Video Game / PaRappa the Rapper

aka: Parappa The Rapper

Once you played it, you can't get it out of your head.

'"I gotta believe!"'

— PaRappa's motto

Released in December 1996 in Japan, September 1997 in Europe, and November 1997 in the US, PaRappa the Rapper is a Rhythm Game for the PlayStation.

The game follows the (mis)adventures of a rapping puppy named PaRappa who attempts to improve himself in order to impress Sunny Funny, the girl he has a crush on, despite being intimidated by the presence of Joe Chin, a rich and narcissistic dog who is also trying to woo Sunny. How does he win Sunny's heart? By rapping his way to glory, of course!

The game works like this: Every stage has a "teacher" who raps a song and ask you to perform certain tasks, like learning karate, learning how to drive, selling things at a flea market, etc. in time with the music. You hit a button at the right moment as indicated on a bar at the top of the screen. Effectively, it's a video game version of Simon. Do well and you'll make it through the song; do too badly and you'd have to try again.

But, the rap twist is that during gameplay, PaRappa can deviate heavily from the "teacher", creating his own twisted yet awesome string of button mashes and random sentences, and still score points. In fact, by creating original lines that are synchronized with the rhythm and beat of the teacher's lines, the player can access freestyle-mode and get better endings.

It is a very short and simple game, but the unique premise, the appealing Paper People artstyle, and the unbelievably catchy songs made it an instant cult classic. It's not only seen as the first definitive modern Rhythm Game, but probably the most influential. Pretty much every Rhythm Game created since, from beatmania to DanceDanceRevolution to Guitar Hero, owes at least a little to PaRappa, if only for starting things off. The game is still highly regarded today, with a 88% on GameRankings.

The game got a large boost from PlayStation Jampack demo CDs which often included the entire first level (Chop Chop Master Onion) playable.

PaRappa also produced a spinoff in 1999 called Um Jammer Lammy, featuring a guitar-playing lamb named Lammy but otherwise borrowing much of the same gameplay concepts and style. PaRappa himself is an unlockable character in his own side-story. This game spawned an album called Make It Sweet!, credited to MilkCan, the in-universe band Lammy plays in. A direct sequel named PaRappa the Rapper 2 was released on the PlayStation 2 in 2001, which once more focused on PaRappa (but with cameos from the MilkCan members).

PaRappa has appeared in other media as well. There was also an Anime of the Game by the same name that ran for 30 episodes and introduced Canon Foreigner characters. Before the anime debuted, Rodney Greenblat, the game's illustrator, had created a series of comic books that are decidedly more true to the game than the anime. Later on another anime would air centering on PJ that would also be closer to the games, which was titled PJ Berri No Mogu Mogu Munya Munya, ran for two seasons and was produced to honor the 20th anniversary of the original game and the 15th anniversary of the previous anime.

The original game was released on the PlayStation Portable in 2006 to celebrate its ten-year anniversary, with a wider display and updated music but otherwise largely intact. On April 26, 2012, PaRappa was announced as a playable inclusion in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale. On December 2015, PaRappa the Rapper 2 was given a re-release on the PlayStation Network, and in April 2017, the original game received a remake titled PaRappa the Rapper Remastered for the PlayStation 4, which is based on the previous PSP version.

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Tropes:

Both PaRappa and Um Jammer Lammy examples

• Aerith and Bob: Characters with some rather out-there names (such as PaRappa, Ma-San, and Chop Chop Master Onion) exist alongside more reasonably-named people (such as Katy, Sunny, and Joe).
• Ambiguous Gender:
  • It is unknown what Jet Baby's gender is. In PaRappa 1, "The Jet Baby Theme Song" refers to the song's title character as a "she", but when PaRappa and his friends walk out of the movie theater, they refer to said character as a "he".
  • A prototype of the same cutscene reveals that Parappa and his friends were originally talking about John Wayne (for some reason), so when the mentions of John Wayne were changed to Jet Baby, it's likely that Katy and PaRappa's lines were not changed to account for Jet Baby being a "she".
• Animal Gender-Bender:
  • Both PaRappa games feature female moose, with antlers.
  • It's even weirder in Um Jammer Lammy, which the titular character, who's a lamb and female, has horns.
• Animate Inanimate Object: Only in PaRappa Town can an onion teach you kung-fu, or a dog date a flower.
• Arc Words:
  • "I gotta believe!", the catchphrase of (who else?) PaRappa himself.
  • In Um Jammer Lammy, Lammy constantly remembers what Chop Chop Master Onion told her: "Dojo, casino, it's all in the mind."
• Bizarrchitecture: To give you a good idea of how interesting PaRappa Town's architecture is, the game's illustrator is an abstract artist.
• Bladder of Steel: None of those games let you pause. Attempting to do so it restarts the entire level.
• Call-and-Response Song: All of the songs, owing to the gameplay formula, take the approach of a teacher giving a phrase and the player copying or responding to that phrase. It's natural for PaRappa, but a little unusual in Lammy's case, since she copies what the teachers sing with her guitar.
• Call-Back:
  • Each of the games starts with the characters watching a movie (usually involving "Jet Baby") with the same weird monster. Then, before the first level starts, they go to "Chunky Burger." In UJL, they even take the exact same dialogue for the bully characters who come in as when they did in the first game.
  • The bully characters say the same first dialogue lines in PaRappa 2, during a cameo appearance at the start of Stage 5.
• Character Catchphrase: Three (or two, with one having two halves), which the characters always say once a level right before the gameplay starts.
  • Parappa has "I gotta believe!"
  • Lammy has "My guitar is in my mind!" and "Leave it to Lammy!", which the last level of her game alters to "Leave it to Milkcan!"
• Climax Boss: The Bathroom Rap in the first game, Teriyaki Yoko in Um Jammer Lammy, and Colonel Noodle in PaRappa 2. While they aren't the final stages, they do serve to wrap up the plot before the final concert, and are usually the most difficult stages in their respective games.
• Creator Cameo: Rodney Greenblat, the character designer of the series, has off-and-on cameo appearances throughout the games, most noticeably as a television reporter in PaRappa 2, but also as the basis for the name of "Rodney State" where the characters live, and the singer of the "Jet Baby" song at the beginning of PaRappa 1. Also, in a bonus scene from Um Jammer Lammy, Ma-San is typing a letter to "Mr. Matsuura" (Masaya Matsuura is one of the game's creators).
• Dance Party Ending: As a game about music, this goes without saying. The two PaRappa games have PaRappa rapping with MC King Kong Mushi about his heroic actions. The goal of Lammy is to get to the concert that comprises the ending.
  • Special mention goes to KT & The Sunny Funny Band, an extra feature for the first game that can be unlocked by completing all six stages in Cool Mode.
• Denser and Wackier: The first PaRappa is fairly down-to-earth and plausible, with challenges such as "passing a driving exam" and "baking a cake", and the title character's main goal being to impress the girl he likes. Um Jammer Lammy, the next game in the series, gets considerably more bizarre, but most of the individual stages are still somewhat grounded at the very least, and the main goal of "get to the concert venue on time" isn't particularly out there. PaRappa 2, on the other hand, involves a Shrink Ray, a crazed hairdresser giving everyone spontaneously growing afros, a video game that leaves the player unable to eat anything but noodles ever again if they should lose, and the overall crux of the plot to turn all the food in the world into noodles.
• Downloadable Content: The PSP rerelease of PaRappa has downloadable alternate versions of the original 5 songs, while Um Jammer Lammy was released for download on the PlayStation Store.
• Dub Name Change: Sometimes averted (Teriyaki Yoko, Ma-San), sometimes played straight (Takoyama-san/Hairdresser Octopus, Niwatori-sensei/Cheap Cheap). The "dub" part is questionable, though.
• Egopolis:
  • In what can be considered an inversion of One-Steve Limit, PaRappa Town is named after another PaRappa. It's actually a pretty popular name in the PaRappa Universe.
  • PaRappa Town is in "Rodney State", after Rodney Greenblat.
• Feather Fingers: Mostly averted. Nearly all PaRappa characters have humanlike hands regardless of species, including frogs, octopi, and even plants. Interestingly, Cheap Cheap Chicken is one of the few characters, if not the only character, with appendages appropriate for her species, but she seems to be able to manipulate objects just as easily as any human-handed Funny Animal.
• Four-Legged Insect: Averted. All the insect characters have two sets of arms.
• Genre Shift: Not in a gameplay sense, but in a musical sense. The first game was primarily classic hip-hop, with its tracks often utilizing chopped-up samples and drum loops. The second game — and PaRappa's tracks in Lammy, which is otherwise rock-focused — are closer to R&B, with the second game featuring live instruments on most of its tracks. This was due to creator Masaya Matsuura wanting the series to feel more timeless, as the first game's music is very of-the-moment.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Chop Chop Master Onion is an onion-headed caricature of his voice actor, Ryu Watabe, who also wrote the lyrics for the songs.
• Inexplicably Tailless: Despite being animals, only Katy has a tail showing; there are moments when even her tail is missing!
• Informed Species: The title character is not readily identifiable as a dog other than his floppy ears and round nose. Meanwhile, Lammy doesn't even resemble a lamb, though she more closely resembled one earlier in development.
• Lantern Jaw of Justice: Joe Chin is named after is his.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: The music fizzles out every time you fail a level.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: This can apply to every levels cutscene, but it particularly stands out in Hair Scare, the fifth level of PaRappa 2. After Katy throws Lammy's guitar to her, both her and Parappa get to say their catchphrases together.
• Limited Animation: The first game, for all its style, had pretty stiff and limited movements in its cutscenes. Alleviated in the levels proper with smoother movement, although everyone's face moved like a slideshow as they emoted and sang. Um Jammer Lammy gave its cutscenes proper movement if still a little stiff thanks to its art style, but everyone's faces were still limited in how they move. The second main game moved past all these previous quirks with the most fluid movement and facial expressions the game series has seen, however.
• Limited Social Circle: Notable aversion, but then played straight. Katy's band members, Lammy and Ma-san, have never met Katy's other friends. But by the second game, they have evidently formed a single social circle close enough to walk into each other's houses without asking.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: In this case, "Lions and Tigers and Humans and Inanimate Objects... Oh, My!" since all of these coexist in the same world.
• Mickey Mousing: Present in the first game and Um Jammer Lammy, where the effects and characters on stage move and change as the protagonist plays worse and worse, and the music becomes a little lamer to reflect it. Omitted in the second game in favor of noodles that overwhelm the stage instead.
  • In the first game, Master Onion will drop his battle-ready stance and lazily start relaxing on his knee or outright lay down if PaRappa does poorly, Mooselini's car will start shaking and swerving out of control as PaRappa proves he doesn't deserve his drivers license yet, Fleaswallow's flea market will start breaking down and outright collapse from PaRappa's terrible bartering skills, Cheap Cheap will leave her film set to personally berate PaRappa if he's not cooking well enough, and the final stage with the concert will have the crowd disperse and the stage lights focus on PaRappa if he sings poorly.
  • In Um Jammer Lammy, Master Onion's dream will get more and more unstable and nightmarish as Lammy plays badly, the fire Chief Puddle's trying to extinguish will intensify and eventually engulf the building because Lammy failed to put it out, all the babies under Cathy Pillar's care will get more cranky and start crying because Lammy can't put them to sleep, Fussenpepper's plane will experience a hellish amount of turbulence and regularly nosedive if Lammy proves to be a bad co-pilot, the tree Paul Chuck's trying to carve will start losing its balance and snapped in half to ruin the guitar being carved, Teriyaki's audience will start getting electrocuted, roused into a hellish tidal wave of souls and eventually start splitting open to reveal the void of hell itself if Lammy isn't a good enough guitarist, and like PaRappa before her own personal concert will have the audience ditch the party if Lammy still isn't good enough to perform.
  • While the second game largely abandons this, it still keeps the traditional example of the last stage's concert being abandoned by the audience if PaRappa is doing poorly enough (since this is after the noodle situation has been revolved).
• Never Bareheaded: PaRappa's beanie hat, which he never takes off. What PaRappa looks like underneath his hat is a very popular topic, and it's even lampshaded in PaRappa 2, if you fail Stage 5:
  Hairdresser Octopus: Hey, take that stupid hat off! What does it look like in there?
  PaRappa: Aaa, I'm not sure myself.
• No Fair Cheating: Pausing a level would make it much easier to time your button presses; the games close this loophole by forcing a level restart if you try it.
• Older Than They Look: PaRappa and his friends have child-like appearances, but the official word is that they're probably teens, hence why PaRappa can get his driver's license. Katy, Lammy, and Ma-san are also implied to be older than the others, likely college-age.
• Old Master: Chop Chop Master Onion is a comical subversion, as he loses his dojo after the first game. While he appears as a prophetic dream in Um Jammer Lammy, he's incredibly disheveled and his is advice to Lammy is that "my dojo is in my mind; it even has a casino." By PaRappa 2, he's ended up as the host of a daytime television program.
• Once an Episode: A song with Chop Chop Master Onion and a finale set at a concert appear in each game.
• Paper People: There's about one character in the game who isn't in this style. Everyone else is paper-thin. Besides stylistic reasons, this decision was likely made to get past the PS1's hardware limitations; either way, it stuck since.
• Rich Bitch: Joe Chin is very wealthy and self-centered, and doesn't seem to realize how much he belittles PaRappa in their feuding attempts to win over Sunny.
• Serious Business:
  • The inhabitants of PaRappa Town sure do seem to be into rapping.
  • Lampshaded at the beginning of Um Jammer Lammy; Lammy's excuse for being late to her concert was that people wanted to rap for the bathroom, and she only plays guitar. People, please leave the rapping to PaRappa!
• Silliness Switch: Done as a game mechanic. If you rank down to Bad or Awful, the background has silly things happen (rain during the rap for the bathroom for example) and the music sounds more wacky and terrible.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: The entire game can be described as a rhythmic version of Simon. However, if you "freestyle" enough by adding your own inputs while keeping the original rhythm, you enter "Cool" mode where you can continue freestyling to rack up points, only reverting to the base prompts if you lose your groove. PaRappa 2 hints at "Cool" mode's existence as multiple instructors, in their introductory spiel, advise Parappa to "come up with your own groove" instead of just copying them.
• Split Screen: Happens in Um Jammer Lammy, when Lammy tries hard to fly a plane with Captain Fussenpepper in Stage 4; and in PaRappa 2, when both PaRappa and Guru Ant are grown big for the final time, while you can see Ma-san getting bored (which doubles as a Funny Background Event), as long as you don't mess up.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Used for stylistic purposes. Due to the majority of characters being Paper People, they are in 2D while the backgrounds (as well as select characters like Boxy Boy) are in 3D.
• Take That, Audience!: Failing certain stages will have the instructor call you out for being absolutely terrible. One even suggests that you should be banned from every video game.
• Variable Mix: When you start screwing up, so does the music.

PaRappa-only examples

• Acid Reflux Nightmare: Implied in the intro to PaRappa 2. PaRappa makes sickly expressions throughout his dream and he wakes up surrounded by discarded noodle containers.
• Actionized Sequel: The first game was about things like taking karate classes, getting a part time job, and getting a driver's license. The second game eventually becomes a game about saving the world from a dietary fate.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The sequel has the difficulty drop during a song if you are screwing up and drop down in rank by making the lyrics more simple, which means less buttons to press or the buttons being spaced farther apart for a slower rhythm. If you do drop down in rank, you get to repeat the section again so you have a shot of recovering.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In PaRappa 2's rap song "Noodles Can't Be Beat", when PaRappa and Colonel Noodle rap about how foods can be in worldly cuisines (while going through quick costume changes to represent each culture of cuisine):
  Noodle: Chinese, Italian, Thai or Jamaican...
  PaRappa: Mexican, Egyptian, English, Korean...
  Noodle: Anything goes, even Hawaiian.
  PaRappa: Anything goes, even Alaskan.
• Ascended Extra: General Potter only had non-speaking role as Sunny's father in the first game. But in the sequel, he plays a key role in the story. Same with Papa PaRappa, though he did appear a bit more frequently in the first game.
• Audience Participation Song: The final songs in both games have the audience sing along when called for. The master leads the audience at the beginning while PaRappa does it at the end of the song. If you screw up or are just messing around, the audience will perfectly mimic PaRappa's rap style.
• Award-Bait Song: "Funny Love" from the first game and "Come a Long Way" from the second game, both of which are more serious R&B-style love songs rather than the more comical or light-hearted raps that make up the rest of their respective games.
• Battle Rapping: In both games, PaRappa has to face all of his mentors at once in a rap battle late in the game.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Prince Fleaswallow, which is only made clear if you actually listen to his lyrics. He seems to have a god complex, be on the run from the police, only cares about money, and is implied to also be a thief.
• Boastful Rap: The endings to both games: unusually, it is a professional rapper boasting about PaRappa. In addition, half of the second game's third and seventh raps are each this, where Guru Ant and Colonel Noodle respectively rap about how good they are.
• Bonus Stage: PaRappa 2 has one at the end of every second stage you complete. It's set in Chop Chop Master Onion's dojo, where you press buttons to break vinyl records that the Kotamanegis (student onions) pull out. Your score in the bonus game is added to your score from the regular stage.
• Book Ends: The second game starts with PaRappa having won a lifetime supply of noodles. At the end, he won another lifetime supply of food, cheese this time.
• Boss Rush: The first game's fifth involves engaging the four mentors from the other songs in a rap battle in order to get to the toilet. The sixth level in PaRappa 2 had a similar premise, with you facing off with the five mentors in a 16-bit video game.
• Boss Subtitles: In the second game, the mentor for each level gets their name in subtitles when they first appear.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: If you fail Stage 1 of PaRappa 2, Beard Burger Master will say, "Oh man, that was bad. And what is with this noodle thing?" (presumably referring to the noodle pattern that appears around the screen and covers the background in Bad and Awful modes respectively). PaRappa then sighs, "I always screw up at the beginning..."
• Carrying a Cake: Poor, poor PaRappa - his cake for Sunny fell to the ground due to Joe Chin pushing him out of the way. Though it's probably just as well—Sunny might have found the design a little offensive.
• Catapult Nightmare: PaRappa suddenly wakes up sitting straight in bed after his nightmare in the intro of PaRappa 2.
• Chekhov's Gun: In the beginning of first game, PaRappa's final boss stage song, "PaRappa's Live RAP", is heard playing as PaRappa and his friends enter the Chunky Burger restaurant.
• Clumsy Copyright Censorship: In the PSP and PS4 releases of the first game, PJ Berri and Katy Kat's orders of "a vanilla and a chocolate frosty", respectively, at the burger restaurant mute the word "frosty", possibly because of trademark issues with the Wendy's Frosty.
• Confusing Multiple Negatives: Cheap Cheap's line "I ain't got no time for nobody."
• Console Cameo: When PaRappa goes to buy a cake for Sunny in Stage 4's cutscene, a store with a giant PS1 controller on it is seen to the left of the cake store.
• Don't Try This at Home: In the first lesson of the 5th stage of the second game, this text is shown in brackets where the lyrics are usually displayed. For the record, the activity shown is hair styling, though it's about as extreme as it can be with people running with scissors.
• Downloadable Content: The PSP rerelease of the first game has downloadable alternate versions of the original 5 songs.
• Dynamic Difficulty: Rather than the static patterns of the first game and Lammy, PaRappa 2 features a dynamic difficulty system. If you're struggling, the game will give you easier lines with less buttons and simpler rhythms; inversely, if you're doing well, the game will mix up the lines with slightly more difficult patterns.^{how it works}Each song has 17 different difficulty variants; 1 is the easiest and 16 is the hardest, and 0 is the default, somewhere in the middle. When you do well, the game bumps you up a level, and when you do poorly, it bumps you down. When you unlock the yellow hat (see Hard Mode Filler), you can select which difficulty you start on by holding the right analog stick and moving it in a certain direction when you start a level. Moving it directly down starts you on the hardest difficulty, 16.
• Ears as Hair: Rare plant variation. Apparently, Sunny Funny's petals are her "hair". They can even be styled into an afro◊ somehow.
• Easter Egg: By holding up on the D-Pad in the first game, an easter egg will occur in every stage but the fourth and fifth ones. This was never hinted at in the game itself until the PS4 remaster, which has a trophy for finding all of them.
  • The first stage has an onion student showering behind the dojo doors and hidden ninjas appearing in various places.
  • In the second stage, Prince Fleaswallow can be seen on the side of the street, presumably trying to beg a ride.
  • In the third stage, a fly will wander into the flea market and Fleaswallow will live up to his name.
  • In the sixth stage, holding down will cause PaRappa to bust a move. Pressing any buttons during this easter egg will stop the animation.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: In the first game, if you want all the stages, you'll have to play on normal difficulty, as easy only allows access to the first three.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Implied to be the case with both Papa PaRappa and General Potter, since General Potter calls Papa PaRappa "the former straight A student."
• Evil Costume Switch: Colonel Noodles in PaRappa 2. After failing to turn all the burgers into noodles in Stage 1, he moves away during the news report in the intro to Stage 2, and now switches to his signature costume in the intro to Stages 4 and 7. During the rap battle with PaRappa, while they are still convincing each other about which food is better, Noodles suddenly raps that noodles "taste better than water" before water pours down at Noodles on cue, washing his plate off of him along with his glasses and his noodle afro hat; and he is now fully convinced that other foods taste just as good, resulting in a Good Costume Switch back to normal in Stage 8.
• Fake Difficulty:
  • Provided by the original game's cumbersome timing window. This game also debuted before the advent of TVs with extensive video and audio pre-processing, and hence it has no lag adjustment options. Good luck playing it on a modern TV.
  • Even more egregious is that this wasn't fixed in the remaster, despite both Um Jammer Lammy and Parappa 2 featuring massive improvements to the timing window.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: If you complete stage 8 of PaRappa 2 with a Cool ranking, after the stage does its usual fade-to-black, it fades back in and the music kicks in again. You get to continue the Audience Participation Song for an extra minute or so — just for fun, as it doesn't affect your Cool rank or score.
• Family-Friendly "Mature" Content: Stage 2 in PaRappa 2 is called "Strictly For Adults". PaRappa and PJ find a TV show called Romantic Karate. It is prefaced with a content warning saying the show is "strictly for adults". PaRappa interprets this as a way to prove his maturity.
• Foreshadowing: In PaRappa 2, if PaRappa messes up a segment during stage 1, Beard Burger Master's son is seen laughing from a corner with a strange machine. The machine is the Noodlizer, and it's revealed later that BBM's son is Colonel Noodle.
• Friend to All Children: Discussed by Rodney Greenblat in his "The Jet Baby Theme Song": "When Jet Baby loves, / She loves all of the children."
• Frothy Mugs of Water:
  • Only in the U.S. version of PaRappa 2, Stage 1, even though Beard Burger Master's voice says, "You better get in line!" his lips say, "Taste better than wine!", which was in the Japanese and European versions.
  • Which causes a minor line in Level 7 to lose its meaning; Colonel Noodles raps, "Noodles are the best, no doubt, can't deny, taste better than water, but don't ask me why," in a nod to his father's "Taste better than wine" lyric, before water pours down at Noodle on cue.
• Funny Background Event: Joe Chin dropping his gigantic, forty-two story high cake near the beginning of the intro for "Full Tank".
• G-Rated Sex: There was an entire level in the sequel where PaRappa practices "Romantic Karate". With his friend P.J. Berri.
• Green Around the Gills: At the end of Stage 5, Parappa overstuffs himself on the seafood cake he had made in the previous stage; this returns to bite him as he experiences a Potty Emergency, hallucinating and sweating profusely as his face takes on a sickly green colour, looking utterly miserable as he endures a torturous Boss Rush of all the previous teachers before he can just barely make it to the toilet in time.
• Hard Mode Filler: In PaRappa 2, when you beat the game once, you unlock a harder difficulty, represented by PaRappa's beanie changing color. There are four different difficulty levels; from easiest to hardest, the default orange, blue, pink, and yellow.^note In the game's internal difficulty system mentioned in Dynamic Difficulty, these are represented by 0, 9, 10, and 11, respectively. Beating each level with the yellow hat unlocks its song to listen to; beating every stage unlocks the full version of "Come A Long Way". There are also four difficulty levels for the CPU battle mode; beating hardest difficulty for each stage unlocks the full version of the title theme.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the end of PaRappa 2, Colonel Noodles has a change of heart about his plan to turn all the world's food into noodles once PaRappa convinces him that everyone should be allowed to eat the foods they want.
• Here We Go Again!: The opening for PaRappa the Rapper 2 has PaRappa waking up surrounded by noodles, claiming that he won a life-time's supply of them. The game ends with him having dinner at Sunny's, telling the player that, this time, he's won a life-time's supply of cheese.
• Hypocritical Humor: In the intro of Stage 2 in PaRappa 2, PaRappa and PJ's ice cream cones turn into noodles. PJ claims that he "can't eat this" not long before eating the noodles anyway. He also seems to have eaten PaRappa's noodles too.
• Idea Bulb: A shining light bulb precedes PaRappa saying "Yeah, I know! I gotta believe!”
• I Have No Son!: Implied if you do badly enough in Stage 8 of PaRappa 2. At Awful, Parappa's father is absent from the audience.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • PaRappa's a dog who has a crush on a flower named Sunny. An animal is in love with a plant. According to Rodney Greenblat, PaRappa could actually have children with Sunny. God only knows what their kids would look like.^note Dogwood blossoms? That said, he also added:
  "Some questions are best left unanswered."
  —Rodney Alan Greenblat
  • Interestingly, in one of the RodneyFun comics, PaRappa mentions wanting to "have many babies" with Sunny.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Fail stage 5 of the original, and it's heavily implied that PaRappa poops in his pants, symbolized by a video of a rocket blasting off.
• I Want to Be a Real Man: After an incident in the sequel's prologue leads to Sunny calling PaRappa a baby, he spends the whole game trying to act mature. Sunny eventually tells him that he only needs to try his best.
• Joke of the Butt: The first level of PaRappa 2, "Toasty Buns". It's about fast food, but loaded with Double Entendre.
  Beard Burger Master: My buns are very toasty.
• Kirk Summation: The entire 7th level of PaRappa 2 was about PaRappa trying to convince Colonel Noodles that there are many excellent foods in the world that would be lost if he turned everything into noodles.
• Level One Music Represents: In the PSP re-release of the game, most levels get one or two downloadable remixes. Stage 1 gets five.
• Limited Wardrobe: Lampshaded regarding PaRappa's signature hat:
  Hairdresser Octopus: "Hey, take that stupid hat off. What does it look like in there?"
  PaRappa: "Ahh... I'm not sure myself."
• Lip Lock: Mostly averted, but a noticeable one occurs in the second game; one of the lyrics in the first stage is "Heat!", but the mouth shape for that line is an "O" shape. Which is weird, since the games are solely produced in English.
• Logic Bomb: In Prince Fleaswallow's rap, he says "I've been working here [at the flea market] since my mama was a baby". Think about that.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: The first PaRappa game was very prone to this with PaRappa himself with most of his lyrics being obviously spliced to match the button inputs. The sequel does a better job at hiding it, but on the higher difficulty levels, both PaRappa and the masters fall into the trope hard due to how much remixing the lyrics are given and it can sound quite hilarious at times. The sequel's 2 player mode also falls into this since the game will adjust the lyrics to match the button presses of the previous player if it thinks they freestyled good enough.
• The Most Dangerous Video Game: Played for laughs in PaRappa 2. Lose at "Food Court", and you can't eat anything but noodles for the rest of your life.
• Multiple Endings: Downplayed. If you succeed in Cool Mode in the first game, the ending cutscene in every stage but the first and last changes slightly. For example, winning normally in Stage 2 shows PaRappa getting his picture taken for his drivers license, but he sneezes while getting the picture taken. Winning in Cool Mode shows PaRappa getting his picture taken without sneezing, resulting in his ID photo looking more flattering.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Rodney Greenblat has mentioned that PaRappa, a dog, and Sunny, a flower, are sexually compatible, and could conceive a child.
• Nostalgia Level: Of sorts. Stage 5 of PaRappa 2 prominently features MilkCan of Um Jammer Lammy, who play the background music.
• Oh, Crap!: If an unused button is pressed, PaRappa will shout "Uh-oh!" in the first game or "Oops!" in the second.
• Omnicidal Maniac: To an extent in the sequel. Bad guy Colonel Noodles wanted to transform everything just to satisfy his undying love for noodles.
• Potty Emergency: Level 5, "Full Tank", has PaRappa needing to poop after eating too much cake. Turns into (implied) Potty Failure if you fail the level. Albeit... strangely (and humorously too).
• Production Throwback: A female Tooli bug from one of Rodney Greenblatt's earlier works, Rodney's Wonder Window, can be seen flying out of the Big Ball of Violence in PaRappa's Imagine Spot before Stage 1 in the first game.
• Pursuing Parental Perils: We learn in the intro to Stage 7 of PaRappa 2 that Beard Burger Master became so obsessed with burgers and their research that he would compel his son Colonel Noodles to eat burgers daily along with everyone else, including Noodles' mother, who became so obsessed with burgers that she turned into one (figuratively). Even worse was that Noodle had become destined to become a burger shop owner like his dad from the day he was born. We're assuming that Beard Burger Master died being obsessed with burger research, and after Noodles ate some pasta and noodles because he loved noodles more than burgers, he decided to start on noodle research and do to the citizens of PaRappa Town what his burger-obsessed father did to him years ago: compel them to eat noodles daily until the day he would die, which is very dangerous indeed!
• Retraux: The sixth level in PaRappa 2 is a 16 -bit video game game. Or if you're doing badly, 8-bit. Or if you're doing really badly, Atari 2600 on an oscilloscope display. Subverted if you're doing awesomely, which is in the 32 or 64-bit style.
• Saving the World With Art: The premise of the second game: Colonel Noodles is turning every food in the world into noodles, and it's up to PaRappa to deliver a Kirk Summation in the form of a rap battle.
• Shrink Ray: The unmodified De-Noodlizer in PaRappa 2 can shrink or enlarge characters (including PaRappa) when a certain character presses the button on its remote control, even with help from the Guru Ant, of course.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Cheap Cheap has a stereotypical British voice, but is still a pretty great rapper.
• Sunny Sunflower Disposition: Sunny Funny. Bright and cheerful, and also wanting adoration.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Instructor Moosesha in PaRappa 2 is one for Instructor Mooselini, from the first game, who is neither mentioned by name nor shown. However, the similarity is acknowledged in one line, where she reveals that they are sisters.
• The Television Talks Back:
  • There was an entire level in PaRappa the Rapper like this. A subversion, as Cheap Cheap's literally right next to him. (The "television" is actually a frame she kept around herself, for some reason. This is revealed only if you're in "Cool" mode, and if you start doing badly ^note she'll stomp right out of the TV frame to teach PaRappa how to cook personally, and what's also curious is how she has a TV filter to her voice while speaking through the television, which goes away as soon as she comes to PaRappa in person. (This is lampshaded by PaRappa asking her how she got out of the TV.)
  • In 2, the second level "Romantic Love" also does this to an extent. Specifically when reaching/losing Cool Mode and getting worse/failing the level. The former as Master Onion will say that now it's PaRappa's turn to lead, and then brings the whole TV set into PaRappa's living room as if he's the focus of the show now. The latter as Master Onion apparently knows when PaRappa is doing badly and calls him out when he fails the level.
• Toilet Humor: There's a level in which PaRappa is on a date with Sunny and suddenly feels the call of nature. Rather than using the facilities at the park he's at, he tries to hold it in for as long as possible, even while driving. For some reason, Sunny interprets PaRappa's strained expression as him suddenly becoming "manly"... and then when he goes back to the car after taking a dump, Sunny thinks to herself, "He's the same PaRappa again. Oh well."
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: In the second game's "Romantic Love", Chop Chop Master Onion refers to himself by his Japanese name, "Tamanegi-sensei". Since changing it would require changing the rhythm of the lyrics, it goes untranslated in the international versions.
• Transformation Ray: The Noodlizer, a Ray Gun that can turn anything into noodles, including burgers, guitar strings, and even noodles.
  "Huh? Noodles into noodles? At the Chinese restaurant?"
• Tutorial Failure: In PaRappa the Rapper 2 every level would have Boxy give the player a practice round by giving sample lyrics from the song they would be playing. While it is a good thing to have, the only problem is the practice/tutorial sections are played at the slowest speed possible while the majority of the songs themselves play much faster than that. You have to learn to adjust to the song's tempo and difficulty yourself.
• Updated Re-release: The first PaRappa the Rapper game got a rerelease on the PSP and a remaster on the PS4.
• Vinyl Shatters: In the second game's Bonus Round, PaRappa can break vinyl records with karate moves.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Several characters, particularly the hairdresser and burger chef in the second game, have strong accents that don't seem to come from any country in particular.
• Wolverine Publicity: The PSP rerelease of the first game contains remixes of the game's songs. The first stage has far and away the most remixes, with five.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: PaRappa 2 kicks off the adventure with PaRappa winning a lifetime supply of noodles and growing sick of eating them. He goes to a burger joint to eat something different and sees that their food have become noodles as well! With a bit of help from the ghost of the Beard Burger Master, PaRappa fixes the issue and is about to enjoy his ice cream, only for it to instantly turn into noodles afterwards.

Rodney Fun Comic Collection-only examples

• Acid Reflux Nightmare: PJ gets a nightmare in the first book from eating Sunny's vegetarian stew.
• Bittersweet Ending: "Katy's Shopping Explosion" ends with Katy winning a free shopping spree and buying too much stuff for her cramped apartment to handle. She can't get her coffee machine to work, her stereo ends up disturbing the people in her apartment and she needs to pay for services for her various electronics. However, her brand-new blow dryer works perfectly, which she is happy about.
• Didn't Think This Through: One of the comics centers around Katy winning a free shopping spree. She gets everything her cart can carry, but she runs into some problems. She can barely fit all of what she bought into her cramped apartment, and when she buys a bunch of fancy electronics (a phone, a laptop, a television and a DVD player) PJ notes that Katy will need to buy phone service, internet service, cable service and movies to make them work. Katy is put off by that because she doesn't have enough money to do that.
• Lethal Chef: Sunny Funny in the second book, nearly literally around the end. When Sunny forgets to buy the ingredients she needs, she decides to improvise. Needless to say, none of Sunny's guests would touch it. (Except for PJ.) As for the dessert, well... Flaming Dynamite Strawberry Onion Cake, anyone?
• Let's Meet the Meat: In the second book, a pair of fish willingly◊ jump into Sunny's bowl hoping to be fried by her.
• Mad at a Dream: "PJ's Dreamland" involves PJ having an Acid Reflux Nightmare thanks to Sunny's cooking. In the dream, a bunch of knights that have PaRappa's face throw him into a bottomless pit. When he wakes up and goes to Club Fun to DJ, he refuses to talk to Sunny and PaRappa.
• No Smoking: Averted. Both PaRappa's dad and Mr. Prince Fleaswallow are seen smoking on separate occasions.
• Plumber's Crack: Sunny laughs at Mr. Buttonose's butt crack.
• Those Two Guys: The squirrel and the rabbit in the second book.

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