Funny / A Hat in Time

Spaceship

Ye snooze, ye lose, peck neck!

• Our introduction to Hat Kid has her sleeping peacefully in her bed. Then her light and radio turn on, startling her into jumping to the ceiling, landing on her face, and her hat floating down to perch atop her head.
• The descriptions of some things you can interact with.
  The closet! You only wear one outfit, so there's plenty of room for skeletons.
  The microwave! You use it to punish food that's been bad.
• Numerous details around the ship indicate that Hat Kid isn't exactly neat and tidy. Her fridge is full of moldy and spoiled food, her washing machine and dryer are just stuffed in the basement and don't seem to see much use, and the mailroom has completely empty "In" and "Out" boxes... because the letters are all piled on the floor.
  • Also the Fridge Logic of just who is sending Hat Kid mail and how she's receiving it, considering she's in outer space and all.
• Hat Kid has what can only be described as a Roomba (called Rumbi) cleaning the carpet in the main room of her ship. You can run into it to kick it, or jump on top to ride it and make it struggle with the extra weight.
• After returning to the spaceship post-first level, the door on the window that the Mafia broke open has now been boarded up. No, we don't know how Hat Kid managed to nail wooden boards into a glass window either.
• If you build the UFO relic, Hat Kid (being an alien herself) is apparently offended by the concept, being baffled by the design of the spaceship and the fact that they're abducting cows. She even threatens within the relic description to sue.
• If you find the secret room with Hat Kid's diary by using the Ground Pound hat in a special spot on her enormous pile of pillows, you can read it to find the normally smiling and cheerful Hat Kid being utterly snarky and irritable about whatever missions she recently had to go through.
• Opening the "Earth" game on your computer gives you one long Eskimos Aren't Real joke:
  Earth, the greatest mystery of our time. Many academics subscribe to the theory that Earth does not exist. This theory is supported by the fact that it's really improbable, and that's just where science is right now. Giving further credence to this theory is, by all accounts, nobody can claim to have ever discovered Earth. There is only record of people 'supposedly' being born there, or being told that it is real. The prevailing theory is that Earth is a mass shared hallucination, and that we should really just take things slow for a while and calm down to see if it goes away.
• Typing something into the web search on Hat Kid's computer will result in it saying your search has been submitted for federal review. Presumably, so you can be arrested if you typed something the feds don't like. You can get an achievement by typing something immature or crass as well.
• Attempting to surf the net:
  You have selected the web-surf application.
  Unfortunately, the tide is low right now. Please check again later.
• A very well hidden easter egg in the spaceship: by using the camera to spy inside Hat Kid's toy box you can find a note labelled "Science Stuff". It measures the intelligence of people Hat Kid comes across and among them are the Mafia (Dumb), Seagull (Smart), Little Girl (Quite possibly Mustache Girl - Dumb), Owls (Smart) and Kickstarter Backers (Smartest).
• If you check the blueprints of Hat Kid's spaceship in her bedroom with the camera you can notice the glass from the ship's bridge is resistant to comets, but weak to fists.
• Most people would respond to their starship getting broken into, being sucked out into space, and having all their fuel scattered across a nearby planet with despair, anger, or panic; Hat Kid's only reaction is an indignant huff as she tumbles towards Mafia Town.

Mafia Town

• The Mafia goons in general look funny — wearing chef aprons over blue pinstriped suits and talking in a bizarre accent. Certain Mafia goons will start up a game of patty-cake with Hat Kid... only to sucker-punch her.
  • A lot of their dialog is also funny. Most of which involves gleefully doing stereotypically evil things.
• A bit of fridge funny, but in every level of the game, there are some small nods to other levels. There are indeed some nods to Deadbird Studio in Mafia Town. Now think about the paranoid Mafia member who fears space aliens - how would he react if he figured out that the Moon Penguins are in fact Penguins from the Moon?
• The intro to the first boss fight, against Mafia goons on a TNT barrel tower. The camera alternates between close-ups of Hat Kid and Mafia's faces, until Hat Kid sticks her tongue out.
  Mafia: This awkward for Mafia! Mafia not sure what to do.
• After saving Mustache Girl from the Mafia, a friendship meter appears to show Hat Kid's progress towards becoming buds with her. Later, when Mustache Girl establishes herself as the game's antagonist, the meter decreases to the point of going out the other end, extending off-screen and exploding.
  • She also pickpockets half of your pons, which is actually what causes the meter to drop down rather ridiculously.
  • Meanwhile, Hat Kid just stands there in shocked anger. Can be seen here. Keep in mind, all she does as the meter goes down is keep this expression while glancing around the room, as if to say, "did she really just do that?"
• One Mafia in particular mentions punching barrels dressed as old lady to scare people. Then he also says sometimes he forgets what he did and punches both.
• The level description for Act 5, a race in which you are encouraged to cheat with the time-slowing hat, or by scrambling for the backroute cannon as fast as possible. In fact, the time hat is considered a key item for beating the act.
  Goal: Win legitima-pfffft hahaha
• In "Heating Up Mafia Town" (an Act where Mafia Town is filled with lava instead of water) you can immediately spot two Mafia goons holding plaques saying "Oh no!" and "Yikes!".

Battle of the Birds

• After DJ Grooves enters his studio with the penguins in tow, the Conductor boards up the door and bursts into maniacal laughter about their predicament... only to realize that trapping his rivals in their studio will force them to work harder.
• The Running Gag throughout Dead Bird Studio of you getting billed for just about everything you do, leading to you accumulating an insane bill that hangs out in the upper right hand corner of your screen. Don't worry, DJ Grooves does away with the bill the moment you meet him, no matter how big it is.
• One of the things you can get billed for in Dead Bird Studio is knocking over the cardboard cactus props. It gets listed as "Assault on Cactus".
• In the loading screen for Dead Bird Studio, Hat Kid is shown in a director's chair crudely labeled "SOME GIRL" and is wearing two pairs of sunglasses, one over the other, giving a cheesy grin. You can even get sunglasses from a dispenser at the start of the level — and yes, you can wear two pairs at once. If you try putting on a third pair, the dispenser just explodes and you get billed 3,000 pons for destruction of property.
• The first meeting between DJ Grooves and Hat Kid. Grooves looks upon Hat Kid, and thinks he's found a perfect starlet of divine beauty, as a pink backdrop with hearts appears behind her... before remarking that it's just a girl.
  • Soon after that, DJ Grooves decides to get you a Bird Passport. Whether or not you move when he tells you not to, Grooves seems to think the resulting picture isn't...very good, and asks you to 'doctor' it with a rudimentary Paint program. The image never comes up again...until you quit the game and see that it became your save icon.
• In Murder On The Owl Express, you find "Crowfidential" evidence that lets you finger various suspects, such as the Crows, your "family", the Conductor, even the Victim! One of the evidence pieces you pick up will allow you to call yourself out as the Murderer, resulting in a hilarious sequence where the Conductor details how you butchered and ate the poor Owl (that's still in one piece) in your lust for blood.
  I had to do it, or the voices wouldn't stop!
  • Picking the victim reveals he "killed" himself just so he could get out of work and lay there all day.
  • In the same mission, when the various crows ask you to answer some questions, if full voice acting is on, their method of pronouncing your Hello, [Insert Name Here] answers is just a series of gibberish mumbles right in the middle of their otherwise fully coherent sentence.
  • One of the questions involve answering what body part Hat Kid is most ashamed of. Later on in the chapter, the crows are found poking fun of said body part. If you manage to sequence break around the crow that asks that (unlike the one that asks you the question about your aunt and pet, all the rest can be platformed around), it defaults to "butt", and is fully voiced instead of mumbled.
    • Even better: there's an achievement for answering the body part question with "butt" or another word that means "butt" that calls you out on it.
  • The fact that the questions the crows ask are basically password phishing, asking exaggerated forms of personal questions you would answer to unlock an account, including "what would your pet's pet's name be?". One even has you "decode" a captcha input on a whiteboard, and afterward thanks you for agreeing to the terms of service agreement on the back of said whiteboard. The captcha itself reads DCB4ILOSE.
  • The crows, when introduced, seem convinced they can imitate Express Owls perfectly... and casually refer to you as a fellow owl, either believing you are one or playing along as co-conspirators.
  • It's possible to bounce off of the knife in the victim's back. It makes squeaky toy noises when you do so, Foreshadowing to it being a rubber knife.
• The crows are the source of a brilliant Stealth Pun. There's a lot of them, and a group of crows is called a murder. They're a murder on the Owl Express.
• The Dead Bird Studio basement has some pretty great examinations from Hat Kid if you know where to look.
  • One warehouse room has boxes filled with abstract writing techniques like "MacGuffins", "Chekhovs Guns", and "Plot Devices". Was this game made by a Troper?
  • Examining the solid gold hand dryer in the Conductor's room sparks this line:
    It strikes you that this might be the gaudiest, most excessive thing you've ever seen. It doesn't look like there's an easy way to take it with you, either. Shame.
  • Outside of The Conductor's room you can find some newspapers framed on the wall. The front page comes with a picture. The headline reads:
    Local bird misses the only train in existence, Conductor spotted laughing.
  • Examining The Conductor's whiteboard:
    Nothing on this whiteboard makes any sense to you. In fact, it mostly just looks like ramblings of someone very close to running out of movie ideas. There are no less than seven instances of the word 'reboot'.
  • Examining the poster for "Train Rush", starring Some Girl, the Conductor, and Owls:
    These posters came out pretty great! Though, it occurs to you you never gave them permission to use your image in marketing. Actually, you don't recall signing a contract for anything here. Or even giving them any of your details.
    ...it's possible you aren't getting paid for these movies.
• The heart-to-heart moment during the Conductor/DJ Grooves fight, due to how out of nowhere it is, can be chuckle-worthy, as well as how they immediately proceed to strap a bomb onto you right after that.
  • If you fight DJ Grooves, you're treated to him screaming "I HATE YOU! DAAAAAARLIIIIIIIIN'!" after you defeat him.
• During one of DJ Grooves's endorsements to help you gather fans, he tells you not to say the word peck on live TV. You're then given an option to do just that out of context, causing the rather shocked Grooves to hastily end the endorsement. And you still gain fans from doing it.
  DJ Grooves: Now tell us, darlin', what kind of condiment do you like on your tuna sandwiches?
  Hat Kid: PECK
  *Record Scratch*
  DJ Grooves: ...DARLING! I-I mean... fellow viewers! Look at the mouth on this young girl. She's really something! Now shoo, get out of this endorsement as soon as you can before the old penguins watching TV notice what just happened!
  • What's even better, as of the Nyakuza Metro update, you can actually hear the "peck" line voiced! You can practically hear the huge, mischievous grin on Hat Kid's face as she shouts the word.
• Train Rush. The conductor will not forgive anyone destroying his train and yet he's perfectly fine with cutting up the cars, putting lava and acid inside, and an entire slew of deathtraps aboard. Logical.

Subcon Forest

• After completing "Contractual Obligations", in subsequent acts you can find the Snatcher inside the tree at the beginning of the level, reading a book literally titled "How to Kill Kids". You have to wonder how such a book got approved for publishing (or perhaps not).
• A book you can examine in the purple Time Rift:
  It's a large heavy book, titled "Proof of Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism". The pages are all blank.
• After completing Chapter 3 and regaining your soul:
  You got your soul back! You feel relieved, energized, and just the usual amount of empty!
• During the boss fight with the Snatcher, he decides he simply won't turn blue to prevent you from being able to harm him. The solution to this? Throwing one of his potions back at him, covering him in blue liquid, which he nervously says cannot possibly count. It does.
• The Snatcher's final contract bluntly telling Hat Kid to just Get Out!, as well as Hat Kid's response to it — cheerfully scribbling over the paper◊ so that the contract is welcoming her instead. She even takes the time to replace The Snatcher's menacing scowl with a smiley face. The Snatcher is incredulous, but he already stamped the contract, giving Hat Kid the binding last word.
  The Snatcher: You understand that's not how contracts work, right?
  • The extended gag of how much Snatcher wants you to leave is amazing.
    Contract: Get Out
    Get Out
    Just Get Out
    Two images of the Snatcher holding signs saying 'Get Out'.
    The following parts of the forest will be available: None of it. Get out.
    Please take your junk and leave.
• You. Can get hit on. By a noose.

Alpine Skyline

• Hat Kid's Item Get! animation when picking up the time piece in the Birdhouse is unique; rather than dramatically holding it out, she keeps trying to shush it with gestures and holding it down as she looks around worriedly, not wanting the victorious level completion music to wake up the giant sleeping bird nearby.
• For whatever reason, there's a Nomad in the Lava Cake, who says that it's "clearly a safe place for a child to be."

The Finale

• The Conductor channels another familiar Scotsman.
  The Conductor: Oooh, whoever they are, I'm nae gonna be judged by some MUSTACHED, HATLESS, HOOD-WEARIN', STATUE-POSIN', CASTLE-DWELLIN', TICKET-GIVIN' PECK NECK!
  • Remember "peck" is a cuss word for birds, so, uh, Conductor just dropped an uncensored Atomic F-Bomb there.
• While you're on the way to the final boss you'll meet some Crows and one is looking down at the lava thoughtfully, then he says this:
  Crow: My fellow criminals have not re-emerged from the lava. Very strange.
• The cutscene preceding the final battle really picking up the pace where everyone comes in to encourage you parodies a standard You Are Not Alone scene, by featuring all the present characters very spitefully telling Mustache Girl to "Get lost!" in an incredibly aggressive fashion.
• In following with the game's light Black Comedy, during the final boss fight, your allies will agree to punch each other so hard they explode, essentially killing each other, so that they'll drop the health-healing pons to help Hat Kid. The way they brush it off (if Hat Kid wins, she'll just reset the timeline and they'll be okay) makes it sound like they're just preparing to rip off a band-aid.
  • And if you have the One-Hit Hero badge equipped, all of this is effectively pointless since you're never going to be able to use the Pons.
• It's what she needs to do, but there's something funny about how, after Hat Kid collects the time piece ball, she promptly smashes it on the ground after her Item Get! animation.

Arctic Cruise

• The little seals use Baby Talk and can't seem to do a single thing without screwing it up in the most adorable and childlike way possible.
  Seal: We fowgot to secuwe the tables! They'we swiding awl ovew the pwace!
• Near the pool, you can find a seal holding an egg, in a reference to the Captioned Seal video:
  Seal: Egg.
• Turns out Snatcher decided to take the cruise himself...by hiding in a crate. Because actually buying a ticket was far too expensive for his tastes.
• The computer in the lobby has a Windows 10-style Blue Screen of Death saying "Oopsie woopsie".
• The Captain's room has a set of security cameras watching various places on the ship. Some of the views include:
  • The Conductor drowning while a seal watches.
  • A crow being electrocuted in the engine room.
  • The Conductor's grandkids playing with knives (hopefully they're rubber).
• Act 2 has you working as a member of the ship and constantly juggle putting The Conductor's grandkids (who are basically just mini-Conductors in baby clothes), food and drinks, and the Mafia Boss's jar in the right areas.
  • One of the patrons is a Mafia member on the ship who will sometimes trip you. When you deliver food to him, it's thrown in his face.
• When you visit the nursery, you may notice that the baby corral that the Conductor's grandkids are in has barbed wire on top of it. Yet the little peck necks still manage to escape somehow.
• A Nomad from the Alpine Skyline finds that shouting out directions to Hat Kid when she walks by is a surprisingly difficult habit to break.
• When gathering the broken Time Piece in the first mission, one of the tasks you get is helping a seal who got hurt, who asks to be taken to the captain. When you do he tells you that he's not a doctor and to basically just kiss it better yourself. And yes, you actually have to kiss the seal to get the Time Piece fragment.
  "Thank you fow kissing my ouchie, miss! I feel bettew aweady!"
• In the last mission, you find the empty captain's chair. You can take control of the ship's steering, which causes the little control room seals to rag doll all over the control room before you crash into the iceberg.

Death Wish

• Snatcher provides a whole bunch of good quotes, but a good highlight is if you actually manage to clear every single challenge, he'll go into a long-winded rant about how he was trying to kill you and that there is no reward.
  Snatcher: WHAT!? YOU'RE NOT DEAD! This book^note Titled "How to Kill Kids" was useless! I should sue…
  • Another has him lampshade the surprisingly dark tagline for the Time Stop Hat:
    Snatcher: Death is inevitable, your time is valuable? Who labeled this? I thought these hats were made for kids!
• The Death Wish level "Killing Two Birds" does highlight that, if nothing else, DJ Grooves is a more graceful fighter than The Conductor is. When it doesn't come to knives, saw blades and indirect attacks like the collapsing ceiling debris. While Grooves jumps at you while flailing his mic and lands on his knee, Conductor does a body slam and lands on his face. They land the same way when they dive kick from the corner and drop with the disco ball, in addition, that Conductor seems to be spinning around uncontrollably on it. When they run around in the time bomb phase to try and waste Hat Kid's time Grooves coolly skates around while the Conductor runs around flailing his wings(?) as if he's the one with the time bomb on his back. And despite this, they still fight functionally the same.

Nyakuza Metro

• The Empress throws one of her henchmen at a wall under the belief they stole from her. Dark, but becomes amusing when the distinct "pop" you get from killing enemies occurs.
  • He even leaves a free health Pon on death, which can be seen in the cutscene!
• In Green Clean Station, there's a manhole hidden away from the regular areas that seems oddly out of place. Interacting with it reveals a inscription: Kiwami means extreme. Soon afterwards, a Underling wearing Goro Majima's eyepatch pops out, referencing the Kiwami remake's infamous Majima Everywhere system.
  • Right near said manhole is a wooden cage with an egg in a nest. Interacting with it plays the seal's aforementioned "Egg." line.
• The area contains food trucks that allow you to obtain food, plus chances to find combos. One food item is the cake, which the Flavor Text says it's typically for special occasions: birthdays, weddings, and 2 AM.
• The stickers you can collect in the DLC range from cute to hilarious, and some of them are made even better by Hat Kid saying something or imitating other characters' lines. A good highlight is her attempting the Conductor's "Myurder" line with his Scottish accent.
• There's a badge that allows you to mimic the memetic Peace and Tranquility screen whenever you dance, doubling as Sweet Dreams Fuel because of how relaxed the "Peace and Tranquility" screen is.
• Oh God, the game's ending. After being caught stealing back her Time Pieces from the Empress' vault, Hat Kid is chased all over town by both her and her cronies, eventually being cornered by the Empress in an elevator — at which point the police (one of whom is actually one of her cronies in disguise, who somehow missed the memo about Hat Kid having a bounty on her head) show up, leading her to bolt off without a proper fight. It's a literal cop-out ending.
• One of the conversations between cats you can hear has one of them lamenting that he’s going to miss his train again. The resulting conversation ends up going through a list of the colored stations he’s going to have to go through to get to work, culminating in a list that’s so long that all he can say is a frustrated “I’m going to miss my train again”.

Vanessa's Curse

• Snatcher has a ball here. What's his evil scheme? Stealing Vanessa's many, MANY crowns.
• One of the things Snatcher can say when spinning the event wheel? "SPEEEEN!!!"

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