Video Game / Chicken Police

PAINT IT RED!

Chicken Police: Paint It RED! is a Film Noir-styled Adventure Game developed by The Wild Gentlemen, published by HandyGames, and released in November 2020. It is the first entry in the The Wild Gentlemen's World Of Wilderness universe.

About a decade ago Santino "Sonny" Featherland and Marty MacChicken were a legendary and celebrated detective-duo working for the Clawville Police Department. Recently however, Sonny have fallen on very hard times, struggling with both severe burnout and creeping alcoholism, and having alienated Marty due to an incident during their last case together were they almost ended up killed each other. And to make matters worse, Sonny has recently been forced on paid leave due to his problems severely affecting his job performance.

But as Sonny sulks in his shabby apartment while counting down the days to his formal retirement, he finds himself suddenly snapped out of his funk on New Years Eve when he is approached by Deborah Ibanez, personal assistant to famous nightclub singer Natasha Catzenko. Natasha is receiving threatening messages, and she needs someone to look into the matter unofficially. After some convincing in the form of dropping hints that Sonny's estranged and long-lost wife, Molly, is somehow involved, Sonny takes the case and persuades Marty to help him. The case takes them all over the city of Clawville, from high society to the gutters.

And one more thing... everyone is a Beast Man.

A sequel, Into the Hive is slated for a 2024 release. There is also the Gaiden Game, Zipp's Café from November 2023, a "bite-sized cafe management sim" set in the same universe.

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Chicken Police: Paint It RED! contains examples of the following tropes:

• 555: All numbers in-game are 6 digits long, the first three always being 555.
• Achievement Mockery: A couple of achievements can only be unlocked by screwing up at a couple of the mini-games:
  • A somewhat downplayed example with "Now, let's grab a bite to eat!", which can only be gained by finishing a interrogation sequence with the "Frank Drebin" rank, which the lowest possible rank you can finish a interrogation with without failing the sequence.
  • In order to get "Burn, baby, burn!", you have to fail a the knot-untying mini-game on the burning ship three times.
• Affably Evil: Small-time hoods and neutral underworld figures like Zipp, Mort, and Doctor Bubo can be genuinely charming due to old age softening them somewhat.
• Ahem: Applied whenever someone is stuck in a moment of awkward silence. The subtitles renders it as "Khm".
• The Alcoholic: Sonny's drinking problems hit their apex roughly a year before the events of the game, and they got so bad that Bloodboyle put him on furlough to get his act together.
• All Women Love Shoes: Police receptionist Monica demands that Sonny and Marty repay her many acts of help by buying her shoes. Black, high heels, size 35.
• Alternative Calendar: The game is set in the 900s, with the Meat War taking place in the 800s.
• Animal Jingoism: All over the place. Nearly every species has a hatred for some other, most often based on their real life predator/prey relationships.
• Animal Species Accent: While the main characters are exempt, probably to keep them more identifiable, many minor characters fall in line with this. Dr. Quetzal speaks in Sssssnake Talk, the horse bartender brays and whinnies between lines, and Bubo hoots as he talks.
• Ascended to Carnivorism: Sort of - the co-existence of predators and prey in Clawville necessitated the development a massive artificial meat industry, and it's apparently become popular for normally herbivorous animals to eat it too. Marty is apparently among them, but Sonny finds it all distasteful and only facilitated for profit.
• Attack Its Weak Point: To get a good score in the interrogation mini-game, you have to pick questions that match the subjects' weaknesses.
• Berserk Button: To Sonny it is his wife Molly, who is an especially sore spot, due to their broken relationship. Whenever the subject comes up, it causes him to immediately drop any joviality or manners and become a boiling pot of shimmering rage.
• Brains and Brawn: Sonny and Marty have this dynamic with Sonny performing most of the interrogations and analysis, and Marty doing most of the fighting and intimidating. However, Sonny can put up his dukes in a pinch and Marty is far from stupid.
• Brawn Hilda: Ursula, as a she-bear, is a large and mannish woman with quite a bit of aggression. Nonetheless, despite their frequent spats, Bubo is very much in love with her, and she becomes sweeter if you speak to her again in the morning.
• Butter Face: Many attractive characters feature in the game, including a brothel filled with artistic nude paintings, but their human-looking bodies are topped with completely non-anthropomorphic animal heads. Bear in mind this trope is only the case to the human players — in universe, they're considered very beautiful.
• Cain and Abel: Albert and Ibn Wessler. Shockingly, between the failed painter and the ruthless gangster, it's the former that you should watch out for.
• Carnivore Confusion: The animal society in this universe has attempted to solve this dilemma using a robust artificial meat industry, and while it has largely worked, criminal predation, both impulsive and premeditated, is still a huge problem.
• Cerebus Syndrome:
  • At first it's all about snarky dialogue, mysterious dames and glamorous nightclubs, all of it fairly tongue-in-cheek with plenty of meta humor about the noir genre and adventure gaming in general, and then Sonny and Marty find Deborah's body.
  • An observant player will hit this point an hour or so sooner, as taking a quick detour to the Hop-Dog and examining the environment will prompt Sonny and Marty to reveal how utterly horrific the Fantastic Racism in Clawville really is, a sharp turn from the fairly lighthearted representation of it up until that point.
  • An unobservant player will definitely hit this when you wake up in a burning boat..
• Da Chief: Chief Bloodboyle is a racist and can't stand Sonny. On the other hand, he cannot be bribed, and Sonny worries about what will happen to the city when Bloodboyle retires.
• The Chanteuse: Natasha is first properly introduced singing at a high class club. Notably, Sonny is dumbstruck by her performance, but remains wary of her despite his attraction. The game concludes with them seemingly going their separate ways.
• The City Narrows: The Cobbler District, now more popularly known as "the Hive", is a ghetto where 98% of Clawville's insect population has been forced to live by law under squalid conditions in cheap, subpar housing. As a result, it is quite crime-infested and experiences regular riots.
• Civilized Animal: The society presented in this game is made up of them, with no sign of any non-anthropomorphic species. Deconstructed, in that the game gives a lot of attention to the societal problems that would naturally arise in this sort of civilization.
• Compensating for Something: Upon seeing that the Wessler Mansion has a watch tower standing in the yard, Marty quips that it is really Wessler trying to do this.
• Creepy Good: Professor Quetzal acts just as creepy as you'd expect a Snake Person to be, but in the end, he has nothing to do with the crimes being investigated and legitimately cares about the well-being of his patients.
• Deceptively Silly Title: While the game does have plenty of humor and is, to some extent, a spoof of the noir genre, a title like "Chicken Police" is likely to disarm you to just how dark the story can get.
• Deliberately Monochrome: The game is almost entirely in black and white, but with the occasional Splash of Colour.
• Detective Animal: The game stars two chickens who serve as police officers.
• Did Anastasia Survive?: It's speculated throughout that Natasha may in fact be the in-universe equivalent of Princess Anastasia, the sole survivor of a famously massacred Russian (or the animal version of) royal family who escaped to Clawville under a new identity. This would then explain where she came from prior to meeting Madame Zaiwass.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Lightly deconstructed with how the cast is confused as to why Control Freak Ibn Wessler would cede so much authority of his criminal empire to Mick, his top lieutenant. It soon transpires that this is because "Ibn" doesn't know how his brother's various rackets operate.
• Dying Clue: Deborah unintentionally gives the protagonists one due to how she was killed with no signs of a struggle, implying that either her murderer was exceptionally stealthy or that she knew them well and thought she was safe around them.
• Eats Babies: One of the worst crimes to come out of the insect Hive neighborhood involves desperate mothers selling their infant larvae on the black market to be eaten as illegal cuisine for particularly macabre clientele.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Ibn truly loved his mother. Albert killing her in a jealous rage is what finally got his brother to have him committed to a mental institution.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In addition to the above, the Wessler brothers genuinely loved each other. Ibn deeply regretted having to lock his brother up after it was clear he was dangerous, and however insane he is, Albert is clearly tortured by the fact that he "needed" to kill Ibn in order to take his place. This actually ends up being one of the flaws in his plan that allows the leads to crack the case — Albert only decided to maim and lock up his brother rather than outright kill him a short time because he still loved him despite everything, and this left enough clues for his scheme to be figured out before he snapped and killed Natasha.
• Exiled to the Couch: Marty mentions at one point that he's been having arguments with his fiancé, Laura, and has been spending a lot of time sleeping on the couch.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes place on one single night, with dawn only breaking at the beginning of the final chapter. This includes driving back and forth all over the city, getting knocked out and dragged onto a burning boat, and leaving the city on a multi-hour drive to a nearby asylum.
• The Faceless:
  • While we do see old pictures of Molly and Tessa ^note Look carefully on the game's menu , Tessa's only up-to-date appearance is as a faceless, obscured figure in a dream sequence, and, in the secret ending, Tessa shows up as a shadow with her arm briefly visible.
  • Miranda the nurse, a giraffe whose head is always out of frame.
• Faeries Don't Believe in Humans, Either: Humans are a mythological species in-universe, said to be creatures of great conflicting chaos and harmony. Ibn has a statue of one in his Weekend House.
• Fantastic Racism: A very prominent theme in the game - a culture war is brewing between the Royalists who support and encourage interspecies unity, and the Separatists, who believe in just the opposite. On a smaller scale, the various animal people often refer to each other in insulting ways, usually casually but sometimes in ways that are clearly very offensive. Various lines allude to a vague hierarchy of privilege within the city, with common/popular mammals (canines, felines, etc.) on top and insects coming in dead last - Clawville's insect population have been forcibly confined into a ghetto, there's a fly who is on the receiving end of proper police brutality, a notable "We don't serve bugs here!" sign, and Dr. Bubo makes a distinction between them and "real" animals when joking(?) about his medical experiments.
• Femme Fatale: Natasha Catzenko is sexy and mysterious, and trouble follows her.
  Sonny: I knew she was trouble the first time I saw her. She wore danger like a perfume. It was simply part of her being, and it attracted me like light attracts the moth people.
• Fictional Earth: The world this game takes place on is called The Wilderness, but is a globe in a solar system nearly identical to our own with the same day/night cycle.
• Foreshadowing: Marty makes an offhanded joke about both of them being put in an insane asylum if you inspect the poster at the shooting range, shortly before finding out that's exactly where they need to go to find Ibn's brother.
• Funny Background Event: When visiting the Wessler Maison, Sonny spots a very fancy bottle of quite expensive brandy on a nightstand, and briefly considers "confiscating" it. Said bottle then later shows up in a brief shot of Sonny's desk during the ending cutscene, showing that he did indeed make good on this impulse.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: The main reason why Albert to begin with merely maimed Ibn to prevent him from telling people about the Twin Switch he had performed, instead of killing him outright? In spite of the furious jealousy over Ibn's relationship Natasha that had lead Albert to decide to violently steal his brother's identity, he still very much loved Ibn. He had to spend time convincing himself that killing him was the only permanent solution before he could go through with it.
• Genuine Human Hide: Technically, it's regular leather, but since this is a world of animal people it's seen as this trope. While leather and fur clothing isn't outright illegal, yet, it's very looked down on in most circles. This is implied to be a recent social shift — Sonny has a picture in his office of himself and his wife, and he's embarrassed when Marty points out that he's wearing a leather jacket.
• The Ghost: Many characters are mentioned by name multiple times, but never appear onscreen.
  • Ibn's top goon, Mongrel Mick.
  • Mary's fiancé, Laura, who we know is a predator but curiously never learn the species of.
  • Officers Moses & Plato, although the former made an appearance on the game's official Twitter account.
  • Deputy Buffalo Malloy, who was supposed to be in charge during the games events but got blackout drunk.
  • Public Defender Hamtaro.
• Great Offscreen War: The Meat War, which happened about 100 years ago. It lasted 27 years, 80-90 million animals died, and 27 species were declared extinct after the war. Some people are worried that a second Meat War is brewing.
• Gun Nut: Marty loves his guns, to the point that Sonny claims that he refers to them as his "harem".
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: While their bromance goes through a lot of serious ups and downs, Sonny and Marty still fit this trope like a glove. There are even a few dialogue prompts where they jokingly banter as if they were lovers, and one easily-missed bit of dialogue reveals that the police department tried to give Marty a new partner after their partnership blew up. While the attempt failed on the first day, the news of it leaves Sonny obviously in denial of how upset that would have made him.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: An optional dialogue option that can be experienced in Act 4 if the player chooses to reenter the Weekend House has Marty reveal that he only tagged along with Sonny after the murder to see him screw up, fail, and potentially die during the case. Working with him over the course of the two days and reconciling helps him gradually overcome this disdain.
• High-Class Call Girl: The "Sweltering Nile", a legendary brothel only open to the rich and well-connected, becomes an important location for the plot about halfway through the game.
• High-Class Glass: A portrait of King Hector the III shows him wearing a monocle.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: All the time.
  • Oaths are often given to the "Wild Ones", the animal-god pantheon of this universe's dominant religion. "By the Wild Ones", "Wild Gods," etc.
  • Probably in reference to the above, "furry" seems to be the stand-in for "holy", prompting "By all that's furry" and "Furry hell."
  • The two leads frequently use "cluck" as a stand-in for a swear word that happens to rhyme with it. Now and then, they'll also throw in the real deal.
  • "Sheepshit" seems to be a more popular figure of speech than "bullshit". Maybe it's considered offensive?
  • Characters will often substitute their animal-specific anatomy in figures of speech that reference parts of the body, for example, "On the beak".
• Husky Russkie: Natasha speaks with a very thick Russian accent and is considered beautiful enough to be desired by nearly every male character in the game.
• I Call It "Vera": Marty gives all of his guns women's names, and apparently collectively refers to them as his "harem". Whether it was also his idea to name Sonny's gun and their station wagon, or if the habit simply rubbed off, is unclear.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Bubo muses that he had a bright medical career ahead of him. It's not enough for him to feel sorry for all his black market dealings and experiments that got his license revoked, however.
• I Have Many Names: "Filmar Low" is one of Filmar's many aliases, all of which are just basic permutations of his actual name (Marlowe) since that makes them easier to remember and keep track of.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Now that the animals are civilized, they view predation like cannibalism, but that doesn't stop it from still being a huge problem. This is especially true in the insect ghetto, where starving parents will sometimes sell their children to be eaten by the elite, and apparently a reliable way to dispose of bodies is to simply leave them there to be eaten to nothing. A Great Off Screen War was waged over meat, and there's fears another one may happen again.
  Sonny: A long time ago, when an animal was starving, they bit someone. Worst case, they killed or ate them. That's being a predator, isn't it? And that was our job... well, it's not the case anymore. Animals are eating each other out of pleasure. It's a poison. They're losing their minds.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: Ibn Wessler is already dead by the time the story starts—the characters only interact with him once Albert has taken his place.
• Impoverished Patrician: Lewis Hayworth is the last scion of a once prominent family. The hotel he owns used to be very successful, but currently him and Sonny are the only inhabitants. Despite this, he's still seen interacting with the upper class throughout the game.
• Informed Attractiveness: With human bodies but photo-realistic animal heads, we have to take the characters' word for it to greater or lesser extent when they're described as good-looking by this universe's standards.
• In-Series Nickname: Marty and Monica regularly refer to Sonny as "bossbird".
• Insistent Terminology: A Running Gag in the game is a character (usually Marty) describing the Chicken Police as having worked together for ten years, and Sonny correcting it to nine.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Natasha Catzenko and her gangster lover Ibn Wessler: cat woman and rat man.
  • Doctor Bubo and Ursula Fragaria: owl man and bear woman.
  • Marty and Laura: chicken man and wolf woman.
  • Sonny and Molly: chicken man and lovebird woman.
  • Broadly speaking, this is apparently a controversial subject matter in the story's universe. Some political groups oppose it, believing animals of different species should be segregated. Their most notable and outspoken opponent is Madame Zaiwass, who embraces the fact that her brothel is seen as a symbol of unity.
• Ironic Nickname: "Sonny" would make you think of either a sunny personality or a youthful disposition, but neither could be further from the truth. It's possible it was appropriate once upon a time and simply stuck.
• Insult to Rocks: Sonny makes a comment like this towards Madame Zaiwass.
  Sonny: I knew it! You know, sister...you could be a famous crocodile, you're still just a snake. And I hope snakes will forgive me that I mentioned them in the same sentence as you.
• Karma Houdini: Marty faced no consequences for shooting Sonny roughly a year before the events of the game since his partner, despite his injury, didn't want his relatively spotless record tarnished by an impulsive act he himself provoked.
• Knight in Sour Armor: This fits Sonny to a T. Despite his cynicism, he still does what he can to help the people of Clawville, although he believes that the city may be beyond saving. At one point he has a conversation with Marty where he says the fact that he continues doing his job must mean that he still believes in his ideals.
• Lampshade Hanging: After solving a puzzle to open a hidden door in Madam Zaiwass' office, Marty says "It's something I've never understood. Why isn't a key good enough? You can take that with you, but riddles can be solved by anyone."
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Upon learning that Ibn Wessler has a secret twin brother, named Albert, Marty remarks that "Sonny, I'm starting to feel like we're really in a detective novel... A cheap one!"
• Lazy Alias: Marty allegedly went undercover as a turkey once, using the alias 'Tur Keyman'. Filmar Low is also one, having previously been 'Phil Marlowe'.
• Left Hanging: There are a number of lingering questions left unanswered by the end which prevent Sonny and Marty from experiencing full closure. To wit, who hired Filmar to tail the heroes, who broke the maimed Ibn Wessler out of the asylum, was Natasha actually royalty in her home country, and how, if at all, was Molly involved in all of this?
• Limited Animation: All of the game's art assets was made by combining real pictures of people and animals, putting obvious limits on the characters' range of motion. The game works around this by making the game heavily dialogue-focused, with the occasional complex action stylistically obscured in some way.
• Lore Codex: Featured in the notebook. Whenever a character alludes to a noteworthy historical, cultural, or geopolitical concept for the first time, a short paragraph explaining it will become available for the player to read.
• Mad Doctor: Bubo might have propped up his father's skeleton in his office for anatomical reference, and he might have experimented with grafting insect appendages on animals. He might be joking about both, but the Chicken Police would rather not investigate the possibilities.
• Man Bites Man: The primary focus of the Predatory Division of the police department. They not only investigate cases of direct murder and cannibalism, but also black market trafficking that facilitates the same. Due to the force being so understaffed, they are sometimes called to assist in more conventional major crimes like basic murder and theft.
• Meaningful Name: When a character doesn't have a Species Surname, there's a good chance they'll have this.
  • Sonny Featherland is a chicken.
  • Chief Bloodboyle is a bloodhound.
  • Timothy Saltwater is a seagull.
  • Captain Marsh is a capybara.
  • Dr. Sesuuous Quetzalcoatl is a snake. ^note Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity represented by a feathered serpent.
• Metaphorical Marriage: Bubo and Ursula live together and are implied to have been together for a very long time, but aren't married. If you talk with Bubo long enough, he reveals that it's because he sides with the Separatists, political opponents of all things interspecies, and claims that it isn't hypocritical as long as he doesn't marry Ursula.
• The Movie Buff: Examining movie posters at the Czar Club will reveal that Marty is a big fan of movies and he claims that not many people in Clawville can say that they've seen more movies than him. This also enables him to reference scenes from classic Film Noirs (well, the in-universe equivalent of them any way), whenever (in)appropriate.
• Never Heard That One Before: Telling the horse bartender 'No horsing around' will elicit this tired response.
• Noble Bigot with a Badge: Pretty much all of the cops encountered in the game. They're even mildly racist towards each other. Marty at least tries to be more politically correct, but he has his lapses.
• Noodle Incident: The two leads frequently reference old cases, some of them in more detail than others. Most notably, the Chicken Police broke up after Marty shot Sonny. The scene which reveals why Marty shot Sonny, and why Sonny thinks he deserved it, is well hidden.
• The Nose Knows: Marty's sniffer is good enough to not only smell Deborah's perfume among all of the filth in Sonny's apartment, but even identify that she's an impala. Sonny jokes that the reason Chief Bloodboyle hates him must be that his sense of smell is even better than his own.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten Sonny getting shot in the hip by Marty. Notably, almost everyone who knows about it puts the blame firmly on Sonny, including Sonny himself.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: While Sonny and Marty's exact age are never disclosed, they clearly have this dynamic between, with Sonny being the Old Cop and Marty being the Young Cop (even though he has a cop been at least a decade and some change). Sonny will regularly make complaints about feeling old and worn down and chastise Marty for his moments of youthful recklessness and hotheadedness. Marty meanwhile likes to occasionally playfully needle Sonny over his tendency to talk and behave like a Grumpy Old Man. Marty also have a tendency to be the more idealistic between the two of them, while Sonny is quite cynical.
• The One That Got Away: Sonny's wife Molly left with their daughter some years before the start of the game, and while he doesn't like talking about it, he clearly misses them terribly.
• Painting the Medium: The Deliberately Monochrome interface is in fact merely a reflection of how Sonny's depression seems to make everything miserable. When he's particularly struck by something, or feeling better in general, there's more color.
• The Pollyanna: Marty, to an extent. He's far from blind to the harsh realities of Clawville or the character flaws of the people who live in it, but unlike Sonny, he adamantly holds out hope that things can get better, and still finds happiness in life's simple pleasures. From Sonny's point of view, that's enough to make him a proper Pollyanna.
  Sonny: You're too good for this world, Marty.
  Marty: Aw, thanks, boss.
  Sonny: That wasn't a compliment.
• Porky Pig Pronunciation: Since Lewis speaks with a stutter, it is only natural that he occasionally falls into this.
  Lewis: Nobody could have survived that horr-hor-ho— Awful night!
• Preppy Name: Before Deborah introduces herself to Sonny, he thinks "Elizabeth or Charlotte? I was sure she'd have a sophisticated sounding name."
• Puppet King: Although he's not seen in the story, Clawville's King Hector the III is believed by numerous characters to be this. The real power of the city-state rests with the Council of Twelve, while the King is effectively a figurehead.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Marty properly tears Sonny a new one when the investigation leads to them getting tied up in a boat that's about to burn down, accusing him of being a careless, selfish coward who brings misery and death to everybody around him. Near the end of the game, an optional conversation will reveal that the speech had been silently brewing ever since he and Marty first found Deborah's body, but finally letting it out alongside that near-death experience had given him the catharsis he needed to let it go.
• Red Herring: Many of the people you wind up investigating have ties to the royal family and espionage, but in the end, the actual threats and murder have nothing to do with the government or any sort of larger conspiracy; Sonny even refers to the whole subject by this trope name when Marty entertains the idea of looking into it further after their near-death experience with the burning ship. But again, it could be part of the Sequel Hook...
• Reptilian Conspiracy: This being a world of animal people, it of course has its own spin on it. Marty will mention in passing that, according to some conspiracy theory magazines he has read, Clawville's Foundation War was really a hoax, and the Reptiles deliberately stayed out of it in order to consolidate their power and are controlling Clawville from the underground to this very day. Sonny dismisses it as a bunch of "sheep shit".
• Running Gag: Marty keeps accidentally misnaming Lewis with another name that starts with L.
• Sexy Cat Person: Natasha Catzenko, the feline Femme Fatale and wife to the local crime boss.
• Sexy Secretary: Monica, the secretary of Clawville PD, is regarded as attractive by nearly every male who encounters her.
• Sequel Hook: The Hive situation is starting to get out of control, Sonny may or may not get together with Natasha eventually, and numerous loose ends regarding backstory are left unresolved. In the hidden true ending, it's strongly implied that Molly was hovering around this case to some extent and is about to reconnect with Sonny, for unknown reasons.
• Sibling Triangle: Ibn and Albert Wessler were both in love with Natasha. But since Natasha were Ibn's lover, Albert's jealousy eventually got the better of him, so he performed a violent Twin Switch on Ibn to take his place, making sure Ibn couldn't communicate what had happened to him, by cutting out his tongue and breaking his fingers. He then eventually ended up outright killing Ibn.
• Shout-Out: Enough to fill a zoo.
  • The game's four chapters are all named after classic Noir films:
    • Chapter One: Detour.
    • Chapter Two: The Killing.
    • Chapter Three: Out of the Past.
    • Chapter Four: Farewell, My Lovely.
  • In the Czar Club, there are animal pun-filled posters for "The Big Sheep", "Murder, My Tweet" and "This Dun for Hire".
  • The name of the rankings you get after completing an interrogation has a couple of references in their naming:
    • The worst result the player can get without failing is labeled as "Frank Drebin".
    • The second best result is labeled as "True Detective".
  • One of Sonny's old acquaintances is a private detective falcon who uses the alias Filmar Low.
  • Apparently, Sonny and Marty once had a case involving a three-headed monkey.
  • Several of the old cases the leads reminisce about are criminally insane twists on classic fairy tales or Aesop's fables. These include a turtle who ate the legs off a rabbit (his dealer) believing it would make him run faster than him, a starving fox and crow who got into a fight over some cheese, and most gruesomely, a goat getting revenge on a wolf for eating her children filling his disemboweled stomach with rocks and then delusionally treating the digested remains of her children as if they were still alive until the police arrived.
  • If you talk to the horse bartending at the Czar Club enough times, Sonny will call him "BoJack" and "Mister Ed." He will sarcastically react with a Never Heard That One Before, of course.
  • If you examine the Clawville crest with Marty, Sonny will comment about its skewed representation with a familiar line.
    "I guess all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
  • We never meet Public Defender Hamtaro but we can probably assume his species.
  • One of the posters outside the Czar Club is of a film titled "Moonlight Boulevard".
  • When Marty sees a Fox Man talking to his old squeeze, Olivia Blackwing, he takes umbrage to it, asking Sonny if the guy thinks he is "Fantastic Mr. Fox".
• Smart Animal, Inconvenient Instincts: The animals in this world are sentient and civilized, but their old habits are still dying hard. An overt example is when Sonny has to talk with Dr. Quetzalcoatl - he can't help but feel deeply uncomfortable in his presence even though he hasn't done anything to really earn it simply because he's a bird and the doctor is a snake.
• Species Surname: Most people have plain surnames, but there are a few exceptions.
  • Marty McChicken and Natasha Catzenko play it straight.
  • Doctor Bubo is an owl man, and Bubo is the scientific name for the eagle owl.
  • Ursula Fragaria has a species given name: she is a bear woman, and Ursula means "little she-bear."
• Speech Impediment: Lewis the rabbit speaks with a stutter. At one point near the end of the game, he speaks a full sentence without stuttering. Sonny is surprised by this, but Lewis justifies it as something that happens when he's tired. Whether he was faking the stutter for an unknown reason is left unrevealed.
• Splash of Color: A few details throughout the game appear in color, most strikingly Natasha's green eyes.
• Spotting the Thread: The nature of the clue that Natasha found, as she recognized that the handwriting of the threatening notes and graffiti matched that of Albert Wessler's monogram from the paintings he did of her.
• The Spymaster: Brothel owner Madame Zaiwass is rumored to have once been a top notch spy, among other legends. When the characters find a secret room in the brothel, they find out that she still fulfills this role for the government, reporting on the activities of Separatist groups.
• Sssssnake Talk: Both Dr. Quetzal and the Komodo dragon Mort display this tic in their speech.
• Taking the Kids: Molly took her and Sonny's daughter when she left, and he hasn't seen either of them since.
• Title Drop: The game's full title is Chicken Police: Paint it RED!. Towards the end of the game, Sonny has a nightmare in which a murderous Natasha with a bloody mouth and set of claws repeatedly tells him to "Paint it red!"
• Twin Switch: It turns out that we never met Ibn Wessler; he's been replaced by his identical twin, Albert, for quite some time, and mid-way through the game it is revealed that he was murdered to try and cover it up for good.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: It is a leisurely point-and-click game, with the following exceptions:
  • A puzzle where you have to save the heroes from burning by undoing the ropes binding them. This is simulated by tracing the tangled, knotted rope. With a controller. Against the clock.
  • Two sections where you shoot up a car that is chasing you, taking cover every time the passenger with a machine gun lets rip. At least there's an Achievement for shooting out its headlights.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: At the start of the game, Sonny has Lewis personally drive Deborah to wherever she needs be dropped off at since the hotel they're staying at is in a rough neighborhood. Unfortunately, this results in her being at the Wessler Weekend House just in time to catch Albert vandalizing the place, and she's subsequently killed by him to cover up his crime. Sonny is horrified at learning this, and to make it worse, the resulting clues from her death don't really provide much vital information.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Mort is an old, blind, petty criminal, who is thrown out by his much younger boyfriend mid-way through the game. You can call in a favor to get him a place to stay until he gets back on his feet, earning the achievement "Heart of Gold".
• Wardrobe Flaw of Characterization: Sonny's coat is buttoned suffocatingly taut to show how uptight and guarded he is. In the game's final cinematic, he finally unbuttons it as he has a more relaxed and emotionally open conversation with Natasha.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Marty goes through the trouble of lugging around his shotgun under his coat for a majority of the game, but outside of brandishing it to threaten information out of persons of interest, he never gets to fire it.
• We Named the Monkey "Jack": Apparently, Sonny named his daughter Tessa after his and Marty's old station wagon. Marty questions him on this choice, and Sonny replies, much to Marty's chagrin, that it was because Tessa was the best and most reliable partner he ever had.
• Wham Shot:
  • The reveal of Deborah's body.
  • The close-up of the Sweltering Nile's work history list, revealing Molly's name.
  • In the hidden true ending, we see a shadow approach Sonny's door that looks an awful lot like Molly.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: During the final confrontation with Albert Wessler, you can ask him outright why he made the incredibly risky move to maim and lock up his brother instead of simply killing him once he made up his mind to take his place. His answer is simple: Despite his madness, he still loved his brother, and didn't want to kill him until he felt like he absolutely had to.
• Workaholic: Monica Rosen, the receptionist for the Clawville PD. According to Sonny, she's so dedicated to her job that she moved into an apartment across from the precinct, but she still sometimes ends up sleeping at the station.
• World of Pun: The game uses pretty much every conceivable animal pun one can possibly think of, and then adds a few more on top for good measure. The tone is pretty set when Sonny uses "cluck" in place of "fuck" in the intro.
• A World Half Full: Clawville isn't wonderful, but it isn't terrible either. The people that we don't meet are probably mostly doing alright, and there are people in Clawville and nations in the wider world who are doing very well. However, you also don't have to look far to find poverty and oppression.
• Yandere: Albert Wessler, who is a broiling and unstable kudzu of emotions that's always on the cusp of lethally bludgeoning those around him with the thin line between love and hate.
• You Owe Me: Lacking much in the way of money, the Chicken Police trades mostly in favors. They have an outstanding balance against Bubo and Zipp, are heavily indebted to Lewis, and Monica actually cashes them out to have them just buy her shoes when she gets fed up with covering for their not strictly legal activities.

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