Video Game / Hi-Fi RUSH

♫ So don’t forget that, I got this, I want this
Release it all, no room to fall
Can’t hold me down, 'cuz I’m on top of the world ♫

Hi-Fi RUSH is a Stylish Action Rhythm Game developed by Tango Gameworks, the studio behind The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo, and published by Bethesda. It was announced for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox Game Pass, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store on January 25, 2023 during the Xbox and Bethseda Developer_Direct, and subsequently released later that day. It would later be ported to PlayStation 5, releasing there on March 18, 2024.

Players control Chai, a wannabe rock star who signs up to get a new robotic arm as a volunteer for Project Armstrong, a cybernetics project run by the MegaCorp Vandelay Technologies, which ends up going awry when his music player accidentally gets fused to his heart. Labeled as a defect and narrowly escaping with his life and a makeshift guitar made of a magnetic wand and scrap metal, Chai finds himself in the fold of a resistance movement out to expose the dark secret behind Project Armstrong, and now able to feel the rhythm of battle and attack to the beat, sets out to take down the directors of Vandelay that want him "recalled".

Everything in Hi-Fi RUSH moves to the beat of the music, and that means everything. That includes cutscenes, obstacles, the scenery, and most importantly, the combat. Players are rewarded with high damage and high scores by attacking, dodging, and parrying in time to the rhythm of the game's soundtrack, which consists of both original music and licensed songs from the likes of Nine Inch Nails, The Black Keys, The Flaming Lips, The Prodigy, and more.

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Hi-Fi RUSH provides examples of:

• Action Commands: Portions of some boss fights, usually against human opponents, takes the form of a musical duel in which Chai's opponent prepares attacks that follow a rhythm, and then Chai has to parry or dodge on-beat. Occasionally, a quick-time event is also mixed in.
• Adventures in Comaland: At the end of Track 4, Chai is knocked out cold by Korsica and arrested. The subsequent scene at the Player Headquarters takes place within his dream, where the player can still do all the usual gameplay things there. Chai apparently believes his adventure is over, and talking to the rest of the crew makes it clear that Chai is projecting what he thinks they would say. It takes a surreal moment where the rest of his crew gets him to "snap out of it" for him to wake up in jail and start Track 5.
• Advertising by Association: The launch trailer makes sure to point out that the game is "From the makers of The Evil Within (seriously) and the makers of The Evil Within 2 (naturally)".
• Aesop Amnesia: Discussed at the end of the post-game SPECTRA missions, where Chai boasts he effortlessly thwarted Kale's plans, taking credit for the SCR-UB that actually did by accident. CNMN asks if Chai learned nothing from his recent journey, leading Korsica to add he's still a work in progress.
• Age-Gap Romance: Peppermint is crushing on Korsica (and she might like her back). Peppermint's 23 and Korsica's 32.
• Ambiguously Brown: The Vandelay Family. They have a brown skin tone and Roxanne Vandelay speaks with a Southern Asian accent, but nothing concrete is referenced for what their ethnicity is.
• And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt: One of the bonus T-Shirts from the Deluxe Edition Upgrade of the game is exactly this, word-for-word.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You can press a button to turn a visual indicator of the song's beat on, in case you'd need it to get an idea of the rhythm. You can also turn it back off with the same button in case you don't need it.
  • Any attack that requires the player to block it will be preceded by a set of beats that have the same timing as the attack itself.
  • Enemies will start dropping health pickups if Chai is low on health.
  • The game has a "Streamer Mode" which replaces all licensed songs with original music, allowing streamers to play the game with lowered fears of getting a copyright claim. While the game admits such copyright claims can't be eliminated from turning this mode on, it at least makes things a lot safer for streamers.
  • Summoning your support characters will have no cooldown outside of combat, as to not slow down puzzle solving.
  • During mid-fight cutscenes, your score meter will stop decreasing so you aren't penalized for something outside of your control.
  • If you find the alternating combos to difficult to remember, you can turn on an Assist feature that automatically uses different moves for you by just pressing the same button over and over. While you can't choose which attack you use this way, it's helpful if you can't get the timing of certain moves down right.
• Arc Villain: The game consists of twelve "Tracks", with each director of Vandelay Technologies being the focal villain of their own arc; for example, Track 1 has Chai escape Rekka's "quality assurance", and Track 2 has Chai fight her directly.
• Arc Words: Though a villainous example, "Curate the Future" and many variations across Vandelay Technologies ads. Though for most of the game it appears to be an ironic buzzword about their technology, it takes on a new meaning when SPECTRA is revealed to not be just a mind-control device, but intended to create a consumer base that Kale will "curate" by himself. True to fact, its half-finished building has "Curating your future" written on ads instead. And finally, it becomes the title for Track 12 itself, representing both SPECTRA's purpose and the team's determination to destroying it themselves.
• Artificial Limbs: "Project Armstrong" is named as such for how its stated goal was to give free access to robotic limb replacements for those unable to afford high-quality cybernetic enhancements, something Chai readily took up thanks to him quite clearly having a disabled arm that prevented him from becoming the rockstar he wanted to be. There are other characters with only their limbs being cybernetically enhanced, such as Rekka's arms or Peppermint's leg.
• Awesomeness Meter: Your combos during fights are ranked from D to S. On higher ranks, Chai's scrap guitar transforms into a real one.
• Battle Theme Music: Each major boss (except Korsica) has two battle themes, an original one if Streamer Mode is on and one licensed by another artist.
  • QA1-MIL has "1,000,000" by Nine Inch Nails or "Too Big To Fail" by the Glass Pyramids.
  • Rekka has "Free Radicals" by The Flaming Lips or "Captive Normals (A Fever Dream)" by the Glass Pyramids
  • Korsica has "Negotiation".
  • Mimosa has "Fast As You Can" by Fiona Apple or "My Heart Feels No Pain" by the Glass Pyramids
  • Roquefort has "5th Symphony" by Wolfgang Gartner or "The Fizzith" by the Glass Pyramids.
  • Finally, Kale has "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails or "In A Blink" by the Glass Pyramids.
• Beam-O-War: During the boss fight against Roquefort countering his "Big Bad Wolf"-esque blowing with Korsica's whirlwind attack evokes this.
• Better than a Bare Bulb: The game is filled with all sorts of meta-humour, spouted by the protagonists and robotic Mooks alike.
• Bilingual Bonus: The WA-ES-2L robot tells poems in Japanese before a parry clash event, but they're not translated. A comment in this video explains their meaning:
  • ああ鬱だ 明日は月曜 行きたくねぇ("How lamentable... Since tomorrow is Monday, I don't wanna go [to work]...")
  • 切れ味を お前の体で 試そうぞ ("Now prepare thyself. I shall test upon your flesh the sharpness of my blade!")
  • やれ打つな 俺が手をする ゴマをする ("Have mercy on the workers. They rub their hands together as they butter up their bosses.")
  • 観念せい！ お前コマギレ 俺ブチギレ ("Now behold! Witness my relentless rage as I slice you to bits!")
  • なるほどね 口に出るけど わかってない ("Oh, now I get it!" Those words come out from your mouth, yet you don't understand.")
  • ウホウホホ ウッホホウホホ ウホウホホ (The sounds a gorilla makes in Japanese)
  • このバカめ 有象無象が かかってこい ("Let the masses come. You are fools to challenge me. I'll take you all on!")
• Book Ends: Provided Streamer Mode is off, the first and last boss both use Nine Inch Nails songs as their themes.
• Boring, but Practical: Pick Me Up!, one of Chai's special attacks, doesn't have any offensive capabilities but provides noticeable healing in the middle of battle for a relatively cheap cost. This makes it a viable option for players progressing through the game, especially since healing between fights can be scarce.
  • High Pitch Punch is a special move where Chai uppercuts an enemy into the air. It requires only 1 reverb bar, thus can be used multiple times, and can give you an instant freebie to do air combos on an enemy without inputting launcher combos. Not the most stylish looking, depending on how a player uses it, but the move is very effective.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: The second to last level has two unique enemies that are fought alone yet not treated as full on bosses. Early in the level, you fight an enemy that's similar to the VU-T0R1 bird robot, except this one is on fire. It'll also parry Chai's attempts to hit it while flying and on fire with a grab that puts you into a rhythm block segment. Later in the level, you fight a robot armadillo enemy that is rather durable and has a unique moment where you summon Macaron to perform a special attack against it. Both enemies are fought only one time the entire game.
• Boss-Only Level: Mimosa and the final boss are the only two bosses that have a stage all to themselves without any grunts to fight first (though you have to do some light platforming before fighting Mimosa).
• Bowdlerise: Averted, surprisingly, despite the game’s T rating. It features Nine Inch Nails' "1,000,000", and the following lyric is left in unedited if you listen closely.
  Put the gun in my mouth
  Close your eyes
  Blow my fucking brains out
  Pretty patterns on the floor
  That's enough for you
  But I still need more
• Break Meter: Mid-level grunts, Elite Mooks, and most bosses have a regenerating stun meter that has to be broken before they start flinching from attacks or can be juggled. Chai's Pick Slide special move and Korsica's assist attacks specialize in causing stun over straight-up damage.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: During the credits sequence, Peppermint repairs the "Vandelay Solutions" pick-up truck that was displayed in a museum exhibit about Roxanne Vandelay's origins, and uses it to pick up the others.
• Break Them by Talking: Effectively how the boss fight with Korsica goes. Early scenes suggest Chai, even with his powers, can't physically compete with Korsica, and even if he could, they need her alive and verbal for her password. His battle with her thus instead revolves around wearing her out by trying to talk sense into her - when that fails, Chai settles for aggravating Korsica on purpose. By doing so, Korsica burns herself out, to the point she's too exhausted to keep going. Wounding her pride and insulting her intelligence especially needle her to the point she's knocked out with nothing but counter-attacks and a verbal beatdown.
• Brick Joke:
  • Much is made about how Chai can't simply strongarm Korsica for her SPECTRA password because she memorizes all of Vandelay's passwords rather than keeping them stored on a passkey like every other boss. Much later on, the end of the game briefly shows that her password is literally just "password". A fine bit of irony, since Korsica is supposed to be the head of security.
  • Near the start of the game, right before the fight with Rekka, Chai tells Peppermint that she's paying him double for this, to which she responds she's not paying him anything for it. At the end of the game, her mother Roxanne Vandelay makes Chai an ambassador for the company. However, when listening to his thoughts in the hideout post-credits, he notes they still aren't paying him anything for the role.
  • At the start of Mimosa's level Chai muses that instead of always sneaking in through the back, he should try going in through the front. Peppermint sarcastically replies they could do that and shoot him out of a cannon for good measure. In Roquefort's level, Chai actually does break in by being shot from a cannon.
• Buffy Speak: When Chai has to keep climbing structures to reach Korsica's office, he notes that "going up is very up."
• Call A Hitpoint A Smeerp: The game substitutes close-enough music terminology whenever appropriate. Chai's Limit Break moves are "Reverbs", levels are "tracks", and combat encounters are "choruses".
• Calling Your Attacks: Alongside Chai doing this for his personal special attacks, every time he does a team attack, his current partner will yell it with him.
• Casting Gag: In the Japanese dub, casting Wataru Takagi as the walking JoJo's Bizarre Adventure pastiche Zanzo, as Wataru previously voiced Okuyasu Nijimura in Diamond is Unbreakable.
  • A related Gag, and an especially egregious one at that is having Takehito Koyasu voice the Big Bad Kale, since hardly does he ever reach the levels of hamminess that his role as Dio Brando in JoJo afforded him.
• Catch a Falling Star: Chai can perform this on Korsica after their boss fight. It's also a last-second QTE, so you can actually fail before moving on; she's still unconscious either way.
• Caught in a Snare: Chai gets caught by a rope snare trap when he first comes into Peppermint's hideout. He stays in Unwilling Suspension until she's done interrogating him, then she just unceremoniously shoots down the rope, causing him to drop to the floor.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: After finishing the Post-End Game Content, talking to Peppermint has her ask Chai if he's learned his lesson. When Chai fails to understand what she means, she identifies that he had originally signed on for Project Armstrong as a way to achieve his "future rockstar" dreams without practice and hard work, and ended up having to work hard regardless.
• Chromatic Arrangement: The protagonists' crew is composed of blue (Peppermint), green (Macaron), yellow (CNMN), and red (Korsica). This extends to their character designs, with all three incorporating their respective colors in a noticeable way. Chai himself rounds out the group by being heavily associated with orange, and 808 is black with differently-colored lights depending on who's speaking through her.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Enemies are different colors depending on what tactics are needed to take them out, and these colors match the Chromatic Arrangement of the main characters. Orange enemies can be beaten by Chai alone, blue enemies generate energy shields that Peppermint can break, green enemies start off with armor that Macaron can break, and red enemies generate fire that Korsica can extinguish.
• Colorblind Mode: The game has filters for protanopia, deuteranopia and tritanopia, which make small adjustments to the environment but mostly alter the 2D prompts and graphics to still stand out. It is also possible to adjust the intensity of the filters.
• Comeback Tomorrow: After Kale attempts to "fire" Korsica using the CH-AS1R's laser beams, he has this realisation:
  Kale: "You're fired?" ...Oh, OH, should have used the flamethrower! Alright, well, there's always next time.
• Comically Missing the Point: From Roquefort's pre-fight chatter:
  Roquefort: I was on my deathbed when Kale saved me. I was smart, but weak. He fixed that.
  Chai: Really? Why'd you wanna be less smart?
• Company Cameo: If you ever spot any tiny snails in some parts of the game, these are actually based off of the Tango Gameworks' company logo.
• Continuing is Painful: Continuing from a Game Over leaves a dent to your Track rank, and can drop down to a D if you retry too many times, no matter how many A or S ranks you earned throughout.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: The Final Boss cannot be stunned with the "Steal the Show" special move. Should you try it, the boss will just say "I'm a dog person" in response and No-Sell it.
• Cool Code of Source: Parodied when Chai and Peppermint reach Rekka's office. Chai thinks he has found the SPECTRA AI, pointing to a large computer monitor with an intricate display of random lines of digits appearing around an abstract swirling graphic. Peppermint quickly corrects him and reveals that it's just a screensaver, with the actual computer just being a regular desktop with shortcuts to different files.
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene: The final boss fight ends with Chai and company delivering one last extended beatdown to Kale, all to the beat, to defeat him once and for all.
• Crazy Enough to Work: Whenever Chai suggests an idea or strategy for how to proceed, it will sound completely dumb and guaranteed to fail or make things way harder for him. The fact that these inane plans actually work out for him is part of why The Team is able to make such progress against Vandelay industries, because nobody can predict what Chai's going to do next.
  • His music-assisted defect powers shouldn't work like they do, being the fusion of a music player and a magnetic trash collector arm, but somehow the combination allows Chai to create musical effects that affect the environment, his enemies, and his combat abilities to make him a One-Man Army. Even Chai doesn't know how he's doing it, but it works for him.
  • Chai's plan to break into Roquefort's office involves him getting launched out of a cannon into Roquefort's window at Vandelay HQ. The rest of the team don't have the heart to tell him what could potentially go wrong. As it turns out, Chai's natural bizarre resilience allows him to survive the impact, to the amazement of everyone else, though the poorly-timed arrival of a blimp knocks him off-course by a few stories.
• Crowd Chant: Chai starts hallucinating a crowd chanting "Chai! Chai!" when he his combo reaches S-Rank.
• Curse Cut Short: The third level ends with the results screen interrupting Chai cursing in fear... with the following Previously on… segment then letting him complete the curse.
• Deadly Euphemism: Rekka makes it clear to Chai that, regardless of how marketing phrases it, "recalling" him after the botched Project Armstrong upgrade means that they plan to kill him.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: QA-1MIL, Rekka, Mimosa, and the Final Boss all explode upon defeat.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you stop close enough to a wall that the hand Chai's constantly snapping with would clip into it, he switches to a separate idle animation that keeps his hand closer to his body.
  • Track 3 ends with a Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight that Chai is unable to damage due to lacking Macaron. If the player comes back on Level Select and uses Macaron to defeat the enemy in question, CNMN chastizes Chai for cheating before playing the cutscene so the story doesn't break.
    CNMN: Mister Chai, Sir Macaron has yet to join you. This is cheating!
  • Using the "Steal the Show" special attack has 808 distract the enemies with her cuteness, briefly stunning them. Should you use it in the boss fight against Mimosa, she'll comment about how not even she can top 808's showmanship.
  • The fight with Korsica doesn't allow you to call in assist characters, since Korsica just uses blocking and dodging to beat her with Victory by Endurance. This also means you can't use Level Select to summon Korsica to fight against herself, because the fight's mechanics don't allow the use of any assist characters.
  • When playing through the first level, Chai eventually gets access to his Super meter, which you then must immediately use to break through a window. When replaying this stage through stage select, no matter what Super you have equipped on Chai, he'll use Power Chord when you have to break the window. That way, equipping non-damage Supers (like Pick-Me-Up or Steal the Show) or an attack which requires more than one bar to use won't leave you stuck.
  • At one point during the last proper level, CNMN ends up as Half the Man He Used to Be because the recoil from the cannon he fires was so intense that it shattered his body. If you go to the hideout and speak to CNMN after this happens, Chai will note that CNMN is completely fine and questions how that could be, though CNMN encourages Chai to not think too hard about it.
• Disappointed by the Motive: For most of the game, Chai and La Résistance are convinced that Kale is planning something malevolent by giving everyone cybernetically enhanced bodies and then taking control of their minds. When it turns out to just be so Kale can influence them into buying more Vandelay products, Chai is disgusted by how "corporate" it is and Korsica comments about how overly complex the plan is for said purpose.
  Kale: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO CONVINCE SOMEONE TO BUY SOMETHING?!
• Dream Tells You to Wake Up: After defeating Zanzo, the gang escapes from the guards. Chai is knocked out and brought in by Korsica, but soon finds himself back in Peppermint's hideout, where everyone is acting unusually nice, including Peppermint. You can still interact, train and buy upgrades as normal for the next stage but, when you start, Chai finds his friends' actions even stranger, until Peppermint tells him he's still captured, prompting him to finally wake up.
• Eating Machine: Vandelay robots are shown to be capable of eating food as a form of fuel. They can even suffer indigestion from eating too much or eating food that hasn't been properly "composted".
• Edible Theme Naming: Many of the noteworthy characters in the story are named after foods and beverages: Chai, Peppermint, Macaron, CNMN (pronounced "Cinnamon"), Kale, Mimosa, Rekka (a type of ramen) and Roquefort (a type of cheese).
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: Vandelay Tower, well, towers above the entire island minus its mountain, and is the main excecutive offices of the company as a whole; though despite a good part of the inside getting destroyed during Chai's invasion, it's still standing when Roxanne returns as CEO. And though it's acessed through the underground and otherwise only visible in the island's map in the hideout, Security Wing 2 is an only slightly smaller tower and just as difficult to traverse, thanks to the laser walls mounted inside.
• Exact Words: Peppermint rebuts Chai's accusation about being endangered by Project Armstrong by saying that her leg isn't Armstrong tech. Notice she didn't say it wasn't Vandelay tech.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes place over two days, tops. It's likely even shorter; the game starts in early day, goes through night stages, then dawn and daytime again, but several levels take place entirely indoors. The only time an hour is mentioned is in a Freeze-Frame Bonus at the end of Track 6 where the station displays 21:45; but it's unclear how much time passed after Chai is knocked unconscious and captured by Korisca, and the time they took to finish her surgery after saving her at the end of Track 7. Chai lampshades this in Security Wing 2, when Macaron gives him a You Are Better Than You Think You Are speech, Chai responds that they've only known each other for "like five hours" at that point.
• Facial Recognition Software: Korsica's office is secured by a facial recognition scanner that will only let her in. Chai gets around it first by taking a ventilation shaft to get in, and then by ungraciously smushing an unconscious Korsica's face against the scanner to get out after her boss fight.
• Fictional Earth: Though real-life animals are seen and ancient mythology such as the Trojan Horse is mentioned, the globe in a few terminal screens and Track 8 is shown to be nothing like Earth as we know it, with mostly one giant continent surrounded by many archipelagos.
• Fight Unscene: Before preparing to secure the cannon at the start of Track 10, Chai takes part in an epic battle that is heard but not seen. The audience doesn't know what happened, but the fact he survived and won was enough to impress Macaron and even Korsica, and Chai simply says they won't mention it again.
• Five-Man Band: From the halfway point of the game onwards, La Résistance consists of five humanoid characters, plus a Team Pet in the form of 808. Playable protagonist Chai fills the role of The Hero, Peppermint is positioned as The Leader but due to Chai's constant "improvisation" acts more as The Lancer, Macaron is The Big Guy capable of knocking down walls even though he'd rather just be The Smart Guy working on the team's tech, CNMN is The Heart that avoids direct conflict but maintains everyone's mental and physical health, and Korsica is a Sixth Ranger.
• Foil: The Resistance as a whole act as one to the Vandelay bosses. While they get off to a bit of a rocky start as Chai learns to rein in his massive ego, they eventually become a band of True Companions who succeed by working together to take down SPECTRA. The bosses, by contrast, are frequently shown to distrust and dislike each other, which is at one point even Lampshaded by Chai. They also all have an overriding individual motivation shared by none of their supposed allies^note Rekka: Smashing "defects". Zanzo: His Mad Scientist research. Korsica: loyalty to Roxanne Vandelay. Mimosa: Herself. Roquefort: Profits. Kale: SPECTRA, meaning that by the time they realise Chai and his friends are a genuine threat to Kale's control over Vandelay and need to be stopped, it's already too late.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Though only visible by using Photo Mode, Korsica's brand of drink that falls from the vending machines has the tagline "A calm mind makes the right choice", hinting at her increasing displeasure with the company; her anger only gets her kidnapped by Chai and almost killed by Kale, but afterwards she indeed makes the right choice to take down the latter.
  • Despite their obvious amorality and the nefarious possibilities with SPECTRA mind-control over those who receive Vandelay cybernetics, Kale repeatedly insists that he and the other Vandelay department heads are not intending to use it to create an army or to Take Over the World. During his boss fight, Roquefort in particular keeps going on about the profits SPECTRA will bring them as motivation for him giving Chai one beast of a fight. It turns out they were actually being completely truthful: Kale simply intends to use the technology to ensure complete customer loyalty to the Vandelay brand and earn millions rather than put in the effort to constantly follow competing market trends.
  • During the museum level, Peppermint gets unusually upset at how the displays belittle Vandelay's founder Roxanne Vandelay despite everything she did for the world to the point that others tell her to calm down and focus. Makes sense given she's Roxanne's daughter.
  • After Korsica joins the team, CNMN comments that SPECTRA is a culmination of Kale's manipulative personality. In the postgame, it's revealed to be literal, as SPECTRA's AI is based entirely on him, including its holographic projection.
  • A large orange blimp is seen hovering around the Vandelay Tower in just about every shot we see of it; it's even part of a museum exhibit featuring the building! What seems to just be an innocuous background detail suddenly becomes important when that same blimp foils Chai's attempt to Human Cannonball his way straight to the executive suite.
  • At the beginning of Track 7, Chai bemoans having to take a back route into the museum. Peppermint sarcastically replies that next time, they should just shoot Chai out of a cannon instead. Track 9 sees Chai infiltrate Vandelay HQ by being stuffed into a cannon and shot at the building.
• Four-Fingered Hands: All the robot and artificial hands have four fingers, including Chai's right arm.
• Game-Over Man: If Chai falls in battle against one of Vandelay Technologies’ directors, they'll add a pithy comment related to their current phase to the regular Game Over screen.
• Gameplay Grading: Fights are graded on your score, how fast you complete encounters, and how on-beat your button presses were, with ranks ranging from D to S. Your grade can also earn a star next to it if you complete an encounter without getting hit.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble:
  • The four human heroes are split between two men (Chai and Macaron) and two women (Peppermint and Korsica). Even the robot sidekicks fit, as 808 and CNMN are referred to as female and male, respectively.
  • The directors are also split equally between three women (Rekka, Korsica, and Mimosa) and three men (Zanzo, Roquefort, and Kale).
• Good Capitalism, Evil Capitalism: Under Roxanne Vandaley, Vandelay Technologies was a genuine force for good, with their robotics technology playing a pivotal role in helping out during an environmental crisis, and the people working under her genuinely loved the company and felt like they were making a difference. Under Kale Vandelay, the company becomes a corrupt mockery of its former self, with Project Armstrong and SPECTRA designed for the express purpose of brainwashing the masses (and even Roxanne herself) and filtering the population based solely on how useful they'd be in maximizing the company's profits.
• The Goomba: The SBR-001 Mecha-Mooks, the first enemies to be encountered, who generally act as glorified punching bags for Chai. This is Lampshaded — Zanzo's research includes experiments intended to "toughen them up", which involves a SBR unit being repeatedly punched in the face with a giant boxing glove. The robotic programmer supervising the experiment is convinced it's likely to be fruitless, but enjoys the entertainment value.
• Guide Dang It!: One of the achievements needed for 100% completion involves breaking QA-1 MIL's faceplate. You'd think you'd accomplish this by hitting him in the face, yes? No! You hit his hands and then do a quick-time event to force him to punch himself in the face. Peppermint does give you a hint that his hands are weak points, but beyond that, there's no indication that the path to get this achievement is hitting his hands.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Played straight with Peppermint, who prefers using her pistols to fight while Chai and Macaron smash things with a guitar or their fists. Zigzagged with Korsica, who uses twin batons and can fight up close with them, but mostly relies on creating gusts of wind with them when summoned.
• Hand Wave: When Chai asks Peppermint about how she is able to teleport to him, she gives a suitably jargony explanation for how she does it and why it won't let Chai warp back to her (ie home base). He then begins to try asking more specific questions like what if he's standing next to a wall when warping her in and Peppermint tells him to just stop thinking about it and accept it.
• Harder Than Hard: The game's default difficulty settings are Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. Beating the game and entering Post-End Game Content unlocks the "Rhythm Master" difficulty, which instantly causes Chai to fail if his combo meter ever drops below a C rating.
• Harmless Electrocution: Chai doesn't take nearly as much damage as someone, let alone one with robotic parts and a power source integrated into them, should take. Vandelay cybernetics must have amazing surge protectors.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Technically the entire soundtrack is such, since in-universe it's being played from the music player trapped in Chai's chest. To establish this, the first song that plays during gameplay, "The Pulse", focuses on a literal heartbeat sound as the rhythm.
• Hit Them in the Pocketbook: Zanzo is Vandelay's Head of R&D, sending waves and waves of robots and outlandish inventions at Chai in place of a boss fight. But his pursuit of unrestrained creativity means that said inventions are ridiculously expensive. Chai and Peppermint defeat Zanzo by goading him into using his priciest works so Chai can trash them, putting huge dents in Zanzo's budget. Chai manages to completely defund Zanzo by the end of this, turning Zanzo into a Cutscene Boss who's easily disposed of.
• How We Got Here:
  • The game's reveal trailer opens with a near word-for-word recreation of the "Yep. That's me" meme.
    Chai: [record scratch freeze frame] Yep, that's me. And you're probably wondering how I ended up here. Well it's pretty standard...
  • The game's main menu also plays to this somewhat, as opening it the first time has it zoom into the team's hideout where Chai is chilling on the sofa off-camera, focused on his scrap guitar, and selecting new game will have the camera focus on an Armstrong procedure advertisement posted on the hideout wall before flashing back to a pre-operation Chai passing by the same poster on his way to get enhanced.
• Human Cannonball: Chai's "plan" to break into Roquefort's office, inspired by one of Peppermint's sarcastic remarks, is to fire himself out of a fireworks cannon to bypass security. The rest of the team don't have the heart to stop him and are amazed when it actually succeeds... though a random blimp prevents this from working flawless.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each of the game's levels are referred to as "Tracks", while the combat encounters within them are called a "Chorus". Multi-part combat encounters refer to each part as a "Verse".
• Impact Silhouette: While on his way to Rekka's office, Chai takes a "detour" that ends with him and 808 smashing through a glass window. If you turn around and look up at said window immediately afterwards, you'll see that there's not only a perfect silhouette of Chai smacking into the glass, but looking more closely shows 808 made her own silhouette.
• Improbable Weapon User: Chai's choice of weapon is a magnetic scrap collector arm, covered in random bits and pieces of junk shaped into an electric guitar. During certain cinematic cutscenes and when the player is doing well enough, it turns into an actual guitar.
• Incompetence, Inc.: Vandelay Technologies would be your typical ultra-powerful cyberpunk MegaCorp, but through the game they are so internally chaotic and mismanaged that a small team of rebels are able to take them down in the span of a weekend.
  Game Director John Johanas: It wasn't meant to be this biting criticism. While very real issues, it was more of a light-hearted jab at the idea of these large corporations being the masterminds behind everything, but the gears don't really align. [...] You’d think that the larger a company gets, the more professional it would be, but it instead gets more chaotic. We’re lampooning that more than anything, but it's something that is very relatable to a lot of people no matter what industry you are in. A lot of people deal with how work feels like a comedy because of how things don't work out.
• Interface Spoiler: Looking at the controls early on will not only give away the fact that you can call in an ally to help you in battle, but also there are multiple allies.
• Irony:
  • When Chai fights Korsica, he almost manages to talk her into a Heel–Face Turn. Then he calls her "oblivious", which pisses her off and starts the next phase of the fight. Turns out he's not actually sure what oblivious means. Not to mention his general obliviousness.
  • Korsica is the head of Security, but Chai makes it all the way to her locked-down office through a glaring security hole. She's also the only boss to keep her password in her head, but it's just "PASSWORD". Which is the most popular -- and therefore insecure -- password you can have.
• Joke Item: Hidden among the Chip upgrades is "Rhythm Dodge Pull Cancel", a Chip that just removes the Power-Up Magnet ability of the Rhythm Dodge. It doesn't have any sort of Magikarp Power either; the chip really is useless. The item description reveals that Peppermint made a deliberately worthless ability to check if Chai actually reads the descriptions for these chips instead of just blind-buying them.
• "Just Frame" Bonus: Being the Stylish Action Rhythm Game hybrid it is, it comes with the territory. While the player normally isn't outright punished for messing up inputs, the benefits from keeping the beat incentivize players to learn the timings to get higher scores.
• Kaizo Trap: A lighthearted example: Right after Korsica's boss battle, there is a surprise button prompt to catch her after she flies into the air. Failing this prompt doesn't affect the story, but it is required to get an S-rank on that section.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Every pun Chai makes is consistently met with a "No. Just… No" Reaction, though he's not the only one. Peppermint expresses this reaction more vocally than others.
• La Résistance: Chai becomes a member of one led by a girl named Peppermint in order to fight back against the corporation that experimented on him.
• Lampshade Hanging: Whenever you load up the game checkpoint, often in the middle of a Level/Track, you'll return to the hideout. Chai and his friends sometimes call out why they are hanging around here when they are actually in between back-to-back stages in the story where they can't. At one point, when Peppermint suggests upgrading 808 to teleport Chai back between missions (a "retcon" of sorts to fix this situation), he reminds her that she outright said earlier it wasn't possible, forcing her to simply Hand Wave.
• Last-Minute Hookup: Strongly downplayed, and more of a "Last Minute Romantic Interest". Peppermint is clearly shown to be crushing on Korsica during the ending cutscene, while this is at most only slightly hinted at in the game itself.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The one-year anniversary update added several cosmetic shirts to the game. One of them reads "Chai & 808 & Peppermint & Macaraon & CNMN & Korsica.", spoiling a mid-game twist that Korsica joins the party.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • CNMN notes how the CH-AS1R robot pursuing Chai and Korsica was rather intricately designed, despite it only being a cutscene entity, speculating that the robot's creator probably laments their creation never getting a chance to fight Chai.
  • In one hideout scene, Chai seems to comment on a Fade to Black transition between cutscenes.
    Chai: "Ooh, it's getting dark in here."
  • In a conversation Chai can have with Macaron before entering Kale's office and initiating the last act of the game, Chai gives Macaron a pep-talk by telling Macaron to think to himself, "in an hour, two hours, [they'll] be done". Guess how long the last act of the game takes on average?
  • The villains Chai has to face are the heads of various Vandelay departments, so characters use the term "boss" in contexts interchangeable between the corporate sense and the video game sense.
  • After completing the Finishing Move against the Final Boss, Chai will say "And this... is game over!" on the final hit. And since you just beat the last boss, it is game over.
  • After finishing up SPECTRA for good, Chai can sit on the couch and muse that there's probably still more things left for him to "achieve".
• Lethal Lava Land: Zanzo's Research and Development department is located deep under the earth in order to use geothermal energy as a power source, and Chai will have to avoid lava geysers while getting through it.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: If you miss the final QTE prompt in Track 7, the music slows to a halt as Chai misses catching Korsica and she hits the floor instead.
• Lighter and Softer: To Tango's other works beforehand. Previously, they were known for dark horror games with plenty of intense violence and gore. This one, though? A lighthearted and fun adventure with no blood or gore. The most extreme it gets is the occasional bout of Black Comedy regarding robots being over-worked or blown up.
• Loophole Abuse: SPECTRA is programmed to control people who are equipped with Project Armstrong-centered technology (such as Chai). Peppermint's prosthetic leg, Macaron's enhanced arms, and the cat 808 were all made before the project began, so they are immune, as is Korsica when they have to save her with their personal tech after Kale attempted to kill her.
• Lore Codex: All of the emails and messages you find in the levels are collected and can be read in the hideout.
• Macrogame: In classic action game fashion, Chai retains all of his upgrades between playthroughs, and can replay levels for better rankings, to snatch up missed upgrades, and to collect more currency to buy the rest of his moves and chips. Defeating the final boss unlocks a chip that will create a radar pulse when near hidden items to make tracking those missing Heart Containers easier, and then completing all the Post-End Game Content unlocks another chip that functions as a simple currency multiplier to help scoop up those last few shop purchases.
• MegaCorp: Vandelay Technologies is an absolutely massive business. With Kale taking over, there are signs throughout leaning more to greed than charity. The entire game is spent dismantling it piece by piece because of it.
• Medium Awareness:
  • In the second level, one of Rekka's bots is preparing to drop a bomb to destroy a rail Chai is riding on, with Rekka appearing in a comic book-style panel insert. As Rekka speaks, she points outside of the panel, which actually pushes the bot and causes it to drop the bomb early.
  • When Zanzo meets face-to-face with Chai, he punctuates part of his speech with JoJo poses, complete with the series' stark shading and "MENACING" kanji surrounding him. Afterwards, he notices the effects and swats them away before leaving the scene.
• Mickey Mousing: Due to Chai's musical super power, the entire world appears to be in sync to the music playing, including the rate at which lights blink, steam is puffed out of vents, and tree branches sway in the wind. Even most of the actions in the in-game cutscenes match to the beat.
• Mind Control: Kale's plan is to use Project Armstrong to make people vulnerable to being controlled by an artificial intelligence called SPECTRA. Essentially, mind-controlling the populace into buying even more Vandelay products.
• Model Museum: One post-game benefit is being able to purchase and view character and enemy models to view. It also doubles as a Monster Compendium, as every model has a description of its lore background.
• Moment Killer: In the ending cutscene, Chai jumps into the back of the restored Vandelay pickup between Korsica and Peppermint as the latter is sidling up to the former. She doesn't seem too irritated.
• Money Is Experience Points: Gears are primarily used for buying abilities and upgrading Chai’s stats. You could also use them to purchase and upgrade chips, and you can eventually use them to purchase costumes for different characters.
• Monster Arena: After finishing the main story, a gauntlet mode called "Rhythm Tower" is unlocked. This 60-floor variant tests how you use your skills, assists, and chipset against each group and boss in a limited time. The further you go, the higher the multiplier increases for any gears you collect. You can extend time by mastering your skills and parries and finishing each floor with a high rank. You can even use those seconds to refill your health and/or reverb bars. With all that said, if you run out of time or die midway, you lose all of your gears. Luckily, you are given the option to take a break or cash out early whenever you reach a checkpoint.
• No OSHA Compliance: Vandelay is a nightmare to get around, and the employees often complain about it. Some of them legitimately do not know how to get around the company, especially because moving about requires skills only Chai has access to. At least one email asks why, and the response is simply "Because it's cooler." It probably helps that almost all of the employees seem to be robots.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: At the start of the mission with the cannon that launches Chai straight into Vandelay headquarters, you hear some ominous monster sounds and the sound of fighting and see the screen shake a lot before Chai drops in from the top of screen cheering about the fight he was just in. Macaron and Korsica both state that the offscreen fight was the most amazing thing they've ever seen and they can't believe Chai actually survived. Chai leans towards the camera and requests that it not be brought up again.
• Ominous Clouds: Though it's bright and sunny as the team chases Kale to the SPECTRA building, by the time they arrive, the sky is completely dark because of an impending thunderstorm. Later, Kale uses it to his advantage, activating the lightning rods on the SPECTRA platform to concentrate the lightning strikes and power up his Berserk mode, enhancing his attacks.
• Only One Name: Every character who isn't part of the Vandelay Family is only ever addressed by a single name.
• Out-of-Character Alert:
  • When Peppermint demonstrates how Chai is vulnerable to being controlled by SPECTRA, she makes Chai call himself an idiot that would be lost without Peppermint's support.
  • In the final level, Kale uses his Mind Control tech on Chai, causing him to drop his weapon and say "I'm proud to be a member of the Vandelay family." When Macaron states that Chai would never say that, an exasperated Kale says that's the point.
• Painting the Medium: During the Roquefort boss fight, his health meter has his name in two different fonts. One for his wolf form, and the other for human.
• Permanently Missable Content: Although completing the game unlocks a level selection that allows Chai to replay all previous stages with his new upgrades, there's no real New Game Plus feature. This means that the many cutscenes in-between levels (including the game's opening) and all the extra hideout dialogue, much of which is easy to miss, can never be seen again unless the player feels like starting a new save file.
• Position of Literal Power: In the city the game takes place in, just about everything is under the purvey of MegaCorp Vandelay Technologies, and with it the quality of cybernetics provided. As such, the higher you get in the hierarchy of the company, the better the quality of your parts. Naturally, this means all of the execeutives of the company, with the exception of Zanzo, who relies on manufactured robots to do the fighting and immediately folds in a cutscene when he tries to attack Chai directly, possess top-of-the-line enhancements that make them into formidable combatants much more powerful than even the strongest Elite Mook.
• Post-Cyberpunk: The game is about a rebel vs. MegaCorp conflict featuring robots and cybernetics, but is also universally bright, colorful and cheerful. And it isn't corporate domination itself that is treated as the root of the setting's problems, but rather each of the corporation's leadership being bad people. Instead of plotting to bring down Vandelay as a whole, the happy ending instead has the protagonists install good guys to lead the company.
• Post-End Game Content: After defeating the Final Boss, the game continues with Peppermint detecting active SPECTRA transmitters, and Chai is asked to revisit past levels in order to deal with it. Additionally, CNMN and Korsica offer new services at the base; an outfit shop and special combat challenges, respectively. All Tracks/Stages can be replayed on different difficulties to access previous blocked secret entrances, including the mysterious numbered doorways. Above all, all attacks, upgrades, assists and specials carry on to give players a chance to improve their score and grades on each Track.
• The Power of Friendship:
  • The encouragement of Chai's friends gives him the motivation and focus to break through Kale's harmonic barrier, and the entire lead-up to and final showdown with Kale has the entire Resistance working perfectly in sync to tear down everything Kale throws at them. It's best summarized in this exchange:
    Kale: You're just a bunch of losers!
    Chai: Maybe so. But together, we're unstoppable.
  • It's even namedropped by Macaron should you talk to him in the hideout when quitting out of the Final Boss.
• The Power of Rock: The game runs off it. Absolutely everything is synced up to the beat of its rock soundtrack. Chai himself literally runs off this once his beloved music player becomes an accidental replacement for his heart, giving him music-based powers.
• Practical Currency: You collect Gears as a currency, which other characters use to create various items and upgrades. The fact that it's not exactly clear how gears are supposed to be refined into completely different items is given plenty of lampshading; CNMN himself says it's convoluted on how they can be turned into clothes.
• Previously on…: Parodied. The third level's results screen pops up right as Chai is approached by an intimidating stranger that's concealed by darkness with red light shining off of his glasses, with Chai giving a Curse Cut Short. Immediately after, one of these segments replays bits of that scene, with Chai finishing the curse as it reaches the present.
• Product Displacement: The "Rock Boots" are a pair of Doc Martens boots, discernable by their general shape, the black-and-yellow heel tabs, and association with Rock (Doc Martens were especially popular with Punk listeners). The actual Doc Martens brand is missing from them.
• Product Placement: A good few of the cosmetic guitars Chai can equip post-game are all based on real-life guitars produced by guitar company Epiphone.
• Production Throwback:
  • You can find a pair of robots from Vandelay's Human Resources department modeled after Sebastian Castellanos and Joseph Oda throughout the game, such as in the room right before the fight with Rekka, with the former giving a nihilistic monologue about a poster on the wall.
  • In the Vandelay Museum, the Tango Gameworks snail can be found standing in front of a mirror, vanishing into it as Clair de Lune plays.
• Project Blank: The procedure to grant cybernetic enhancements to regular people that kicks off the whole plot is called "Project Armstrong".
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Downplayed. Roquefort's boss fight, whether you're in Streamer-Friendly Mode or not, starts with the opening notes of Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, since that's in the public domain. However, the song that follows is either a licensed track with Wolfgang Gartner's "Wolfgang's 5th Symphony", or an original track called "The Fizzith".
• Rank Inflation: Ranks for individual fights or "verses" during a Track range from D to S, and adds a shiny * if you complete a verse without taking any damage. The rank you get for the Track overall can go an extra step higher, S-Crown, if you get an S rank on every single fight and avoid continues.
• Recurring Extra: There are a few robot models that keep popping up throughout the stages that Chai can interact with, most notably the eerily-too-knowledgeable Smidge.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Peppermint - as the name would indicate - is fairly cool-headed and logical, especially compared to Chai, who's impulsive, emotional, and kind of a ditz.
  • Later on, Chai manipulates Korsica's temper and emotions to defeat her. Which makes Chai look like the Purple Oni - or maybe Magenta - to her Red Oni. ^note Or maybe she's Magenta to his Red, but she's definitely Red compared to Peppermint. Just to underline the similarity to Chai, the Resistance enhances her arms and heart, much like him.
• Retraux: One of the new costume sets in the Arcade Challenge! Update! is an intentionally low-poly and texture resolution look intended to make the cast resemble character models from the PlayStation or Nintendo 64 era.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Though they are compliant with their bosses, Vandelay's robot workforce appears to be close to fully sentient, showing a full range of emotions and making independent decisions regarding carrying out their tasks (to the extent that some of them try to find ways to get out of doing their jobs). They apparently have working hours like a human worker would, and a later scene shows them eating human food without issue.
  • Though their limits are never entirely specified, one unit profile mentions the VA-SER units all have programmed humanity, but it's only used to appeal to the public.
• Running Gag:
  • In the geothermal powerplant where R&D is stationed, Chai can find a rather out-of-the-way notice by a disgruntled employee who thinks they've been Reassigned to Antarctica in lieu of being fired (because that's extra effort and paperwork) because of the fact their 'office' is a small alcove in a cavernous area of R&D. Bitterly, they decide to mess with the coffee machine so it only gives out decaf. This results in a recurring gag about all the coffee now being decaf: while Chai is moving through Security, Korsica will come in over the loudspeakers to ask why all the coffee is decaf, a relaxing worker in the cafe will comment that Vandelay "makes a mean decaf", and Kale is denied a cortado when his assistant informs him the machines are still only putting out decaf. In the ending cutscene, Korsica is also seen using a coaster for her coffee mug that reads "This machine runs on decaf". The game's first major update would continue the joke, as sometime before the events of the game, the decaf situation turned DM-ET1L units berserk and caused them to be decomissioned, justifying its exclusivity to the Arcade challenges.
  • Korsica getting conked on the head. Just before the fight against her, a vent cover falls onto her head. After the fight, Chai smacks her face against the face scanner so they can leave. Then, he bonks her on the doorframe on the way to it before doing it again on another doorway. At one final doorway, which is incredibly wide to the point Chai can easily make his way through without hitting Korsica on the head, he still takes the time to cautiously, slowly make his way through it... Only for the door to close partially, conking her on the head again.
• Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight: One of Zanzo's robots is equipped with a more advanced energy shield that not even Peppermint can break. The stage ends with Chai's failed attempt to fight then reason with it. Before the next stage, he and Peppermint meet Macaron, who has a way to break said shield. He joins the gang and his ability makes these heavy-shielded robots beatable going forward. Playing this again in Level Select can allow you to actually beat the robot since you will already have all of the assists available, including Macaron. However, this will break the story since you still need to meet Macaron, so CNMN will play the end cutscene as normal so Chai can officially meet them both.
• Secret Level: Beating the game allows you to access the numbered locked doors that you could previously see throughout the game. These are 'SPECTRA Rooms', housing transmitters that would enable its mind-control to be activated after Kale's defeat. There are eight doors in total, with each door having both a standard and hard version for a total of 16 challenges. Completing everything leads to a Sequel Hook, where Chai prevents SPECTRA's activation by simply unplugging it and leaving it alone, with an obvious hint that someone could just return and reactivate it.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Though Downplayed, each of the seven main bosses fought throughout the game have aspects of these to them.
  • QA-1MIL, a giant hulking machine unable to travel outside of the QA building by its tethers supporting its weight from the ceiling, represents Gluttony, voicing how much it loves the taste of defects like Chai, and having apparently consumed a massive amount of them going by the unbroken no-defect record.
  • Constantly-shouting, angry and prone to violence at the slightest perceived insult, Rekka represents Wrath, enjoying a spectacle of a fight and eager to beat Chai down after he broke her perfect record.
  • Zanzo represents lust for power, lording his power of creative genius over others and desiring to enact whatever idea he has regardless of the costly reality of doing so, which The Team exploit by getting him to indulge in his creative vision and manipulating the augmented reality against Chai so much he blows his budget before he can enact his Boss Fight proper.
  • Despite her overall diligent nature and thoroughness with doing her job, Korsica ironically represents Sloth, not bothering to question Kale's plans with SPECTRA and trusting in his vision of the company's future despite his obvious disregard of the company's customer-friendly roots, not thinking to take action for herself until Chai points out how she's Locked Out of the Loop. The fact that she's not truly a slothful person means she performs a Heel–Face Turn and joins the team mid-way through the game after investigating Chai's claims and finding out he was right. Doubling the Irony, Korsica furthermore benefits from the company's own Slothfulness, as they don't bother removing her access to the system or taking her out of the mailing lists after she's fired and nearly killed, resulting in her being able to feed insider information to aid Chai's progress.
  • Mimosa represents Envy, constantly making herself look better than others by deflecting issues with the company's perforce onto them whilst maintaining her surface-level image of a perfect subordinate, specifically sabotaging both Rekka and Korsica, the other two female bosses, in minor petty ways to make them look bad. She becomes truly angered when Chai not only interrupts her concert, but proceeds to get the audience on his side, wanting to kill him for 'stealing her limelight'.
  • Money-obsessed Rocquefort clearly represents Greed, getting pissed at the wasteful spending habits of Zanzo, angered that he ultimately has to fight Chai because it's 'a waste of time, and time is money', having the third stage of his Boss Fight take place in a literal money bin, and suffering a Death by Materialism from the quarter's earning crushing him under a small mountain of gold.
  • Image-obsessed, perfectionist company head Kale represents Pride, his Establishing Character Moment expressing his derogatory opinion that the Project Armstrong volunteers are all 'losers' who will struggle to meet his ambitions through the project, constantly mocking others for not doing enough to meet his high standards, refusing to treat Chai as a serious threat despite his multiple successes, so utterly convinced that his vision of the company future is the correct one that he brainwashed his own mother to achieve it, and has the company's history re-written to make himself seem like a genius innovator who is the only one who can lead Vandelay going forward. In his Boss Fight, he specifically mocks Chai's Armstrong enhancements as inferior compared to his own cutting-edge full-body augmentation. He also winds up taking some aspects of Sloth over from Korsica once his motivation for using SPECTRA is revealed to be that he couldn't be bothered to put in the work to follow market trends.
• Self-Deprecation: Many of the memos you can find in the SPECTRA Hub Room depict Kale mocking business ideas that are actually the premises of other games developed by Bethesda or Tango Gameworks.
• Sequel Hook: The Post-End Game Content resolves with Chai anticlimactically leaving the backup SPECTRA and Kale AI unplugged right next to its outlet, and the achievement unlocked for completing this is "I can't see this being a problem ever again". After this, in the last optional hideout conversation, Peppermint's final words in the entire game are that she has a feeling that "we're just getting started".
• Shout-Out: Several.
  • The clear inspiration from Jet Set Radio is given a direct homage on the game's main menu, with both games focusing on the main cast relaxing in their hideout as each option on the menu zooms in to a different person. The game over screen is also a direct reference, with both games featuring the player character falling over in a black void as a spotlight focuses on them.
  • The tag on 808's collar is the kanji character for "hibiki" stylized to resemble Metallica's logo.
    • 808's floating spherical drone mode is a dead ringer for Luna-P.
  • Rekka's appearance and style of fighting are a reference to professional wrestling as a whole, but her manner of speaking as well as an achievement linked to her defeat are clear references to Macho Man Randy Savage.
  • Rekka's grab attack during her fight sees her perform the Potemkin Buster on Chai.
  • One of the guitars in the cosmetics store, the Epiphone ES-335 Emerald Green, clearly resembles I-No's guitar Marlene.
  • Zanzo's various hammy poses are a very obvious reference to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, including one moment where he performs the Golden Wind "torture dance". He's even accompanied by the manga's trademark "MENACING" onomatopoeia during one of his scenes. He also directly quotes Dracula.
    "But enough talk! Have at you!"
  • Macaron's introduction shows a P.O.V. Shot of him observing Chai with the T-800's red hud.
  • When Macaron joins Chai and Peppermint, despite not wanting to actually fight.
    Macaron: Um, are we... really locked out of the "Pacifist Route"?
    Chai: I'd... probably say so.
  • After arriving in Mimosa's dressing room too late, Chai sneaks onto the stage where she's performing by dressing up in a "Left Shark" costume, referencing the infamous backup dancer from Katy Perry's Super Bowl XLIX performance.
  • Chai's entrance onto Mimosa's stage is a homage to Michael Jackson's stage entrance in Bucharest at the start of his Dangerous World Tour.
  • The middle portion of Mimosa's boss fight is almost a wholesale reference to Space Channel 5, specifically the section in Part 2 where Ulala has a rock-off battle with Pudding.
  • The cutscene with Kale immediatelly following Mimosa's defeat is structured similarly to the famous scene in The Professional where Stan screams at a henchman to bring in 'everyone,' including Kale making the exact same face as Stan from the exact same angle, except Kale is shutting down every part of the campus.
    Kale: Shut the campus down.
    SBR-001: Uh... which sections, sir?
    Kale: ALL OF THEM!
  • After getting launched into Vandelay Headquarter's cafeteria, Chai realizes he's been caught when the entire cafeteria is looking at him and a wanted poster on a screen above him. Both he and his wanted poster are in the pose from the famous "Bigfoot" photo◊.
  • As mentioned in Production Throwback, two robots from human resources are a direct parody of Sebastian Castellanos and Joseph Oda from The Evil Within.
  • As the crew in Chai's dream are trying to wake him up, 808 performs The Arm's dancing strut from Twin Peaks.
  • One of Chai's special attacks is named "Rip and Tear".
  • Chapter 10's beginning, of all things, mimics Xenogears infamous disc 2 exposition dumps, with Chai sitting on the couch, under a spotlight in the dark, as his MP3 player dangles and sways behind text that explains all the epic things that happened off-camera.
  • Once you unlock the ability to customize Chai's outfit, one of the available hairstyles is called "Stylish Silver."
  • The Reward for collecting all the Armstrong Circuits found in the stages is called "All My Circuits."
  • In the Museum level, at one point you find a robot attempting to create art with discarded robots. He claims that others find his art to be too dark. The "sculpture" that he's working on is a clear reference to "Saturn Devouring His Son"◊ which is generally agreed to be a rather disturbing piece.
  • Some of the Vandelay Vlogs left by Kale in the SPECTRA room are rejected product pitches that reference other Bethesda developed/published games, namely underground living environments that are actually giant social experiments, technology that can create an infinitely looping day that resets at the end of the day, injections of alien DNA that give supernatural powers administered via the eye, and a machine that contains the brain of a serial killer that pulls people into a dream world.
  • The name "Vandelay Industries" itself originates from Seinfeld, first mentioned in the episode "The Boyfriend (Part 1)".
  • Inside Vandelay Headquarters, you can find a memo about commemorative hoodies to celebrate the upcoming destruction of the Defect (aka Chai), and the way it describes the hoodie's design is taken straight from the business card scene from American Psycho.
  • Roquefort looks and talks a lot like a stereotypical 80/90s businessman^note except apparently non-white, and with cybernetics, and a monocle. His alternate form is a large wolf. Though he isn't on Wall Street.
  • Kale ripping off his attire in one motion is something that is seen all the time in the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series.
  • After getting snapped out of brainwashing during the final battle, Chai taunts Kale by saying "Don't call it a comeback."
  • Chai's entrance into Track 2, leaping high out of a manhole and posing up at the sky to the camera, is rather similar to how stages from another rather musical game, de Blob, open.
  • Some of the character poses in Photo Mode are ripped straight from Dragon Ball Z. Two prominent examples being Chai and Peppermint doing the Fusion Dance and every character (except CNMN) having a Ginyu Force pose.
  • The tutorial robot "Smidge" being a refrigerator that makes flirtatious comments with masochistic overtones to Chai's discomfort is essentially a PG-rated version of NORA from Atomic Heart.
  • New music in every stage is introduced by text that appears in the lower left-hand corner. It's in exactly the same position and font as MTV, back in the day when it played music videos.
• Show Within a Show: Every Mission Report is drawn in the faux-manga style of some Franco-Belgian Comics. In the last one, there is a panel where Peppermint puts down the very same comic detailing their plans to ambush Mimosa, revealing she draws them herself (possibly so Chai can understand). The previous one also foreshadows her crush on Korsica, as she stops to draw a heart around her (representing her Heel–Face Turn) while they account for the bosses they had to deal with.
• Shrine to Self: There are golden busts of Kale scattered throughout the levels that Chai can smash to pieces to earn extra scrap metal and gears he can use to buy upgrades from Peppermint. The Vandelay Museum also becomes this under Mimosa's direction, existing solely to prop up Kale as a singular visionary while relegating his own mother to being a footnote in the company's founding history and completely wiping Peppermint's existence and contribution to Project Armstrong from the records.
• Slapstick Knows no Gender: While Chai receives the most slapstick abuse of the entire cast combined, Korsica gets her fair share. After she gets defeated in her boss fight, Chai can fail to catch her in a QTE; if this happens, Korsica slams into the ground with the background music deflating. As Chai is carrying Korsica in the following cutscene, he squishes her face against a scanner, then proceeds to bump her head against several doors. The third time he tries this, Chai very carefully maneuvers the unconscious Korsica through the third door, only to have the door suddenly close and bonk Korsica on the head anyway.
• Soft Glass:
  • Chai breaks through glass windows at several points in the story and doesn't get a single cut. An O5-KAR commends him on the second instance, surprised that he's intact while a robot like him would be junk on the floor.
  • Reconstructed at the start of the Track 4 chase sequence; he throws his weapon at a window to crack it, allowing him and his friends to break through the weak point thanks to their running start.
• Standard Evil Organization Squad: In order to stop Project Armstrong, La Résistance has to personally deal with all of Vandelay Technologies’ directors, who can hold their own in a fight: Rekka, Zanzo, Korsica, Mimosa, Roquefort, and Kale Vandelay himself.
• Streamer-Friendly Mode: A mode can be enabled in the options which replaces the licensed music with original, stream-friendly tunes. While the game warns that this won't eliminate copyright claims, it will at least significantly reduce them.
• Superpowered Robot Meter Maids:
  • According to plaques in the Vandelay Museum, most of the enemy robots fought were designed with some mundane purpose in mind, such as trimming hedges or barbequing.
  • Chai is a cyborg version of this, as his robot arm was originally supposed to be a trash collector; however between unintentionally having a music player installed alongside it and Chai's own ridiculous durability, he is a One-Man Army.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: To avoid copyright issues for players recording their gameplay, Streamer Mode replaces all of the licensed songs with in-house composed tracks that share the same beat as the original. Compare Roquefort's boss theme (The Fizzith) with Wolfgang Gartner's 5th Symphony.
• Take Our Word for It: Chai's plan to commandeer a cannon ends with his arrival at the cannon, talking about how awesome the previous fight scene was, the one the audience didn't get to see.
• Take That!:
  • Korsica questions why a coffee maker needs a firmware update. Some real-life companies have added a wifi feature on select household appliances for various uses, so it may be a shot at them.
  • One of the memos you find tells how Vandelay has successfully secured the rights to the arrow symbol to denote location or direction, poking at Sega infamously patenting the game mechanic of an arrow pointing towards your objective in Crazy Taxi.
  • One of the memos in the SPECTRA Hub Room is an email from Roquefort brainstorming ideas for how to further monetize the rollout of SPECTRA, including pre-order bonuses and day-one DLC.
• Team Spirit: Chai learns throughout the story how important teamwork is. After all, you can't call yourself a "rockstar" and not have the equivalent of a band to back you up.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Zanzo and Roquefort do not get along, being that Roquefort is responsible for maintaining the company's profitability, while Zanzo is content to throw money with reckless abandon to fulfill his own curiosities.
• Terminator Impersonator: The ES series of robots with their noticeable german accents combined with their particular frames make them an obvious reference to the Terminator.
• Theme Naming: There are multiple layers of themed naming going on at once in this game:
  • First, all of the cast are named after kinds of food or drinks, often in somewhat subtle ways. For example, Rekka is named after a kind of ramen broth, while Roquefort is a kind of cheese.
  • Second, the main heroic cast are all named after kinds of tea: Chai, Peppermint, Macaron and Cinnamon. This creates a connection with Korsica, who is named after Corsican Pear Spice tea. Sure enough, she pulls a Heel–Face Turn and joins the team.
  • Third, Peppermint and Kale are the children of Roxanne Vandelay, and are both named after different kinds of green edible plants. This one is partially obscured due to the two above examples overlapping with each other, keeping The Reveal hidden.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: When Chai and Zanzo meet face-to-face, Zanzo calls him Mister Chai, and Chai says that it's Mister Chai. Zanzo then points out that's what he just said.
• Third-Person Person: Rekka talks like this. Combined with wearing a huge belt that says "BOSS" on it, along with her style of vocal inflections, she's doing it to take on the appearance of a pro wrestler.
• Tim Taylor Technology: Chai discovers his first special attack after touching a battery pack and being electrocuted, with Peppermint informing him his now overcharged cybernetics can expend the excess energy in a stronger attack. In fact this seems to be a feature of Vandelay cybernetics, as Rekka and Kale both exploit this in their fights.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Vandelay Technologies has Rekka, a boisterous self-styled pro wrestler, and Mimosa, a vain beauty and dancer. They also have Brave Scot Korsica as another tomboy before her defection.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: The English version has the Japanese word "Hibiki" written on Chai's suspender, as kanji on 808's collar, and as one of Chai's reverb moves.
• Treasure Room: The third "verse" of Roquefort's boss fight takes place in the company vault, filled with enough coins that he can dig through it and attack Chai from below.
• True Companions: The Resistance starts out as a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits, but they grow into this by the second-to-last Track. Even after Kale is stopped and Roxanne is restored as CEO, they dedicate downtime to hanging out with each other.
• Turns Red:
  • Most bosses become more aggressive and have more devastating attacks after losing most of their health, such as QA-1MIL's "Serious Mode".
  • Certain Elite Mooks will become enraged when stunned and force Chai into a parry battle in retaliation.
• Victory by Endurance: Invoked in the boss fight against Korsica. Since Chai can't physically overpower her, even with his powers, he instead goes for letting Korsica burn herself out trying to hit him, all while intentionally making her angry enough to keep attacking him.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • SCR-UBS are adorable, harmless, little vacuum cleaner robots who can be found across all levels cleaning the floors. They can also be destroyed for useful pickup items such as health.
  • There's also the chest robots, which ineffectually back away and cower as Chai busts them open to obtain fragments of upgrade items.
  • Any interactable NPC can be smacked to hear additional dialogue, most of which are reactions to getting hit in the first place.
  • One robot built a pretty tower from boxes and is standing nearby adoring it. Naturally, you can smash it into pieces for a handful of gears, at which point he states that he'll at least always have a memory of it.
  • In one level, a robot can be spotted relaxing on a swim ring. Chai has the option of calling in Peppermint to shoot it until it flips in the water. Lampshaded by both of them immediately after:
    Chai: That was harsh! He was just chillin', Peppermint.
    Peppermint: You aim, I shoot... so it's on YOU.
• Virtual-Reality Interrogation: Chai's ending up back in the hideout after seemingly being captured by Korsica is setup to make the player assume one of these is happening only for it to be subverted when it's revealed that Chai just fell asleep while he was captured.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Vandelay's department heads mostly get their desserts because they don't cooperate with, or even like, each other. Mimosa doesn't talk to any exec but Kale and is more concerned with putting her image out there; Korsica can't get much work done because Security is falling apart; Roquefort and Zanzo are at each other's throats over the company's budget; and Kale is too prideful to care about any of it, enabling Mimosa's narcissism and punching down on Korsica instead of sending anyone from Maintenance to fix Security's issues (in fact, Chai has to do maintenance work just to get to Korsica). The first half of the heads that Peppermint's crew fights are only approachable because Vandelay is a mass of clashing egos, leaving Peppermint's crew under the radar; when only Mimosa, Roquefort, and Kale are left, they finally start taking the heroes seriously, but the damage is already done.
• Weird Sun: The rising sun behind Vandelay Tower in Track 10 is a series of stripes, taking after Vaporwave aesthetics.
• We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Various small details hint that 'Credits' is the currency used around the Vandelay campus, and going by the currency's logo being a stylised 'V' it is likely created and backed by Vandelay Technologies itself. Avoided for the player, as you collect Gears as a Practical Currency that other characters can use.
• Wham Line: During the museum raid, Peppermint gets increasingly frustrated at the exhibits that downplay Roxanne's contributions to the company. She loses it at the exhibit claiming Kale created Project Armstrong, leading to this confession:
  Peppermint: Kale didn't develop all that technology. I know this because this leg... my mom made it for me.
• X Days Since: Rekka has a "Days Without Defects" that implausibly claims to have counted 994,543,515 days (almost 2,722,912 years). The first boss's self-destruct smashes Chai into it, which resets it to zero.
• Xenomorph Xerox: The KEM-0N0 robot is an animalistic, quadrupedal design with an elongated head and spiked tail highly reminiscent of an Xenomorph's.
• X-Ray Sparks: Once you reach Phase 2 of her boss battle, Rekka's Shock and Awe attacks can expose Chai's skeleton if he's hit.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: A short comedic example. During the long climb to reach Korsica's security office, Chai at one point begins to get really angry at how much higher he has to go and begins wondering if it's a waste of time. Macaron chimes in that the Chai he knows wouldn't throw in the towel so easily in attempt to pep him up. Chai awkwardly responds that they've only known each other for about 5 hours at this point.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Z-shielding can be broken either by calling in Macaron, or with most of Chai's super moves. However, trying to use a super move on the Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight that introduces Z-shielding right before Macaron joins the team will have no effect.

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