Rhymes On A Dime / Video Games

Examples to trample,
Of Rhymes on a Dime,
In Video Games, with their pretty "Whoa" names.

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• Ezio lampshades this in Assassin's Creed: Revelations when he sings during his guise as a Wandering Minstrel.
  The things I do, to save the world
  Surprise me time to time
  Like learning how to play the lute
  And making these words rhyme
• Balan from Balan Wonderworld. This is made more obvious in the novelization, where he has more dialogue. Also applies to Lance in the novelization, since he doesn't speak in the game itself.
• Banjo-Kazooie:
  • Gruntilda, the villain of Banjo-Kazooie. She stopped talking like this in the sequel, at the insistence of her sisters, but returned to full form in Nuts & Bolts. Probably because her sisters weren't around to nag her anymore. ^note It's also likely that it was due to her having more context sensitive dialogue in Banjo-Tooie compared to the other games, so it was hard to come up with constant rhymes.
  Gruntilda: Come on, sisters, time I lack! What's the plan to get my body back?
  Mingella: Annoying your rhyming is, so stop it or we will not tell!
  Gruntilda: Oh, if I must...
  • Motzand, Napper, and the Black Snippet do this too.
  "Motzand plays his organ with ease, but can you follow him on the keys?"
• Umlaut of CarnEvil speaks like this all the time, usually to insult the player(s). He stops doing it when he gets to fight you before the final boss.
• Child of Light takes this to its logical extreme, where almost everyone speaks in rhyme.
• The Red Caps in City of Heroes speak like this. At one point their leader Snaptooth can be seen shouting at one of them to stop.
• The Curse of Monkey Island
  • The song "A Pirate I Was Meant To Be," is sung by pirates who Rhyme On A Dime. The only way to end the song and escape the puzzle is to end a line with the unrhymable word "orange."
  • There is also an extended swordplay puzzle (Insult Swordfighting) where combat is mostly verbal and the pirate who comes up with the better insult wins. When swordfighting at sea, the insult and counterinsult have to rhyme. ("When your father first saw you, he must have been mortified."/"You're a disgrace to your species, you're so undignified!" "At least mine can be identified.") Even Guybrush and Captain René Rottingham get this rhyming exchange after the former's victory over the latter.
• The opening credits Daze Before Christmas rhyme all the way, though the ending averts it by being a normal paragraph without rhyming.
  Find every stolen present that was unjustly craved,
  For every kid on the earth, Christmas must be saved!
• Micheal Tillotson from Deadly Premonition. Especially exceptional because he's not only creating a rhyme at the drop of a dime, but he's also repeating what Mr. Stewart whispers to him. Who does not speak in rhyme.
• In Devil May Cry 4, all Combat Adjudicators utter the same rhyming lines when you attack them with the wrong character.
  Combat Adjudicator: By your hand, you cannot break out clasp. That power lies in another's grasp.
• Since V from Devil May Cry 5 regularly quotes William Blake poetry, he often says lines that rhyme with each other. Griffon occasionally teases him about it.
  Griffon: Okay Shakespeare, just remember this: You and I like to exist. So get rid o' those demons quick, 'cause killin' ain't my shtick! I've got your back, 'cuz dyin' is whack!
• In Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga, we have Bellegar, a crazy mage whose lines are all rhymed. Some of them are really funny. Taken up to eleven in the expansion where his couplets turn into verses with more intricate rhyme schemes to match with his more important role.
• Dragon Age: Origins includes a talking oak tree that speaks in rhyme and makes an Incredibly Lame Pun when asked about it. Namely, that this probably makes it a "Poet-tree".
• The entire race of mermaids in Dragon Quest VI.
• The Court Jester in The Excellent Dizzy Adventure speaks exactly in this way.
• Final Fantasy
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Kefka delivers one remembered by all when before Gestahl takes a huge fall:
  '"Run, run, or you'll be well done."'
  • Professor Shantotto of Final Fantasy XI. Rather odd, considering she serves as her nation's ambassador to conferences with major world leaders, and no one seems to call her out on her odd speech patterns.
  • Naturally, Shantotto's appearances in the Dissidia Final Fantasy games have her retain her habit of rhyming, though she rarely sticks to any sort of meter.
  Shantotto: I don't make threats!
  If there's no result by the time I'm done researching the ultimate spell, it's too late for regrets!
• The supervillain Deja Vu can't speak without rhyming in Freedom Force.
• The Gravemind in Halo, in addition to its trademark trochaic heptameter. This is justified by it being a hyper-intelligent Hive Mind made up of the combined intelligence of the Flood's countless victims, including a myriad of poets:
  Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside
  Corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide
• Milkmaid of the Milky Way is entirely written in rhyme, whether writing, dialogue or narration.
• Grub, the DJ of the Party Zone Night Club in The Nameless Mod.
• Halaster Blackcloak in Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark. Admittedly, he is described as completely insane. One line from before you meet him, on a note in an otherwise-empty treasure chest:
  Note: "Much to your displeasure, here there is no treasure! -H"
  • And one of his lines from before you free him from the drow holding him captive:
    Halaster: "If the portal is opened, more drow will come through. I don't want that; I can barely stand you."
• Epros in the RPG Okage: Shadow King. Humorously, he continues to do it even after breaking free of his classification as the Phantom Evil King, seemingly just to annoy the others.
• Merlee from the various incarnations of Paper Mario.
  • The first Paper Mario game also has minor character Rhymin' Simon, the Master Poet (to folks who know it). Mario can get Lyrics from him to pair with a composer's Music to create a song for a chanteuse and get a Badge as a reward.
• In Primordia (2012), Primer aka 137th Legionbuilt constantly speaks in rhyme, much to Crispin's annoyance. It is explained that he went crazy due to locking away most of his memory in order not to think about his defeat during the War of the Four Cities.
  "No... bro."
• A variation occurs in the Spooky Swamp level of Spyro: Year of the Dragon. All of the inhabitants speak in haiku. This also extends to visitors—Sheila the Kangaroo and Moneybags also use the Japanese verse form throughout the level (which Moneybags complains about).
• The Headless Horseman, a seasonal boss in World of Warcraft speaks all his lines in rhyme.
• Chester, the intrepid salesman/explorer in Shovel Knight rhymes with his slogan/sales pitch whenever he pops out of a blue chest.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War: "Bard" and "Poet" Uruks have a great love of rhyming, and continue to do so until either you or they are dying.
• The worms in Worms Reloaded when they're using the "Poor Rapper" speech bank. As the name implies, the lines they speak are often awkward, but in a funny way.
  "Great, a crate! Great, …sodium nitrate!"
  "See you later, like in an alley…gator?"
• Most of the bosses in Cuphead have rhyming quotes for when they defeat you. There are exceptions, though.
• In The Darkside Detective, The Krampus speaks in rhyming doggerel couplets.
• Metal Gear
  • "Vulcan Raven, giant and shaman."
  • According to the director's commentary, the scene where Snake yells "Ocelot!" in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is because it rhymes with "Liquid" (in Japanese - Osero-TO and Riki-DDO.) David Hayter does his best to deliver it suitably, but this is definitely Lost in Translation.
  • The gag where Liquid fakes his own death in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots had dialogue which, in Japanese, "FOX-DIE...ja nai!". In English it's "FOX-DIE... think again!", which is often commented on as a serious downgrade.
• Andrew Schultz's Prime Pro Rhyme Row series is all about coming up with rhymes that have assonance and alliteration playing on the names of where you are and what you have. For example, late in Very Vile Fairy File comes a puzzle sequence that includes Bot Board, Hot Horde, Lot Lord, and Got Gored.
• Slime Rancher: Downplayed with Mochi. She doesn't rhyme all the time, but three of her six Range Exchange quotes are rhymes.
  Mochi: Let's trade a trade, lemonade.
  Mochi: I promise you this is a good deal, banana peel.
  Mochi: My ranching skills are gonna make you squirm, wiggle worm!
• In Spore, the NPCs of the Maxis adventure, "Delicate Negotiations," all speak in rhyme.
• In Toy Commander, Roly Poly, the clown stacking rings doll who serves as the boss of the Children's Bedrooms, talks in rhyme.
• One of the video shorts a Webkinz user can watch on a bought TV is called "Once Upon a Rhyme", which is about a witch putting a princess under an irreversable spell that forces her to rhyme her sentences. Fortunately, the princess decides to take advantage of the spell and become a natural poet.
• Pajama Sam in No Need to Hide When It's Dark Outside: All of the dialogue in Darkness's kitchen is spoken or sung in rhyme. No real reason why there specifically, it just happens.