Funny / Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• After encountering Chocolina in Luxerion, Lightning has no idea who she is, even when Chocolina explains her role in Serah's journey. She then tries to explain her whole story to Lightning, who BEGS her to stop talking in the most deadpanned way imaginable!
  Chocolina: It all started when-
  Lightning: Wait, never mind. I trust you. You're on my side. Please stop talking.
  • Chocolina's reaction to Lightning walking up to first talk to her is saying she knows Lightning wants to talk to her. Quickly seeing how chatty she is, Lightning replies that she thinks she has it backwards.
• Hope and Lightning come up with a plan to infiltrate Snow's palace: Shooting a buttload of fireworks into a giant statue to topple it and turn it into a bridge leading to the palace. Lightning goes along with it, but Hope seems strangely into the "destructive plan" they've hatched up, consistently hurrying her on in the quest to find more fireworks:
  Lightning: You... seem to be a little more excited than you should be about this...
• Right after Lightning unwillingly submits to Hope's plan to be the leading actress in Yusnaan, he urges her to rehearse the lines together with him. When he recites the savior's line with full of gusto and energy, Lightning repeats after him in a completely deadpan voice. Made even funnier when Hope reacts to being even more excited for the show, implying that he is eager to see her embarass herself.
  Hope: To save the people of this world, I would give everything I am!
• When Lightning initially talks to Luka, the girl of the "Tear Of An Angel" sidequest.
  Luka: Can you imagine the stuff I think about (to make myself cry)?
  Lightning: Something sad, like your pointless existence?
• Lightning's reaction to having to say an embarrassing password ("Meow meow, choco chow.") to a bunch of girls dressed as chocobos. Each time she says it, she gets more exasperated and annoyed, at one point muttering to Hope, "That... was by far the most embarrassing thing I've ever done in my life." She eventually threatens to force Hope to take her place on the surface when he laughs at her.
  • The Japanese version is 'Tabechau-Nyan' which more or less translates to 'I'm going to eat you- Meow)'.
• Any scene in the game can be made instantly absurd, depending on what you've given Lightning to wear. Pumpkin heads, fuzzy beards, swirling mustaches, top hats, afros, bunny ears...none of them really fit the game's serious tone.
• When you win a battle in the Slaughterhouse/Colosseum, there can be a moment where the crowd sings the classic Final Fantasy victory theme tune.
  Da da da da, da da, DA da DA!!!
  • Lightning rolls her eyes and scoffs at this. This must be her stoic version of "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?"
• After Lightning saves the moogle village in the Wildlands, Mog launches himself at Lightning for a flying hug, the entire scene suddenly turning dramatic, sappy, and in slow-mo... until she effortlessly flicks him away, bouncing several times right into the fourth wall.
  Lightning: I don't really go for people hugging me.
  • Even better, when you go back to the Ark you'll now have an option to talk to Hope about Mog. He will then start to scold Lightning for being mean to Mog and eventually accuse her of liking the hug, but being embarrassed by it... to which she promptly 'threatens' that he best drop the subject, because he's on dangerous ground right now.
  • There's also a sidequest afterwards to find three lost moogles. When Lightning does find one, she decides that it would take too long to escort the moogle home, and instead grabs them and tosses them high into the sky, all the way back to the village. She has a very strong throwing arm...
    • Even better: Hope comments that Lightning threw the moogles far further than Serah ever threw Mog.
    • Then after finding out the reason they were out there so long, and making sure apologies are in order, Lightning says that if they're ever lost again, the moogle culprit will have to be search for them... from high in the sky where she throws him. ^note  As it turns out, despite the wings, moogles are generally afraid of heights. Said moogle promptly begs in a near-panic: "Please not the sky, kupo! Have mercy, kupo!"
  • Then in one of the Wildlands loading screens, Lightning notes how she heard Serah threw Mog around quite a bit. Perhaps when this is all over, they could play 'catch' with him together, as a sort-of bonding...
  • In fact, it's fairly safe to say that almost everything related to moogles in this game is just plain magnificent.
  Moogle Hat adornment description: "I want to sit on Lightning's head, kupo!"
  • Then there's the Moogle Lover garb. To put it in Lightning's own words:
  Lightning: You saw me dressed like this, now you have to die.
• The Dead Dunes train station announcements: while in the other stations they're either diligently precise and serious or enthusiastic, the Dunes have the utterly jaded speaker saying, in the deadpan tone of who doesn't even care anymore:
  Speaker: Just so you know...trains are running.
• After Adonis allows Light to meet Fang at the Monoculus hideout, the two women immediately start chatting it up. Adonis then hastily leaves while mumbling under his breath "Ahh, never mind, guess you guys know each other." And this isn't subtitled, making it a Funny Background Event.
  • If you're paying attention to Fang's bodily movements during that scene, you'll notice that, without interrupting her conversation with Lightning, she catches Adonis' eye, then beckons towards the door with her spear, resulting in his aforementioned departure. In other words, he left because Fang asked him to give them a room.
• Fang did the math to figure out her chronological age, and declared herself the oldest hag on the planet.
  • For added humour, notice that everyone else alive in Nova Chrysalia has lived 500+ years, while Vanille and Fang were sleeping in crystal until about 13 years before the 13 days. Which means that, in time actually lived, she's the (second-)youngest brat on the planet.
• As part of a quest, you can deal with a Cactair in the Dead Dunes, which is an average Cactuar enemy with one little extra detail... that being an afro. And sometimes when it uses 1000 Needles on you, it fails, and gets the prompt "My needles are stuck in my hair!?"
  • And after a while of trying, he will sucessfully use 1000 Needles on you, and you will get the prompt "Got them unstuck!"
• The side quest Life of a Machine involved finding oil for a Bhakti robot. After mentioning that he has friends waiting for him, he observes that Lightning "should feel emotional compulsion to help [him]", potentially ruining any emotional compulsion Lightning and/or the player may have felt to help him.
• After doing a quest that involves helping a girl choose what adornments she wants to use to attract attention, Hope asks Lightning what she plans to do with them. After suggesting that she could wear them herself, she responds with:
  Lightning: Hope, that's the worst idea you've ever had.
• A nice detail is NPCs comments when Lightning walks by, and they change depending on what schema she's wearing. When you wear the Amazon Warrior schema a woman will beg to not be cursed. And when you wear a "Suit" style garb a woman will say "I love you!"◊, then she realizes that she's talking to another woman. And if you have the Buster Sword equipped, people will comment on its size.
  • When you walk around with Aerith's schema people will say "show me your Limit Break!"^note Becomes a case of Fridge Logic and a Mythology Gag when you remember two things from Final Fantasy VII. Aeris/Aerith was not only limited to being playable to only the first disc (without using cheat codes anyways), and that her Level 4 ultimate Limit Break, Great Gospel, manual required doing a Guide Dang It! miniquest. A mini quest you couldn't even complete until you were near the very end of Disc 1. For many Final Fantasy fans, they may have never seen Great Gospel outside of a Youtube video.
• The first time you go past the Cactaur statue in Yusnaan you're confronted by a guard who claims you're the savior. Lightning's deadpan response, especially given that you are in no way trying to hide your identity, is that he's seen through her clever disguise.
  • The equipped outfit and adornments may make the scene even funnier, like if she's wearing one of the crossover outfits, or she's wearing a pair of sunglasses.
  • Also potentially adding to the laughs, it's possible you could have the default garb and weapons equipped - the EXACT thing Lightning wore when breaking in during the prologue.
• In the final dungeon, Lightning comes across a slew of dead monster bodies, noting that "someone's beaten me here." A floor or two down, she finds Fang duking it out with a Chimera:
  Lightning: Heh, I should have guessed.
  Fang: You all right, Lightning? Almost missed the party.
  Lightning: What are you talking about? Looks like you don't need my help.
  Fang: Stop playing hard to get, and get your butt over here! I know you're dying to get in on this!
• After their first conversation together of a New Game+, Lightning mentions how she feels that Hope and herself have had this very conversation before and she's getting a sense of Deja Vu. Hope tells her he's worried about her mental fortitude and that the Savior needs to be in tip-top mental shape... then also admits on the second day that she could have a point; they don't know if she's done this before, and never will even if she actually did, no matter how times she's (possibly) done it.
• After completing Snow's storyline, you can talk with him in the Auger's Quarter in Yusnaan.
  Snow: They say some hot new actor debuted in the play. They say that she was really into her part; destroyed the whole set. I wonder who would be that crazy. Huh, Lightning? H-hey, come on! I was just teasing!
• If not riding the Angel of Valhalla in the Wildlands, it is possible to talk to him, which may result in Lightning giving a very deadpan "Kweh kweh." Bonus humor points for the fact that she will still do this even after learning that her chocobo is really a form of her eidolon, Odin.
• Kind of a gallows humor thing, but after you complete the Canvas of Prayers quest called "Ultimate Craving," the Alchemist Sildonius states in the log information that you can read "The moment is almost upon us! One more year, that is all we need, and we shall be invincible!" Of course, you know and I know...
• To find this one you have to initiate conversation with Hope on the Ark repeatedly. If you've recently completed a storyline objective and there's a new "Talk with Hope" option, he'll have a situation-specific dialogue piece corresponding to it. Talking to him otherwise triggers more generic comments, and most of the time he'll say something like "How can I help?", "Is everything okay?", or "Do you need something?" in a soft, concerned tone. But every now and then when you interact with him he'll say "WELCOME VALUED CUSTOMER!" in the most over-the-top tone you will ever hear. It comes out of nowhere.