Cyberpunk 2077 / Tropes C

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• Camera Perspective Switch: At the game's ending cutscene, the camera switches from first-person to third-person, which is the only time the game does this outside of mirrors, vehicles, and picture mode.
• Canon Immigrant: Yishen, the Deuteragonist of the Cyberpunk 2077: Your Voice TP comic added to the pre-release copies of the game can be briefly seen and interacted with in the "Never Fade Away" mission, where she struggles with a broken vending machine, with Johnny having an option to help her out.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: After being shot and left for dead, V is rescued by Saburo Arasaka's bodyguard Goro. While he initially has no love for V, they are the only one who can prove Yorinobu murdered his father, and the only one he can turn to after being framed for the crime by Yorinobu.
• Cap: V's level and street cred are capped at 50 (level 60 with Phantom Liberty installed), attributes and skills at 20. There's also a limit on how much loot they can carry, but this can be modified in a number of ways.
• Capitalism Is Bad: Zig-zagged. On one hand, Night City is just about the bleakest portrait of unfettered capitalism imaginable, with amoral corporations using every means available to protect their bottom line while reducing their employees to virtual serfdom. Those who don't work for a corp fare even worse, with no social safety net and most of the population unable to afford even basic medical care, while it's treated as a given that the wealthy elite can get away with just about anything. No one ever offers any real alternatives, however; the rebellious Edgerunners are just as capitalistic and cutthroat as the corpos they oppose, more concerned with finding their own fame and fortune than making radical change. Likewise, the game also throws a few jabs at the Soviet Union, the NUSA's communist rivals (which has a socialist corporate system); one news article documents the survival of a group of Soviet miners who were caught in a collapse. After crediting their survival to their implants, the reporter happily says the miners will be resuming their work next week. The main point in highlighting the negatives of capitalism is to demonstrate how out of their league V is in all this.
  • One radio segment actually manages to strike a balance in the dystopian evils of both worlds in the form of a pair of news stories; in the first, a major humanitarian crisis in southeastern Europe is spiraling out of control, in large part due to the local governments refusing to render aid because it might "interfere with the free-market economy." The second story is from (The People's Republic of) China, whom have just banned manually driven vehicles, forcing citizens to only use self-driving vehicles that will only go on "authorized" trips to and from work, and has also mandated human-powered vehicles such as bicycles to be fitted with GPS trackers. Overall, the message from the game is along the lines of, "Night City is a corpo-capitalist hellscape, but when world is dominated by powers that can influence entire nations and international economies over a particularly uneventful weekend, your economic layout isn't gonna matter much."
• Cash Gate: At some point the main story won't progress until you pay a certain fixer 15,000 eddies for their help in an upcoming mission.
• Cassette Futurism: The "shard" digital media format and "jack" connection port tech work exactly like "future" looking versions of SD cards and USB cables that were industry standard in computers at the time of the game's development. Over-the-air hacking does exist, however. The return to physical media can be justified by the fact that the infamous DataKrash of 2022 from the universe's lore destroyed the net as we know it today. In 2077 the old internet is the lair of rogue A.I.s and ancient viruses, and the modern net is a set of carefully defended walled gardens, air-gapped subnets, and corporate datacenters. The AI called "the Blackwall" manages traffic over the physical infrastructure of the internet and attempts to keep the traffic from the old wild net and the new net separate. The Doylist explanation is that the pen-and-paper RPG that established the tech was written in the 1980s.
• Cast From Hitpoints:
  • The 2.0 revamp of the game introduced the "Overclock" perk in the Intelligence tree, which allows a V with a cyberdeck installed to effectively convert their health into extra RAM for a limited time, with every extra unit of RAM over their max costing 10 health.
  • Similarly, the Tech tree has the "Edgerunner" perk, allowing the player to exceed their Cyberware Capacity by 50, losing 0.5% of their max health for each point over capacity.
• Cast from Money: The iconic pistol "Plan B", found on Dex DeShawn's dead body, uses V's cash as ammo, one eddie per shot. Being an unremarkable piece of hardware apart from that feature puts it pretty deep in Joke Item territory.
• The Cameo:
  • Hideo Kojima appears as an NPC (named in-game "Hideyoshi Oshima") during the finale of Act 1.
  • Ozob Bozo, a minor character and focus of two side quests, is a character from a series of Cyberpunk 2020 podcasts from Brazilian website "Jovem Nerd." His creator and player Deive "Azaghal" Pazos voices him in the Portuguese version of the game.
  • Jacek Rozenek, the Polish voice actor of Geralt from The Witcher series of games voices one of the cabs in Delamain's sidequest. Yes, the one who says "Beep beep, motherfucker!".
  • Internet personality Jesse Cox appears as an NPC named Jesse (appropriately enough), a.k.a. "Flaming Crotch Man", the star of the "Burning Desire" side job. To impress his girlfriend, he purchased a black-market "Mr. Studd" implant (an iconic bit of cyberware from the TTRPG) from a recalled production run. Said implant malfunctions - spectacularly - and he begs V to drive him to a ripperdoc, cursing profusely about how much pain he's in the entire time.
  • Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, voices Maximum Mike, the host of 107.3 Morro Rock Radio.
  • Phantom Liberty's Stella is voiced by Suzi "The Sphere Hunter" Hunter.
• Casting Gag: Who else to play a cyberpunk messiah but Keanu Reeves? Johnny Silverhand joins the ranks of his other cyberpunk heroes by being a revolutionary anarchist and Antihero with a severe attitude problem. Silverhand also joins the long list of characters he has played named some variation of "John".
  • The esoteric shop owner Misty, able to read tarot cards, is voiced by Erica Lindbeck, who also voiced a character in a game with strong tarot motifs. This also isn't the first time she voiced a character called Misty.
  • Cherami Leigh and Robbie Daymond also took part in the English dub of Persona 5. Notably in Daymond's case, he plays a detective in both Persona and Cyberpunk 2077, but the personality of his character and his relationship with Leigh's own character are diametrically opposed between the two games.
  • Cherami Leigh has experience playing characters with cybernetic limbs.
    • This isn't the first time she's voiced a cold-blooded mercenary, either.
  • It wasn't the first time Mie Sonozaki voiced the Lost Lenore of a cybernetically enhanced legend whose role plays a massive part in the story where the McGuffin is misused by an Asian MegaCorp to control all cybernetics.
  • Casting Michał Żebrowski as Johnny Silverhand in the Polish version is this on a meta-level: before the game came out, fans speculated (though mostly jokingly) if Geralt from The Witcher will appear in the game in some way. Come trailer revealing Johnny Silverhand, and Polish gamers found out that yes, Geralt will indeed be in the game... but it won't be the one from the game series. Żebrowski played him in a 2001 cult classic The Hexer.
  • In the Polish version, one of the cyberpsychos is voiced by a famous Polish rapper, Quebonafide. His latest album, at the time of the game's release, was titled "Romantic Psycho".
  • It's not the first time Noshir Dalal plays a ninja with advanced prosthetics who's tasked with protecting the heir of a royal Japanese family who's travelling through a dangerous, war-torn land.
• Celebrity Endorsement: In-universe, there's ads for Kiroshi Opticals implants featuring the members of Us Cracks, a music band from the setting which members are notorious for wearing eccentric-looking eyes implant.
• Celebrity Paradox:
  • Self-inflicted. Keanu Reeves portrays Johnny Silverhand. Keanu is also co-owner of Arch Motorcycles, a bespoke motorcycle maker. Arch-brand motorcycles appear in the game, one of which is owned by Jackie Wells and possibly by V.
  • There's also the Run the Jewels song, "No Save Point", made specifically for the game and that actually plays on one of the radio stations, which directly namedrops Keanu Reeves. The creators' explanation is that Reeves existed in-universe as a niche actor who never really got popular, and whose most notable trait was his physical resemblance to Johnny Silverhand.
  • Are the Soviet ripperdoc Nina Kraviz and the real-life Russian musician Nina Kraviz the same person?
• Central Theme:
  • The impossibility of dealing with systemic issues like poverty, prejudice, sexual exploitation, and environmental devastation. The Edgerunner protagonist, V, constantly butts heads with Johnny Silverhand over whether it’s possible to change anything in Night City. The player character can accomplish individual good in quests or profit from the crime in the city but they are unable to change anything on a structural level. Not unless they're willing to do something just as big, like assaulting Arasaka Tower, and even then the change is temporary at best and devastating for bystanders at worst, and no matter the outcome, V will leave a lot of burned bridges in their wake, in one form or another.
  • Another is what it means to be alive. Many characters debate on whether it's better to live a long and quiet life or to go out young in a blaze of glory as a legend so you can be remembered. Going hand in hand with this is how you live your life in the face of impending death. Living in Night City is already dangerous enough as you can catch a bullet to the head on any given day even if you aren't involved in any criminal activity, but it goes doubly so for V who is facing impending death within weeks due to the biochip in their head. The game also makes numerous references to the infamous Neil Young lyric, "it’s better to burn out than fade away," including an in-game band having a song titled "Never Fade Away", and examines whether it truly is better to burn out (by fighting against fate to the death and going out in a blaze of glory) than to fade away (accepting the cards that fate has dealt you, and either crossing the threshold with your head held high or accepting that nothing, especially not power or glory, last forever); One of the characters is in a remarkably similar situation as Kurt Cobain was, seeing his legacy of anti-corpo rebellion being injected into the mainstream and "sold out", leaving him in a depression over how, despite it being decades later, the world is still the same shithole it was back in his time.
  • Different ways of dealing with mortality, your own and your loved ones. Religion is still prominent in the universe, with Shinto and Catholic priests in the overworld (and Padre being one of the fixers), Buddhist monks being a part of different sidequests, and other major religions like Judaism or Islam being mentioned. The "Secure your soul" program promises people immortality through technology, and rich members of society (like the Arasakas, Rogue or Kerry) being able to prolong their lives and youth through different implants and rejuvenation treatments. Many sidequests center around different characters' way of dealing with their loved ones deaths (Claire seeking revenge for her husband's accidental death, Misty missing Jackie and reminiscing with V, Judy's guilt over Evelyn's death, Kerry's and Rogue's problems with handling Johnny's death, Joshua's spiritual awakening before his death sentence is carried out, how V will handle their own deteriorating health and imminent death).
  • Legacy. V is trying to carve their own through the course of the game, Johnny has to grapple with the fact that he's mostly remembered as a terrorist and an asshole, Viktor left his past as a boxer to lead a quiet and humble life Jackie wanted to become a legend, but died tragically, and is mostly remembered by his loved ones by his personal qualities, Joshua Stephenson wants to be crucified and leave the braindance of the event as his legacy, Alt left the Soulkiller to be used by Arasaka after her accidental death, and now wants to destroy it, Panam is frustrated that the Aldecaldos under Saul are slowly becoming an antithesis of what they stood for (rejecting their legacy), Rogue and Kerry have to live up to their legacies of a legendary fixer and rock star.
  • The importance and meaningfulness of human relationships. Throughout the game, V can befriend many different characters and change their lives for the better. Every playthrough ends with V receiving calls form their friends, who want to stay in touch or outright thank V for what they did for them. The "Reaper" ending shows that V was never as alone as they felt, but instead had plenty of friends who were there for them. Unlocking "The Star" and "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" endings, considered the most optimistic ones, requires forging a deep bond with the Aldecaldos and Panam/Johnny, respectively. The main catalyst for Johnny's and V's character growth is their mutual bond and their respective acts of true love show the length to which they both will go to save each other's lives.
  • Identity. Is your identity who you think you are, who you actually are, or how others see you? Is it the effect you have on others? Some combination of the four?
  • Phantom Liberty revolves around the theme of loyalty, either to individual people or to a greater cause. For example there is how Solomon and Johnny are Foils of each other. Solomon is an intelligence agent for the NUSA who holds unshakeable patriotism for his country, despite how many times he's been betrayed by his own government. Meanwhile, Johnny is a former corporate soldier turned terrorist who immediately deserted when he realized all the promises his recruiters made to him were lies. Meanwhile, Songbird is a Boxed Crook forced to work a job that is killing her for the FIA and subsequently resents them and by extension Solomon, being willing to sell them out if it means a shot at freedom. Solomon meanwhile only wants what's best for Songbird and goes out of his way to protect her despite the numerous times she's burned him. Meanwhile, V has pick their own loyalties between choosing to follow Songbird and Solomon, who have a concrete plan to remove the Relic, or Johnny who at this point has become Fire-Forged Friends with V but has nothing to offer them in regards to removing the Relic. The climax brings the romantic and pragmatic aspects of the plot into sharp conflict, with V having to decide whether to pursue the romantic goal of giving Songbird her freedom from the NUSA (either via escape or Mercy Kill depending on your choices), even if it costs them the cure they've been searching for and alienates them from the NUSA, or do the pragmatic thing of watching out for themselves and giving Songbird away, even if it means cooperating with President Myer's ruthless plans and crushing Reed's spirit in the process. Rather fittingly, choosing the pragmatic option results in V getting the cure they seek, but the cost attached is so heavy they have to give up on their grandest dreams and settle for a more "realistic" life going forward.
• Chain Lethality Enabler: The Cold Blood skill buffs V for a few seconds whenever they neutralize a target, improving with V's score in the skill. It starts with an underwhelming movement speed buff, but can be improved to a stackable suite of Damage Reduction, an Attack Speed Buff and damage buff, boosted Critical Hit chance, etc.
• Chainsaw Good: One available melee weapon is the Budget Arms Cut-o-Matic, a one-handed militarized chainsaw powered by a small combustion engine in the heft. As the only actively noisy melee weapon in the game, using it for sneak attacks is pretty much impossible. Sadly, it doesn't have special attack animations to account for the sort of sustained cutting you'd expect from a chainsaw; V just swings it at enemies like a machete.
• Character Customization: V's gender, appearance, skills and even backstory are up to the discretion of the player. This includes the option to mix and match gender characteristics, including voice.
• Character Level: Three systems: Experience levels, Skill levels and Street Cred. The first allows you to improve your attributes, giving you straightforward stat upgrades. The second is limited by your attribute level and increases by using specific skills, granting you perk points and bonuses to those skills. The third works like fame and recognizability and is awarded by completing quests.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • There's references to the Relic and the Secure Your Soul program before Dex starts setting the Konpeki Plaza heist.
    • In the prologue, once you go back home after rescuing Sandra Dorsett from a Scavengers hideout, the television in the elevator plays a talk show which guests are debating about Secure Your Soul.
    • In the Street Kid lifepath prologue, the magazine Kirk uses to show the Aerondight car to V contains an ad for Secure Your Soul. The loading screen cutscene for Act I has a shot showing the same ad on a coffee table in V's appartment.
  • Ads for a Crucifixion-themed Brain Dance can be found in town long before V is hired to contribute in its shooting.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • The Street Kid lifepath prologue features Pepe, Padre, and a mention of Mama Welles.
  • Misty and Viktor are first introduced during the time-skip montage cutscene between the lifepath prologue and Sandra Dorsett's rescue mission. If V is a Nomad or a Corpo, said cutscene is also the first appearance of Padre and Mama Welles.
  • Judy first appears as an unammed NPC sitting with Evelyn at the Lizzies' bar counter when you must meet the latter during the preparation of the Konpeki Plazza heist.
  • Kerry and the other Samurai musicians are first met during both Johnny's flashbacks, way before the Samurai-themed questline.
  • Adam Smasher is first mentioned during the prologue, when Jackie name-drops several living legends of Night City. While he reappears later in Johnny's first flashback, is present as Yorinobu's bodyguard on the Konpeki Plazza's suite, and is mentioned a couple of other times, V won't interact with him until the very end of the game — and not in every ending.
  • Rogue and Claire are first encountered in the Afterlife, just before meeting Dex for the final briefing prior to the Konpeki Plazza heist, long before they become relevant to the plot, respectively as a NPC mentioned as exposition by Jackie and as a barmaid you chat with for a short time.
  • Before meeting V in person and being the main character of his own questline, River first appears as one of the persons present on a braindance recording a murder attempt against the mayor.
  • Takemura properly enters the plot once V is resurrect by the Relic after being executed by Dex, but is first seen accompanying Sabura Arasaka in the Konpeki Plazza's suite right before V and Jackie must flee the place.
• The City Narrows: Pacifica, a coastal neighborhood for the wealthy, including a giant mall and a beach resort, was completely abandoned (some buildings mid-construction) following the Fourth Corporate War. Now, it's the worst part of Night City, where nobody aside Max-Tac or elite Edgerunners dare to go and where only homeless people, down on their luck immigrants and the Animals live. And the Voodoo Boyz. A side quest mentions that Night City's late mayor touted a huge drop in the city's crime rate...that only exists because he had Pacifica recategorized as an outlying municipality.
• City of Adventure: Night City has been voted "worst city in America" by 2077, with poverty galore and absurd amounts of violence (both regular and corporate-sponsored). People go there regardless in the pursuit of a better life... even if they have to take it from someone else. It is full of multiple criminal gangs who rule whole districts, a police force that works for sinister megacorporations, and has an entire subculture of mercenaries doing jobs for all of them. Violence is the way that almost all issues are resolved.
• Cluster F-Bomb: This a Mature rated game and the characters frequently throw in curse words ranging from mild ones to Country Matters. If you took shots every time a hard curse word is uttered, you would suffer alcohol poisoning for years to come.
  • Exaggerated in the Russian version, where almost everyone swears constantly.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The color of the subtitles (as well as icons and UI to a degree) will appropriately change depending on whether you're controlling V or Johnny. When playing as V, the speaker's name is marked in red and the subtitles in white, whereas with Johnny, the speaker's name will be blue and the subtitles in yellow.
• Combat Medic: The Trauma Team are a combination of paramedic and bodyguards who come in in squads of four, fully armed and fully armored medics in a reinforced vehicle. This is pretty justified since Night City is plagued with crime, and their service area covers all of Night City, including gang hideouts or corporate sites (provided the client is working for said corporation).
• Combat Stilettos: Ten-inch heels appear to be part of the NCPD's street uniform for female officers, regardless of how impractical this sort of footwear would be in a perpetual warzone like Night City. At least it doesn't seem to have much of an influence on their chances of survival, seeing how their more sensibly dressed male colleagues die just as quickly.
• Company Cross References: Cyberpunk 2077 features a lot of references to CDProjekt's previous hit, The Witcher series. A full list can be seen on the game's shout outs page.
• Computer Virus: Used often, including with a credit chip containing a hidden virus shutting down electronics in a gang hideout. V can also weaponize viruses and use them to hack electronics, guns, and even people.
• Conspicuous Consumption: The ultra-rich are rife with profligacy, spending money on opulence. The Neo-kitsch style exemplifies this, with iridescent golden trim and other flashy flairs with extravagant materials. For another example, the Rayfield Caliburn for sale is a mere two years old, in Dino's inventory because the previous owner believes "only poor people drive two-year-old cars". Scrappers covet the refuse from the ultra-rich, who throw away perfectly functional goods after minimal use.
• Continuity Snarl: Invoked. Johnny Silverhand's memories of 2013 and 2023 seem to contain some discrepancies, be it mentioning Night City locales like Watson before they were even named such at the time, or his One-Man Army exploits at the raid on Arasaka Tower. These are not only a hint at how biased his own memories are, but also of how far the line between his and V's consciousness is blurring.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Higher level enemies with a skull, robots, and bosses are immune to stealth grabs. At best, some bosses are heavily chromed and vulnerable to a stealth takedown that takes out their initial 25% health.
  • Many high level enemies are immune to Ultimate Quickhacks like Suicide and Cyberpsychosis. Likewise, many vehicles throughout the game are unhackable, especially in places where being able to remotely control or blow up a vehicle would trivialize an encounter.
• Contrived Coincidence: The heist for the data chip in Arasaka was pretty well planned out, if a bit hastily thrown together given the heavy hitter it's against. It nearly went off without a hitch. But then Saburo Arasaka, the head of one of the two most powerful Megacorps in the entire world, happens to show up. And to make matters worse, his son Yorinobu murders him before locking down the building. And you might have yet managed to escape, except Trauma Team happens to arrive right as you are scaling the outside of the building, forcing you to make a jump that ends up lethally wounding Jackie. Had you performed the heist literally one day earlier, things would have gone much differently.
• Conveniently Empty Roads: The "The Beast In Me" questline is a series of races throughout Night City. The racecourse is a holographic visual shared to the racers only, but the streets are entirely empty whenever there's a race going on. This was amended in a later update, so now there is some traffic you need to be aware of, but it's still much less than normal.
• Cool Bike:
  • The Yaiba Kusanagi sports bike, featured in the Deep Dive video and displayed at CD Projekt Red's booth at Tokyo Game Show 2019. Inspired by the motorcycles of AKIRA and Bubblegum Crisis.
  • The fourth Night City Wire livestream revealed that Keanu Reeves also granted CD Projekt RED Product Placement rights for his custom-built motorcycle brand, Arch. In the game, you inherit Jackie's Arch bike (based on the extremely limited edition Arch Method 143) in Act 2.
• Cool, but Inefficient:
  • Ultimate quickhacks are guaranteed to neutralize the target one way or another, but their RAM costs and cooldown timers are massive even when combined with an ultimate-boosting legendary cyberdeck. Half of them also only affect a single target, and the ones that can be used against groups tend to be woefully ineffective ^note forcing an enemy to detonate a grenade in their hand doesn't do all that much when most enemies only carry EMP grenades or flashbangs, and enemies under the effect of Cyberpsychosis only deal Scratch Damage on other NPCs past the early game. They can have situational use (mostly to create a distraction), but in terms of damage output they're much, much less effective than the basic Short Circuit or Overheat quickhacks.
  • The 2.0 update pushed a great many iconic weapons into this category by making it impossible to install mods in them. The general overhaul to the mod system made most mods very powerful, often to the point where an iconic's inbuilt properties can't quite compete, assuming they were even useful to the player to begin with. Thus it's often more effective to wield a generic but modded version of a given gun and leave the iconic variant at home. CDPR seems to have been aware of this because 2.0 also introduced a bevy of new iconic guns that are functionally the same as their base versions, with the only difference being that they can be upgraded.
  • Throwing knives are stylish but ultimately much less effective than silenced handguns when it comes to stealth combat. While knives need no ammo, have no minimum alert range and can obviously be used as melee weapons, handguns are hitscan weapons, attack faster, have much longer range, and are generally more convenient to use. The handgun perk tree is also much more efficient at providing direct damage and accuracy bonuses than the somewhat more gimmicky throwing knives tree. And as for ammo, handgun bullets are both abundant and dirt-cheap to craft, so this should never be an issue in the first place.
• Cool Car: The game contains cars that are every flavor of cool, from the Nomads' rolling fortresses to exquisitely sleek (and ruinously expensive) corpo hypermachines, with some old-school classics like Johnny's Porsche 911 thrown in for good measure. In-story, though, the stereotypical cool cars (and ultimate celebrity status symbols) are the Rayfield Caliburn and Arondight. Aesthetically inspired by the legendary Bugatti Veyron, they're advertised as blisteringly fast masterpieces of automotive art with the armor of a main battle tank — since if you have one of these, everyone in Night City is going to want to take it for their own. Unfortunately, their actual in-game performance doesn't come anywhere near that, leaving their looks and bragging rights status as their only perks.
• Coolest Club Ever: Night City has many of these.
  • "The Afterlife", a club that takes a major Fixer like Dex Deshawn to even get a table at, built in the remnants of an old morgue.
  • Lizzies is a nightclub that operates as a Band of Brothels' headquarters that specializes in braindance porn.
  • The Totentanz is a club owned entirely by Maelstrom made in the remnants of a factory building. It puts the 'punk' in cyberpunk, having a massive mosh pit and with music playing so loud it can be heard on street level despite the fact it's several stories up.
  • During a brief flashback as Johnny, you get to experience a first person romp and gunfight through Atlantis. A classy club that was the Afterlife of 2020 back in the golden age of Edgerunners.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: This is typically how the corpos thinly cover up their murders when they can't use their control over the city to make their murder legal and present it as justifiable. The most notable example is Yorinobu Arasaka throttling his father to death, and then claiming he was poisoned.
• Corporate Warfare: The megacorps of Night City all vie for control through subterfuge, economic dominance, or just plain violence. The primary conflict is between Arasaka Corporation and Militech, with both sides having gone to open war during the Fourth Corporate War and even used nukes.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: In a world where corporations are above the law, only care about their bottom line and don't hesitate for a nanosecond to walk all over the little man if it means a cent more profit, just about every high-level corpo in Night City is one of these. One of the most prominent examples is Meredith Stout, a Militech agent you meet during the game's second mission. Egotistical, elitist and sending V and Jackie on what would have been a suicide mission if not for their skill, only to scoff and smugly insist on her superiority when called out by V. If the player chooses the right interactions, V can actually end up sleeping with her though.
• Cosmic Motifs: All endings feature it to some degree: "Path of Glory" has V departing to rob a space casino, "The Devil" takes place on an Arasaka research station in space, "The Star" ends on a shot of V and Panam looking out into the night sky, and "Temperance" has Johnny departing Night City with the starry sky above.
• Country Matters: Along with all the other foul language in the game, the C-word gets used liberally and is uttered by Night City denizens almost as often as mundane words like 'and' or 'the'.
• Covert Pervert: On the outside Meredith Stout is as dignified, and arrogant, as any other corpo suit. By asking about a blink-and-you-miss-it tattoo, she will invite V to meet her in the No-Tell Motel. Given your previous conversations it's easy to think she'll give you an assignment but when you enter the room where she's staying, she'll be dressed in an outfit consisting of a leather harness, thigh high leather boots, choker and electrical tape. This outfit shows off several tattoos that show a wild side you'd never expect. You then are given the option of having sex with her. If you look in the room after the encounter you can even find a rather large sex toy that she left. (Sir John Phallustiff, a very good non-lethal melee weapon for that time of the game, which counts as an Iconic weapon, allowing it to be greatly upgraded.)
• Crack is Cheaper: In-Universe, high-quality weapons are absurdly expensive. A legendary socket wrench can easily set you back 100,000 eddies in a weapons shop, not to mention what firearms cost. For reference, the average late-game gig pays out between 3,000 and 5,000 eddies. It makes the whole "higher street cred unlocks new weapons at vendors" shebang largely meaningless because at these rates you'll never pay for weapons, anyway.
  • Similarly, high-tier cars can set you back about 100K eurodollars upwards. Each. And you have to collect them all to get a car achievement.
• Crapsaccharine World: Night City looks incredibly pretty on the surface, but it wasn't voted the worst place to live in America for nothing. The "Postcards from Night City" featurette begins with cheery in-universe TV personalities, goes through clubbing scenes involving dancing, drinking and doing drugs, then hits you with a Mood Whiplash switching to reports about rampant crime, pollution and skyrocketing numbers of homeless.
  Newscaster: (cheerfully) We are fucked, America! (more serious tone) And I'm not sure how we're gonna fix it.
• Crapsack World: As bad as it is in Night City and the New United States of America, it's implied through news reports and background dialogue that the situation globally is just as bad, if not worse:
  • News reports you can overhear will discuss the skyrocketing pollution levels in Eastern Europe, and how the governments in the region are making no attempts to intervene. In addition, global warming has lead to temperatures in the Mediterranean rising to the point that large chunks of the region are now completely uninhabitable.
  • To illustrate that point, one news report you can overhear in the game mentions that Antarctica is referred to by some as "Heaven on Earth" due to its amazingly low murder rate of 70 per 100,000 citizens. ^note In real life, the highest murder rate of any country is 52 per 100,000 citizens as of 2020.
  • One news cast you can overhear mentions that the Himalayan Wars blew so much dust and soot into Earth's atmosphere that solar panels and even wind turbines are rapidly becoming useless for power generation across the globe. The Himalayas are one of the tallest mountain ranges on the planet, but the area they cover isn't all that large, relatively speaking. For armed conflicts there to mess up the atmosphere so badly, they can't have been anything but nuclear exchanges of insane proportions.
  • Most of the Middle East is gone, having been nuked to hell in the so-called "Suicide War." The news mention that the neighboring Turkey often gets hit with the radioactive dust storms that resulted from the war. Lebanon seems to be doing ok though, as evidenced by one of the alcoholic drinks named after the Baalbek region.
  • On a more down-to-earth level, Militech has been voted "Best Employer in Night City" three years running for offering such excellent benefits as a whole five days of paid vacation a year and free access to pharmaceutical-grade stimulants, and even offering a whole thirty-four percent of their workforce retirement benefits.
  • One of the car purchase quest texts mentions that Argentina is back to being a military dictatorship.
  • Yet another newscast talks about ongoing illegal salvage operations plundering the sunken ruins of Venice, implying the iconic city is completely gone. And if Gaia's Lament has claimed Venice, things aren't looking so good for numerous other cities along the Mediterranean's shores, either; though one character does mention moving to Malta after making their fortune, implying that at least the aforementioned island nation is still good enough to be considered an ideal retirement location.
  • A notable aversion is Somalia on account of Dramatic Irony. The country which, even in this wiki, is often portrayed as the Crapsack World de jour, appears to have become a popular tourist destination in the Cyberpunk universe, with commercials touting its beaches and cruises.
  • Paying attention to the names of clothing items reveals that pretty much every piece of clothing in the game world is armored. Yes, even bustiers and bras. Life in Night City is so dangerous that people don't dare stepping outside without what's essentially a full suite of low-level body armor. Even worse, it doesn't help. Numerous lines of dialogue imply that a violent death is the standard way to check out in this world, with V at one point suggesting building a monument to one character who passed away peacefully due to old age.
  • Climate change hit the Caribbean so hard that the nation of Haiti has completely collapsed, forcing most of the population to immigrate to places like Night City. The Voodoo Boys have become their self-proclaimed protectors.
• Crazy Homeless People: Prophet Gary, the trashbag-clad Conspiracy Theorist ranting outside Victor Vector's clinic. Modeled after and voiced by streamer CohhCarnage. He usually makes an insightful theory about the dystopian conditions they're living in... before blaming it all on Lizardmen sponsored by the Scientologists of Alpha-Centauri. He's something of a tourist attraction.
• Critical Hit: Pretty standard fare for an RPG in terms of mechanics, inasmuch as that they have a certain percentage chance to deal multiple times the regular damage when they trigger. What makes them a bit unusual in CP 2077 is how easy it is to stack crit chance to the point that every hit becomes a guaranteed critical. A quick tour around Night City's clothing stores is enough to amass enough Fortuna mods for a perpetual 100% crit chance. Pick certain perks or find a good weapon with a high innate crit chance multiplier and you can achieve the same result even faster. From that point onwards you'll deal damage in the hundreds of thousands with every hit regardless of the weapon used, turning every hit on any non-boss enemy (and even on most bosses) into a One-Hit Kill. Seeing how utterly broken this system was, most of it was eventually nerfed into the ground over a couple of patches. That said, some builds in the 2.0 update can still achieve an almost perpetual 100% crit chance under specific circumstances, making them just as broken.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Subverted prior to 2.0. There were attribute-dependent perks that increased crit chance for specific weapons, but the quickest and easiest way to stack up a perpetual 100% crit chance came from outfit mods, which were independent from attribute distribution and general playstyle. Other perks enabled quickhacks and even grenades to crit, thus paving the road for any conceivable character build to specialize in critical hits.
  • As with most things concerning gameplay, 2.0 made a lot of changes to the crit system. Now only a handful of builds focus on crits, most notably ones that utilize handguns or throwing knives, both of which fall under the Cool stat. Quickhacking can also be given a 100% crit chance, but this requires installing iconic cyberware that's only available with the Phantom Liberty DLC (although there's a base-game version that grants up to 40% crit chance, which is still quite a lot).
• Cruel Twist Ending: The Tower ending, exclusive to Phantom Liberty after completing the expansion and kept Songbird alive. In this ending, V contacts the FIA and gets the Relic removed, though the process lands them in a two-year-long coma and outright destroys Johnny's engram. While this does save their life, their neural system is so shot to hell that they can no longer field any combat cyberware or implants. Worse still, much of V's friends and associates have moved on with their lives, either forced into working with the corporations, running away from them, or left Night City entirely. Night City itself hasn't changed, either; despite Yorinobu's actions crippling Arasaka, it also causes other corporations like Militech to swoop in and pick up where Arasaka left off and continue exploiting the city and its people. By the time you reach the ending cinematic, V's become such a depressed wreck they can only fade and disappear into the crowd.
• Cultural Cross-Reference: The game was made in Poland, but it features a lot of references to foreign, mostly American and Japanese, media, ranging from genre staples (Blade Runner, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell), popular movies and TV shows (Breaking Bad, Die Hard, Dirty Harry, Brokeback Mountain), video games (Death Stranding, Half-Life) to some really niche ones (a graffiti referencing a Russian book called The Twelve Chairs). A full page dedicated to references in the game can be found here. Not to mention the numerous references to Filipino culture such as street food and Tagalog brands like isaw (chicken intestines) and "Kabayan Foods" respectively, largely due to the Philippine-based studios who assisted in developing the game.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Combat starts out challenging, but as the player levels and finds more and more advanced weaponry and cyber implants a lot of the game's non-boss baddies become little more than target practice. In the last third of the game, a few shots from a smart shotgun in the general direction of a group of band members can often wipe them out before they can open fire at all. This, of course, opens up much more direct approaches to presumably-stealth missions - just waltz in through the front door and shred everything that stands in your way.
• Cute and Psycho: Lizzy Wizzy starts off sympathetic at first, being a star in love with her manager and worried that he's cheating, but she quickly skips over this line when V finds out that said manager planned to have her mind copied in an engram. While a scummy thing to do, he was at least partially driven by fear of her due to her cybernetics messing with her mind... which is quickly proven true when in a rage she slowly strangles him to death. While she feels guilty at first she soon finds inspiration in it and her after mission texts mention she made a braindance out of the incident while cheerfully texting V with smiley emoticons.
• Cute Kitten: There's a sphinx cat that hangs around V's apartment complex that can potentially be adopted by them and live in their flat. Even Johnny seems to take some interest in it!
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • V is ambushed and killed by Dex and his one bodyguard after the failed Relic heist despite the fact that they're still armed and uninjured. If the player had been in control, they could have likely killed both. Doubly weird, since a previous trailer showed the scene and justified it better, with V successfully fighting back and killing both the bodyguard and T-Bug despite being hacked and Dex barely managing to shoot him instead of doing so with ease in the game proper. It may be explainable by how exhausted V is at this point, shattered by Jackie's death and having run themselves ragged the whole day.
  • Deep into Judy's questline, V gets completely owned in a cutscene sparring match against what's basically a cyborg hooker with some software upgrades. You can later fight a real opponent with the same upgrades who's a total pushover. It's explained a bit as V isn't trying to hurt Tom, takes no damage, and is thrown into a couch.
• Cutting the Knot: "The Beast In Me" questline sees V competing in a number of street races, where they must finish in the top three at least twice. However, if you race using one of the of weaponized vehicles introduced in the 2.0 update, you can destroy most of your fellow competitor's vehicles within seconds of starting the race, guaranteeing you a top three slot by default. There are no penalties or consequences for doing so.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul:
  • True to the pen-and-paper RPG, the more cybernetics people install in their body, the higher the chance they'll fall into "cyberpsychosis", a mental illness that causes them to empathize with machines more than humans to the point of bigotry and violence. The Maelstrom gang actually pursue this; V and Jackie comment on how they worship machines, and see cyberpsychosis as a sort of enlightened state.
  • Averted by V, however. No matter how many implants the player sticks in themselves, they're never at risk of cyberpsychosis. It can likely be explained with the Relic's influence between the neurological effect it's having on V's brain plus having Johnny around. Also averted for Adam Smasher despite him being listed 96% cybernetic, though given that he was already a psychopath before the enhancements and is working for Arasaka, it's likely he gets treatment to avoid the effects.
    • This aspect vanished in version 2.0 of the game, that introduced a cyberware capacity stat, and implies that heavy chroming is not good for anyone's mental health.
  • The subject is also addressed in the Monster Hunter quest that reveals cyberpsychosis is not actually real. It's a term that was applied liberally by the media to a wide variety of conditions ranging from hard drug use to faulty combat mods to nervous breakdowns to severe PTSD. Cyberpsychos are, by and large, dangerous because they're incredibly powerful cyborgs on a rampage, as many of Night City's citizens are prone to doing^note Imagine having a gun turret attached to your back, which is jacked into your brainwaves; if and when your emotions run high, it immediately turns and shoots the closest people to you. This is essentially what "cyberpsychosis" is like., but the lie that "too many implants makes you crazy" is easier and requires less action than the massive systemic issues.
  • Mike Pondsmith, creator of the IP, went on to explain that he equates cybernetics to a drug addiction. The more people chrome up, the more they rely on it and often do so to fill some hole in their life. He went on to say a stable quality of life is likely the best suppresant for cyberpsychosis. This includes things like a good education, loving friends and family, and healthy living which result in people having a greater empathy, hence why empathy is the determining stat for your psychosis resistance in the tabletop.
• Cyberpunk: On just about every level. The game is named Cyberpunk. It's based on the Cyberpunk tabletop game that has been shaping the genre since 1988. You play as a cybernetically enhanced Street Punk. And it takes place in a world where violence, poverty, corruption and crime exists side by side with cyborgs, flying cars and other futuristic tech.
• Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: It often rains during important story beats and very occasionally in the open world. The "very occasionally"^note datamining revealed a ~5% chance of rain for 30-90 in-game minutes, compared to 90% probability of sunny weather for periods of 8-15 hours; the other available weather phenomena like clouds, toxic rain or sandstorms spawn with probabilities as low as 2%, leading many players to never see them even once in their entire playthrough part drew criticism from players and critics who felt the game world was too bright and sunny for a cyberpunk setting, regardless of CDPR's explicit intention of averting this trope. The studio still relented about a year after release and increased the chance of rainy weather^note to an astounding 10%, which still means Night City enjoys almost perpetually clear skies as part of the 1.3 patch. Mods are available to rebalance these percentages to more typical cyberpunk conditions.
• Cyberspace: Entering cyberspace is so risky that a hacker has to be in an ice-cold tub, a special suit or in a pool of water, to prevent their bodies from overheating while jacked in. And even then, of the times you do it yourself in-game, two (once in the Voodoo Boys' base, once during the "Star" endgame results in the entire system shorting out once you exit. As for Cyberspace itself, it takes the appearance of a black void with semi-transparent constructs in which a projection of you can move.
• Cycle of Hurting: Prior to 2.0, grenades used to be cheap to craft and could stunlock bosses into their staggered animation. The update made grenades work on a cooldown instead, with a maximum of three on standby, to prevent this sort of Grenade Spam.
• Cynic–Idealist Duo: Subverted. In the protagonist duo, Johnny is both the idealist and the cynic. V is a hedonistic materialist with no interest in anything beyond the next job, paycheck or thrill. Johnny is a crusader, and lives and breathes his anti-corporate anarchist values. However, V is generally happy, mentally stable and has a wide circle of True Companions. Johnny is bitter, abrasive and egocentric, which, along with his unrelenting unwillingness to compromise or back down from his ideals, has alienated every friend he ever had.