Cyberpunk 2077 / Tropes S to Z

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Tropes A-B HERE!

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Tropes D-F HERE!

Tropes G-L HERE!

Tropes M-R HERE!

Phantom Liberty HERE!

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S

• Safe Word: V can choose either "Afterlife" or "Samurai" as one when booking a Doll session at Clouds during "Automatic Love". Interestingly, the safe-word in Clouds isn't strictly for BDSM encounters, but rather to prematurely terminate the Doll's session in case the client gets too uncomfortable with the subject matter, regardless of whether the client is actually in a sexual situation with the Doll, such as in V's case where the Doll assigned to them instead begins delving into some very personal matters which could understandibly freak them out.
• Samurai Shinobi: Goro Takemura has been scouted, augmented, and employed by the Arasaka MegaCorp to be the personal bodyguard of the patriarch CEO Saburo Arasaka. After Saburo is killed by his own son, Takemura goes rogue and his story arc is essentially that of a Rōnin. On the other hand, he is of "peasant" birth (i.e. recruited from the streets), specializes in assassinations and other dirty work, and, notwithstanding his Undying Loyalty to the Arasaka clan and his snobbish disdain for any culture other than Japan's, is basically a cyborg ninja. If you do anything besides cooperate with Arasaka in the endgame, the corp will fall to ruin with Saburo remaining unavenged; the bitter message Takemura sends V in the credits implies he is considering his own seppuku.
• Save Scumming:
  • A valid method to try out different dialogue options, although useful only in short-term cases. The really important choices usually don't make themselves known until much later.
  • Unique legendary clothing pieces hidden in the open world spawn with a random number of upgrade slots that is determined when the item is picked up. Save and reload until you get the maximum possible number.
  • The Hacking Minigame's data matrix resets every time you quit out of it, as long as you haven't yet clicked on anything. This reduces the time you have to input the solution on your next attempt, but it's usually less annoying than wasting time on a particularly nasty sequence. And if you retried so often that you ran out of input time, you can just reload a (quick)save from before your first attempt.
  • In a mission, once stealth is broken, every enemy in the level knows where you are and is gunning for you, with no way to re-establish stealth. It is also very easy to lose stealth from not observing a single camera or goon. If you want to play a mission in the more interesting and immersive stealth manner, you will have to reload repeatedly whenever you mess up.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Male and female V are this to each other. Male V tends to come off as more of a distanced and cold Broken Ace, while female V is more feisty and prone to anger. According to Cherami Leigh, the voice actress for female V, this was done on purpose.
  • Female V can be this with Johnny, due to Johnny's more dryly sarcastic nature contrasting V's more temperamental snark.
  • Both Vs are also this to their respective love interests: Male V and Panam play this trope straight, while male V and Kerry are a same-gendered example. Same thing with female V and River, though it's somewhat zig-zagged with female V and Judy; while Judy is certainly Hot-Blooded and prone to making impulsive decisions, she's overall more mellow, at least when compared to female V, making them qualify for this trope.
• Schmuck Bait: One side job involves approaching a street vendor who offers an extraordinary braindance for 16,000 eddies. If you go through with the purchase, he charges an additional 4,000 eddies to use his headset since it's an older braindance. Fall for that, and you wake up naked without any gear in a building full of gangsters. Namely the very apartment you and Jackie rescued Sandra Dorsett from way back at the beginning of the game. And just to really rub it in, Johnny wastes no time calling you the dumbest merc in history for falling for such an obvious scam, and he really has a point there. You don't even get anything of worth out of it. It's the only quest in the game that you simply shouldn't accept, ever.
  • Developers took note of complaints about this quest and have added a very aggressive way to back out of it forever and get your eddies returned before giving into the bait, the quest is then marked completed. Before the update the quest would forever stay on your quest list.
• Scratch Damage: Brushing by barbed wire will cause a miniscule bit of damage and induce a yelp of pain from V. It becomes more frustrating when trying to do jumping maneuvers around barbed wire, as it will send V flailing to the ground floundering about to get back on their feet.
• Sentient Vehicle: Delamain is a company that rents out luxury taxis controlled by a single AI with an intelligence that exceeds most humans. "He" becomes an ally to V in the story after acting as their Getaway Driver after the botched heist mission, and enlists their help to locate divergent offshoots of the AI that have broken free and are driving rogue in various parts of the city.
• Sequel Non-Entity: Kei Arasaka, who was Saburo's designated successor and dutiful son, foiling Black Sheep Yorinobu, is completely missing and mentioned in passing to have died during the Time Skip between the tabletop and video game.
• Sequence Breaking: A minor example, but the game seems to assume you'll complete Act 1 as quickly as possible and has some dialogues that don't make sense otherwise. For example, it's perfectly possible to get Victor the 21,000 Eurodollars you owe him before going on the heist, yet the dialogue still suggests that V is dying, which they aren't yet. The dialogue will also still refer to V being in dept to him even if you got the money together before seeing him and paid him up front.
• Series Continuity Error: Continuity within the side quests isn't perfect, as some of your choices will be ignored following later side quest plot updates; in the Beat on the Brat series, beating El Cesar will prompt you to choose one of 4 outcomes: take just the prize money, take just the car, take both and leave him with nothing, or let Cesar keep his car and your money and just take the glory; even if you let Cesar keep both, earning his respect in the process, when his daughter is born a while later, V and Cesar will friendly message each other as if V chose to take the car regardless. Similarly, Judy's sidequest involving the takeover of the Clouds will proceed as though Woodman, one of the managers there, is alive, even if you killed him during your last encounter. Both of these have been fixed as of Version 1.5, with the Tyger Claw leaders explicitly calling you a murderer if Woodman is dead.
• Sex Sells: Advertisements in the game are over-the-top sexualized in a variety of gratuitous ways. It's part of the theme of naked unfettered capitalism exploiting everything; in this case, people's sexual drives and tastes.
• Shabby Heroes, Well-Dressed Villains: Downplayed- V and their allies are usually dressed in street clothes of varying quality, either because that's all they can scavenge or because they geniuinely like the style. The villains, however, like the Arasaka family members or other high-ranking corpos, are always dressed in sleek, elegant and high-class neomilitarist clothing, which is minimalist in design and kept in muted colors (at least comparing to the garish and out-there clothes that V and their allies wear).
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • The side job "Killing in the Name" has V go all around Night City to track down the elusive Swedenborg. Turns out they're just a fortune-telling machine that someone connected to the net behind proxies and modded to spew out anti-corporate messages filtered through fortune messages. Johnny at least, is amused at the absurdity of the situation.
  • In the end after V is jerked around as free muscle for most of the main questline, it all proves meaningless since V's condition has deteriorated too much for them to be cured without also losing their ability to wield implants in the "Tower" ending introduced with Phantom Liberty. If you don't pursue that ending, V's days remain numbered and they're only left with the choice of becoming a cyberghost or living out their last few months as themselves. In endings that aren't "The Devil", V does not assist Hanako Arasaka which results in her death and renders Takemura's efforts just as pointless whether he's dead or alive. The "Reaper" ending in particular is an outright Shoot the Shaggy Dog story, as V decides that continuing to live on is no longer worth the trouble, and everyone they knew and loved is devastated upon learning of their suicide.
• Shame If Something Happens: How Jackie scares off the Arasaka goons sent after V in the Corpo-Path beginning. He notes to the goons that they're way out of water, neck-deep in Mox territory (not to mention inside the middle of what is, for all intents and purposes, the Mox's HQ) and that causing trouble, such as trying to kidnap his friend V, may cause people to start shooting, and that "somebody might die today!" The Arasaka goons wisely back off, saving V from whatever grisly fate they had planned for them.
• Sharing a Body: The main plot of act II and III revolves around Johnny's personality, which was on the chip V had slotted into their head, taking over their body. The process isn't instant, which forces V and Johnny to cooperate to find a way to take the biochip out before the time runs out and Johnny will fully inhabit V's body. Johnny can only talk to V and show up in their vision as a Virtual Ghost, but with time, he can take over temporarily, at first with the assistance of suppressant pills, and, with time, whenever he wants.
  • A few characters who knew Johnny in life, like Rogue and Kerry, can immediately tell who's in control.
  • In a few specific scenarios, other people can hear Johnny, though no one else ever seems to see him. All of these situations involve some kind of tech changing the viewer's perceptions, like Judy's brain dance link or entering cyberspace with Alt.
• Ship Tease: Besides the ambiguous nature of Johnny and V’s relationship as stated above, there’s two separate teases with the fixer Wakako Okada:
  • The first (and most blatant) is with Takemura, who she is immediately charmed by. If he dies, she expresses some disappointment over this. The attraction seems to be somewhat reciprocated by Takemura, who calls her a “delightful, mature woman”, though Takamura later expresses to V that he is very aware that Okada is a gangoon kingpin, practically an enemy of Arasaka, to whom Takamura is employed.
  • The second is with the netrunner Chang Hoon Nam. The gig involving him is called “Wakako’s Favorite,” he has strict orders to remain in contact with her, and she says she “needs him” in the phone call issuing the gig. Later, it’s revealed by Chang Hoon Nam she regularly insists they have dinner together.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog:
  • One side job involves a client tagging along because It's Personal and he wants to make sure an escaped killer receives street justice. One car chase later, he's unceremoniously shot by cops because he decided it was a great idea to approach them with a weapon drawn after they repeatedly told him to back off.. If you stick around, said escaped killer becomes your new client who demonstrates that he's genuinely remorseful for his actions, and hadn't escaped at all; he was only being shuttled around town in preparation for broadcasting his own crucifixion as repentance.
  • In the Corpo V side job "War Pigs", an exasperated V can point out to Frank that it's pointless to capture them since Abernathy probably doesn't even know or care who V is, let alone the fact that V hasn't worked for Arasaka for the past six months. If V doesn't choose the right dialogue options (and/or didn't have the correct prereqesite conversation from the prologue anyways), Frank disregards V's warnings and tries to arrest them, getting himself killed in the process.
• Shout-Out: Has enough for its own page.
• Shower Scene: If you pursue one of the game's romance partners, "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" gives you the option to shower with them.
• The Six Stats: The game has five main stats, with branching specialties:
  • Body: Which combines the classic Strength and Constitution attributes; it calculates health, carrying capacity and both melee and heavy weapon damage as well as allowing V to intimidate others in dialog.
  • Intelligence: Calculates V's ability to notice details and solve problems. It also calculates the player's skill in hacking.
  • Reflexes: Analogous to Dexterity, it calculates V's precision with weapons and driving ability.
  • Technical Ability: This stat determines the effectiveness of V's equipment, crafting and engineering, as well as looting. They are more apt to talk shop with other techies in dialogue mode as well.
  • Cool: A mix of Charisma and Willpower, Cool determines V's ability to make witty comments, but also maintaining stealth and keeping focus in combat, increasing the chance of critical hits.
• Slash Fic: In-Universe example. During the side gig “Psychofan”, you can find a particularly bad Slash Fic, full of Stylistic Suck, which ships Johnny Silverhand and Kerry Eurodyne.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Towards the end of the game, a major boss can take damage in a cutscene if you have allies with you (namely, one of your allies pulls a Taking You with Me on Final Boss Adam Smasher). When the cutscene ends, the boss fight starts with the boss already damaged by more than 1/5th of his health bar.
  • For any mission undertaken or completed prior to "The Heist," the mission description in the journal is written in the First Person. One the relic is inserted, all the mission descriptions change to Second Person, as Johnny is addressing the player.
  • In Kerry's questline, if Kerry manages to come to an agreement with Us Cracks, he'll bury the hatchet by taking a group photograph with them. V is asked to take the picture; passing a Cool check allows V to be on the photograph too, which turns the game in the normal photo mode.
• Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: The creators have expressed their dislike for how overplayed "Dark, gritty raining world" cyberpunk settings have become. As such, 2077 is full of bright multi-colored neon lights and relatively clean urban environments.
• Smart Gun: Smart Weapons fire homing ammunition (typically remote-guided gyrojet bullets). In particular, 'Skippy' is a pistol with a simple-yet-snarky VI installed; they can be customized to fire only at the head or only at the knees, they sometimes fire prematurely (typically a plus unless you aim at civilians on accident), and they chatter with the level of intelligence that you'd expect from a brain the size of... well, a gun.
• Sniper Pistol: As of the 2.0 update, speccing your character as a gunslinger via the Focus branch in the Cool stat makes any handgun pinpoint accurate at any distance, removes the damage penalty for shooting at distant targets, increases damage and crit chance the farther you are from the target, and ultimately waives the stamina cost for shooting while hip-firing. In other words, you can consistently and indefinitely bullseye people in the head from so far away they aren't yet marked as a target, without even aiming down the sights. This has the weird side effect of making handguns the superior choice for sniping over actual sniper rifles because, barring one iconic example, sniper rifles can't be suppressed whereas most semiauto handguns can, and a decent crit headshot from most pistols usually delivers a One-Hit Kill, anyway.
• Socketed Equipment: Weapons, armor, and even externally accessible cyberware can have mods attached to them. Some are removable (called Attachments in some documentation) like gun sights and muzzle attachments, some are only recoverable with certain crafting skill perks, and necessitate the scrapping of the item.
• Something Only They Would Say: Johnny's preferred way of proving to people from his old life that he's truly in V's head is to say, do, or know something only the real Johnny would know.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Zigzagged with Archive's song "Bullets" from the teaser trailer. Albeit the lyrics fit well with the teaser, the Trip hop sound of the song doesn't.
• Space Age Stasis: The sections where you play as Johnny Silverhand seem to be technologically identical to 2077 (save for small things like more primitive holograms and PDA-sized cyberdecks) despite being set 60 years in the past. This is subtly lampshaded in a few throw-away lines throughout the main story — the people in power, first of all the megacorp leaders like Saburo Arasaka, are paranoid about keeping the status quo going on forever. Any significant change would upset the balance of power and threaten their cherished lifestyle of infinite luxury. No wonder little has changed societally, technologically or otherwise. It is one of the many aspects of the dystopian world that Johnny Silverhand rails against.
• Space Compression: A downplayed example. Though Night City as seen in the game could technically hold its canonical population of 5 million, the suburban districts of Rancho Coronado and North Oak are far too small for the city of this size; this is especially notable in North Oak, which is supposed to house dozens, if not hundreds of multibillionaires living in luxurious mansions, but the game's version of the area only has three. The limited infrastructure seen in the game would also be hard pressed to keep this level of population density functional.
• Squad Nickname: MAX-TAC (Maximum Force Tactical Division) is nicknamed the Psycho Squad because their chief job is to hunt down psychos, rogue cyborgs gone nuts.
• Spooky Séance: Discussed in "A Like Supreme". After Johnny gives the control over the body to V, Kerry will ask if Johnny is gone. V will respond that yes, but he can still hear Kerry talking. Kerry will laugh and say that he's "not in the mood for hovering tables and voices from beyond the grave right now".
• Stealth Hi/Bye: There's a monk who can guide V through some meditation, but he disappears without a trace after each session.
• Stress Vomit: Happens to V at the very beginning of the Corpo origin, from a combination of stress from the Frankfurt Incident and implied drug abuse. It's also a symptom of the biochip's encroachment, causing V to throw up after interrogating Anders Hellman.
• Stupidity Is the Only Option: At numerous times, V has no choice but to directly walk into situations that any savvy merc would see as exceedingly dangerous, if not sure death. For instance, when meeting Meredith Stout, V goes right up to her and her goons in a secluded location and attempts to shake her hand. Predictably, this leads to V being clocked, tied up and almost killed. An even more major case occurs during the final meeting with Dexter; alongside his body guard, he tells V to go into the bathroom and wash blood off their face. V has no choice but to do so, and the moment they do, their fate is sealed. Players can even hesitate to leave and stare directly at Dexter's bodyguard standing right outside the bathroom door, but they have no choice but to step outside, get clocked again, and get shot in the head by Dexter. If V refuses to enter the bathroom, they will still eventually get taken down by the bodyguard when distracted by Dexter.
• Sudden Downer Ending: Dying in "(Don't Fear) the Reaper", which has the potential to be a Crowning Moment Of Awesome for V if they succeed in assaulting Arasaka tower by themselves, will instantly roll credits and play the friends' and allies' voicemails from the much darker Reaper Ending in which V committed suicide—as it turns out, embarking on a Suicide Mission still counts as suicide if you die—and thus shunts into the Reaper Ending.
• Suicide by Cop: If V dies during "(Don't Fear) the Reaper", the game will instantly roll credits and treat it as if V took the "Reaper" ending where they committed suicide. As one can expect, the idea that V was hoping to take on the entire Arasaka Corporation solo just to access Mikoshi without getting any of their friends killed is implausible in the most optimistic interpretation, and thus to those who weren't aware of V's mindset at the time (read:Johnny and V themselves) were more inclined to believe it was just an elaborate suicide attempt with the method being a Corpo's iron rather than V's own.
• Super Cop: The Psycho Squads are not your average SWAT team. Armed with the best in armor, commo-equipment and vehicles they have free reign to anything and everything in their power to pull cyber-psychos to state sponsored therapy, whether they like it or not.
• Super Drowning Skills: NPCs that fall into the ocean (which is highly unlikely to happen in normal gameplay, but is still possible to achieve) will drown instantly, as no one in Night City other than V themselves seems to know how to swim.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • In "The Woman from La Mancha" gig, your target, an NCPD detective whom the fixer would prefer be "discouraged" from her case rather than eliminated, is clearly very aware she is in hot water, if not being hunted outright. So when you break into her room to speak to her, she immediately draws on you, and you might be forced to gun her down if you don't pick the right dialogue options. Even if you do force her to stand down, she still has nothing kind to say to you because, one, you just told her that her NCPD partners are the ones who ordered the hit, and two, you're a fucking stranger who just burst into her room without so much as a howdy-do. Of course you're not suddenly going to be buddies.
  • Johnny was an avid smoker in life and will often neg V to smoke a cigarette to satisfy his craving. If V gives in, the player will be able to find filled up ashtrays in V's apartment. Given how stressful the situation V is in is, it's no wonder they became addicted.
  • Judy's attempt at a coup in Clouds will always fail, because a merc, a techie, two sex workers with kung fu moves installed in their implants and a low-level manager simply can't win with a highly organized gang sponsored by one of the biggest corporations in the world. Even after killing the local gang bosses (and possibly Maiko) and ousting the gangoons from the building, the Tyger Claws simply respond with more gangoons and proceed to brutally retaliate.
  • At the end of River's storyline he comes to the conclusion that it doesn't matter how much he will try to protect and serve the people of Night City, he's just one person struggling against a massively corrupt and jaded NCPD that is so far out of its league that the gangs would roll over it without a second thought even if it wasn't corrupted, and that he will never win this battle, no matter how hard he tries. He opts to quit the force entirely and start a new career as a Private Eye.
    • River's partner Han points out a good example of this when River confronts him over his involvement in covering up Mayor Rhyne's death: Yes, Rhyne's death in an underground strip club stinks to high heaven and back, but the mayor was an absolutely beloved public figure, both by the people and the corps, which is a rare thing indeed in a place like Night City. To try and challenge that and suggest that Mayor Rhyme died in anything but completely wholesome circumstances would set the city into an absolute uproar, the likes of which the NCPD simply would not be able to handle, wide-eyed idealism or not.
  • Kerry comes to realize that he can't just ditch his label, which exploits him and his art, because without them, he would have to either handle things like promotions, tours and media by himself or just ditch it entirely, which would essentially make his music unaccessible to most of his fans. He decides to stay with the label, but he's more than happy to make problems for his managers if they ever get too bold with his image or music.
    • Carrying off the above, Kerry essentially inflicts this back upon the label company himself. Kerry isn't just a talented musician, but a rockerboy who was once a member of the most infamous anti-corpo rock band of the early 21st century, and headlined said band alongside what can be considered the poster child of rockerboy anarchists. He knows exactly how to get under the skin of monochromes (such as his record company), and he knows they can't just simply drop him as a client because he's practically a wellspring of eddies, as long as he keeps his trouble-making to a level where he is still affordable as a client.
  • After destroying the Arasaka Tower in 2023, Johnny is mostly remembered by the mainstream public as a terrorist who killed thousands of civilians, and not as a hero who valiantly fought capitalist tyranny. Additionally, aside from inadvertently killing around a half-million mostly innocent people, the main impact of Johnny's attack was to benefit a different sinister megacorp, Militech. In the end, the only people who actually like Johnny in 2077 are anarchist conspiracy theorists, dedicated Samurai fans (who likely shared the same political opinions anyways), and the few surviving close associates of Johnny who knew the true reasoning behind the Arasaka attack.
  • After the botched heist, Evelyn tries to hide in her old workplace, the Clouds. As it turns out, it's hard to hide from your unsatisfied clients when said clients are some of the most talented hackers in this universe, and can easily track her down and hack her remotely, without anyone being able to connect them to her death.
  • While V tries to convince Dexter that they didn't kill Saburo during the heist, Dexter actually believes them; it's just that everyone else, including Arasaka and NCPD doesn't. Dexter just doesn't want to risk being associated with someone the majority considers the murderer of the most powerful man on the planet. The presence of Arasaka's Exterminators later shows how right he is, and demonstrates that even if Arasaka and NCPD did consider V innocent, Yorinobu himself isn't going to risk letting anyone who witnessed the murder of his father walk free, not even his own bodyguard.
  • Many characters warn V about Dexter's "cool guy" act being a sham, and that he's much less chill than he lets on. He ends up shooting V in the head to avoid being tied to them after the Heist turns into a clusterfuck.
  • Similar thing happens with the Voodoo Boyz: there are multiple instances where V is told that they don't like outsiders and that they tend to dispose of any mercs who work for them. Lo and behold, Placide infects V with a virus during their scan and will activate it after they do their job, expecting that the short circuit will kill them.
    • The Voodoo Boyz get a dose of reality right back at them if you strike a deal with Netwatch; turns out, double-crossing every outsider you meet, regardless of their intentions, only works as long as the outsider doesn't survive the double-cross. And if they do survive? They might come back absolutely pissed and possibly ready to wipe you and your entire gang from the face of the earth.
    • On that note, wiping out the Voodoo Boyz leadership and most of their HQ will remove their spawn points from Pacifica, while replacing some of them with Scavs, who are quick to fill the power vacuum.
  • How is Johnny remembered by his closest friends after a lifetime of heavy drinking, drug use and toxic behavior? Mostly as a nuisance at best, or a destroyer of lives at worst, and his body is buried under an unmarked slab of concrete in the middle of an abandoned oilfield because all they wanted was to forget the asshole they were forced to prop up.
  • While Alt can separate V and Johnny's engrams with little to no issue due to being a brilliant netrunner, she's not a neurologist and can't fix V's brain degradation.
  • If V manages to consult with actual neurologists who can counteract Arasaka tech in the "Tower" ending, they actually do stop V's neural degradation after removing Johnny's engram...at the cost of V ever being able to wield cyberware again. Given how the extent of their degradation was a Player Punch in all other endings, it's not surprising that even with the best treatment available there are going to be complications. Furthermore, the ending also upends V's relationships in a manner no base game ending other than "Temperance" does...but that's because V's been in a coma for two years. Even V's most understanding friends are going to have moved on with their lives during the interim, and not all friends are going to be equally understanding. And lastly, though V can bemoan how they've lost everything that matters to them and nothing will be the same again, Misty will rightly point out that there are far worse fates V could have ended up with.
  • In "The Star" ending, many of the Aldecaldos actually die, because while they are trained veterans, Militech is still a professionally trained private army with the advanced equipment to boot, while the Aldecaldos' most advanced tech is an old Panzer that was stolen from Militech to begin with.
  • Dealing a mortal blow to the Arasaka corporation by storming Arasaka Tower, destroying Mikoshi, and killing Hanako in the "Path of Glory" or "The Star" ending doesn't free Night City from corporate exploitation, as it's heavily implied that another company (likely Militech) could easily fill the power vacuum. Just as killing a king won't take down feudalism, killing Saburo or Hanako won't end "cancer capitalism" (as airwave pirate Dr. Paradox calls it), because another person or company will just take their place.
  • V's romantic partner will leave them in some endings, either due to divergent life goals (like Panam, who has to leave Night City to lead the Aldecaldos) or personal problems (like Kerry being unwilling to leave Night City with V because he couldn't cope with losing him so far from familiar comforts to fall back onto). While there's no doubt that all four of the love interests truly love V, their relationships couldn't have been longer than a few weeks by the time of the ending, which just isn't long enough to drop all your plans and step out of such serious comfort zones for.
  • After V allows Johnny to take over their body to talk to Rogue in "Chippin' In", he instead gets drunk, gives V a tattoo, takes drugs (including the ones that will prolong the time he is in control) and intends to takes a stripper home. Given Johnny's personality and past addictions, this really shouldn't be that surprising.
• Swiss-Army Gun: The Achilles tech rifle is essentially three rifle types in one package. Firing it from the hip produces a shotgun-like blast with decently tight grouping, useful for CQB. Aiming down the sights tightens the spread enough for mid-range combat, and charging the shot while aiming produces a single solid beam with pinpoint accuracy that can replace a sniper rifle in a pinch. It doesn't excel in any of these roles but is a decent multipurpose weapon that has applications no matter the situation.
• Symbiotic Possession: Despite all his faults, Johnny has enough decency to never take over V's body without their consent, unless it's to save their life. He also tries to work with V, both in finding the solution for their Relic problem and in various sidequests and gigs, offering V advice and his own knowledge on various topics.

T

• Take That!: At the end of the E3 2018 trailer, the Freeze-Frame Bonus includes this text in response to the question of whether or not there will be microtransactions in the game:
  Trailer: In a single-player role-playing game? Are you nuts?
  • The Summon Vehicle function contains a long disclaimer noting that the feature is in "beta" and the may "fail to recognize or avoid obstacles such as humans," which is a clear Take That! to Tesla's Smart Summon and Autopilot features' perpetual and invokedObvious Beta status and general lack of safety.
  • In the Next-Gen Update Launch Trailer the line "If there’s one thing I can tell you about this city – you either love it or wanna burn it. No middle ground." seems to be a vicious one to the game's extremely polarizing reception from fans and critics and to the game's hatedom.
  • Swedenborg's following seems to be one towards both Qanon's followers and stoner slacktivists.
• Take Your Time: Despite the fact that V is slowly being taken over (unwillingly on both ends) by Johnny Silverhand and only has weeks left to find a solution there’s absolutely no time limit. You could spend months wandering around, taking jobs and fulfilling every side mission. The impending Death of Personality won’t come till you advance the story. You'll also have story missions where characters will tell you not to keep them waiting, but you can meet them at their leisure; they'll act the same no matter when you arrive.
• Tank Goodness: The Aldecaldo sidequest chain culminates in you helping your nomad friends get their hands on a Militech Basilisk to help them get the edge they need in smuggling, security, and raiding. Technically, it's an armoured transport rather than a true main battle tank, but it's still the toughest, hardest-hitting thing in the Badlands, especially once the Aldecaldo techs (several of whom are veterans from Militech tank regiments themselves) get to upgrading it.
• Tanks, but No Tanks: As mentioned above, the Basilisk isn't actually a tank, as multiple in-game characters are quick to point out. Everyone still calls it a tank regardless because it's more convenient than "armored cargo transport with mounted self-defence weaponry", and because the modifications the Aldecaldos make to it after getting it up and running are mainly about enhancing its combat capabilities at the expense of its transport capacity.
• Tarot Motifs: The achievements/trophies for the game and the endings are named after several Major Arcana. Fittingly, starting the game gives The Fool, which is the start of the journey (Right next to your apartment) while finishing the main storyline gives The World. There's also a sidequest to locate and scan graffiti of twenty Major Arcana, hallucinations caused by the presence of Johnny Silverhand with appropriately stylized, edgy artwork. Naturally The Fool is directly beside the entrance of V's apartment.
• The Taxi: Autonomous Delamain cabs serve this role.
• Team Switzerland: Netwatch, being vital to the world by virtue of maintaining the Blackwall and dealing with any Net-wide threats, stays out of the corporate wars and is paid a king's ransom by the corporations for doing so. They're actually Playing Both Sides in order to stay that way, as Arasaka and Militech would love to take over the Net.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: Judy is a bit of a tomboy, but she's very sensitive, kind, and has a strong sense of justice. Her much more feminine ex-girlfriend, Maiko, is an opportunistic, snarky and cutthroat businesswoman who cares first and foremost for her own status and high place in the hierarchy.
• Terminator Impersonator: There's a group of cyborg assassins known as "Exterminators" which are sent by the Arasaka corporation to eliminate dangerous targets. In addition to red Glowing Mechanical Eyes, they attack the protagonist on motorcycles, they have long arm blades and one even tries to climb his way onto a car in a similar fashion to the T-1000.
• Theme Naming:
  • The muzzle brake attachments introduced for power weapons in the Version 1.5 update are all named after various monsters or usually unfriendly spirits in various cultural folklores around the world.
  • Militech guns are named after famous battles in American history (Omaha, Saratoga, Lexington) or after Greek mythic figures (Ajax, Achilles). The Crusher gets grandfathered in as an exception, as it's a classic from the Tabletop game.
  • Arasaka guns tend to be named after Japanese historical figures from the feudal period, ranging from samurai, daimyos, or even the famous swordsmith Masamune.
  • Tsunami guns are all named after Japanese mythical creatures, such as the Nue, Nekomata, Kyubi and Kappa.
• There Is No Cure: Played With. After a Relic biochip containing the Virtual Ghost of Johnny Silverhand ends up permanently lodged in V's head, they are told they only have a few weeks or months to find a way to safely disentangle it from their brain — otherwise, said brain will be permanently overwritten by Johnny's engram. They first seek out the original inventor of the Relic for a cure, but he confesses to them and the Relic has never been designed to be reversible. Then, in one ending, the MegaCorp Arasaka (which funded the Relic) promises V to remove it — but discovers that even without it, V's brain is still too damaged to live, so the best they can do is to turn them into a Human Popsicle until (and if) an actual cure is found. In other endings, V seeks the help of a powerful AI and storms the Arasaka HQ in hopes that the AI will separate Johnny from them — which it does, but discovers that the Relic is almost done converting V's body into Johnny's, so V only has two options: let the chip finish the job, or keep the body for a couple more months they have left. V then sets off on a new quest to save themselves, the details depending on which ending it is, And the Adventure Continues.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Notably averted. V will frequently sit down for drinks or meals with other characters, and the game always gives you the option to consume whatever is in front of you, be it a beer with Panam or River's homemade jambalaya.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Saburo Arasaka considers his son Yorinobu's attempt to steal the Relic technology to be this. Too bad Yori long ago considered Saburo's instrumental part in perpetrating what is now terminal-stage capitalist oppression on the world to be far more unforgivable.
• Throw-Away Guns: The Budget Arms Slaught-O-Matic is a dirt cheap piece of crap gun that can't be reloaded, you just throw it away and buy a new one, essentially a poor(er) man's Tediore.
• Time Skip: No matter which Life Path you choose, at the end of the Prologue, there will be a six month time skip montage showing you and Jackie getting integrated with the citizens and lifestyle of Night City which leads directly into the first mission.
• Titled After the Song: Many missions are named after song titles, in particular a lot of the side quests, examples include — Space Oddity, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, Riders On The Storm, Killing In The Name, Dream On, among others.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Judy is the tomboy to Evelyn and Maiko.
• Token Good Cop: the game's portrayal of the NCPD falls somewhere in between a Necessarily Evil organisation that's forced to be brutally violent because that's just how Night City is while still being so under-resourced that it's completely unable to go after anything but the very worst crimes, and utterly corrupt to the point of essentially being one more gang, just with official (public) backing and (more) military-grade weaponry. There are a few good people left, but things for them aren't exactly easy:
  • V's neighbour Barry used to be part of the NCPD, but quit after a Maelstrom gangoon shot a kid right in front of him for shits and giggles, getting away scot-free due to his Corpo connections.
  • The trope is even Invoked by the title of an Act I side quest "The Woman from La Mancha", where V is hired to take out Anna Hamill, the only officer in the NCPD still struggling against the pervasive corruption of her department — in fact, the hit was put out by her own colleagues and superiors so she would stop investigating Kabuki Market and rocking the boat for everyone else.
  • River Ward, one of V's main allies and romance options, is a hard-bitten detective who genuinely cares about protecting the people of Night City, but eventually ends up quitting the force to become a Private Detective, on the basis that he can do more good without the NCPD's many Dirty Cops breathing down his neck.
• Too Dumb to Live: Many, many examples. All too often V stumbles onto the remains of people who thought that e.g. going on a solo netrun into an Arasaka datafortress, blackmailing a sociopathic Corrupt Corporate Executive, trying to cheat the Animals in a drug deal or doublecrossing an extremely well-connected fixer were good ideas. Some standout examples:
  • A minor side plot in the Badlands (one gig and several linked scanner hustles and random finds) involves the Wraiths' efforts to take down a drug smuggler's drones. One of them then has the genius idea to sell the stolen drugs, without even altering the packaging...to the 6th Street gang. The gang the smuggler they stole from was with.
  • A loanshark tries to blackmail one of his victims. Standard Night City fare, right? Except the loanshark then agrees to take the payment from the victim alone and in an out-of-sight location. Predictably V finds his bullet-riddled corpse.
  • An Aldecaldo kid named Trevor finds an item the Always Chaotic Evil Wraiths are looking for and tries to sell it to them, thinking that'll get the Wraiths to leave his camp alone. Everything about the responses he gets from the Wraiths just screams trap but he goes there alone anyway. V's gig in this case is to go retrieve his remains so the idiot can at least get a decent burial.
• The Tower: The "Tower" graffiti can be found in the Arasaka Tower, the subject of two raids that ended with the death of Alt, Johnny, and countless civilians. Johnny also has the tarot art tattooed on his right tricep. The first raid ended with Alt's death, which changed Johnny forever, the second one with Johnny being turned into an engram and uploaded on a biochip, and the potential third one will end with V, Johnny and Rogue or the Aldecaldos making their way through the tower to Mikoshi to save V's life, with Alt slaughtering pretty much everyone inside. All three of these events have a profound impact on the people making up the squad, the Arasaka corporation and Night City as a whole (at least for some time).
• Tragic Bromance:
  • Between V and Jackie. Jackie's death during the heist has a clear impact on V, to the point where they get noticeably upset and emotional whenever he's mentioned. V can order "his" drink in the Afterlife during the "Path of Glory" ending.
  • Between V and Johnny, especially if you've kept their relationship on a good note. Both of them seem very depressed and in mourning over the departed one in whichever epilogue you choose.
• Trailers Always Spoil: The cinematic trailer for the game spoilers the end of Act 1 where Jackie dies during the heist for the Arasaka tech and that Dexter betrays V to save his own skin (and that V wakes up in a junkyard after getting shot). However, in game, T-Bug dies before this scene happens (and doesn't seem like she'd turn on V anyway) and V doesn't properly meet Johnny until days later when they are recovering from nearly dying at their apartment rather than at the junkyard where Dexter dumped them.
• Translator Microbes: V starts the game with a translator implant that deciphers the most spoken languages in Night City, but requires downloading additional modules in order to understand more exotic languages, such as Haitian Creole. In a case of Gameplay and Story Integration, the subtitles will translate for the player. Although the Street Kid backstory disables it for Spanish, presumably because that version of V is fluent.

U

• Underestimating Badassery: In the Corpo V sidequest "War Pigs", ex-coworker Frank is clearly down-on-his-luck and thinks he can hold V at gunpoint by his lonesome self to offer them to his boss Abernathy. What follows is a pathetically easy fight despite his Iconic tech pistol.
• Universal Ammunition: There are only four types of ammo: pistol, rifle, sniper rifle, and shotgun. All weapons within each category can share ammo. The "rifle" category is the broadest, with SMGs, assault rifles, and LMGs all sharing ammo. Notably, even the mini-missile shooting smartguns use standard ammo despite theirs being vastly more complex than standard bullets or railgun slugs. The fact, that even weapons from one particular category (e.g. Power pistols) wouldn't have totally interchangeable ammunition doesn't help either.
• Unorthodox Reload: The reloading sequence of Johnny's iconic handgun is essentially two horizontal flipcocks with a magazine change in between, made doubly impressive by the gun lacking the trigger guard one would normally require to even attempt a flipcock in the first place. And then made triply impressive by handguns generally not being able to be flipcocked at all.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: There are often rather dramatic scripted events that can occur, drawing no reaction from the locals. As Night City is an Urban Hellscape, this is somewhat of a Justified Trope. As one example, during the "M'ap Tann Plenn" quest, V takes a short walk through Pacifica with a local ganger through a busy market. Nearby, a gangoon drives off an N54 News AV with gunfire from an assault rifle, and in the distance and in plain view of everyone, an attack helicopter is ravaging an apartment tower with its machine guns. Both incidents don't even get so much as a glance from the local populace.
• Urban Hellscape: Night City is overflowing with poverty, with at least half of the populace unemployed and/or homeless. The city is also so violent and dangerous that police barely have time to investigate accidents, suicides or non-violent deaths. The average Homicide Detective is working fifty homicide cases on a daily basis. Shootouts and crime scenes are everywhere, and the police are basically another gang, forced to pay deference to the local MegaCorps and willing to accept "tribute" from the various gangs around town. The special MAX-TAC division are basically a militarized SWAT unit that gun down dangerous threats with deadly force, and are especially called in when there's a Cyberpsycho on the loose.
• Uriah Gambit: In the disastrous aftermath of the Konpeki Plaza heist, Goro Takemura sets out to hunt down the supposed killer of Saburo, and V's the prime suspect (besides Yobinoru himself). Between lapsing bits of consciousness, V sees him calling Yobinoru and saying "I found your father's killer" to waking up again with both of them under attack by Arasaka exterminators. Either Yobinoru always sent him away with the idea of killing him, or else he had to switch tactics fast once he realized an actual witness to the crime was about to be brought in.

V

• Vice City: While superficially it looks fairly decent (if crowded), Night City is absolutely one of these. According to the official trailer, it was voted the worst place to live in America due to rampant street violence and more people underneath the poverty line than above it.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Many players actually fully paid their debt to Viktor, despite it being completely optional. Of course, you can't access his unique cyberware without doing so and by midgame it's pocket change in any case.
  • Side jobs done for Judy, Kerry, River and Panam can be done for no reward, and they all center around V helping their friends with their problems.
  • In one gig, V is tasked with procuring scandium rods for a client. They're currently being guarded by a man named El Gallo, who is on the verge of going cyberpsycho from the stress of being a veteran abandoned by Militech and the derision he gets from his superiors. V can potentially kill Gallo or sneak past him to swipe the rods, but a V with a sufficiently high tech level can explain how to fix an elevator without the rods. This ends the encounter peacefully and potentially saves Gallo's job and sanity.
  • In the gig, "Hippocratic Oath", V is charged with rescuing a doctor named Lucy Thackery who sold her services to keep her brother out of the Maelstrom's clutches. They find her treating a wounded member of the Maelstrom and demands V help her save him. V can either let the patient die or shoot him dead to get her to hurry it up, or help her treat him and save his life even though there's no additional reward to be gotten out of it.
  • V can show compassion to Barry, their neighbor who became suicidal after witnessing one gruesome murder too many in his line of work.
  • During the grave scene in "Chippin' In", V can be kind to Johnny from the get-go, or at least give him a second chance when he asks for it. You can also fulfill his request to go on a date with Rogue and check up on Kerry.
  • You can run back and save Takemura in "Search and Destroy", despite Johnny trying to convince you that he's gone, and you can't help him.
• Videogame Dashing: Double-tapping direction keys allows you to dash away from incoming attacks.
• Video Wills: The Corpo V sidequest "War Pigs" opens with ex-coworker Frank sending a message about how his boss Abernathy (aka the one who got V fired) is purging everyone who's not 100% with her and he's gathering info on her before that happens. He adds that if V got the message, then Abernathy got to him first and he hopes V will finish the job. He's not actually dead. He just sent the message as bait to lure V.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • If a quest has to be started at a certain hour of the day, when having arrived too early, V always gets an option to just sit down or lean against something and wait until the appointed time. This is an Anti-Frustration Feature from a gameplay perspective and has no negative consequences, but from a story perspective, spending up to 23 hours leaning against a random guardrail is just about the most comically wasteful and nonsensical thing to do imaginable, for anyone, but especially for a person with only a few weeks left to live.
  • In one sidequest V pays for an unexplained BD that only plays on the vendor's personal rig on a whim. Predictably, it's a setup. Johnny compares it to sharing needles.
  • To get the most out of ricochet effects for Power Weapons, you need to develop an intuitive sense of reflection angles so you can fire ricochets at the ground from the hip and let the Ballistic Coprocessor cyberware (or a weapon with an integrated Ricochet Engine if rolling with a Smart Link instead) take aim lock-on from there. It takes far less time to aim, allows you to move faster due to not aiming down sights (and even faster if you get a perk that enabels firing while sprinting). The violation of common sense? You're seemingly recklessly firing at the ground instead of at your target, something that anyone with a mind for gun safety in real life would be pulling their hair out over.
  • Want to take someone alive? Set them on fire! Damage-over-time effects like fire and poison automatically cut out when an enemy falls unconscious, making them amongst the most reliable ways to resolve a combat encounter non-lethally. It's why the Psalm 11:6 assault rifle (which riddles targets with flaming bullets) is one of your most useful early tools for 'safely' subduing cyberpsychos.
• Villainy-Free Villain: An Exploited Trope. In the final fight of the "Beat on the Brat" jobs, Razor Hugh is a championship boxer and kind of a jerk, openly bragging about how you won't last a round against him. Just after you receive an offer from your coach to take a dive against him in exchange for a larger payout, a young girl comes up and tells you about how Razor Hugh beat her father nearly to death even after the ref called the fight, and asks you to avenge her father on her behalf. Should you win the match, you can find the girl outside gloating over the phone about her acting skills and how much money she made off the fight. A Street Kid V is genuinely impressed, and tells her there's no need to explain and she should make her eddies where she can.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: V will throw up multiple times during the story, for different reasons, and since the entire game is in the first person, seeing it can't be avoided. The corpo lifepath even opens with V throwing up from stress. There's also a hack tree ability that makes the enemies keel over, puke their guts out and die.

W

• Wall of Weapons: V can build an armory in their apartment which sports a variety of guns, blades, grenades and other hardware on the walls. One wall is reserved for iconic weapons received from main story characters and love interests, the other for iconics crafted from the specs you can loot off of certain sidequest bosses. An unfortunate side effect of this distribution is that players who don't specialize in the Tech attribute will always have one of their armory walls decorated with empty gun racks.
• Wave-Motion Gun: The Militech-manufactured Mini-Mecha suits that some bosses wear have an inbuilt BFG that shoots a giant beam of energy at enemies. Royce, the Arc Villain of the heist preparation arc and the game's potential Wakeup Call Boss, is the most prominent user, but there are others as well. The "beam of energy" itself is implied to have originally been a plasma cutter or welder, either modded or overclocked into an impromptu Plasma Cannon, due to the presence of the exoskeletons at construction and industrial sites.
• Weird Currency: The primary form of currency used in Night City is the European Economic Community's digital currency, known as the eurodollar, or "eddie" for short. Cards containing them, such as the one V gets from Meredith holding Militech's payment for the Flathead, can include viruses.
• Wham Episode:
  • The final quest in Act I, "The Heist". The biochip job slowly deteriorates into chaos when Saburo Arasaka suddenly arrives in the penthouse to confront his son Yorinobu over the theft of the chip, forcing V and Jackie to hide. In a fit of rage, Yorinobu strangles his father to death and then frames the killing as an assassination, which leaves V and Jackie as the perfect scapegoats. The ensuing mayhem results in the deaths of both T-Bug and Jackie, and the quest ultimately ends with V getting shot in the head by Dex in a desperate attempt to tie up loose ends. This mission starts off the primary plot of the game while also fully cementing that Anyone Can Die.
  • The quest "Both Sides Now". It starts with Judy asking you to come to her place right away while clearly not sounding alright. When you arrive, you find that Evelyn killed herself sometime between when you left her with Judy and now due to everything she went through.
• Wham Shot: In the conclusion of the E3 2019 trailer, after V is shot, he wakes up in what looks to be a garbage dump and is approached by a man with a silver cybernetic arm. The man in question is a character modeled and voiced by Keanu Reeves. And according to official materials, he's the long-thought-to-be-dead rock star Johnny Silverhand.
  Johnny: Wake the fuck up, samurai. We have a city to burn.
  • While the scene above isn't in the game, V does wake up in a garbage dump and witnesses another Wham Shot, namely that DeShawn is forced to get them out of the trash heap by Takemura, since V is the sole witness of Saburo Arasaka's murder and the key to bring Yorinobu to justice.
  • A moment in the game itself: During the flashback to Alt's kidnapping, Johnny is stabbed from behind by one of the "drunken groupies" that attacked him. He looks up to see the "groupie" standing over him...with some clearly high-end cyberware very unlike what an almost penniless drunkard would have, and very like what an Arasaka ninja would have. It's a rather subtle nod to the revelation a few minutes later that Arasaka was behind the kidnapping.
• What a Piece of Junk:
  • The Nomad lifepath's starter car, a junky Thorton Galena hatchback with the "Rattler" nomad kit, is more potent than it's portrayed to be. It's introduced in a garage getting a janky electrical system worked on, and has rust and bullet holes riddling the side. Its exhaust pipe also apparently vents in a clearly unmuffled manner out a cut hole in the hood, and it and the attached turbocharger also sticking out through the hood glow red-hot when revving. It also lacks the Crystal Shield display tech seen on all the other Nomad-kit vehicles for sale later in the game, and has plain ol' glass windows. However, it has incredible acceleration, topped only by hypercars and other beefy cars with near-hypercar performance, has a fair bit of ground clearance for off-roading, and can make it into the mid-160s in top speed. It beats out its more regionally common nomad car cousin, the Galena Gecko, in most performance areas. Though it gets wrecked before the prologue time-skip, an Act 2 Nomad Lifepath-specific quest pops up offering the chance to reclaim the Galena Rattler in working condition.
  • V's starter car that they receive after completing their lifepath is an Archer Hella sedan, which already has a reputation for being so Boring, but Practical that it almost bankrupted the company that made it because once a customer bought one, they'd basically never need another car ever again. V's Archer looks even rougher than the ones driven around by the other denizens of Night City, having apparently being repaired several times with jury-rigs and kludged fixes, including the entire rear bumper being removed and replaced with what appears to be a welded pipe frame. Performance-wise, however, while it is no Quadra or Caliburn, and it certainly won't win any beauty contests, it is pretty speedy and maneuverable for its size, and is sturdy enough to take more than a few hits before it bursts into flames. While it tends to get out-paced by more high-performing cars later in the game, it's a great starter vehicle and ideal for zipping across the city or just cruising and taking in NC's sights.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to the iguana V and Jacky acquire in the Nomad prologue? The fact that iguanas can live for up to 25 years makes it unlikely it died of old age during the six-months Time Skip. It's likely they sold it for some quick cash, but without any actual information about its fate, all we have is conjecture. It's alluded to that the iguana found in Yorinobu Arasaka's Konpeki suite is the same one, as it was pilfered from Arasaka Corporation to begin with, and he may simply have determined it'd show up on the black market (since he has some experience with the criminal underworld). Jackie, however, claims that it couldn't be the same one because it had "more wrinkles."
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • A.I.s require licenses to continue operation and will be erased if they can't justify (or afford) their license. Regina resets Skippy without a qualm, even though he had attained true sapience. V generally averts this, showing as much — often more — empathy for artificial beings as organic ones, including Skippy, Delamain, and Delamain's "children".
  • Throughout the game, V has multiple opportunities to treat Johnny either as a person or as lines of malicious code they can just ignore (by taking omega blockers). The game has no definitive answer as to what exactly an engram is (a person, a program, or something else entirely), so V (and through extension, the player) can grant or take personhood from Johnny however they see fit.
  • It is generally averted with engrams, from what you see and the way people interact with Saburo Arasaka's, most people seem to treat engrams similarly to how they would the human they're based on, only occasionally acknowledging that they're not the same. Except for Anders Hellman, one of the scientists involved in the creation of engrams, who constantly refers to them as "data" or "construct".
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: During the ending credits, you will get to listen to voice messages left by the friends you've made along the way, with all of them giving you a short update about how they're doing. The message changes depending on how far you've gotten into their personal quest or on which main ending did you choose. The only exception is "The Reaper" ending, where all characters will leave a message about how devastated by V's suicide they are, no matter their status before.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: There are several buildings where lighting is either almost or completely nonexistent, a few sidequests also taking place in these dark buildings. Turning up the gamma is about the only way to see anything in these areas, and it's become a common question why CDPR didn't include a flashlight or some form of night vision optics which led to someone creating a flashlight mod.
• Why Am I Ticking?: The Detonate Grenade quickhack does Exactly What It Says on the Tin — it forces the target to detonate one of the grenades they're carrying. Moderately useful because you don't know what type of grenade will go off, plus not all enemies carry grenades in the first place, but at least it never fails to entertain.
• Why We Need Garbage Men: In the Wretched Hive of Night City, trash is EVERYWHERE, with huge mounds of garbage piling up in every available space. Even Kopeki Plaza, an affluent city centre with holographic goldfish floating above, is overflowing with trash. In Kopeki Plaza, garbage dumpsters are full to the brim, garbage cans available to the public are full and overflowing to the point they cannot be closed, and there is so much litter than you quite literally cannot go more than 5 feet without stepping on a discarded wrapper or takeout box. Though there is a giant landfill that exists just outside the city limits which the player character eventually ends up waking up from after Act I, even that is not enough to alleviate the excessive garbage accumulation issues as there is no verifiable existence of a working incinerator building to dispose of the trash. Seems as if trash pickup and street cleaners are another thing critically underfunded by the city. Only corporate headquarters like Arasaka tower is free of trash, and even then, only up to the border between corporate property and public street.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: Night City is a completely open world that is smaller than The Witcher 3's Continent but vertical in a way that its predecessor wasn't.
• The Worf Effect: Invoked when Judy is demonstrating her fighting reflex doll software. She invites V, an experienced solo, to spar with Tom, a male doll, who promptly thrashes V and tosses them onto Judy's couch.
• Wretched Hive: Night City is a shithole and that is putting it mildly. Not only is it full of violent crime, but whole districts are also ruled by gangs, corporations exist above the law, poverty is everywhere, deranged cyborg spree killers stalk the streets, and you personally witness a few suicides happening randomly about you. The police brag about the murder rate going down, but you can find out from a detective that they achieved this by reclassifying the most violent part of Night City as a different jurisdiction. The abundance of technology has done nothing to make the world's problems any better and has actually made many of them worse. No wonder it was voted worst city in America. The "Postcards from Night City" featurette highlights the rapidly increasing number of homeless people, and the crime rates are twice as high as the New United States' average.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: Averted. If you listen to the news broadcasts and do the math for NC's murder rate, it does indeed have a murder rate more than five times higher than modern-day Tijuana and more than ten times higher than the worst murder rate in the modern US: St. Louis MO. A single district in NC having 30 murders in one day is not considered remarkable on the news.

Y

• You Don't Look Like You:
  • Downplayed. The female V design revealed during the E3 2018 demo had pale skin, dark hair with red tips and wore quite a lot of eye make-up. The design used in newer promotional materials has her as an Ambiguously Brown redhead with a magenta undercut. Her male counterpart, on the other hand, was kept relatively consistent.
  • Johnny Silverhand was portrayed as a blonde who was based on David Bowie in the original tabletop game. Here, he's played by Keanu Reeves, so not only are his looks much different (including dark hair), but his entire design leans more into the "punk rebel" aesthetic much more than his original glam rocker influence.
  • While Kerry's 2023 design is relatively faithful to his tabletop depictions, the difference between the concept art from the artbook and actual in-game model for his 2077 design is staggering, to the point where it's difficult to say that it's the same character. The most noticeable differences would be the fact that his concept art has tattoos on his stomach that are completely absent from his game design, his sleeves look wildly different, and his neck cyberware implant has a different look. The artbook design is actually used on some in-game posters.
• Your Mom: One gig in Watson has you rescue the coach of a prizefighter who went into self-imposed exile after agreeing to take a dive for the Tyger Claws and then secretly betting on his own win, and the Tyger Claws are none too happy that he skipped town. Being a Defiant Captive, the coach antagonizes his torturer with zingers comprising of this trope while being interrogated as to where the fighter is.

Z

• Zeerust:
  • Most of the vehicles have digital gauges, that were considered very cool and futuristic back in the 1980s. Averted with Neokitsch-themed cars, that have much more modern (by Real Life standards) dashboards.
  • Personal communication technology seems to have developed more in line with Mike Pondsmith's 1988 expectations than anything resembling the real world. For example, phones can create holographic images, but are just phones; prior to Patch 2.1 they didn't even play music, let alone all the functions of a modern smartphone. The 'net is also much more in line with the Internet of the 1990s than slick, modern websites or social media, though this could be justified by Bartmoss's fracturing of the 'net in the backstory.
• Zeerust Canon: Downplayed with Johnny's flashbacks to 2013 and 2023. While the changes aren't too dramatic, the Night City of the era is depicted as more in line with the '80s and '90s future envisioned in the original tabletop game (especially with its more overt Cassette Futurism and fashions) compared to 2077.