Video Game / Friday Night Funkin'

"Gettin' freaky on a Friday night, yeah!"

"If you want her, you're gonna have to go through him. Think you can manage? LOL. It's cute you think you stand a chance, but hey, you know what they say: girls dig confidence."

— Friday Night Funkin' Trailer

Friday Night Funkin' (often shorted to just FNF) is an open-source Rhythm Game created by Newgrounds users ninjamuffin99, PhantomArcade, evilsk8r, and KawaiSprite. The game was made by the group as part of a game jam, Ludum Dare 47, and has since gained a following for its unique Newgrounds-animation art style and funky music — and arriving just as Adobe Flash was being discontinued (while plenty of people headed to Newgrounds before they created a Flash emulator) certainly didn't hurt.

The plot is easy to follow; you play as Boyfriend (yes, that's his name), a blue-haired rapper who's hooked up with the smokin' hot babe you see in the picture, Girlfriend (yes, that's her name). Her dad, Daddy Dearest (yes, that's his name), isn't all too keen on you and her... *ahem*... gettin' freaky, so he challenges you to a rapping contest for your right to keep dating her. It won't be easy beating him, especially since he's an ex-rockstar who may or may not be trying to kill you. Even if you do win, who's to say some other schmuck won't try to mess things up between you and your girl? Looks like you've got a long career ahead of you...

The game can be found on both Newgrounds and Itch.io for free. The developers plan to expand the game via updates with new tracks, levels, and characters. The game also has a substantial modding community, allowing for an abundance of fan works built from the game's source code.

After the first seven weeks were released, a paid version titled Friday Night Funkin': The Full-Ass Game was announced via Kickstarter on April 18th, 2021, which plans to include local multiplayer, fully animated cutscenes for each week, online integration, multiple player characters, proper modding support, collaborations with artists, and countless other refinements across the board. It is slated to contain 45 weeks of new material not planned for the base game, or 135 new songs ^note 60 songs were initially promised as part of the initial financial goal, with 75 new songs on top of those confirmed thanks to the meeting of additional stretch goals — 45 songs for the main game, and 30 songs in an epilogue on top of those featured in the base game, and was initally scheduled for an April 2022 release before it managed to earn over $2,000,000 in fundings on Kickstarter, leading the creators to add more content during the game's development. Within three days of its announcement, it had already made $1,000,000, over fifteen times its $60,000 starting goal, and more than doubled its total by the time it neared the end of its run.

The free version will be updated with some of the paid content after its release, but after the Kickstarter was announced, Friday Night Funkin' underwent an extended hiatus in terms of updates so that they could focus on developing the full game. It was later confirmed that new content would arrive for the free version of the game, with the first post-Kickstarter update, adding Erect difficulty, additional playable characters, and animated cutscenes being planned for an as of unknown date.

You can support the game by donation on its Itch.io page.

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If you want her, you're gonna have to go through these tropes. Think you can manage?:

A-L

• Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Week 1 is titled Daddy Dearest, while Week 4 is titled Mommy Must Murder.
  • Girlfriend's parents are canonically named Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest, with the latter specifically given that ridiculous name for the sole reason of being alliterative.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Exploited during Week 6: the Dating Sim not knowing how to handle Boyfriend winning against Senpai allows Spirit to break free from the code and fight Boyfriend for his body.
• All There in the Manual: Much of the game's story is currently untold within the game itself, but a story does exist, and is occasionally explained by the devs on Twitter and during Twitch streams, like why Pico and the Spooky Kids are fighting Boyfriend during their respective Weeks. The Full-Ass Game is set to provide full cutscenes explaining the narrative.
• Amazing Technicolor Population:
  • Girlfriend's parents both have light purple skin.
  • The background dancers and limo driver in Week 4 are a light shade of pink.
• Anachronic Order: While Week 2 was developed and added to the game as, well, the second week, chronologically it actually happens some time after Boyfriend beats Mommy Mearest.
• Arrange Mode: "ERECT" difficulty (yes, that's its name) in The Full-Ass Game presents the player with remixes of the original funkin' beats found in the other difficulties prior, with the gimmick of the mode being that rather than copying your opponent, Boyfriend freestyles for a majority of the song.
• Art Shift: Week 6, made to celebrate Pixel Day on Newgrounds, is a Game Within a Game, giving everything a pixel art aesthetic.
• Artifact Title: While "Friday Night Funkin'" was certainly an appropriate title for the original Ludum Dare build which only had "Bopeebo" and "Fresh", the builds following the game jam begin moving away from funk music and expanding into other genres before Week 1 even ends. Some weeks like Week 4 and Week 7 also take place during daytime rather that nighttime.
• Bait-and-Switch: Week 5's final song, Winter Horrorland, begins with a Jump Scare of a christmas tree with what appears to be Girlfriend's severed head before the screen pans into Boyfriend. Cue Girlfriend sitting on the speakers like usual, completely oblivious to the entire thing.
• Battle Rapping: The game is set up as a rapping contest between Boyfriend and Daddy Dearest, and later other characters, over whether or not you get to date Girlfriend. Thing is, the lyrics to all the songs sound like Animal Crossing speak. Girlfriend, Monster and Tankman are the only characters in the game who speak clear English. In Girlfriend's case, this is because she explains the tutorial to the player.
• Big Damn Heroes: During Week 7's last song, Pico swoops in to save Girlfriend from the Tankmen holding her hostage, and shoots more that try to attack Boyfriend during the song.
• Big Red Devil: Week 4 introduces five men working for Girlfriend's parents, one driving the limo Mommy Mearest and Boyfriend are standing on and the other four dancing on top of another limo in the background — they have pink skin, large toothy grins, and black horns coming out of their flat tops, evoking the standard demon appearance. Interestingly, unused sprites for the backup dancers, part of a scrapped Funny Background Event in which they're knocked and visibly decapitated by an occasional lamp post, show that their horns are legitimate, and not hair like Daddy Dearest has.
• Blue with Shock:
  • Boyfriend goes blue whenever you miss a note or press buttons when you're not supposed to, complete with a dumbfounded expression and black vertical lines over his head. This extends to Girlfriend when she's in Boyfriend's arms during "Stress".
  • During "Roses", Senpai's Blush Sticker is replaced with blue over the top of his face, showing his slipping façade and general frustration over Boyfriend's ability to keep up.
  • The girls behind Senpai gain two small blue lines under their left eyes and dismayed facial expressions to emphasize their shock over Senpai's behavior.
• Bridal Carry: Before the two Tankmen are able to shoot Girlfriend, Pico comes out of nowhere and lands on the speaker, causing her to hop off the speaker and into Boyfriend's arms.
• Broken Pedestal: The female students that were once fawning over Senpai in his first song had their hearts broken from watching him throw a tantrum at Boyfriend in the cutscene for "Roses".
• The Cameo:
  • Week 5 has a whole treasure trove of famous Newgrounds characters, alongside several other internet icons, that cameo in the background. In total, there's Darnell and Pico himself from the Pico series, ZONE-tan, the Nightmare Cops, Kenstar from Egoraptor's Girl-chan in Paradise, evilsk8r's mascot Buggy, @cooldudetm's mascot, Blockhead, Meat Boy, OneyNG, Psychicpebbles, characters from the GENTLES Newgrounds short, Sublo and Tangy Mustard, Henry Stickmin, xXsquidwardXx's parody rapper from their FNF parody, the Monster, and Hatsune Miku.
  • The two other most prominent characters from the Tankmen shorts (aside from Sergeant John himself), Steve and Private Skittles, both make cameos in the background of Week 7, with Steve occasionally driving by in his tank and worriedly watching the action, while Private Skittles boredly watches everything from his tower.
• Captain Obvious: In the cutscene leading up to "Stress", Tankman bluntly says "This is WAR! And in war, people die!".
• Character Title: Weeks 3 and 7 are named after the opponent of the Week, that being Pico and Tankman, respectively.
• Christmas Episode: Week 5 takes place in a shopping mall with a big Christmas tree in the background, holiday-themed songs, and festive outfits for all the characters. Daddy Dearest is even holding a Mall Santa at gunpoint.
• Couch Gag: There are multiple phrases that show up at random in between the title screen and "in association with Newgrounds" screen. Said phrases can be found on the Quotes page.
• Cutscene: Notably absent for the first four weeks of the game.
  • Week 5 has a short cutscene for its final song where Monster has painted the entire mall red and is looking to have a rematch against Boyfriend.
  • Week 6 begins every song with a cutscene, complete with dialogue — granted, Boyfriend doesn't say anything the player hasn't already heard from him.
  • Week 7 begins every song with cutscenes in a similar fashion to old-school Flash animations.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: Daddy Dearest hates that Boyfriend and Girlfriend are dating, and challenges Boyfriend to a rap contest for his right to continue dating her — though even after Boyfriend beats him fair and square, Daddy Dearest still disapproves of the relationship, and frequently attempts to either sabotage it or screw with Boyfriend. Mommy Mearest is none too happy with Boyfriend either.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: One click of the screen after failing a song is all you need to try again from the top. The game over screen doesn't even have a visible quit option, just a retry button. It even has music that's just as groovy as the other tracks.
• Difficulty Levels: Each Week has an Easy, Normal, and Hard mode to select from, with each successive mode having faster and more abundant notes, culminating in Hard's note chart matching note-for-note the melody of the song. Interestingly, the tutorial has difficulty settings. Each version of it is almost exactly the same except for a nasty surprise on hard: a big-ass chart of arrows that floods you well after the tutorial ends.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: Naturally for a rhythm game, faster songs mean faster notes to hit with quicker reflexes. Week 1's final song, "Dad Battle", has a fast-paced tempo appropriate for what is essentially a boss fight against Daddy Dearest, after which rapid fire notes appear in just about every song at one point or another.
• Dramatic Wind:
  • During Week 3, a train occasionally passes by that blows Girlfriend's hair sideways.
  • As of the January 2021 update, everyone's hair constantly billows about during Week 4, which takes place on top of a moving limo.
• Duels Decide Everything: Exaggerated. Boyfriend-Blocking Dad refusing to let you date his daughter? Soldiers and assassins coming after your head? Humanoid Abomination wants to eat you alive? Evil spirit trapped within a video game wants to escape into the real world? The answer is always the same: beat them in a rap battle.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Ludum Dare 47 build.
  • The title screen is more simplistic, and the logo is different.
  • Pressing enter will send you straight to Week 1, which is the only week avalible.
  • "Dadbattle" hasn't been added in yet; Beating "Fresh" takes you back to the title screen.
  • Boyfriend does not get blue-balled if a song is failed. Instead, the screen will turn black with only the song's instrumental playing, and the words "Lose..." and "Restart?" appear.
  • Girlfriend sits on a pile of blocks instead of on a speaker.
• Easter Egg: When getting a Game Over, there is a 1/1000 chance that the normal Game Over sequence is replaced by a rather cutesy screen that is also a Shout-Out to Gitaroo Man and their own Game Over screen.
• Evil Learns of Outside Context: Week 6 features Boyfriend and Girlfriend getting sucked into a dating sim home to an angry spirit that got trapped in the game. Upon realizing that Girlfriend is the daughter of the man who trapped him, Spirit breaks out of his person-shaped can and challenges Boyfriend to a music battle for his body.
• Excuse Plot: While Word of God has stated there is an actual plot to the story, something confirmed through both Spirit in-game monologuing about Daddy Dearest's status as both Big Bad and Greater-Scope Villain and various posts by the creators about the lore, the lack of cutscenes for most Weeks and Speaking Simlish-type singing for the characters means there's very little of that plot visible in-game. Even taking into account Word of God, what little plot is available as of the Tankman update build is that Daddy Dearest is a Boyfriend-Blocking Dad trying to kill Boyfriend for dating his daughter. While that tangentially connects to all the other Weeks through All There in the Manual, the actual reasons for most of the other characters' presences are still unexplained. That said, there are plans to elevate from an excuse plot to a genuine plot with The Full-Ass Game through every week having their own cutscenes with dialogue.invoked
• Expressive Health Bar: The faces of Boyfriend and his current opponent are shown on the life bar at the bottom of the screen. If Boyfriend is close to failing, his life bar icon gets X's in his eyes. The same will happen to most of his opponents if he's doing exceptionally well.
• Fake Difficulty: Earlier versions of the demo had several critical flaws in how the game plays; how the game checks for inputs is the most egregious, as the system only reads note inputs for one of the four arrows at a time, resulting in dropped inputs that should be able to land becoming forced misses. The problem was so rampant that fanmade game engines that fixed this problem such as Kade Engine became the standard for the modding community, and the official game itself would later fix the inputs in the Week 7 update.
• Foreshadowing: For new players, the last set of notes in the tutorial section is the earliest sign that this isn't just a game of copying notes. This becomes much more apparent when the player plays "Dad Battle" in Week 1, where Boyfriend will have to harmonize with Daddy Dearest instead of copying his notes.
  • During Week 5's battle, the first track has glitchy sounds and ends with a sinister laugh, indicating that someone else in the Mall than the Dearest couple wants to harm Boyfriend and Girlfriend.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Most of the characters (including the Henchmen) only have 4 fingers on each hand. The only exceptions are Daddy Dearest, Mommy Mearest, and Senpai.
• Freudian Threat: Senpai's Wham Line after losing in "Senpai" is to tell Boyfriend that he's going to rip his nuts right after fucking his Girlfriend.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Week 5 features a cameo cavalcade bopping along to the beat of the music, and also a Mall Santa, who is nervously sweating as Daddy Dearest holds him at gunpoint.
  • The various store names in the background of Week 5 are "LMAO", "CRAP!", "JUNK + SHIT", and "SALADS AND SEX".
  • Week 6 has a swarm of girls watching Senpai and Boyfriend sing, who even go from lovestruck to disgusted in between "Senpai" and "Roses".
  • "Stress" from Week 7 has Pico burst in out of nowhere to save Boyfriend and Girlfriend from being shot to death by Tankman's army and will continue to open fire against the tankmen for the entirety of the song.
• Fun with Acronyms: The Full-Ass Game.
• Genre Throwback: Its simple addictive gameplay, fun yet abrasive tone, art style, and cameos come together to make a love letter to classic Flash content, particularly what one may find on Newgrounds, especially Newgrounds works from the Turn of the Millennium.
• Groin Attack: Fail a song and Boyfriend gets blue-balled so bad that his skeleton cracks.
• Guest Fighter: The game features several special guest rappers, most of them being famous Newgrounds mascots from the site's history:
  • Week 2, introduced as part of a Halloween update, has you squaring up against Skid and Pump from Sr. Pelo's Spooky Month shorts. They even do the Spooky Dance!
  • Week 3 pits you against the titular protagonist from Tom Fulp's web-game series, Pico.
  • Week 7 sets you on a bare wasteland surrounded fighting none other than Newgrounds mascot Tankman and his army of tankmen from their titular series.
• Halloween Episode: Week 2 was made for Halloween; the opponents are Skid and Pump from Sr.Pelo's Spooky Month videos, fought within a haunted mansion.
• Harder Than Hard: As part of the Kickstarter's stretchgoals, The Full-Ass Game will have a difficulty above Hard called "ERECT" difficulty, which features remixes of the original songs that require a little more dexterity.
• Have a Nice Death: Losing a song on Week 7 will have Tankman throw an insult towards you on the Game Over screen.
• Healthy Green, Harmful Red: The health bar is split between opponents. The player's side of the bar is shaded green, while the opponent's is shaded red; the better you play, the more health is given to the player and taken from the opponent.
• Hero vs. Villain Duet: Many of the tracks technically qualify as this, as they usually feature an antagonist challenging Boyfriend to some sort of singing competition that the two then partake in, even if most of the time the lyrics are gibberish.
• Hostile Show Takeover:
  • Mommy Mearest and Daddy Dearest kicked Santa out of his chair in a local mall to set the stage for Week 5, and Daddy Dearest makes sure he stays put by holding him at gunpoint. While singing. Mommy Mearest's even wearing a Santa-esque outfit.
  • Following Week 5's "Eggnog", instead of the usual Fade to Black to the next song, it instead smashes to black and cuts back to reveal the Christmas tree decorated with entrails and a severed head, the mall turned vaguely more eldritch as the Monster takes the place of Girlfriend's parents, ready to sing his own little ditty.
• Hostage Situation:
  • Week 5's plot kicks off because Girlfriend's parents have taken a mall Santa at gunpoint so they can sit in his chair to sing. Unfortunately for him, all the spectators and authorities are much more interested in enjoying the music his captors brought than helping him. Aside from Monster, of course, who’s more interested in causing trouble himself than listening to the music.
  • The first two songs of Week 7 happen as two of the Tankmen hold Girlfriend at gunpoint. Prior to the third song, Sergeant John reneges and they prepare to shoot her, until Pico saves the day.
• Hyperactive Sprite: Every character bounces to the beat of the music when they're not singing; special mention goes to Skid and Pump, who outright dance, and Monster, whose body squashes and stretches to the beat.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: There's your standard Easy, Normal, and Hard difficulties, and then there's "ERECT" difficulty, which remixes both the songs and their charts.
• Inconsistent Episode Lengths: The levels are as long as the songs they feature, which can be anywhere from a minute twenty to a minute forty in length, and there are even a few outliers beyond that.
• Interspecies Romance: While there was initially some ambiguity about it due to the lack of attention brought to it, with it relegated to subtle implications and Word of God posts, Week 7 fully confirms that Girlfriend is indeed a demon just like her parents, and also that Boyfriend is definitely human, fully verifying that their happily loving relationship is between such massively different species. invoked
• Jump Scare: After the second song of Week 5, the lights suddenly go out. When they come back on, you're treated to the sight of the Christmas tree in the background, now adorned with a severed head and entrails, accompanied by a scream. This was particularly jarring before the Week 7 update, given that prior to that point, Monster's first song hadn't been included in the game.
• Like Parent, Like Spouse: In the final song of Week 7, Boyfriend is carrying Girlfriend in his left arm, with their poses being near-identical to when Daddy Dearest had Mommy Mearest on his lap during Week 5, making a good parallel between Girlfriend's parents and her relationship with Boyfriend.

M-Z

• Marilyn Maneuver: In the background of the main menu, Girlfriend can be seen holding her dress down while standing in front of a large speaker that's causing it to billow.
• Meaningful Background Event: Among the numerous cameos in the background of Week 5's stage, one particularly notable character, placed between the xXsquidwardXx rapper and Miku in the far back right, is the Monster, who turns out to be much more than just a fun background element come the week's final level.
• Mickey Mousing: Everything that moves bounces to the beat, with the pace even being adjusted for songs with a quicker tempo. In particular, "Bopeebo" has musical stings and sound effects after each of Boyfriend's verses, which are all timed to him doing a V-Sign.
• Mic Drop: Inverted and played for drama. Boyfriend drops the mic when he fails a song.
• Mood Whiplash: Monster's existence, along with his songs "Monster" and "Winter Horrorland", are a massive thematic departure from everything else in the game. Week 5 provides an even starker level of whiplash, especially during the story mode. The parents' two songs before him set up a bit of Black Comedy where they hold Santa at gunpoint while various cameo characters (including itself) hang around in the background, only for the second song to suddenly transition to showing a bloodied, mutilated head looking suspiciously like Girlfriend's on top of an entrail-coated Christmas tree, before he makes his grand appearance and starts singing "Winter Horrorland".
• Musical Gameplay: Boyfriend's singing is tied to if the notes are hit in time: miss a note, and the corresponding voice clip won't play.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The life bar does not move when your opponent sings, but on the flipside, you also can't make your opponent fail a song.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Week 7 is set in the Tankmen battleground and has the sniper from the second episode staring down at the brawl between Boyfriend and Tankman, with the damage on one of the pillars caused by said sniper even visible.
  • Week 7's climax has Pico killing a barrage of Tankman's army one by one using dual UZIs in a similar style to Pico Unloaded, the Flash animation where Pico's dual UZIs originated from.
• Nameless Narrative: All of the original characters are only referred to by their role in the narrative: the player character is Boyfriend, his girlfriend is Girlfriend, her parents are Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest, Monster is a monster (both literally and metaphorically), Senpai is a video game character whose role is to act as a senior classman that younger girls pine after, and Spirit is the spirit of a person that faced Daddy Dearest and got trapped in the game.
• No Ending: The game currently takes you immediately back to the week select menu after beating a week in story mode.
• No Fair Cheating: As of the Week 7 update, the player can toggle "Practice Mode" for any song. While playing in Practice Mode, they cannot get blue balled, will be penalized less for missing notes, and if they toggled it while playing in Story Mode, then they can proceed to the next song afterwards. However, as a trade-off, the player's score will remain at 0 at all times. Downplayed in that the cost for not being stonewalled by a song is not having a score to brag about.
• Pastiche: Ninjamuffin has stated the game took inspiration from various things, mainly rhythm games, such as DanceDanceRevolution, Parappa The Rapper, Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA and Gitaroo Man.
• Perpetual Smiler: With the exceptions of Tankman (who has varied expressions), Senpai (who stops looking nice when he Turns Red) and Spirit (who never smiles), every other character is constantly smiling during their respective battles. Boyfriend will stop if he misses a note or sees lightning, and Girlfriend for the latter reason or if she's insulted on her looks.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: In the title logo, the I in Friday is replaced by a stylized microphone.
• Player Death Is Dramatic: If you fail a song, the soundtrack is killed instantly, and the background along with all other characters vanish while Boyfriend's skeleton visibly cracks. He then drops the microphone out of shock.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: Boyfriend is the main protagonist and the player character, but most of the advertising and posters have Girlfriend as the focus; she's even the first character you see when booting up the game.
• Precision F-Strike: The game grades each note you press depending on how close you are to being on the mark, with "Sick!", "Good", and "Bad". Whenever you just barely hit a note, the game ranks it as "Shit!".
• Press X to Die: Pressing the R key on the keyboard will result in Boyfriend getting blue-balled right then and there.
• Punny Name: The game takes its Added Alliterative Appeal with the Father and the Mother too seriously, as they are called Daddy Dearest and Mommy Mearest respectively.
• Record Needle Scratch: Whenever you miss a note or hit the button when there's no notes to hit, a record scratch plays.
• Redshirt Army: In Week 7, soldiers rush in to deal with Pico, only to be gunned down in succession by Pico.
• Remilitarized Zone: Week 7 takes place in a warzone with a sniper tower, ruined buildings, and the occasional tank driving by in the background. In the final song, a whole army of soldiers running and getting shot is added.
• Rhyming with Itself: In the bonus vocal track "Fresh (Boyfriend Remix)" on the soundtrack album, Boyfriend rhymes both "yeah" with "yeah" and "worth it" with "worth it".
  I just want to hold her tight, yeah
  Her hair, her eyes, her thighs, yeah
  If I die, it'll all be worth it
  Just to get a chance to show she's worth it
• Rooftop Confrontation: The battle in Week 3 against Pico takes place on a rooftop next to a train track. The location itself is based on the rooftop of the Newgrounds' office according to the developers.
• Rule of Three: Every week in the game as of the Week 7 update, due to finally implementing the last song in Week 2, has three songs.
• Serial Escalation:
  • As each update fleshes out everything around the gameplay, the difficulty of the songs keep topping themselves. Week 2 was initially an infamously difficult week due to songs with rapid taps combined with flawed hit detection. Week 4 saw to it that Week 2 was made easier, but brought "MILF" and its infamous beat drop. Week 6 added pre-song cutscenes and had "Roses", which threw in a couple of difficult-to-read verses. Week 7 gets voiced cutscenes and songs with fast and long beatmaps that put even "MILF" to shame.
  • The first 3 Weeks took place in relatively normal locations, such as a theater, a haunted house, and beside a railroad. Week 4 has you and your girlfriend's mother rapping on top of moving limousines driving down a highway. Mommy Mearest even has backup dancers riding their own limo!
• Shadow Discretion Shot: Before the final song of Week 6, we see Senpai's shadow gasp in pain before his face explodes, allowing the Spirit sealed inside to finally appear and fight Boyfriend.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Boyfriend is nineteen years old, with Girlfriend and Pico implied to be the same; the three are much shorter compared to adult characters like Girlfriend's parents, and Boyfriend is only a bit taller than Skid and Pump, two children. Justified, as the three are intentionally drawn shorter than they'd actually be.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: Lampshaded in the bonus track on the soundtrack album, which has one lyric comparing Boyfriend and Girlfriend's social media messages to a game of Candy Land.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: The game zigzags this trope — while its tutorial and first few songs are based on copying the singer's notes and timing, eventually the game will slip in additional notes as Boyfriend begins harmonizing with his opponent.
• Smug Smiler: Damn near every participant of the rap battles is putting on their Game Face that never lets up. In the case of Daddy Dearest and the Monster, it verges into a Slasher Smile.
• Speaking Simlish: Almost every character's "singing" is unintelligible noises with some actual words thrown in here and there (the exceptions being Girlfriend and Monster, who both sing in full English):
  • Boyfriend has high-pitched scat-singing that mimics the lines of other characters.
  • Daddy Dearest has Tom Jones-style crooning.
  • Skid and Pump have autotuned laughter.
  • Pico has robotic-sounding radio chatter.
  • Mommy Mearest has a popstar-esque voice that sounds a little like Boyfriend, only at a higher pitch.
  • Senpai has bit-crushed voice samples one would hear in some DOS games.
  • Tankman sings his bars in a wavy robotic voice.
• Suddenly Voiced:
  • After winning against the Spooky Kids in Week 2, you'll be greeted with the final song, sung by a mysterious creature known as Monster who sings about very dark topics such as murdering you, your girlfriend, and then turning both of you into food. He comes back in Week 5 to sing about the same topics with Christmas-themed lyrics.
  • After five weeks of a silent narrative, Week 7 opens up each song with Tankman speaking to Boyfriend in clear English to insult him and his girlfriend.
    Tankman: Well, well, well, what do we got here?
    Boyfriend: Beep!
    Tankman: We should just KILL you, but what the hell — it's been a boring day. Let's see what you've got!
• Super-Deformed: According to the creators, Boyfriend, Girlfriend, and Pico are drawn in a chibi art-style, meaning that they're not really supposed to be that short in real life. That said, the creators have also implied through various posts that even if Boyfriend was designed normally, he'd still be short enough that Girlfriend would have to kneel down just to make proper eye-contact.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The game certainly is comedic, cartoony and fun, but it doesn't have that T rating for nothing.
  • Week 5, "Red Snow", has you fight against your girlfriend's parents in a mall, with plenty of cameos from various Newgrounds media. The final one, "Winter Horrorland", starts out with the Christmas Tree decked out with intestines and a severed head in Girlfriend's likeness as a startopper. The mall is abandoned, and Girlfriend's parents have been replaced with a monster with a lemon for a head, singing about eating Boyfriend and Girlfriend.
  • Week 6, "Hating Simulator", is about Boyfriend and Girlfriend getting trapped in a dating sim, the protagonist of said sim cheerfully challenging Boyfriend to a sing off for Girlfriend's hand. By the second song, Senpai's polite personality is revealed to be a facade, and by the third, his body bursts open to reveal a murky pink spirit, the colorful schoolyard becoming a dark, wavy location. The spirit reveals that Daddy Dearest put him into the game, implied to be because he wanted to date Girlfriend, and that he wants to steal Boyfriend's body so he can escape the game and get revenge for himself and all the other unfortunate suitors.
• Technician Versus Performer: Erect difficulty adds this dynamic to the game's various rap battles. While opponents still sing their parts perfectly and more technically than before, Boyfriend embraces his Performer side with extremely fast, intricate original solos to overpower them.
• Thick-Line Animation: The game's primary artstyle has thick, distinct lines for the characters, given its inspiration from 2000s-era Flash games and animations.
• Traintop Battle: During Week 4, you battle Mommy Mearest on top of a limo, driven by a demon who works for the parents.
• Trapped in TV Land: Week 6 sees Boyfriend and Girlfriend getting stuck in a 32-bit dating simulator. Their opponent for that week is Senpai, the protagonist of the game. "Thorns" reveals they are not the first people to get stuck in the game.
• Twisted Christmas: The Dearest parents celebrating Christmas by holding a Mall Santa at gunpoint is a dark comedy example. Monster killing the whole crowd then singing about how Boyfriend and Girlfriend will become his Christmas dinner is a darker (but still funny) example.
• The Unintelligible:
  • The characters "speak" in noises when they sing, which are mostly completely gibberish save for a few stray words here and there. Girlfriend speaks during the tutorial, while Monster, to add to its overall creep factor, sings in English.
  • Played for Laughs in Week 6, which has actual textboxes and dialogue; Senpai speaks in English and sings in noises, while Boyfriend says the same beeps and boops he does while singing.
• Uncommon Time: The final song of Week 2, "Monster", starts out in the usual 4/4 time, but throws in two bars of 7/4 just before the tempo picks up. About halfway through the song, the tempo changes again, bringing with it a change to 7/8, 5/8, then 7/8 again, then a bit of 5/4 before returning to 4/4 for the rest of the piece. This appears to be the reason as to why Monster was scrapped until the release of Week 7, as an update note in the changelog explains that Ninjamuffin could not get the ChangeBPM property in the note chart editor to work.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Mall Santa is the hostage of the Dearest couple, but everyone in the mall (even Monster, though he has other plans for him) only cares about their rap battle against their daughter's boyfriend.
• Visual Innuendo: Screw up a song and you're treated to an x-ray of Boyfriend's cracked skeleton, which also includes two pulsating little spheres... located on his crotch. Which are also colored blue. Or, blueballs.
• Wake-Up Call Boss:
  • "Dad Battle", the final song of Week 1. Up until now, you had songs with relatively easy-to-hit note charts, with "Fresh" having a couple of tricky beat-boxing sections. This song is where Daddy Dearest, and by extension the game, takes off the gloves and puts on the anvils. It's fast-paced, has a tougher chart, and introduces the concepts of both rapid-firing up to 3 different notes in succession and harmonizing with your opponent while they hit notes. Better get used to these quirks, because starting with Week 2, each song will have at least two of them in play, if not all four.
  • If "Dad Battle" wasn't hard enough for you, "Spookeez" certainly will be. If it was still too easy, "South" surely will pose you problem.
• Wham Episode: Due to a combination of the entire story being pretty much a rhythm-based Boss Game, every character Speaking Simlish, and there not being any real descriptions for anything, the game is mostly an Excuse Plot-driven series of event about Battle Rapping. Even the introduction of Monster, the first character that sings proper lyrics, is overall just as randomly placed as every other fight. All of this changes with the Week 6 battle against Senpai, as the text-based nature of the dating simulator it takes place in means it has actual dialogue. Said dialogue winds up providing actual lore for the game, in the form of Spirit explaining how he was trapped in the game by Daddy Dearest for unknown reasons, along with how Boyfriend is not the first person to go against Daddy Dearest, just the first to survive.
• Wham Line: After bursting out of Senpai, Spirit's monologue includes the fact that he knows about Girlfriend and Daddy Dearest, the latter of who not only trapped him in the game, but did things to many others like him.
  "I'll make her father pay for what he's done to me and all the others....."
• Wham Shot: The third song of Week 6, "Thorns", opens on a blood-red void, with Senpai's health meter icon replaced with a red, skull-like will-o-wisp. It's followed by Senpai's silhouette twisting and contorting until his face bursts open, revealing Spirit: a bloody spirit with a disturbingly realistic human face.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The female students on the background of Week 6 suddenly disappear in "Thorns", when the background becomes distorted, due to Spirit's appearance.
• Wingding Eyes:
  • The little icons on the UI bar gain Xs for eyes when their side of the bar nears the edge - the exceptions to this are Girlfriend, Daddy Dearest, and Senpai, who don't have lose icons, Monster, who instead has an X for one pupil and a circle around the other, and Tankman, whose visor instead has a big crack in it.
  • The girls in the background of Week 6 have hearts for eyes to indicate how head over heels they are for Senpai.
• X-Ray of Pain: The Game Over screen depicts the emotional pain of Boyfriend losing a rap battle as an x-ray of his skeleton cracking and literally getting blue balls over not being able to finish.
• X-Ray Vision: You get it during the Game Over screen focused on Boyfriend's cracked skeleton. You can also see that his balls are now firmly blue and that his brain is in the shape of the word "Retry". Since Boyfriend is holding Girlfriend in his arms during Week 7, the X-Ray vision will also show Girlfriend's skeleton, revealing horns and fangs not usually visible in addition to the sides of her head being oddly separated from the rest of it.
• You Have No Chance to Survive: The trailer mocks potential players of the game as not being able to have enough game to win over Girlfriend's heart, but admires their confidence.
• Zerg Rush: Played for comedy. The hard mode for the tutorial of all things has one in the form of a whole mess of arrows that come right out of nowhere well after the song ends. Hitting some of the notes is enough to get past it, but it does have the potential to make you fail if you're not ready for it.

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*CRACK!*

*Mic Drop*

Retry?^*Yeah...come on, don't stop (Drop the beat! Drop-drop the beat! Drop the-!)

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