On the other hand, it's become an industry-wide Running Gag when talking about Vapor Ware. While the game was still in production, it was frequently used as a punchline in the same way as "when pigs fly" or "when hell freezes over". All this is thanks to its constant delays and "When It's Done" release date set by its original developers.
Against all odds, it finally became available on June 14th, 2011 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC on DVD or via Steam, just in time for Duke's Twentieth Anniversary. The Hail to the Icons Parody Pack was released on October 11th as the game's first DLC pack. It includes four new maps, each making fun of an iconic FPS series with a parody-weapon based on said series, and three new game modes. A second DLC pack titled The Doctor Who Cloned Me, released December 13, 2011, has a smaller campaign taking place right after DNF's ending which gives proper closure to the story along with four new multiplayer maps.For more information about the game's extensive development history, which is arguably more important than the game itself, see this page.
Tropes related to the game include:
[Please remember that tropes related to the game's development go into the Development History page]
Affectionate Parody: "Hail to the Icons", Downloadable content made almost entirely of references to other shooters.
A.K.A.-47: Weirdly averted with the M1911 pistol, and only the M1911 pistol. This is probably because there are no other weapons that resemble real guns (except the shotgun).
All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Las Vegas gets pretty mashed up by the aliens. Unfortunately for them, it's also where Duke lives, and he's not pleased that they took, of all things, his girls, while he was caught in the middle of all the action.
All There in the Manual: General Graves' full name, Phil Graves ("fill graves"), is revealed in History, Legacy & Legend: Duke Nukem Forever, the art book that comes with the Balls of Steel edition of the game.
And Your Reward Is Clothes: Used in the multiplayer's experience system. Killing other Dukes earns you XP, there are various challenges to complete that give you bonus XP, and it all adds up to hats and costumes you can wear. Hats that you can gain include an Uncle Sam hat (with red, white, and blue shirt), an afro for Duke, and a Conehead hat.
Taken Up to Eleven with the My Digs location. Everything you can unlock for it is either cosmetic, a babe you can ogle, a trophy, or an interactive distraction that serves no other purpose than to be interactive. And it is awesome.
Arc Number: 69, for obvious reasons. It's the number of rockets the Devastator can hold, Duke lives on the 69th story of a building, and, if the ending is correct, Duke will be running to be the 69th president.
Ascended Meme - The "Balls of Steel" special edition. (For some backstory, the "Balls of Steel" line was used to harass a Ventrilo server constantly, causing the admin to devolve into extreme, rabid angrish. The resulting video was incredibly popular and popularized Ventrilo harassments.)
In one boss fight, Duke says "I'm gonna kill you old style!' a reference to the woman who threatened the harasser. After defeating the boss, Duke will say "I've got balls of steel.", one of the mainly spammed phrases from Duke during the harassment (also made popular due to BALLSBALLSBALLSBALLSBALLS being spammed as well)
The spamming of "BALLS BALLS BALLS" got its own separate reference in "The Doctor Who Cloned Me."
Patton Oswalt's "Flagon of Chuckles" line from one of his routines was referenced as an Achievement.
Badass: Duke, of course, but special mention goes to Crusty Old Man, the crane operator during Duke's fight with the Octoking, who not only survived the battle but also hurled a few insults during it as though it's all part of his contract.
"Whoa! There's somethin shakin' the crane! Come on out, ya bastard! I'll donkey punch ya in the blow hole!"
Berserk Button: This is the first time we have ever truly heard Duke angry. Not just "This really pisses me off", but tangible, human, rage. Duke loves his babes, and by God does he hate aliens.
Also, occasionally, when he messes up at the pool table in his mansion.
Bland Name Product: the game has several instances of real-life brands being modified, usually with a Double Entendre. For example, Abercrombie & Fitch becomes Analcrumbly & Itch, while Macy's becomes Fecy's.
Book Ends: In the beginning of the game, you take a piss and kill a giant cyclops alien in a videogame. The last boss is that very alien, and you piss in his eye socket after killing him. To which he remarks before fighting him, is a one liner ascended from a very familiar one: "I'll rip your eye out and piss on your brain!"
Booze-Based Buff: Duke can down a tallboy beer to drastically enhance his damage resistance in exchange for blurred vision. On top of that, multiplayer features Duke-brand Whiskey that provides temporary invulnerability.
Bond One-Liner: Duke has a ton of them. What he says depends on what he kills.
Breather Level: After The Hive you go to the Strip Club, and have a scavenger hunt to get a lap dance. It turns out it was All Just a Dream.
Call Back: You can sign "Why I'm So Great," Duke's autobiography first mentioned in Duke Nukem II.
Interacting with the "Balls of Steel" pinball machine back in Duke Nukem 3 D would cause Duke to remark "Hmm, don't have time to play with myself." Now that you can play "Balls of Steel", Duke says "Now I ''have'' time to play with myself!"
The achievements for beating the game on each difficulty are named after the Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels from Duke Nukem 3D.
The very first boss is similar to Duke Nukem 3D's Cycloid Emperor. In fact, the entire level is pretty similar to the last 3D's last level, right down to the field goal.
Cosmetic Award: Aside of the achievements, simply leveling up (No challenges required) earns you decorations for "My Digs", which when selected takes you to a whole separate floor of Duke's casino which you can explore at will, much like Lara Croft's Mansion in Tomb Raider. Most of these are just photos of Duke doing manly things or giant gold statues of naked babes.
Disc One Final Boss: In The Doctor Who Cloned Me, after you fight and kill Dr. Proton, you'll find that the game isn't even halfway over yet.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Frequent. For example, while playing pool, Duke will moan suggestively. For bonus points, do this in Duke's Penthouse while the Holsom Twins are nearby.
Dummied Out: Using console commands, players can give Duke a weapon called the Mini Nuke, complete with model, textures, animations and all — everything, in fact, except the damage expected from a nuclear missile.
Evil Laugh: The twins have a wicked cackle, first seen at when, ah, playing with Duke, then again when one of them makes a joke about him.
Fingerless Gloves: He's got nuke-symbol branded sport gloves as opposed to his old biker leathers.
Forklift Fu: One segment of Duke's trip inside the Hoover Dam encourages him to use a forklift to kill a bunch of pigcops.
"Fork you!"
Four Star Badass: During the single-player campaign of the DLC The Doctor Who Cloned Me, General Graves, of all people, joins up with you and Captain Dylan in battle during some segments, wielding a Ripper and throwing occasional pipebombs at enemies like a boss in his official attire.
Gameplay Ally Immortality: Mauve Shirt Captain Dylan, who can't die because he's a named character. Averted in that he does get critically wounded late in the game and "dies" of said wounds ... and played straight again when he got better during the single-player campaign of the DLC The Doctor Who Cloned Me!
Groin Attack: Appears as a finisher against the Battlelords.
Gunship Rescue: After spending pretty much the entire game as butt monkeys and walking item-drops, the EDF gets a chance to shine in the final battle: Supplying Duke with a BFG, helping mop up the remaining alien foot soldiers, and flying Duke out of a nuclear explosion.
Humiliation Conga: After finishing the first boss, Duke punts his eyeball for a field goal.
I Got Better: Captain Dylan shows up alive and well in The Doctor Who Cloned Me after his apparent death near the end of the main game. The explanation is that he only passed out from blood loss.
Immune to Bullets: Bosses are arbitrarily immune to small arms fire; only explosives or mounted turret guns can harm them.
Incredible Shrinking Man: Duke is shrunk down to miniature size at several points during the game by stepping on special shrink pads. The following sections (played when shrunk) allow you to jump on shelves, use various tools and implements (like small pipes, kitchen spatulas and more) to traverse puzzles, and allow you to ride in an RC car given to you by a young fan.
During one particular section, shooting some barrels next to a Pigcop sends him flying. "Huh. I guess pigs do fly!"
Plenty of other things get lampshaded. For example, when Duke comes across some locked double doors at the Duke Dome, he remarks, "Who locks these things?!"
Ladder Physics: Averted. There's even an animation showing Duke's hands as he climbs, and he has to face towards the ladder while he climbs.
Living Legend: Because of the previous game, Duke's now quite famous.
Luck-Based Mission: The encounter with eight Octabrains late in the game. They throw either wooden crates or steel drums at you; the latter of which cannot be deflected and will kill you with just two hits. If more than two of the Octabrains choose to throw drums at you during the fight, you're basically screwed.
Mauve Shirt: Captain Dylan, the named EDF soldier who appears in several levels and swears every other word.
Medium Awareness: Numerous jokes indicate that Duke is aware that he's in a video game.
Mêlée à Trois: The Doctor Who Cloned Me has a couple firefights with Aliens vs. Dr. Proton's robots vs. Duke and his allies.
Mercy Kill: In The Hive, Duke Nukem can remorsefully put out of their misery the women that have been impregnated.
Minigame Zone: Duke Nukem's Titty City. This is a Happy Place that comes right after Duke blacks out after defeating the Alien Queen that contains an incredible amount of Ego-boosting objects.
Multi Boobage: One of the alien bosses. Duke notes that he'd still hit that.
Mythology Gag: Almost certainly a reference to the 2001 trailer, in the opening level of the game, an EDF soldier taunts Duke:
"Hey pal, what are you going to do? Save the world all by yourself?"
Nintendo Hard: Some LPers have complained about Duke dying very easily even on the lowest difficulty. When you factor in, among other things, Duke's rather short Ego bar at the very beginning of the game (which can be doubled in length through interacting with several specific objects throughout the game), as well as enemies being capable of emptying nearly three-quarters of that amount with a single attack, not to mention Duke being the One-Man Army that he is, it's not that hard to figure out why.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: Duke lives with the Holsom Twins. The president (whose name is never mentioned in the game) is revealed to be a bad guy in collusion with the aliens and looks like Richard Nixon.
No Fair Cheating: One of the load screen hints tells you that if you ever get lost, you could always cheat by looking at FAQs online.
"Looks like those alien bastards drank all my beer!"
Rated M for Manly: Duke gives his ego a permanent increase by watching strippers, smoking cigars, appreciating himself in the mirror, lifting weights and a whole damn lot of other ways.
Real Song Theme Tune: Duke returns to kick some alien ass to the tune of Invaders Must Die. Another trailer features "Battleflag" from Lo Fidelity Allstars. Ultimately, they make a new remix of the classic Grabbag theme from Duke Nukem 3D.
The level Duke Nukem's Titty City. Washroom. Gloryhole. Button prompt. Do the math.
Refuge In Vulgarity: It's possible to pick up a turd out of a toilet, and throw it at a water fountain, then drink out of the fountain. And that's just the start of it.
Regenerating Health: Parodied: Duke's "health" bar is an ego bar, like it was in Duke Nukem Manhattan Project. He's not slowed down by piddling little bullets and lasers, but it does hurt his morale, which is why doing manly things like getting drunk, pissing, watching strippers, or drinking from a water fountain gives the bar a permanent increase.
Taking the above into account and with a bit of Fridge Logic too, the Strip Club level makes PERFECT sense. How else would Duke survive the injuries he picked up from the Triple Boob Monster, not even having any broken bones, unless he gets himself a huge dose of Ego from his own dream sequence?
Redshirt Army: The EDF troops mostly exist to witness Duke being awesome, and die because they're not as awesome. Duke even lampshades this when going into the Hive, and finding the corpses of the advance team that was supposed to meet him.
"Advance team, my ass!"
Lampshaded even further when an EDF commander sends a rookie with you and even says "Try not to let him get his ass killed." Of course he immediately goes running into a hail of bullets at the first opportunity, a reference to his name and also probably a joke about terrible team AI in FPS games.
Retcon: In one level, you visit a museum containing artifacts from Duke's previous games, including screenshots from them. One is from the opening from the first game, where Duke says he'll kick Proton's ass and still have time to watch Oprah. The text has been changed from "Oprah" to "Lenoman", a talk show host that briefly appears in the game. Strangely, Duke's salmon shirt still remains.
Ride of the Valkyries: During the opening segment of the Mighty Foot level. Intermixed with the title theme, slowly creeping from orchestral into heavy metal as the level goes on. AWESOME.
Self-Deprecation: Duke has several lines mocking the long delay.
Sequel Snark: Duke meets a dying character and merrily quips that he won't be in the sequel. The Doctor Who Cloned Me reveals that this trope was ultimately averted.
Shotguns Are Just Better: Unless you're fighting a major boss (which are only harmed by explosives), the game's shotgun is generally the most useful weapon in the game.
This is a Zero Punctuation review of the nonexistent game, conducted in full Sarcasm Mode. It should be noted that this was the third game Yahtzee admitted was actually a good game, and won his 2009 "Best Game Ever" award (Or at least, it would have, except it was so incredibly good that it caused some kind of quantum collapse that erased it from existence and from the memories of the human race).
A particularly dense fan of Zero Punctuation either didn't get the joke or hadn't heard that 3D Realms had laid off its internal development studio after the first Take-Two lawsuit. The fan actually e-mailed Yahtzee asking where he had obtained a copy of the game so the fan could acquire a copy for himself.
In a hilarious Take That, Randy Pitchford demoed Duke Nukem Forever in Australia at the Mana Bar, which just happens to be Croshaw's videogame bar. A not-so-subtle Take That, one that Croshaw is gleefully accepting. It'll be interesting to see what his actual review will be. *
When Yahtzee took a week off from doing a review, the video to replace it was the Viewer's Choice winner, his sarcastic review of the (thought to be) cancelled Duke Nukem Forever. What week was that? The week where the game was officially revived two days after the review went up.
And now he did an actual review of it. Despite his policy of always being pragmatically pessimistic to avoid being disappointed when hyped games turn out to be lousy, he seemed genuinely saddened that even after twelve years of development, Duke Nukem Forever had more flaws than other games he'd mercilessly panned, and he still tried to find reasons to like it.
Andrew Kepple (of Too Much Spare Time fame) made this way back in 2004 and posted it to both Newgrounds and 3DRealms' forums.
Aaron "Nodwick" Williams, on one of his Backwards Compatible strips, featured a "choose your own joke" strip regarding this game's due date because there was no way to decide. Including "Hard to say; you should always get firm dates on any contract with Satan" and "They should have covered this one with the Easter Bunny..."
In the That Guy With The Glasses series "Video Game Confessions" (where a bartender recounts the conversations of various patrons of a video game bar... no points for guessing what kind of patrons), one episode is dedicated to Duke Nukem. It also is about the aforementioned game and WHY it never came out: after Duke personally took over the production of the game, he ended up making production too expensive. After it didn't go through, Duke went on to work on Avatar.
A 2006 FoxTrot storyline where Jason tries to convince Andy to buy a new computer has him provide her with a list of reasons why, one of which is "Jason can play Duke Nukem Forever someday."
Penny Arcade, like everyone else, got a joke in about the interminable delay. In 1999. (Needless to say, that is nottheonlyjoke they've made about the game.)
(From Serious Sam) Dude, you've been hanging here, like, FOREVER.
Serious Sam had another crack at Duke in Second Encounter:
Sam:(grabs a phone) Blondie, is it you? John: No, it's John. Sam: Ah. When will he come? John: He will come when he's done, boy. Sam: Done with what? Bah, I've been waiting forever for him to show up. (hangs up)
In Spoony'sSWAT 4 playthrough, the post-mission summary of one of the levels reveals that Lieutenant Spoony's reckless discharging of a shotgun into the Library's servers wiped out all work and backups of Duke Nukem Forever.
Max Payne 2 has this little Easter egg where two police officers, "Miller" and "Broussard", are in an underground car park conversing about how people will remember Broussard's name when he "crack[s] this case":
Miller:Like you're ever gonna crack it.
Broussard:It'd be done when it's done. I'm gonna do it right. It's the spirit of the law, not the letter.
Miller:I'll be on ya back about it 'til you do.
Broussard:You already put a snake in my bed, what more can you do?
A Japanese mod for Doom referenced DNF's long dev cycle - one Old West-styled map had a bunch of bounty posters for various other game characters, such as Caleb ($6000), UAC Marines ($1000, dead or alive), and Duke Nukem ($1500). However, the actual money figure on Duke's poster is crossed out, and the word "Diprecated" is written on it.
The Prey mod Altered Reality, which is set in environments reminiscent of the 1998 version of Duke Nukem Forever, starts with Tommy on a toilet, trying to take a dump. His first words are:
Tommy:Man, I'm gonna take forever to release this piece of shit!
Back in 2005, CJayC, then-Grand High Ruler of GameFAQs, made a joke about the site's own little examples of Vaporware, stating that they would be finished before DNF. Nobody at the time thought this claim would be proven false, but they would have been surprised at how close it came.
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