven ship as a 'Death Star.'

Non-canon Metal Gear

Not even Metal Gear Solid Ghost Babel is immune. After killing the boss Marionette Owl, he says that he and his unit have vowed vengeance on 'Anonymous'. This was fine at the time; but with the rise of certain Image Boards, the effect is reminiscent of a certain FOX news broadcast. "His madness surpasses even my own," says Owl. Considering Owl's Freudian Excuse was that he found a murdered, shredded body as a child, you can understand he'd have such a hatred for a board full of trolling and Guro.
Another non-canon one, this one from Metal Gear Acid 2. Ho Yay between Snake and his friend Dalton reaches its hilarious climax with Snake lying semi-naked on a bed while Dalton chides him for being so reckless as to endanger his own life; Snake responds that it wasn't really recklessness because he knew Dalton would always be there to save him. Dalton agrees, says, "This will probably do you some good" while implicitly approaching - and then there's an extended Fade To Black. If you've been picking up on the Sub Text and are familiar with the Sexy Discretion Shot trope, you'll either be relieved or disappointed when the fade to black is revealed to be a loading break for the next part of the cutscene, in which Dalton is giving Snake a fairly innocuous item.
- In the same scene, Snake is finally reunited, after huge personal tragedy, with his 'family'. Unfortunately the artist drew him with a look of absolute dread as his allies throw their arms around his neck, making it look as if he would rather have never seen them again.
- Snake's hairstyle in that game ruins every single serious moment he attempts to have in it. You could argue that his usual hair was pretty Eighties, but at least he wasn't sporting a golden blond high-top-mullet.
- Talking of Snake's hairstyle, in the first Ac!d, Snake had a straight, shoulder-length cut with the bandanna tied under. It's flattering until we see a couple-of-years younger Snake in a flashback who has hair the same length, but very wavy. The image of Snake picking up a pair of straightening irons so he can preen himself before a mission is patently absurd enough to ruin even a seemingly normal haircut.
It falls somewhere between Reverse Funny Aneurysm and Crowning Moment Of Awesome, but the final boss of Snake's Revenge is Big Boss!... who, upon defeat, transforms into an invincible giant purple robot and chases Snake down the halls breathing fire. Anything I could put here would completely fail to describe how this actually feels to play.
- His weakpoint is the soles of his feet. It may be impossible to impart that vital piece of information and still sound cool.
Nick's death in Snake's Revenge is a fairly dramatic moment, but it's spoiled by miscolouring one pixel on his heaving back. As a result, instead of appearing to pant out his last words, he appears to have a long, firm sausage-shaped object on his back that jiggles up and down like a wagged finger.

Close Metal Gear

Resident Evil

The very first Resident Evil game had a bunch of these, no thanks to the terrible English voice acting. Jill sandwich, anyone?
- Future Resident Evil games have been considered quite campy even with improved voice acting. It has surely evolved into self-parody in Resident Evil 4, with Leon howling in soul-wrenching woe at the deaths of the Mexican cop from Spain and the helicopter pilot who he knew for all of 10 minutes.
- In Leon's defence, Mike is probably the longest living helicopter pilot in the entire RE series, so that's something to mourn for.
  - Was. Resident Evil 5's Kirk managed to last several chapters before being ridiculously brought down by bat-like creatures.
- No, no, no. Mike, if you'll recall, was about to tell Leon the location of a good bar. Leon is sad because he doesn't know any good bars, and now it looks like he never will.
- Quite of few of Leon's lines have entered into narm legend, such as "Where's everybody going? Bingo?", "You're right hand comes off?" (sic) and "You're small time!"
- And then there's how Leon simply cannot call Luis by his actual name. No, Leon always calls him "Lewis." What?
- Let's not even get started on Ashley's parasite removal scene.
  - "I have the antidote! If I give it to her..." What? WHAT?! WHAT'LL HAPPEN YOU STUPID-!
- When Leon finds a deep freeze room full of corpses infected with parasites, his reaction: "Sucks to be them."
  - Well, unless you're implying that it doesn't suck to be them...
- In Resident Evil 2, the voice acting was just cheese all the way. The worst may have been Sherry's line, "He must have been caught by the monsters! I have to help him." The punctuation is not a mistake. She goes from panic in the first sentence, to flat in the second.
  - The second worst was Ada's fake death, if Leon is the second scenario. It's not so bad if Leon is the first scenario, but this one has Ada suddenly become the love interest.
    "Tell Sherry, I'm sorry I wasn't a better mother! *dies*"
  - How could you forget "Get... that... scum! Make... him... pay!"
  - Leon says "Someone tried to kill me", when actually Annette was trying to shoot Ada, and Leon jumped into the line of fire.
  - "I'm afraid it's burning up. We've got to do something before the embryos pupate".
- The voice-acting was part of the B-movie charm for many gamers.
- Jill Valentine's "Barry! It's a monster!" in the RE Make had a certain cheesy appeal to it. Not to mention Claire's rather monotone "There's a gun inside." in RE 2. Then there's pretty much everything Steve says in Code Veronica.
  SHUT UP! I DON'T WANNA TALK ABOUT IT! (Uzis the living hell out of a wall)
  - Is no one worried about ammo in that freaking game?
  - That's a good point, considering that getting the damn ammo for Steve gets its own cutscene.
- Code Veronica, with Steve's infamous "FATHERRRRRRRRRRR!" Including wasting all of his ammo, his amazement that he did not shoot Claire by accident once, and his equally narmful cries afterwards.
  - The way Claire has a tendency to emphasize words oddly is quite narmy, too.
I need those! Give them to me.
- All the above Code Veronica moments were parodied in this Lets Play.
- Speaking of Code Veronica, this troper actually finds Alfred Ashford's Nobleman's Laughs truly creepy in their own strange way - but has to admit his goddamn girlish giggle ruins it.
- Resident Evil 5 has a moment in the middle of the final boss battle where Chris Redfield literally punches a boulder out of his way. If this doesn't qualify as narm, nothing does.
  - This troper say that one first on You Tube while it was muted, and instantly wondered how anyone could think that would actually help. Or not break his knuckles neither.
- One line from Resident Evil 5, delivered in an over the top manner: "A new Genesis is at hand, and I will be the creator!"
  - "I JUST GOT AN EXTREME MAKEOVER!" This was the point where I stopped taking the game seriously.
- Enrico. Resident Evil 0. Let's just say that the voice you get over the radio is not altered because he's shouting into a radio.
- Oh, god. Jill Sandwiches are only the tip of the iceberg when looking at Barry Burton's original dialogue. "Just take - a - look - at - THIS! It's Forest. Ohh my COD!"
  - Also ruining that particular scene is that though it's made clear exactly what they're talking about in R Emake, in the original, Forest's body is somewhat obscured from sight; this troper knows of a few people who wondered exactly what was so mortifying about the forest below the balcony.
- Nemesis: "He's after STARS members! There's no escape!"
In Resident Evil 2, when William Berkin is gunned down by Umbrella Special Forces in Annette's flashback. She stops him to take care of the "bullet wound." Wound? he got shot, like, fifteen times!

Close Resident Evil

Sonic The Hedgehog

Sonic Adventure:
"Oh, no! Our weapons are useless! Retreat! All personnel, fall back!"
- What really pushes this into Narm territory is the fact that, upon receiving this order, the kneeling police officers calmly get to their feet and proceed to moonwalk away from Chaos.
- "Our hearts combined form awesome power!". Sure they do, Tails.
- "Watch out, you're gonna crash! AAH!"
A fair amount of Shadow the Hedgehog, but mainly:
"Where's that... DAMN 4th Chaos Emerald?!"
- This is made especially comical because the captions put the emphasis on the word "fourth" instead, even though there is absolutely no such emphasis in the dialogue.
A fair amount—no, all of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. This is especially due to the contrast of the kind of realistic humans and the furries during the drama scenes, the 4Kids voice acting, the nonsensical plot, the bad dialogue, and moments of pure silliness like Eggman pressing buttons like he was a blind man playing a piano.
- At least Eggman's Narm moments are awesome. The scenes with him in are pretty much the only bearable bits of the game's plot.
- DON'T TOUCH IT!eleven!111!1!1
- Don't forget Mephiles' "resurrection", where he introduces himself then starts zombie walking while looking straight down. This, combined with his black and white color scheme will make you apologize for all the times you called Shadow "Emo the Hedgehog".
- And then there's the glorious Narm that is Sonic's death scene. this troper can't decide which part is the funniest: the overdramatic slow-mo fall, Princess ~~Dull Surprise~~ Elise's Big No, the total randomness of the murder ("Yep, just minding my own busness, enjoying the si-*BLAM*"), or the fact that being impaled by a laser lance of death apparently doesn't leave a single mark on him.
  - Final nail in the ~~hedgehog~~ coffin? The fact that Sonic is apparently lanced in the ass through to his crotch. You may now laugh.
  - I see you all these things and raise you ~~Dan Green~~ Mephiles's hamtastic laugh.
- THE IBLIS TRIGGER!
- "I can't deflect lasers with my telekinesis!". Well darn, Silver, there goes my plan.
Even though Sonic Adventure 2 was made in America, the script apparently got translated to Japanese and then back into English, rendering lines that were only sometimes comprehensible, rarely synced to the mouth movements, and even overlapped each other. "He must be using the Chaos Emerald to wa...[rp]" "[My]...name is Shadow."
- Me and my bro noticed that alot. It ruined a lot of otherwise cool cutscenes.
  Shadow: Faker? I think YOU'RE the fake hedgehog around here! You're comparing yourself to me?! HA! You're not even good enough to be [my fake}!
  Sonic: [I'll make] you eat those words!
  Conclusion
  Sonic is psychic.
  - Worse, sometimes the overlapping was between lines spoken by the same character. "Hey. It's not his spee[d]. [H]e must be using the Chaos Emerald to war[p].
- How has Sonic's finishing blow to the Egg Golem in the Dark story not been mentioned yet?
  Sonic: TERIYAH!
  - Add to the fact that this is one of the more serious Sonic installments, and the subtitles are in Comic Sans MS.
Let's show that creep THE REAL SUPER POWER OF TEAMWORK! Yeah, because WE'RE SONIC HEROES! Actually, the entirety of Sonic Heroes was pretty Narmy.
- Let's blast through with SONIC SPEED!
- SHAA!
- Rouge's "I'm getting dizzy" vocal sounds suspiciously like Howard Dean's YAAAGH scream.
- This cutscene leading up to Team Sonic vs. Robot Storm.
Rouge in Sonic2006. She's flying away with the Scepter of Darkness, and Eggman's robot punches her with a fist double the size of her body. And yet, all she says is "Ah." Seriously, I won't even put a link to video because it's so embarassing. Add that to the fact that Rouge is supposed to be 18 but sounds like she's 30-40. But that's the 4Kid's voice actor's fault.
- "I'll punch this thing WITH MY FISTS!"
- I think we all can agree that the above quote can also go with THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS. What else are you gonna F*** punch with?
  - Knuckles, don't swear! This is a kid's game!
Ah, the final boss of Sonic Unleashed. It could've been so epic, had it not suffered from two narms of its own:

The Unexpected Genre Change of fighting its first form with a Humongous Mecha formed from all of the Gaia shrines Rock'em Sock'em Robots, style.
The orchestrated music during Dark Gaia's final form sounding like he and Super Sonic should be breaking out in vaudeville-like show tunes at any second instead of fighting.
- If there was ever a reason for the concept of fan-art to exist, this would be it.
- To be fair, it's a remix of "Endless Possibility," so depending on how much you like that theme, this feels closer to a case of Your Mileage May Vary.

Close Sonic The Hedgehog

Lara's emotional moment/hissy fit at the end of Tomb Raider: Legend.
"WHAT?! NO!"
"WHERE? IS? MY? MOTHER?"
- And of course:
"MAKE SENSE RIGHT THIS SECOND OR I SWEAR I'LL EXECUTE YOU WHERE YOU STAND!"
- Some consider that scene pretty badass, especially when Lara pistolwhips Amanda.
- Angel of Darkness also gave us the oft-quoted threat of "You unsavory little runt!"
- Tomb Raider 3 gets "Your perception of good timing is... bad!"
- This Troper found the death screams of the guards in the Tibet section of Tomb Raider 2 Narm; after getting mowed down it sounds like they shout something like "AH! A COUGAR!"
This Prince of Persia (2008) story trailer. It's not as much that the voice fails (though Your Mileage May Vary), but rather the words that are spoken. Darkness? Light? Haven't we heard this crap somewhere else already?.
Even Majoras Mask is not immune. One day has you protecting the Lon Lon ranch from thieves trying to steal away the cows. If you get there a day late, you find the ranch owner paralyzed with grief, as the thieves took both her cows and her little sister. Moving on its own, but becomes pure Narm when you learn the thieves are aliens.
The Non Standard Game Over in the final case of Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All spoils the somber mood with a simple grammatical error:
"The miracle never happen."
- Another possible example from Trials and Tribulations is due to a typo; Mia was presumably supposed to tell the judge "when you were a child," but she says "when you were in a child". The implications are unsettling, to say the least.
- Anything to do with "Shelley De Killer". It's hard to take such a silly name seriously.
- This may have been a deliberate Shout Out, but it's still not appropriate for the tone of the moment - in the last case of the second game, when Phoenix is asked to identify the killer, he gives us the wonderful 'Adrian Andrews, I choose you!'
- Phoenix's outraged 'you...you scoundrel!'
  - Well, there was a nine-year-old girl there.
- Pretty much any time the Phoenix Wright games reference popular culture, the game treads close to Narm territory. For example, when questioning a clown about an otherwise serious case, when you point out a contradiction, he spouts the lines to the theme from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
  - Not quite. He spouts the lines to the theme from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air with clown-related substitutions.
"In West Clownadelphia, born and raised, on the playground is where I spend my clowin'."
- In 4-4, if you look hard enough once Gavin starts laughing, his hair goes from extremely messy to normal.
  - Also his Villainous Breakdown has him turning into a Super Saiyan
Devil May Cry has very inconsistent translators and thus has the unfortunate tendency to fall right into these. Fans still cherish Dante's sorrowful cry over Trish's dead body after the Mundus fight: " I should have been the one to fill your dark soul with LIIIIIGGGGHHHTTT!" delivered approximately in the same manner as Vegeta's "Over nine THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND!"
- Thank god the first game was released before 300. Imagine Dante screaming "THIS! IS! SPARDAAAA!"
- There's more oddness when Dante and Trish escape the castle on a biplane. Trish, for some reason, says 'The sky... it's so clear! So blue!' Dante's response it pretty baffling, too. Then Trish says 'Like the sky, I feel that my heart is becoming clear.' Who writes this crap, one wonders?
- In Devil May Cry 2 (should you care to care to acknowledge it), Lucia's accent disappears mid-sentence...
  'Wheeeeeooooooo!'
- Devil May Cry 3 was better overall but had some truly wince-worthy moments. The cutscene before the boss fight with Lady leaps to mind.
- Devil May Cry 4 continues the tradition of narm with insanely corny one liners and a secret ending that looks like it came from Charlie's Angels. Also, Dante looks like one of the Baldwin brothers.
  - It is worth mentioning, however, that many people are used to the overly narmy sequences in Devil May Cry, it becomes laugh-out-loud funny, particularly in the fourth installment. The cutscene in which Dante shows off Lucifer and the secret ending above leap to mind, especially when the Double Entendre (single entendre?) is that blatant...
  - "KYYRRRIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Nero is Narm Incarnate above all else.
  - It should be pretty obvious to everyone that plays DMC4 that Nero is overly serious about everything, and Dante...isn't. Therefore, the time playing as Dante should be viewed as a comedy, and the time playing as Nero is Narmtastic.
  - Nero flipping off Dante when he's being absorbed by the Big Bad. It IS funny, but it's so Narmtacular.
Drake Of The 99 Dragons is a terrible game. The cutscenes are.... It must be seen to be believed.
The Japanese-made video game Zero Wing opens with a dramatic scene showing a military spaceship rocked with explosions. The crew reports that bombs had been planted on the ship, and moments later the ship is hailed by the enemy commander. He informs them that all of their bases have been taken over, and laughs at their imminent demise. Left with no choice, the Captain dispatches the ship's ZIG fighters (one of which will be controlled by the player) for a last-ditch counterattack. ...Then the game was translated into Engrish.
Some of the English dialogue in Street Fighter IV is like this, particularly all of Akuma's overly dramatic speeches about "nothingness." They're probably just as wordy in Japanese, but at least his voice sounds cooler.
- In the arcade version of Street Fighter II, one character punctuates his attacks by saying what sounds like "Cool Whip".
  - Also, considering some of the words are unintelligible, some things end up sounding wrong— such as "The pipes are broken!" or "Ghetto Uppercut!"
- In Super Street Fighter II, Guile's "Sonic Boom!" sounds exactly like it did in Street Fighter II... except if the guy had inhaled a whole bunch of helium this time.
  - Don't forget the announcer being guest voiced by Big Bird.
The dramatic tension in the first boss battle of House of the Dead 2 could've been a lot more pronounced had the boss character not said its infamous line ("Suffer like G did?") in the form of a question...and had the boss character not been a squeaky-voiced bat-winged imp controlling a headless suit of animated armor.
- This same boss, who is in the service of Goldman, also lets out a wail when he dies: "Sir Goooooooooooolllld!"
- Granted, the first two House of the Dead arcade games were unintentionally hilarious due to the unbelievably bored delivery of the entire vocal cast. The second game's "survivors" are so nonchalant about being chased by the undead it boggles the mind.
  - This editor suspects that all of the House of the Dead games were in fact intentionally comical - the plots obviously make no sense and all the dialog consists of one Big No or other played-out trope after the other, mostly delivered in flat monotones or with inexplicable inflection. Of course, it was probably just an Excuse Plot in the first place, as all anyone wanted to do in the game was blast zombies anyway.
  - For this troper, House of the Dead 2 crossed the line to just Flat-Out Funny when the final stage presented: Cyber Zombies that could walk through walls and had lightsabers. No, really.
  - "TO PROTECT THE LOYFE CYCLE!"
  - "DIS IS DA FINHAL BATTHOL"
  - "I AM. I AM. I AM THE ONE WHO RULES OVER NATURE. I SHALL DESTROY AND HATE MANKIND. I AM...DA EMPEROR!" (And on him dying: "I AM. I AM. [fwoop]")
  - He just said "destroy and hate mankind". So what, you're going to destroy mankind and then hate it because you destroyed it?
  - "IT'S TOO QUIET." Said an a mildly annoyed manner.
- Let's not forget "Don't come!", a dialogue in-joke which has appeared in at least a half-dozen Namco and Capcom games by this troper's count. It was even quoted in Resident Evil 4.
  - As for that, Time Crisis has the one example of "Don't Come!" that always makes this troper laugh. It just sounds so unbelievably crappy and forced.
- If the main games weren't intentionally hillarious, Typing of the Dead and the unrelated Touch the Dead certainly were.
  - I don't even want to know what went into the minds of the people who named Touch of the Dead.
- Sadly, HotD3 completely lacked Narm, to this troper, and even lampshaded some of the weirder moments (like an Implacable Man gigantic zombie security guard.)
- As if to make up its lacking in 3 and 4, Overkill decided to overdo its Narm, by making G suffer with a Cluster F Bombs dropping detective.
This scene in Mega Man X4.
- Nothing cracks this Troper up more than hearing X yell "Time to get serious!" with the voice of an 8-year old boy. It doesn't help me concentrate on the boss fight.
- BTW, speaking about Mega Man X... Mega Man X8. Everything involving Lumine. Serious, that can't be taken seriously.
- Hey, when your main characters are a blond kid with a humongous sword who gets mind controlled all the time and a guy with a gun on his arm, there's only one thing to do.
- From Mega Man Legends, there's the opening monologue that starts with the incredibly camp "On a world covered in endless water..."
- Copy X Mk. II from Megaman Zero 3 Sp-peaks with an od-d st-tutter to indicate that he is a poor-quality copy. With the ef-fect that a merciless fascist tyrant sounds like a nervous child.
  - In 'The Last Cataclysm' on Newgrounds, a flash fan adaptation of the events of Megaman Zero 3, those lines are voice acted. They aren't narm out loud. They sound like Copy X Came Back Wrong and is clearly unhinged. Well, more unhinged.
- Not to mention Dr. "Wight" fwom Megaman 8. "If we fowwow the signaw, we'll find Dr. Wiwy!"
  - "You must wecovow all the enewgy immeedily, W-..Mega Man!"
The cutscene before you fight Lilith in Requiem: Avenging Angel. It's supposed to be giving you important plot information right before a boss fight, but the randomly-placed word-emphasis and the fact that you have to watch the cutscene every time you retry this hard boss fight means it jumps into Narm territory really quick.
In Tales Of Legendia, the main character, Senel, sees his long-lost girlfriend, Stella, fly into the sky and sacrifice her life to stop the beam of the Nerifes Cannon from reaching its target. The cutscene ends with Stella's limp body falling to the floor, a short pause, and then Senel leaning down and yelling "STELLAAAAAAAA!". Due in large part to the apparent reference to Marlon Brando's famous line in A Streetcar Named Desire, many fans reported bursting out laughing at the end of this otherwise tragic scene.
- Not helping is the fact that, as she dodges in front of the beam, it looks like she explodes like a rather spectacular firework.
- In a similar case from Tales Of Symphonia, this troper found Zelos's death on Kratos's ending to be hilarious.
  - This scene is made even more hilarious when Zelos is wearing his "Pickup Artist" beach outfit. If you choose to let him live and he wears that outfit, he rescues the party from Mithos in the Hall of the Great Seed in the same outfit.
- Tales Of Symphonia: When Colette loses her soul you get this famous scene-killer:
  Colette learned Judgment
- After Presea regains her true self and discovers what has become of her father, you can't help but laugh at the scream.
  - And it's going so well, up until the end.
- Also from Tales Of Symphonia, the Bonus Boss's line, said in a very overly dramatic deep voice: "I will show you my true power!" The actual battle aside, that only just increased the ridiculousness of the laughably cliched villain storyline-wise.
- "What is this ominous light that threatens to ENGULF US?"
- Why have the (weirdly excuted) attempts to avoid gendered pronouns and names after Mithos posesses and kidnaps any one party member apart from Lloyd or Kratos not turned up? This troper thought it was hilarious that the missing party member would only be referred vaguely and strangely to as "Our Friend" instead of he/she/him/her/it/insert name here while Heimdall gets rained on by fragments of the Tower of Salvation. Even more so that Genis says it unless he got kidnapped, though he was so irritating it has yet to happen for this troper.
  - Around that same time, when the party realizes that Derris Kharlan is about to leave, dooming the world to die from mana deprivation, Genis will say "This is a much bigger problem then reuniting the worlds." and then immediately after, respond with "Who cares?! Our friend just got kidnapped!" Genis, we're already worried about your mental health. Arguing with yourself doesn't help your case.
- Regal obtained the title, "El Presidente"!
- The scene after the first dungeon, when Lloyd manages to figure out that Colette has lost her sense of touch...by giving her possibly hot possibly cold coffee. Even if you could stand that, the fact that Collette dramatically drops the coffee cup at the end of the scene just pushes it into Narm.
- And the sound the cup makes when it hits the ground makes it seem as if it was actually empty.
- Veigue's "CLAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRE!" in Talesof Rebirth was so bad that even Namco frequently makes fun of it. It's even undergone a small degree of Memetic Mutation.
- Indignation. *ahem* sorry, IN-dig-NAY-shun!
  - WHAT the HECK is THAT???
  - It can't BE!
- Tales Of Symphonia Dawn Of The New World also has its moment in the form of Emil's Mystic Arte, particularly the Ain Soph Aur extension. After the main execution, he laughs maniacally in an over-the-top fashion, then yells "Darkness Devours! Ain Soph AUR!!" while using a Light spell.
- "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality."
- In Tales Of Eternia, after you counter the Final Boss's instant death attack she/it utters the line "This cannot be..." in the flattest voice possible. You have to hear it to believe it.
And who could forget the very beginning of the classic Beat Em Up Altered Beast? Zeus, God of Gods, commands the two nameless heroes to rise from their graves, but the voice clip that accompanies this scene is of such low quality that Zeus sounds like Elmer Fudd: "Wise fwum your gwave!"
In an effort to punctuate the totally unsurprising fact that he is, in fact, The Dragon, and not the Big Bad: Zant, the Twilight King of Twilight Princess shifts from his excellent creepiness of all previous scenes to jumping around and clucking like a chicken during his boss fight. It's just a little overboard, but it shows him for what he always was: a batshit insane loser.
- Ocarina of Time has the cutscene of Ganon's Castle collapsing into the ground. It looks less like it's breaking down and more like a toy castle that's sinking into the ground, looking nothing like destruction. This troper's cousin noted that the castle looks like it's just folding over, and another friend liked it to a penis going flaccid.
  - This troper thinks it looks more like a controlled demolition of some sort. GANON'S CASTLE WAS AN INSIDE JOB!
- From Ocarina of Time again you have Ganondorfs last bit of dialogue: "CURSE YOU ZELDA!!! CURSE YOU. . . LINK!!!"
  - That's if you stuck with the default name. "CURSE YOU ... DUDE!!!"
  - Or worse if you're a grammar whore: "CURSE YOU. . . Link!!!"
  - Or, as Sir Ron Lionheart translates it, "MOTHERFU-YOU LINK!"
  - My favorites: "CURSE YOU. . . MOTHER!", "CURSE YOU. . . TOILET!", or "CURSE YOU. . . FAG!" Nothing is funnier than also realizing that Darunia named his kid that.
  - And the current Speed Run on Speed Demos Archive: CURSE YOU... T!
  - This troper's friend went through Ocarina of Time, which yielded "CURSE YOU. . . PANTS!"
- Twilight Princess again, we get the scene were Ilia regains her memories. With over the top music and Epona doing the "Majestetic Horse" pose in the background. It was so hilarious that I could never again take Ilia serious after it.
- Actually, a TON of stuff in Twilight Princess was like this. The worst that comes to mind is the scene where one of the spirits is warning Link that the fused shadows could corrupt him; it brings to mind cardboard props in a god-awful 3rd-grade school play. Even more minor scenes suffer from poor animation or unrealistic movements (such as the bizarre way Zelda's Sword fell, or the utterly silly stumbling animation of the boss in the goron mines.) It's sort of sad that the game was in development for so long and had so many horrible cutscenes despite it - one could theorize that they horribly rushed the creation of half the cutscenes in order to get it out in time for a gamecube release.
  - Of course, Your Mileage May Vary on all of this.
The PS 2 version of Shinobi features a sequence where the villain taunts you that you can't kill a former acquaintance, 'even with that tainted blade.' The main problem is that the player character, Hotsuma, has already killed the acquaintance in question with the blade in question, and he even has an enormous scar marking where his head was cut off.
Mediocre but entertaining Stealth Based Game Spy Fiction would have been a better piece of, well, Spy Fiction had the voice actors bothered trying. A particularly egregious example is when the lunatic terrorist Dietrich captures the positive, quirky agent Nicklaus, chains him to a crucifix-type device, and shoots him in the heart in front of his best friend. If you weren't laughing at Dietrich's painfully badly-written mocking of the survivors - "Boo hoo! Poor baby!", in a nonspecific and ridiculous Eastern European accent - you probably threw back your head and laughed as the survivor attempted to give a scream of bitter rage to the heavens and ended up making a sound vaguely like he'd finally passed a very stubborn stool.
- This one also had the catchphrase 'Back in the hole', which was said repeatedly by the main character as a code to his best friend, Nicklaus, usually while pointing to him at the time. In one horrible Narm moment, the phrase is said by both after Nicklaus had previously said, "I'll go on ahead. You go in behind." The voice actors deserve some credit for being able to say the line without laughing.
The scene following Junpei's death and subsequent revival at the cost of Chidori's life in Persona 3 was meant to be moving, to be sure, but was so over-the-top and full of ackward romantic dialoge, a character that keeps her poor speaking skills thoughout the event, the stiff falling over sequence and an inconsitacy with the gameplay prevent anything but laughter. Not that that particular relationship was developed realistically to begin with...
- Also the scenes that are part of the Fortune social link, wherein a teenager's eventual decision to become a doctor is apparently catalyzed by the fact that people are having massive medical crises around him all the time. He misses a train because he's trying to help not just one, but two senior citizens who spontaneously go into cardiac arrest while he's standing nearby.
  - You want Narm, try all of the Devil social link. The guy is, for lack of a better word, a prick. Then you find out that he came from poverty so you feel bad, but he ruins it by being a prick even when he's giving money to a charity.
  - He is the Devil Social Link for a reason.
  - Ah, but he's a popular prick. Popular enough to return in Persona 4, in fact.
- This Troper found Strega for the most part hilarious in battle, what with Jin's battle pose being to do a dance while swinging around a suitcase/laptop around.
- You think Persona 3 had Narm? Check out the Macekred dialogue in the first game. Basically every scene, besides Nate's Crowning Moment Of Awesome, that was meant to be dramatic, tense or tear-jerking was ruined by some very poor translation that made everyone sound like 8-year-olds ("No your stupid (sic)", "I'll kill you slow!", and this troper's favourite, "Now I'm Super Guido!", to name a few).
- This troper always gags a little watching this scene in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. And then has an urge to punch all four V As in the mouth.
- Persona 4 isn't immune, for example Chie's "crying" gesture as seen after the Shadow Yukiko fight looks like an attempt to rub something off her face (It actually DOES get used for that at one point when she is attempting to get a bug off herself). Many of the bosses get silly as well, Shadow Naoto has a mechanical left body, wings that look oddly familer and two oversized Death Ray blasters, the result is about as scary as the mental image. Shadow Kanji is a Two Faced gaint Dual Wielding ♂. In story these make sense given the nature of the shadow (representing her feelings at being treated like a child and confusion over sexual identity respectively, but they are STILL funny as hell.
World Of Warcraft has a Narm moment every October. The bizarre music and drunken chatter of the Brewfest holiday clashes with the eerie setting of the Undercity.
- In Zul'Drak, a zone where there's an ongoing war against the undead Scourge, you get a quest to go help at a Argent Crusade forward camp. When you report to the guy there, he says: "Everything was fine until the Scourge arracked!"
- In this troper's opinion, nearly every holiday event in WoW is Narm. (Christmas trees in the Exodar...jack-o-lanterns all over Thunder Bluff...what?)
  - If you think that's bad, you should check out the names they gave stuff in Hallow's End. Tricky Treats? Tummy ache? How old does Blizzard think we are, five?
- Illidan's famous line in the cinematic of the second expansion set, "YOU ARE NOT PREPARED", would be badass if he did it once, but he repeats it three times, ruining the moment. Blizzard joked about this themselves in a Christmas audio clip they did shortly after the unveiling of the cinematic, where Illidan makes a cameo but simply keeps on repeating his line ad infinitum.
- Really, the whole of WoW is full of them. On the surface, everything has a serious tone, but a good majority of the quests and NPC's are pop culture references or some other kind of subtle joke.
- The Wrathgate cinematic that bridges the first and second acts of Wrath of the Lich King is an action-filled scene that is very tense and emotional for fans of the lore, bridging together several different storylines and changing the game world significantly. But most fans still cringe at this overused action movie cliche:
Tirion Fordring: I was wondering if you'd show up!
Saurfang the Younger: I couldn't let the Alliance have all the fun today!
Milder example: the Saloon structure in Age of Empires III. While the Saloon offers the players good units, The Wild West-style harpsichord music can be somewhat distracting.
- The campaign mode, probably due to the game being more multiplayer oriented, didn't exactly splurge on the voice acting or script, resulting in some rather horrendous dialogue:
Sahin: Why do you continue to fight, Frenk? Can you not see that your struggle is pointless?
Morgan Black: Why do ye call me Frank? Ah'm Scoatisch, y' Turkish doag!
Sahin: Bah! All you Europeans are French to me!
- Just as half-defense of the exchange, and half-historical tidbit, Muslims, historically, commonly referred to Europeans as 'the Franks', even if they should have known better about their antagonist's nationality.
- Same with the Chinese—it's where Star Trek got the name for the Ferengi.
The only way to maintain willing suspension of disbelief during Trauma Center is to assume it's an over-the-top pastiche through design. A terrifically hilarious moment for this troper was when Dr. Stiles was wandering around in the city in misery after being negligent towards a patient. When it begins to rain, he doesn't mind - 'maybe it will calm me down!'
- And you get a Narm whenever you lose - a hopelessly melodramatic rendering of how Dr. Stiles mysteriously disappeared, unable to handle his guilt over losing a patient.
  - This troper and his friend was laughing our asses off when we failed to operate on a dog in New Blood, and our two doctors pulled that.
- "DAMMIT! DON'T. YOU! DIE ON MEEEE!". Or "Let's BEGIN THE OPERATION!"
- This troper found The scene where you have to defuse a bomb Hilariously silly, and laughed every moment it mentioned a "patient".
- "I DISAGREE."
- "I'M A DOCTOR!"
The ending cinematic in Diablo, depending on which class you played as. When the player character drives Diablo's Soulstone into his/her forehead, the look of pain on the Warrior and Sorcerer's faces is authentic. The Rogue, by contrast, ends up looking like Barbra Streisand.
In Ace Combat 5 the death of Chopper, aka Captain Davenport might have been more heartrending if the cries of anguish from the squadmates didn't sound so orgasmic/like they were constipated. This troper, despite herself, found herself laughing during that otherwise heartbreaking scene from the voice-acting.
- In reality, people suffering great emotional pain don't necessarily sound effectively dramatic. Even if that's a sufficient handwave, though, nothing justifies the terrible voice-acting or writing from the AWACS.
- It's even more Narmy if you're familiar with Hot Shots, since the constant calling out of parts of the plane breaking down gets too close to Topper's final landing ['I've lost a wing...Oh, there goes the other one']. The dying character's name not helping matters in the slightest.
  - This Troper found the scene hard to watch, actually. More so because of Chopper's last words. From a character that seemed to be heading towards comic relief for so long, to suddenly state that his plane is falling apart with a voice so deadpan that it can't help but reflect his fatalism about the situation...it can be tough.
- Also as narmy was the fact that the AWACS in 5 ("Thunderhead") and 6 ("Ghost Eye") could be found panicking and basically having a coronary as soon as Lt. Col. Ford (during the B-2 bomber attack on Sand Island Air Base) in 5 and Garuda 2, Frank "Shamrock" Lumpert (when scouting Chandelier) in 6 were shot down. In contrast, Sky Eye and Eagle Eye weren't exactly just renamed, but they were completely professional, stayed on top of things, and had the human touch.
Ace Combat 6's "Go dance with the angels"? That's supposed to be an insult (Emmerian POWs interrogated by Viktor Voychek throw this at him). It's worse than merely neutered.
- Interestingly, it IS an insult to that particular character, since he was grounded from flying by an injury. That doesn't make it any less narmy.
  - Problem is that it's used repeatedly by the Emmerians in other contexts, so instead of being a one-time zinger it seems to be the national slogan of Emmeria, and even the Estovakian ace Ilya Pasternak sinks to that level at one point.
  - This troper finds it appropriate. Especially when watching replays of his plane swirling and weaving through the sky. Your Mileage May Vary.
- "MATILDAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" If memory serves, all the extra As are even in the subtitles.
- During the opening Melissa see the wrecks of both her duaghter's school bus and her husband's plane is done, on the same road and done in such a dual tone
  - Unskippable had a field day with both parts.
The opening scene for Halo 2 has an Elite Commander being publicly humiliated and tortured by Brutes for his failure to protect the original Halo from "the demon", Master Chief. This would be an incredibly dramatic scene, if only two things had been cut - 1)the Elite Commander's rather pathetic roar of pain at being branded; and 2)the Grunts in their thousands lining the walls of the corridor the Elite Commander's being marched down, screaming "Heretic!" in their hilarious high-pitched voices.
- On the Oracle mission:
  Grunt 1: "Me have bad feeling about this".
  Grunt 2: "You always have bad feeling. You have bad feeling about morning food nipple!"
  Elite: "Close your jaws, or I shall bind them shut".
- Narmy Elite speech: "Don't be afraid, I have a banana for you!" "Cheeky monkey!" "That was deeeeeply satisfying!"
- While the Brutes are carrying the soon-to-be Arbiter to the Mausoleum:
  Brute 1: "Why not throw him in with this lot? They could use the meat".
  Brute 2: "What about us? My belly aches, and his flesh is seared just the way I like it".
  Tartarus: "Quiet! You two whimper like grunts fresh of the teat"(another food nipple reference?).
Most people prefer not to mention the CD-i Mario and Zelda games. If you're not laughing about the bad voice-acting and worse animation, you're wondering what the writers were on when they wrote the script. "I'm so hungry, I could eat an Octorok!"
- "You DARE bring LIGHT to my LAIR? You must DIE!"
  - Dude, she heard you were reading a book in the dark, and thought it would help. Chill!
- Not to mention, "You've killed meeeeeee!" "Good!" So Narmy it forced a Heroic BSOD on the Angry Video Game Nerd.
- "Join me, Link, and I will make your face the grrrrrrrreatest in Koridai... or else you will DIE!"
- "The chains! NOOOOOOOO!!! You haven't seen the last of me!"
- No! Not into the pit. It Burns!
- Mah boi, This peace is what all true warriors strive for.
Half Life: G-Man's deadpan-from-hell delivery breaks down for anyone who has played Microsoft 3D Movie Maker, where the same actor voices McZee, an insane Barney the Dinosaur-esque host.
- The G-Man's speech patterns are also eerily similar to Torgo's from Manos The Hands of Fate. This makes it just a little bit harder to take the G-Man seriously.
Breakdown was an excellent although severely flawed game. A scientist suffers an obviously fatal fall, lands right in front of you, and then gets back up, apparently unscathed. And then she notices that the back of her head has been smashed to a pulp, and she then dies with cartoonishly exaggerated death throes.
As much as this troper hates to admit it (as its one of his favorite games), there's a Narm moment to be had in Dungeon Siege II: Broken World. Up until Part III, whenever you visit Arcanist Laenne to buy or sell reagents (and believe me, if you want to take advantage of those good reagent recipes, you will be visiting her a lot), she almost always starts her conversations with "We have taken in more Humans than we have room for, and they're in bad shape". It's an accurate and descriptive line the first few times you hear it, but after hearing it a few hundred times, you can't help but either groan or say "Yeah, yeah, everything happens to you". Thankfully, though, you can skip past it.
Lufia and the Fortress of Doom on SNES has a ridiculous Narm moment. One of the original heroes has managed to live for over a hundred years and meets the new heroes. He talks about how he's still in good shape and everything before giving the explanation of what happened last time. Then, he randomly has a heart attack and dies after the plot no longer needs him.
- This scene makes much more sense after you find out who Lufia is.
Dead Rising gives us such gems as "I've covered wars, y'know." Well, Frank, so has Geraldo.
- Pretty sure that was supposed to be satirical.
  - Or not- we're talking about the same company that makes Resident Evil. The game was actually full to the brim of Narm - reaching its height when the main character, after having killed the man responsible for the zombie outbreak, says "You know, I thought he was terrorist scum. But... In the end, all he really cared about was his sister." Trapping your sister in a mall full of flesh eating zombies is an odd way to show affection for her.
  - This troper was under the impression that the Big Bad was made of stupid. Certainly brilliant moments, but overall kind of a moron.
  - Or they were both so overtaken by grief at the destruction of their entire village and not to mention family, that they didn't really care if they lived or died only if they made those they saw as responsible pay for their crimes. At least Carlito seemed this way with Hottie Mc Spanish (I can't remember her name) just trying to keep him from murdering too indiscriminately.
  - Her name's Isabela. And she's Mexican. Sidling away now.
- This troper's defining moment of Narm was the insane manager of the supermarket that you have to fight - "THIS IS MY STOOOOOOORRREEEEE!"
  - Having seen that scene, I certainly thought it was more of a Large Ham moment that showed how crazy the manager was. "NOT ON MY WAAAAAATCH!"
- "I'm...a...zombieeeee..." Yah, yah...hurry up already, I've got survivors to save.
- And let's not forget the classic line "We need to retard the zombification process."
- On top of all that, the main character will wear the same clothes in cutscenes as he wears during gameplay. This means that many serious, dramatic moments can be spoiled by having Frank West wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Or a Servbot mask. Or a cocktail dress.
The Typhon boss in Rygar: The Legendary Adventure. While the game does a good job of reviving the classic kind of hero story ("save the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world"), this boss just ruins the mood. It looks like a multi-headed dragon, but the tops of the necks...are a bunch of crying, fire-breathing babies.
In Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War: Soulstorm, Lord Firaveous Carron's reaction to the Blood Ravens' Rhino transports is, well, rather ridiculous. By the way, the "SINDRI!" is actually from the original campaign.
- He also cries like a little girl when you beat him.
- Not to mention Brother-Captain Boreale's hilariously bad accent. "SPESS MAHREENS! WE HAVE FAILED........THE EMPRA!"
- Also worthy of attention are the Eldar's ~~Wailing~~Howling Banshees. Their lines would be Bad Ass if they weren't so hilarious from their squeaky voices.
- Everything the narrator says is over-the-top. Example.
- The Imperial Guard Commander somehow "lost" 100 Baneblades, a Baneblade if you like to know is a massive 30 foot tank with ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL!! most Imperial Guard armies are lucky to have three and that's only when they're near a Forge World.
Shadow Of Destiny has a few. For example, Eike shouting, "You bastard!" at Hugo during Ending E. Doesn't sound bad out of context, but becomes Narmy when you consider that a) up until this point, the only swear used had been 'damn' and that only two or three times, b) the delivery of the line was ridiculously casual given the situation, and c) the script writer had apparently been channeling South Park. Honestly, though, any moment where Eike is required to exibit any emotion besides Dull Surprise qualifies as a Narm.
One particular striking example in Kingdom Hearts is a scene in the second game involving Kairi and Namine escaping from the Nobodies' Lair in The World That Never Was. It would have been a pretty tense scene... if they weren't holding hands with their arms at ninety-degree angles. At a pace that made them look like they were almost skipping. Right down the middle of the hall.
- Speaking of Kingdom Hearts, while use of Totally Radical language is a rich, deep well of Narm in itself, most Tropers agree that this is the worst.
- The reenactions of some movies were pretty ridiculous, too. Especially Pirates of the Caribbean (because of bad animation) and the flashback in The Lion King. Young Simba's model looks lile he's perpetually smiling. Which makes him look awfully stupid. While watching his father's death.
- And of course, there's Goofy's "Death". Not only does it come ridiculously out of left field, not only do we get to hear Donald Duck mourn his fallen comrade but Goofy is revealed to be alive all of five minutes later
- Pickaxe guns. That is all.
  - Aren't they just crossbows?
  - This troper thought it was hilarious when Sora got down on his knees and cried when he finally found Riku.
- Who could forget Donald Duck squawking, "SEFFIROFF!"
  - 358/2 Days ruins a perfectly dramatic scene with this line: "But... But who will I eat ice cream with?" Sure, since he broke up his friendship with Axel a few scenes prior to this, he won't have anywone to eat ice cream with once Xion's gone...but seeing as Xion is DYING, being upset about not having her around to eat ice cream with just sounds ridiculous.
  - It wouldn't be that bad if he had at least completed the sentence with something, but no. He just left at that. The last thing he says to Xion is that.
Intentionally invoked in Portal for black humor: finding a previous test subject's scrawlings of the phrase "The cake is a lie" repeated over and over is both disturbing and hilarious.
The Final Boss of Salamander 2, the arcade-only sequel to Life Force (cousin series to Gradius) greets you with the most intimidating threat a mile-wide three-headed alien could possibly give to a spaceship pilot: "I'm going to scare you like you've never been scared before!"
- Gradius Gaiden, in the fourth level, has a boss consisting of two giant moai heads that taunt you: "You think you can beat me with that?? Loser!" It's the "loser" part that drives it over the top - that's a playground insult!
EA's game version of The Godfather did a fairly good job of conveying the mood of Don Corleone being shot - until the guy sitting next to you as you drive the Don's ambulance tells you the hospital is on Houston Street. And he pronounces it "HOUSE-ton". If you're not aware that this is the actual pronounciation of New York's Houston Street, it qualifies.
- A better example from The Godfather (and from the same part of the game) might be Fredo leaning out the window of the ambulance firing a Tommy gun at pursuing mobsters like some kind of badass hero, whereas in the movie he is universally portrayed as incompetent, whiny and cowardly.
- Another good example is where you kill the guy your character has been wanting to kill from the intro, which is actually a rather nicely done moment where you get to murder them yourself. Except it happens to occur in the middle of a mission where you're likely to have a bunch of heat on you, and instead of the satisfying kill you're (probably) supposed to have, you kill him in a few seconds and run like hell. (This troper hasn't seen the godfather movies, and doesn't know if this is a horrible interpretation of some other event or not)
The opening cutscene of Halo 3's second level, Crow's Nest. Miranda's last line is probably meant to sound badass, especially when combined with stirring music and a Dramatic Gun Cock, but it just sounds corny and kinda stupid.
- "To war!" Umm...where's that again?
  - The giant hole in the ground surrounded by the Prophet of Truth's entire fleet that they'd been in the middle of discussing plans for hitting? Everybody already knew where they were supposed to be heading, Miranda was just giving a sarcastic answer to a dumb question asked by someone who hadn't been paying any attention.
  - It's still an awful line. Makes me cringe every single time.
Johnson's death in the same game was met with the Tucker/Church death conversation in an impromptue MS Ting of awesome during my first playthrough with friends. Didn't help that after the second game I'd slotted him neatly into the Scrappy corner, but he 'died' like, four times before that? Not counting all the times he got 'knocked out' during gameplay.
When The Black Knight/Zelguis dies in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, he mutters "...phiran, I will wait for you in the afterlife.." although this is intended as a dying man missing a syllable in his last breath, this becomes slightly narmy if one knows that a "phiran" is a type of cloak.
- And then of course, there's the line "Now one of those two is truly...alone..." Danananananana! You got Alondite!
- While we're still on that subject, here's three words: Ike's memory scene. The voice acting just COMPLETELY ruined the dramatic moment. For starters, Ike should sound like a kid, not a poor man's reenaction of Marty McFly.
  - Nearly every cutscene in Radiant Dawn had absolutely horrendous voice acting. It's a toss up as to whether the memory scenes involving Zelguis and Sephiran or the wooden dialogue between Ranulf and Skrimir are more painful to listen to.
  - And an honorable mention for Tibarn.
    "To WING, brothers! Keep UP with me if you CAN!!!"
- For an otherwise touching and wonderful friendship/shippingmoment, Soren's crying at the end of his and Ike's hidden conversation hit this HARD. It's incredibly hard not to laugh at the thought of Soren of all people sobbing "Uwaaaah...GWAAAAH!". It's even better if you try to make the crying sounds out loud. People do not cry like that.
From the Captain America and the Avengers arcade Beat Em Up: Cap and his crew are prepared to fight the first boss, Whirlwind, saying they've got him cornered. Whirlwind's retort? "You will be the one escaping!" This is supposed to sound threatening, but thanks to the cheesy voice acting (it was the early '90s, you know), it sounds utterly hilarious, especially given that it sounds like both Cap and Whirlwind were voiced by the same guy.
- Plus, telling your enemy that they're going to escape isn't exactly very threatening, being akin to yelling "I won't deal you serious injury!"
- "I CAN'T MOVE!"
- On a side note, the designers of the game must have been under the impression that the Vision was a flat-chested woman or the world's most flamboyantly homosexual male robot. His default poses and moves have him with his knees turned inwards and his hands being held limply out to the side or covering his "breasts". Very, very strange.
Oh, c'mon. Baten Kaitos, anyone? The scene where Kalas pulls a Face Heel Turn cracks this troper up every time, despite the fact that it's supposed to be a rather dramatic moment.
- Would the laughing point be when he said "LOOK AT MY BEAUTIFUL WINGS!"
  - This troper misinterpreted the drama as a result. Instead of "no! How could that be? You're a traitor?!", the drama wound up being "Oh my god, he's snapped".
- There's also the ending to the giant Sidequest to gather all the missing family members before Quzman dies. When you gather all 32 family members, the elderly man gently ascends to Heaven with several fairies helping him up. What makes the scene unintentionally funny is the text box that pops up after the scene. "Quzman died peacefully" suddenly pops up while the cheerful level-up jingle plays. Kind of spoils the moment.
  - Don't forget the last signature. Same textbox, same level-up jingle, only the message reads Quzman's brother passed away, but you finished the Family Tree!
- Pretty much any word out of Lyude's mouth has a habit of becoming hilarious. This troper loves watching the opening to the game just to hear him say "It's UNTHINKABLE! To ACT against the EMPIRE?!"
- One problem the game faces is that the Guardian Spirit's name and gender can be chosen at the beginning of the game, which means that his/her name can't be said during voice acting sequences. However, instead of substituting another word (e.g. "your spirit"), the voices leave a gap in the dialogue, which is incredibly jarring. The second game fixes this somewhat by making the spirit's gender male, but direct addresses to his name are left empty.
- And of course, Origins has Milly's "No! No, no, no, No! Father you are so wrong!"
Star Fox Adventures is one long Narm, thanks in part to the corny voice acting and the fact that it takes the Rule Of Cool way, way too far. This troper still enjoys it, though.
- Perhaps the narmiest moment is the fading breaths of a Earth Walker soldier, delivered in "Dinosaur Language." It has to be seen to be believed.
- This troper finds the cutscene that always plays when Fox gets an item in Adventures to be pretty Narmy, and can't help but laugh each time she sees it. It's probably due to the fact that Fox's face literally runs through the expression spectrum, starting out with a bizarre combination of mild annoyance/mild anger, and ending up with a look of total joy, akin to someone who's just found the holy grail, cure for cancer, and eternal youth, all at the same time.
  - Krystal's (it only plays twice when you play as her) isn't quite as funny, but seeing her go from an incredibly bored looking expression to one that looks like she just won a carnival game is still fairly narmy.
- At one point in the game, you cross a lava pit with moving platforms and flame jets. Once you get to a certain point beyond it, Tricky, who has heretofore been able to teleport, and who can be set on fire without noticing, all of a sudden has a cutscene where he cowers, and will not cross until you stop the platforms from moving (inexplicably shutting off the jets, too). This cutscene is extra bad if you do it before reaching that point, since that causes him to cower at pretty much nothing (compared to what he's been through to that point) and cross right afterward anyway.
- This troper loves the Star Fox games, but they bring narm by the barrelfull. First there's the inconsistent English voices, where Leon for example will go from a British accent in 64 to a slimy psycho voice in Assualt. Slippy and Peppy's voices vary from game to game a lot too, but General Pepper takes the cake for his ridiculously over-the-top voice in Adventures.Then there's lines like "I'm on my WAY." and Andross' "Only I have the brains to rule Lylat" (SF 64) and Andrew's "Think you're tough eh? In that case, it's SECRET WEAPON TIME." (SF Assualt)
General Kehck's final speech in Beyond Good And Evil. "May the angels of darkness rise to glory!" It's not quite "With LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!", but it's still absurdly over-the-top.
- I attributed that to the dying rantings of a Large Ham, and pretended his last words were something more dignified.
Wii Fit has a Narm moment. Yes, a Narm in a fitness game. The step-aerobics portions, actually. Don't get me wrong, they're fun and all, but someone thought it would be a good idea to put it on a stage. In front of a packed audience. And, uh...yeah.
Quite a lot of Konami's Silent Scope series. Prime example here, starting halfway through...
- If you don't feel like or can't watch the video (and I can't, so I don't know if this line is there) then here's an example: Silent Scope 2 pairs you up with a 'buddy' sniper. A little way into that game, the two of you have to make an assault on a facility. Your buddy turns to you and, in the most hilariously serious voice, says "Time to play 'Metal Gear' for real!"
Max Payne often made dramatic moments hilarious through the main character's over-the-top noir voiceovers. Max Payne 2 introduces "Dick Justice," a TV show that appears throughout the game mocking those same voiceovers. Max Payne 2 still has them for real, however, so the game is parodying this trope and playing it straight at the same time.
Likewise, even the most horrifying of cutscenes in Silent Hill 3 (hmm, where did I put that fetus?) can be made into Narm by suiting Heather up in the Princess Heart costume.
- Don't forget Silent Hill Origins, where Travis can run around in a freaking dog suit.
In Homeworld2 fleet intelligence, who has up to this point had a deadpan delivery panics and delivers a completely out of character (and unconvincing), "Scans of the hull indicate it is immune to conventional weaponry! BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR! BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR! BRING SAJUUK TO BEAR!.
.hack//GU makes a big deal about PKing up to the point where it becomes a crime equivalent to murder. Sure, there's the bit about some players who actually get sucked within the game itself, but considering that you just respawn upon death, it just makes the entire issue Serious Business. Especially when one player uses the If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him arguement.
- Don't forget the classic: "IT'S HASEO!! THE PKK!!!!!". So much horror, so much terror for... an online game.
Mega Man 8 had this because of the voice acting.
"Bass! Why must I fight you! We are not! Enemies!
- To make things worse, he actually pronounced Bass' name BASS. Like the fish.
- Don't forget the Elmer Fudd meets JFK voice they assigned to Doctor Light.
  - Here's a let's play so you can hear it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT8abQNQafY
- The dubbing was so bad that at one point, there was a rumor about Capcom using the Japanese VA's because they were too cheap to use English ones.
Although he does do a good job in some places, at times Yuri's voice actor in Shadow Hearts: Covenant turns the game into a total comedy, like when Yuri loses his powers, his delivery of "What the hell is this?" kind of wrecks the mood. The first scene in the graveyard is also a big offender, particularly since "That's me growing there!" reminds me of Dick Solomon.
- In fairness, Covenant isn't the most serious game to begin with. Though the voice acting in the original Shadow Hearts was utterly terrible. You try listening to Generic Old Woman narrating the story of the sea demon ("A looooooong, looooooooong time ago....") without laughing.
  - Not to mention she takes about twenty minutes to narrate the monster walking towards the front door, obviously under the impression that it's creepy rather than gut bustingly hillarious. When she finally reaches the end and it turns out to be a terrific anticlimax you want to strangle the old bat.
- And then there's THE MISTLETOOOOOOOOE!. Just, the mistletoe.
- And Karen declaring her feelings for Yuri... it's probably the over-the-topness of the delivery ("YES! I LOVE HIM! MORE THAN ANYTHING!"), but also the fact that she knows him for... what, a month?
Command And Conquer has a grand moment of this at the end of the Nod campaign for Tiberian Sun. As Commander Mc Neal watches, having been beaten senseless and tortured before the scene, a nuke that Nod fired in the last mission hits the GDI space station. I'm pretty sure the actor was screaming a Big No, but it ended up sounding like the kind of yell that insensitive people would attribute to a deaf person. Then again, this is Command And Conquer, and the amount of ham in this game alone almost matched the first Red Alert game.
- And then, Red Alert 3 came...
  - BY MY OWN FORCES!!!
We're this far into the article, and no mention of Deus Ex yet? While it's a great game, the accented voices are usually delivered poorly, and J.C. Denton's lack of emotion in his voice leads to some rather awkward dialog exchanges at times...
- Because J.C.'s lack of emotion makes many of his lines arguably cooler. "A bomb's a bad choice for close-range combat.", that and the voice acting wasn't So Bad Its Good, just bad.
- "Oh my god, JC, A bomb!" "A bomb!". Grade-A narm!
In the PC game version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the cutscene where Malfoy is attacked by Buckbeak. Buckbeak knocks Malfoy to the ground and he shouts "I'm dying! I'm dying, look at me! It's killed me!" Hagrid matter-of-factly says "yer not dyin'" and then Malfoy gets up and walks off, obviously totally uninjured. He is supposed to be faking his injury, but that scene makes it look like he's completing dropping the facade at the drop of a hat and that's what makes it perfectly hilarious. (Obviously, the game's makers just didn't feel like animating Hagrid carrying Malfoy.)
James Bond 007: Nightfire plays a dramatic sting of music when you find a secret in the stage. While that's fine in itself one stage has a secret in the janitor's closet. The end result is what do you mean failure isn't awesome?
- In one level the player is repeatedly told to use the sniper rifle and provide cover for a friend. This sounds normal, but should you notice that the basic Walther PPK, with attached silencer, placing the top half of an enemies head in the bottom half of the crosshair, will kill anything(barring the typical creepy henchmen in a Bond story) at any range. Its so ridiculous that using any other weapon is just stupid. This particular level has many of these situations, all made hilarious by being yelled at to use the sniper rifle when your picking enemies off at the maximum draw distance with a bloody silenced PPK.
Army Of Two. This troper is convinced that the game is a Stealth Parody of over the top action games and the America Saves The Day mentality. Once your mask-clad mercenaries encounter the terrorist with the gold-plated AK-47, everything goes straight past the Rule Of Cool and into pure unintentional hilarity.
- Especially when that terrorist gets ready to fight. "This, is how we say hello, in AFRICA!"
- Saddam and his entourage had a ton of gold plated weaponry. It's not especially unrealistic.
This contributor found the scene from Assassins Creed where the Mad Scientist informs you that the Animus experients are 'serious business' to be incredibly narmy and outright hilarious.
In The World Ends With You, the drama of the flashback of Rhyme and Beat dying is spoiled when you realize how stupid Beat was being. He basically tried to protect Rhyme with a Diving Save... from a car.
- Yeah, but it was a Diving Push Save. He was just too late, and they both got hit.
  - He actually "jumped in front of her," but he, as he put it, "ain't strong enough to stop a car, yo." To this troper, it fit Beat's personality; he's caring but rarely thinks about the consequences of his actions.
- Let's not forget the utterly absurd Bonus Boss, Hanekoma's noise form. It's a palette swap of Pi-Face's noise form on the bottom screen and Iron-Maiden's noise form on the top screen and he bellows out lines like "ENJOY THE MOMEEEENT!" and "OPEN UP YOUR WOOORLD!" as he kicks you in the face. "What the Christ?" doesn't come close to describing it.
  - The really disturbing/hilarious part? Iron Maiden/Konishi's Noise form is a sexy cat girl. With boobs. Hanekoma is male, yet his Noise is identical aside from the color. Yeah.
  - Actually, that one makes perfect sense if you look at it through What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic tinted lenses.
  - Also, Hanekoma taught Sho Minamimoto how to summon Taboo noise. As his Taboo form Leo Cantus is identical to Panthera Cantus' red lion-y half, Sho could've just copied it from him.
The ending of Eternal Sonata. Proof that Author Filibuster, Mind Screw, Romantic Plot Tumor and Exposition Break should never, ever, oh-dear-sweet-merciful-butterscotch-pudding-from-Neptune ever mix, even if the setting is a Dying Dream. The ending theme's surprisingly good though. Claves's ridiculously long Final Speech is also pretty cheesy.
- Didn't help that the time she spent hanging around was used to prove how useless she was in combat. I just wanted her to die already.
It's nothing anyone particularly said or anything, but the sequence following a genuine Tear Jerker moment in Lost Odyssey - the death of Kaim's daughter, moments after their reunion - is one that screamed Narm at this troper. Specifically, the priest conducting the funeral...sends you on two fetch quests, one to gather flowers that she liked, one to gather torches for the ceremony, and turned the funeral itself into a rhythm minigame. This was likely to show off how such ceremonies were performed in this fantasy world, but...that could've been accomplished in another Tear Jerker Cut Scene instead of having the player press the controller's shiny colored buttons in time to light the other mourners' torches. What the eff, Japan.
- This troper found the cutscene itself narmful, what with every character in the room shouting "FATHER?!" one after another. And then Lirium says to her children, "this man... is my father..." WE'VE ESTABLISHED THAT. "(something to the effect of)... that makes him...your grandfather..." THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS.
- This troper's biggest Narm came from a brief flashback to the overly stoic protagonist having his hair brushed by his wife. The combination of the fancy clothes and alleged sense of nostalgia with the hero's typical "I don't care" expression struck me as hilarious.
Luigi's ending in Super Mario Galaxy. As if Mario shouting "WELCOME! WELCOME TO THE NEEEEEEEW GALAXY!" wasn't already narmy enough, Luigi's timid voice makes it sound, as if someone with a gun was threatening to shoot him from behind, if he doesn't say it. This troper and her sister laughed 24hour non-stop, because of this line.
- This troper personally thought it was awesome, but to each their own.
- "I'm going to stomp you to space bits!"
- Similarly, this troper always gets a good laugh from Luigi's "Yay for me, LUIGI!" from New Super Mario Bros.
There's an online RPG being heavily promoted on banner ads here and elsewhere entitled Asda Story. The name itself is a Narm for anyone based in the UK, where Asda is a supermarket. This troper eagerly awaits the sequel, The Chronicles of Tesco.
- Excel Saga sounds similarly mundane to anyone not familiar with more than the title.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl didn't include an option to switch between English and Japanese languages, so when the English version was leaked and someone posted videos running through the sound test of the characters' voice samples, the general outcry was that of anger and dissatisfaction with the seemingly-inferior English voices (although most of these people had been religiously watching videos of the Japanese version and thus had simply gotten used to the Japanese voices). The worst in many people's eyes - even beyond Meta Knight apparently being the offspring of Vader and Zorro, Falco being from Brooklyn and Wolf from Texas, and Sonic's 4Kids voice actor - was probably Ike and his wonderfully-monotone "I fight for my friends." Sadly, although context helped many of the other voice samples sound decent, Ike was not so lucky.
- He'll get no sympathy from me.
- "C'MON! BRUE FARCON!"
This is actually constantly subverted in the Mega Man Legends series. You'd expect these games to have narm all over the place in its English voice acting, but the game is so cartoony without going off the deep end that it works. This is especially true when Data saves the day by singlehandedly stopping the annihilation of Kattelox through voice-command. That means a bunch of bureaucratic talk with lots of complicated words coming from a high-pitched cutesy voice without changing expression, and still waving his nub-like arms the entire time. Some people probably laughed 'till their sides hurt, but this troper was just as stunned as Mega Man.
The song "GOLD RUSH" from beatmania IIDX 14 GOLD: "2 DX GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLD! Make it! Make money!" And don't get me started on the rest of the lyrics, which are no less fucked up than the fan lyrics.
Whenever Lenneth Valkyrie shouts out (especially in a distraught mood), the portrait of her facial expression looks more like she's singing the opera. Probably because the game reminds a lot of people of Richard Wagner's magnum opus.
In the ending cutscene of System Shock 2 after SHODAN offers a chance to join her so that We Can Rule Together, many fans consider the hero's reply of, "Naah," to be one of the cheesiest lines in the game. Of course, it doesn't help that the endgame was rushed in development.
- Really? This troper considers it the hero's Crowning Moment of Awesome. Consider that throughout the game, he's been acting as the pawn for someone else—either Polito, SHODAN, or Delacroix (in a sense)—and executing his orders without question or complaint. "Naah" is his final act—of rebellion against SHODAN.
In Ultima IX: Ascension, the Avatar asks a lot of really really stupid questions. But the worst of all has got to be when he's in Trinsic and asks, "What's a Paladin?" You'd think that after Paladins having existed since Ultima IV, he'd know better. He'll ask this even if you chose the Paladin class at the beginning of the game! An audio clip of the Paladin quote, as well as additional narmy quotes from the game, can be found on this site.
- There's another one towards the beginning of the game. After finding out the Britain has been moving all the poor people to the poisonous swamp of Pew, the Avatar, living embodiment of the eight virtues and perfectly aware of all of their tenets, can only come up with the following argument: "But...Britain is the city of compassion!" Even worse, when the mayor replies that the plan is compassionate with some severely twisted logic, the Avatar is completely stumped. Durr.....
The use of the term "Ending your/my game" in Super Paper Mario is a bit silly during one of the more dramatic parts of game ( when Count Bleck had lost the will to live and asks you to finish him off). Of course, Never Say Die isn't always in effect in the game (particularly Wracktail's line, "I shall punish you...with death!").
In Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green you can encounter a trainer swimming in the water who screams at you to leave her alone. After you defeat her, she admits that a water Pokémon ripped her bathing costume off and she's embarrassed. However when she appears on the battle screen, she is of course, fully dressed.
- "I like shorts. They're comfy and easy to wear."
- "I'm a cool guy! I've got a girlfriend!"
- Even worse is Palkia's appearance in Pearl version. You wouldn't believe how unimpressive a cosmic dragon can be that a) is pink and b) gargles at you.
When the Elite Beat Agents are turned into stone right before the Jumping Jack Flash stage, the mood is ruined because of how fake everybody's crying sounds. "Ah, unHAAAAAAAAAAAAW. My candy."
- To be fair, Elite Beat Agents is pretty much pure Narm if you go in expecting anything remotely resembling seriousness. By the time the above scene happens, you'll probably be just too used to the game to even blink.
The Bouncer had moments all over the place. From the "No Cactaurs!" jacket Volt is wearing (yes, meant to be a Final Fantasy joke of a different stripe, but too easily mocked in other ways) to the classic "Koh Leifoh... super spy!" sequence, it's really hard to take the game seriously at all (this probably explains the final boss fight abandoning all pretense of plot).
In Splatterhouse 3, you have to save your wife and child, and if you fail to save 1 or more of them, you get a different BAD END depending on who you failed to save (going completely psycho if you failed to save both of them). The ending where Dave dies begins with some depressing music and narrative, but the mood is quickly foiled when you get some of the greatest words in video game history. DAVID IS ONLY MEMORY
The first Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Anything involving Team Meanies. The name should tell you exactly what to expect.
- They shoulda told me about them before I registered my team. "We're Team Evil! We're taking you in!"
When you get to the final-ish stage of the X-Men arcade game, Magneto rewards you with "X-MEN! WELCOME...TO DIE!"
- Not to mention the Blob boss fight in that game. "NOTHING moves the Blob!" Overly amusing as you can respond to this with a special attack and knock him on his butt. This doesn't stop the voice at all.
  - YTMND made an in-site fad out of the Blob's line in their early days, just to say.
- I KILL YOU, X-CHICKEN. HA HA HA HA.
Jax's ending in Mortal Kombat 4. Jarek's "OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOD!" (twice) and "This is not a brutality, this is a FATALITY!" pratically made the Narm alone.
- Actually it sounds more like "OH MY GÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜD!".
- No mention of Jarek's oddly muffled 'laugh'?
- "THE BLACK DRAGON LIVE ON!!" (Dun Dunnnnn)
- Just Jax's ending? Goodness, they're all like that! Literally all of them. Go look.
Gears of War 2: "A giant worm! They're sinking cities with a giant worm!"
- This Troper removed the Narm by mentally adding the following line which fit very well and may have been implied: "Seriously, WHAT THE HELL?"
  - Watching that scene with several trope-savvy friends was especially entertaining. "They're sinking cities with a giant narm!"
  - This Troper naturally responded with a yell of "SHAI-HULUD? WHERE!?"
- Let’s not forget this little exchange:
Ben Carmine: I hear there’s a shitload of grubs there, sir.
Marcus Fenix: More like TEN shitloads!
- Dom killing Maria because she's no longer hot.
  - YOU STUPID SOULESS BASTARD.
  - This troper found that particular scene to be oddly non-Narmy, actually. This almost constituted a Narm in and of itself; the entire game is composed of Narm and yet Carlos Ferro's delivery in this scene borders on the poignant. However: "DAMN STRAIGHT! I'M GONNA KILL EVERY ONE OF THESE BASTARDS!"
The PSX RPG Legend Of Dragoon was plagued with a progressively awful translation. What was supposed to be a touching scene of reunion and forgiveness between Haschel and his former student Gehrich as the latter dies was ruined by someone yelling out "SHUT UP! TALKING MAKES YOU DIE!" right in the middle of it.
- This Troper remembers more the extremely bad voice acting during cut scenes. Dart's VA was particularly bad. "BLACK...MONSTER!". Don't get me started on some of the Additions...
- "DIE! MORE AND MORE!" Uh, sure, Rose... whatever you say. Rose's VA was just full of Narm. "OH IT CANNOT BE!"
So much of the dialogue and the voice acting in the Silent Hill. However, many fans find a certain charm in the narm. "Huh, radio. What's going on with that radio?"
- "From now on, if anyone makes fun of me, I'LL KILL THEM. Just like that..." "Eddie, have you gone nuts?"
- "I'm kind of lost." (incredibly long pause) "...Lost?"
- "MY DAUGHTER WILL BE THE MOTHER OF GOD!" Actually, every single one of Dahlia's lines.
  - And every single one of Claudia's lines, not helped at all by the glorious Fake Brit accent. The maker of a Lets Play of the game was so amused by it that every subsequent instance of the word "God" was instead spelled as "Gawd", even in direct transcripts from the game.
- The fourth game has Henry's epic-level Dull Surprise reaction to everything from people being brutally murdered in front of him to discovering the corpse of the murderer in his apartment.
- On a more Your Mileage May Vary note, the second game has Pyramid Head's raping of the town's monsters, which, while terrifying, is so insanely out of place that one can't help but laugh, especially the second time when the monster being raped is moaning in pleasure (apparently even abominations wrapped in their own skin like it).
Edd-DEE! (About 0:54.)
In Dynasty Warriors 3, a death cutscene that is supposed to be dramatic (Guan Yu at Fan Castle) becomes this instead because the voice actor left out the word "with" leading to: "In death, my soul will be my brethren. Farewell!"
- A dike? Oh no!
- Given that the entire Dynasty Warriors series is set in a World Of Ham, it's an ENDLESS source of Narm. I mean how do you choose between Ma Chao's gut-wrenching demands for "JJJJUUSSSTICCCEEE!", Zhang Jiao's urging the Yellow Turbans to "GooooOOOOOOOOooooo!!!" while his voice cracks like he just hit puberty, Cao Ren's grandfatherly monotone regardless of how much carnage is happening around him, Gan Ning's vaguely Jersey accent in some installments.... actually, it's probably just easier to list all the dialogue in this series that isn't Narmy.
Time Hollow has Ethan's ridiculous yelling whenever he confirms a flashback. This is a bit of Narm Charm, though, as the over-the-top nature just seems to fit somehow.
- It's also worth noting the relatively positive tone of the things he yells, even when he confirms a flashback of a friend's dead body.
- Let's not forget Irving's line, "Now it's time for Revenge Part Deux —- Revenge: The Return!" while assuming the identity of Jack Twombly.
Disgaea 2 had one cutscene where the entire party was surrounded by monsters, and death seemed certain. This would be a very dramatic scene if Yukimaru's Verbal Tic didn't make the whole thing sound unintentionally silly. "Oh, how cruel is fate, zam?"
Virtua Fighter has always tried to take itself seriously, but the new customizable costumes in VF 4 and 5 kind of prevent that. It's hard to take a cold-blooded assassin seriously when he's wearing a speedo in a damn blizzard.
- Not to mention the new pre-fight warm up scenes in VF 5 R. Because nothing says "getting hyped for a fight" like running against a pink background with throbbing hearts, dancing around and clicking your heels, or posing like the cover of a damn playgirl magazine.
Franco Bash's entire existance in the Fatal Fury series is pure narm, and ham. Imagine a 7-foot tall raging alcoholic boxer screaming lines like "Now I'm cookin'! Once I get goin, I'm just a DYNAMOOOOOOO!", or stomping a guy in the face while bellowing "NOOOOOOO!" for no explained reason.
The Matrix: Path of Neo is a rich mine of narm, from the bad voice acting, horrifically glitchy physics, and the ending. Jesus Christ, the ending. If you don't know, the ending is the Wachowski brothers (or rather their 2D sprites) stop the game and appear on a blank white screen, tell you (yes, you) that the regular ending wasn't cool enough for a video game, so instead all of the agent Smiths form together into a gigantic metal Smith. So Yeah.
Albedo from Xenosaga creates many instances of Narm. One notable instance being his over-the-top "AHHHH, YEEEESSS.. FEED ME YOUR HOSTILITY, PIERCE ME WITH YOUR HATRED!"
In the bloodless version of No More Heroes released in Japan and Europe, Holly Summers's death is made a whoooole lot less emotional. When she holds the activated grenade in her mouth, the resulting explosion still kills her, but instead of a bloody half-corpse you get a full corpse... but with a Looney Tunes-esque sootface. Ruins the moment a bit and makes Travis's angst less effective. (Luckily, this troper lives in America and played the uncensored version, gore and all~)
In the Heroes of Might and Magic V expansion, Hammers of Fate, the second campaign ends with a climactic battle against Laszlo, a corrupt knight who is responsible for the slaughter of thousands of rebels and dwarves. While two of your heroes battle him, another hero, Freyda, is trying to rescue her father from the prison that Laszlo and the queen (really a demoness in disguise) put him into. As he dies in her arms, the god Elrath speaks directly to Freyda, giving her the power to reach out and strike down Laszlo in justice-slash-revenge. So in this dramatic moment, you'd expect a girl who just lost her father to give a raw throated scream of fury. But there must have been a voice-acting screw up, because the line is delivered like she's having an orgasm. It utterly ruined the drama of the entire scene for this troper, especially when the other characters commented on how she sounded like a banshee.
Maybe it's unsporting to beat up on Daikatana, but it's difficult to believe that Superfly's voice acting (his in particular, and especially when Hiro dies) wasn't intentionally bad.
The German in the Multiplayer of Call of Duty: World at War is narm-tastic.
- "Our hounds vill tear zim to SHREDS!"
Wild ARMs 5: "It's your ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRM!"
- "METEOOOOOORRRRR DRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVVVEEEE!" Yuri Lowenthal, I love you and all, but that was seriously painful.
- Also, anytime anyone makes a grunting or shout of pain in Wild Arms 2. Due to the game's Blind Idiot Translation, these were often rendered as "Oooouuu. Graaaaa. Owwwww." Periods included.
Thanks to SNK's trademark "Dodgy English", The King Of Fighters has had a veritable effton of Narmy moments. For example:
- The tension when Rugal regards the Fatal Fury team in 94 is screwed by him referring to their enemies as "Geese and Klauser". Rouge Angles Of Satin applies here, but yeah.
- Most winquotes are hilarious stuff, but this troper would like to nominate Joe Higashi's "ALL OF YOU ARE JUST BIG!". said to the US sports team
- Whenever you beat Rugal in 95 with an edited team, he goes out with an indignant tirade. This tirade is made more comical wth his scream of "I'll be back...YOU JERKS!", making him sound less like an evil Blood Knight and more like a whiny schoolkid who's just had his lollipop stolen by bullies
- The above is compounded with the subsequent spelling error: "Rugal Befeated"
  - Not even dialogue realted but the arranged version of Rugal's 95 theme has some suitably Bad Ass church bell chimes....and then the Bad Ass is wiped out by some guy shouting "UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LOVE!"....So Yeah.
- Then there's 96. Beat Goenitz with anyone else and he dies proclaiming "I am being called away to heaven...". Beat him with the Fatal Fury gang, and when Joe accuses him of running away, Goenitz actually shouts "No, I'm not, I'm dying you idiot!". Ths he goes from calm religious zealot to a guy who acted like he can't believe Joe just said that
- Beat Orochi in 97, and watch as the dramatic tension crumbles as he announces "Continue this way of living and you'll destroy yourselves?"...in the same form of question as the above "Suffer like G did?"
- Then we have 99. Once Krizalid goes down, NESTS decide to kill him by dropping a rock on him. The dramatic tension would have been a real surprise hit...had they not had an image of Krizalid looking less shocked at his death and more smiling like a junkie ho'd just hit up a shot. The face is just HILARIOUS when he pulls it off. Here, check it out and tell me that doesn't look goofy.◊
- Then we come to 2000. "You can't resist me! I'll beat you all like a drum!" as said by Clone Zero. It doesn't help that any dramatic or scary shot of him is ruined by his utterly humourously silly Pringles moustache, hence the name "Commander Pringles"
- Speaking of 2000, during the Art of Fighting team's ending, Takuma saves King from the Zero Cannon. He then reveals that King may be carrying Ryo's baby...while the revelation is shocking enough, the players were more bowled over by Ryo and Robert's faces of surprise, which ended up rendering them as something akin to a horrid Botox disaster◊.
- We cannot forget this one! One of Clone Zero's attacks apparently aims to making him appear Bad Ass by having him blow the opponent away by the mere ondulation of his cloak. Except that he first turns around, and instead looks as if he's... farting. Cue immature lulz from the players.
- Finally, we cut to 2001. Igniz is a hard mofo (Perhaps the Norio Wakamoto voice helps) but if you're looking for some Narm to heal your wounds after constant use of continues on him, then be prepared to giggle as he asks in pain: "Is this the end of lovable Igniz?". Ironic considering the only emotion we had for him was seething hatred...or adoration. So maybe he IS right. He IS lovable.
- Ryo and Takuma- oh, sorry, Mr Karate's endings in SNK vs. Capcom: Chaos probably aren't meant to be taken seriously, given the tone of the usual Kyokugen storylines and how Takuma is using the name "Mr. Karate" again. But when you factor in how every line out of Yuri's mouth contains the words "oodley doodley cool"...
- Nearly everyone in the hilariously screwed up English dub of the Maximum Impact spinoffs, especially Rock Howard, whose pre fight line in one player mode has him saying "I CAN'T CONTAIN MY BLOOD RAGE!" in a seemingly pained voice, only to then say "Look out!" in a surprisingly more calm voice.
Art of Fighting 2 is guilty of having an English translation that is pure narm incarnate. While the Japanese script was somewhat serious, the English translation took no prisoners in becoming near Gag Dub hilarious. Thus came hilarious moments such as:
- —>Ryo: You must be Duck!
- —>Geese: Thats GEESE, fool. Sad pun I know but...the fowl leader of Southtown.
- Not to mention how Jack transforms the Neo Black Cats into a creative dance group.
RUBY DIDN'T MEAN TO DO THAT! RUBY DIDN'T MEAN TO DO THAT AT ALL!
Most characters from Soul Calibur IV. Especially Nightmare and Kilik.
- Another Nightmare example is one of his winning quotes in Soul Calibur II: "Raarrrgghh! GO AWAY!"
  - SC II also gives us Sophitia's Narmtastic win line: "You're in pain. It's painful, isn't it?" (delivered sympathetically, no less)
Definite Your Mileage May Vary, but in Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 there's a scene where a CIA Agent who's worked undercover with some weapon smugglers is caught, and since your character is in constant radio link with him, you hear his frantic pleas while he's trying to convince them he's legit, and then afterwards his immediate screams as he's being tortured, followed by the main character Bishop instructing command to "Turn that shit off". Just the way the entire scene was presented was unintentionally hilarious, especially with how Bishop tone and response seemed to be more "I just don't care" instead of concern.
Ecco II: Tides Of Time for the Sega CD gives us a movie recap of the previous game. It also gives us dolphin lasers.
Star Ocean: The Last Hope gives us what should've been a deeply depressing scene when an alternate dimension's Earth is destroyed with billions dying, triggered accidentally by Edge. However, the voice acting, and Edge's Large Ham actions, make it more hilarious than anything. EVERYTHING EVERYTHING EVERYTHING!
PoPoLoCrois for the PSP. At the end of Book III: Ice Demon, Pietro finally reunites with his mother, which had everything to be a heartwarming scene - cute music, cute design, animation... but... the voice actresses of both Pietro and his mother decided to moan and laugh at the scene. At the same time. While Pietro slowly runs towards his mother to hug her. Instead of heartwarming, the scene became highly awkward.
Lufia II: "You little hoochees!"
One of Bubble Symphony's bad endings: "Year, but will can't go back to our own world!"
Phantasmagoria 2 is packed with Narm, but one of the most ridiculously random moments in the entire game takes place outside the S&M nightclub, where a random trio of "gangsters" walks by line dancing.
- The policewoman's response to seemingly everything Curtis says being "MY ASS!"
In the N64 game Operation Winback, when you killed enemies they would flash on and off before disappearing. In one cutscene the hero encounters a dying civilian who has been shot by the terrorists. After the man, dying in the hero's arms, makes an emotional speech about wishing he could see his family again...he flashes on and off and vanishes.
- It also doesn't help that the heroes are members of a special forces team called SCAT, and one of the villains goes by the name of Gunt.
Okami has horrible Narm in almost all its cutscenes. Whenever people talk, their heads look like bouncy balls being squished.
- And, since the main character can't talk, all his lines are delivered by a tiny glowing fairy, who apparently can't talk without bouncing up and down.
  - The whole thing's a painting. I wasn't aware it was intended to be taken seriously - like a fairy tale. Not silly, not nothing to go angsting over.
  - I get the feeling most of the moments were supposed to be bad. This is a game that involves little painter crawling around the dress of a God, getting a dragon drunk in order to kill it, and generally an incompetent populace.
Arguably, Manah in Drakengard. This only happens once - this editor giggled constantly when Furiae is killed and Inuart is wailing over her corpse, Manah is twirling around... and around...and around... Arguably, this could have been intensely disturbing, however, the fact that she just kept on going ruined it.
Played for laughs in Super Robot Taisen Z with Black Charisma, the incredibly menacing looking masked villain who spends a lot of the game having ominous conversations with other villains. And then the expansion pack came out, and he was finally given a voice... and the voice changer mentioned in the original game is revealed to be a hilarious pitch-shifter, shifting his pitch from chipmunk to little girl and back constantly. The villain squad you control to fight him aren't sure what to make of it.
One of the most dramatic moments in Luminous Arc is ruined by Alph's wail of "Luuuuuciaaaaaaaa!"
- One of Heath's lines is worse. He yells out, "IRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!" Now recall Megaman X4 for an over-the-top line to be even more hysterical.
- And how about when that Angel that ressurrects Zehall (the name slips right now) dies? It's hard to say if you should feel sorry for her or laugh hard, due to lines like "Like, no, Mr. Gooooooddd!!"
Jane's death in Rogue Galaxy. A giant bird swoops down from the sky, threatening to attack an old man. Jane pushes the man out of harm's way, and the bird lands on top of her, smacking her head into the pavement, then suddenly flies away;. This should have been a shocking moment. However, how utterly random and abrupt it was made this troper laugh to tears.
Dragon Age may itself turn out to be quite non-narmy. However, one cannot help but find this trailer incredibely narmariffic.
DOYLE! MY ARM IS TURNING GREEN! The voice acting didn't help matters.
In Knights Of The Old Republic 2: in the penultimate boss fight against everyone's favourite Scottish zombie Sith, Darth Sion, you can attempt to weaken his will in the conversation portions, leading to the following:
Darth Sion: You seek to erode my will. You will not succeed.
[You have eroded Sion's will, reducing his Will saves, Constitution and Wisdom.]
- From that same game, a dramatic flashback revealing some important plot-relevant info is wrecked by the participants' heads nodding back and forth constantly. Take a look.
- It was in the first game and probably in the second game, but during conversation the player character is always doing the 'yes, I see' head nods and bearing a vaguely intent expression. Usually this is fine, but when the NP Cs you're talking to are being insulting or making demands, it looks pretty silly.
Snatcher, excellent as the rest of the acting was, has these in the second half:
Gillian. (after Harry Benson dies) Cunningham! No, Snatcher! I'll get you for this!
Pick a scene in Last Alert for the Turbo-Duo. Seriously. Any scene at all.
GAME OVER YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Though normally well acted and interesting, more than a few of the dialogues in Mass Effect can become spectacularly narmtacular depending on what selections you make and what order you select them. The "dialogue wheel" usually gives you a choice between "nice" and "rude" responses (with a few "neutrals" sprinkled among them) to drive the game's paragon/renegade Karma Meter, but if you aren't perfectly consistent in your dialogue choices over the course of the game you can make Commander Shepard seem positively bipolar, oscillating between a principled and compassionate gentleman soldier and a genocidal jerkass who publicly executes unarmed civilians. The single biggest potential narm moment is probably Shepard's speech once s/he gains control of the Normandy, where you can jump between tolerant nice guy and xenophobic human-supremacist in every other sentence.
- Something like half the lines Ashley gives are narm. "Just because I can drill you from a hundred yards between the eyes, doesn't mean I can appreciate poetry!" And the romance storylines, oh my god...
- "By the goddess, Shepard, that was incredible!"
In both second stages in Darius Twin, you face the Dual Bosses Emperor Fossil and Queen Fossil. Instead of the usual Boss Subtitles, you get this nice big run-on sentance:
"WARNING - HUGE BATTLESHIPS CODE NO. EP30 "EMPEROR FOSSIL" CODE NO. QU10 "QUEEN FOSSIL" IS APPROACHING FAST"
- "A HUGE BATTLESHIP MY HOME DADDY IS APPROACHING FAST"
There's a scene in God of War 2 where Kratos screams "ZEUUUUUUUUUUUS!" in a manner that reminded this troper of Boris Badenov cursing out Bullwinkle.
Super Mario Sunshine had some very narmy voice acting for Bowser. Skip to around 3:46 and listen to it in all its glory...
"How I HAET those goody-goodys!" Massive Crowning Moment Of Funny. In fact, that whole musical sequence at the beginning could be considered Narm.
Many of DJMAX's English-language songs are written in English so horrible that it kills the mood of the songs if you know and listen to them. "A Lie" and "Fallen Angel" make it worse by giving you easy access to the lyrics via their background animations.
All of Robot Alchemic Drive counts, though it's very likely this was entirely intentional on the part of its creators, as its ongoing homage to old school mecha anime.
- Robots kill people! A robot killed grandma!
Old-school dungeon crawl CRPG Stonekeep doesn't have the greatest voice acting - some would say the latter-game performances by the fairy trope are decent, though - but there's no excuse for how silly this ambush sounds.
Even Bio Shock, which is pretty much wall-to-wall awesome, Nightmare Fuel, and Scenery Porn, isn't immune to a few glimmers of Narm. I burst out laughing in the opening level, when your character picks up his first plasmid. To wit: he picks up a random syringe that's been lying there God knows how long, with God knows what inside of it, and decides to jam it into his wrist for giggles. It's not even given a "Would you kindly?" excuse — you just do it! The real Narm comes, though, when you've injected yourself and you're flopping around on the floor like a dying fish; all you hear is Atlas on the radio cheerfully telling you, "don't worry, it's just your genetic code being re-written" (!!) Greaaaat...
- Bioshock had an audio diary where Dr. Suchong tests the Enrage plasmid on some guy, who sounds like a monkey burning his arse on a hotplate or something.
Blaz Blue. GORILLA FAIT IS TOINING. REBEL ONE. Ack-SHUN!.
In Iji the ending scene if Dan is dead, General Tor apologizes for his death by his underlings with "I'm sorry about your partner." to a delusional Iji who is in complete denial about it. The Relative Error made this editor laugh despite the tragedy and connection to Iji at her woobiest .
- It gets even funnier with the Scrambler on.
"Iji: Socks..."
In the arcade Light Gun Game Friction, enemies will sometimes explode into pieces upon being shot by the player. What makes it even more hilarious is the fact that there is no blood, which makes the enemies look like they're made out of crystals. And after a few seconds, their bodies sink into the ground (as opposed to simply vanishing, like in most gun games), as if they were being pulled into the ground by some evil corpse-manipulating magician.
Remember — Chu-Chu died for your sins!
Play through Prince Of Persia: The Sands of Time. Enjoy the Prince's wonderful snarkiness and general sense of humor while appreciating the very well-told story. Now go straight from that to Warrior Within, five minutes into which the Prince shouts, "You BITCH!" I cracked the hell up and could not continue playing for several minutes (while simultaneously lamenting the Character Derailment, but heck, at least it was funny!).
- Kaileena: "I had hoped the Dahaka would kill you. I had hoped that Shahdee would keep you from the Island. I even cursed the sword I gave you, AND YET YOU DID NOT DIE!" Noo, but your voice acting makes me want to.
- And then the good ending, in which the Prince sails away from the island with Kaileena, then proceeds to, from what can be inferred, force himself on her until she gives in and they have sex. She tried to kill him not even an hour ago...it was a bit of a swerve, is all.
In Dead Or Alive 4, both Ryu and Kasumi's pre-battle cutscenes with Alpha-152 are made narmful by how unfairly difficult the battle is, taking multiple tries even for an expert. In Ryu's version, he steps forward to protect Kasumi in a Stay In The Kitchen moment...then proceeds to get totally curbstomped. In Kasumi's version, he stands by noting that This Is Something She Has To Do Herself...then watches her get totally curbstomped. Either way, Ryu's a Jerk Ass.
In the game, TMNT: Turtles in Time, there is a lot of Narm (Minus the Shredder, who actually manages to make "Turtle soup, my favorite!" sound Badass), first level's got Baxter Stockman who says "Terminate the turtles!" in a strange tone, and Metalhead saying "I'm going to mangle you green slimeballs!" with a small monotonous tone, Krang takes the cake, though, he says "Prepare to die!" with a strange voice, in Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, they actually manage to make the Narm funnier, by making the characters voices their 2003 counterparts or someone else, and attempt to make it dramatic, the result is funnier than the original game, or more badass than the original.
Starcraft: Mengsk's line, "Don't be snide, Kerrigan. This was part of the deal, remember? I've earned this" at the end of a Brood War mission always cracks me up, due to the extra grunting emphasis on the word "earned."
- Then there's Fenix, who gets into the act in the previous mission by spouting flowery nonsense like "Ah, to go into battle with my Protoss brethren again! Ah, but time will tell all things" and "I can still, how do you Terrans say it, "throw down with the best of them."]
- This is made worse by Fenix actually being fairly young by Protoss standards.
In Chrono Trigger, there's a completely optional, utterly pointless, blink-and-you'll-miss-it side-quest sort of thing. Marle has had two or three bitter fights with her father, and now wants to make up. If you go to the right town, you have the option of buying some spiced jerky (apparently his favorite) for 9,900 gold. If you then take it to the king, he will look at it, pause a moment, then declare that he has high blood pressure, assume Marle was attempting to harm him, then throw her out of the castle and say he never wants to see her aga... wait, why am I laughing?
Contra III: The Alien Wars features one of the heroes offering the brilliant suggestion of "Let's attack aggressively!". Apparently they already tried to attack the aliens "passively" and "moderately", but neither worked out to well.
Guitar Hero 5 has perhaps the ultimate narminess in the "so wrong, it's hilarious" category: Witness Kurt Cobain's digital ghost rapping with Flava Flav's voice, dancing like a Japanese school girl and covering Bon Jovi songs. YEAAAAAAHHHH BOYYYYYYYY! As well as Johnny Cash singing Rammstein.
Advance Wars Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict has a narmy moment when Will rescues Isabella from the Great Owl. You've just fought a desperate battle in one of the cargo spaces, the plane is dropping out of the sky, Will has just talked sense into Isabella and admitted his love, and then you're treated to a full screen shot of Isabella crying and her face is priceless. I laughed for a good five minutes after that.
Left 4 Dead is practically full of this, though probably on purpose. The way each survivor reacts to another one's death is just so over the top that it's almost Resident Evil styled.
In Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Wolverine has a skill in which he roars and buffs himself up. However, when the roar itself sounds a BIT like a baby's cry, suddenly this troper can't help but laugh.
How have we gone this far without mentioning Haze? Especially this infamous cutscene.
- IT'S JUST AN ANIMAL!!!
''Call Of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth: "The sacrifice is getting awaaaaay!"
Omega Five: "STAGE 1: DA GWEISHAW FOHTRESS," and "DANGER! DANGER!" when the boss alert text on the screen is instead reading "WARNING!".
The Thunder Force V Final Boss warning screen:
"ALERT! The enemy is dead ahead! Area Guard Name: Unknown ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!"
In A Vampyre Story, if you talk to Froderick, it kicks off a flashback to an exposition-rich conversation that Mona and Froderick had sometime before the game begins. If you ask about Draxylvania (the setting for the story), Froderick will describe the place in unflattering terms, then point out that in Draxylvania's favor, they DO have Draxylvanian blood cheese, the best blood cheese in the world. Mona will respond, "I think it's the only blood cheese in the world. Sounds, uh....yummy." The line as written is clearly sarcastic, but the actress delivers it as though she's making a note to try it at her earliest possible convenience.
In RayCrisis, one of the bosses is called Sem-Slut. Aside from the second part of its name being a derogatory for someone who gets around, it's prefixed by "Sem-", which makes it an even less innocent name. Sadly, it was renamed to "Sem-Strut" in the US release.
Syphon Filter 3. "You ready, George? AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!
F Zero X: "Too bad. You lost your machine".
The prisoners in Quake II repeatedly say stuff like "Please stop", "Make it stop", "It hurts", "Kill me now", and make zombie-like groans.

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