Funny / Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

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

Sekiro's story is quite solemn, but it still has place for quirky characters and moments of levity.

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• The Sen purses' descriptions imply that Sekiro isn't so much The Stoic that he doesn't feel satisfaction having a lot of money secured in his pockets. As stated in the Bulging Coin Purse:
  A purse almost overflowing with sen. It can be used to acquire the sen inside. Hefty enough to bring something resembling a grin to a Wolf's face.
• The lore description for the Pacifying Agent item foreshadows the existence of the Headless and their most infamous attack. At the same time, it really highlights the idiosyncrasies that can only be found in Japan's particular brand of superstitions:
  ...All who keep death close keep this powder closer, adhering to simple rule: If seized with fear, cover your rear.
• When you take down the Blazing Bull, you get this gem from the soldiers outside the gate:
  Soldier: Sounds like he's quieted down. *Gate opens* Ah! The enemy is still alive!
  Soldier 2: What about the bull? Where's the bull?!
• Mibu Village is overall a dreadful place, hidden in a dark valley and whose inhabitants have been turned into monsters. However, there is one NPC who gives us a funny moment as he desperately tries to pretend to be a basket and avoid notice from the other villagers. And by "pretend", we mean hiding his head under a basket and repeating the following like a protective spell:
  Shosuke: Basket, basket, basket, basket, basket, basket, I am a basket...
  Sekiro: Hey.
  Shosuke: Hiiii!! Basket, basket, basket, basket!!!
• If you give Dragonspring sake to Isshin, you'll learn that 90% of the cast are in fact heavy drinkers who'd flock to him just to have his precious sake. Even Owl, who at this point of the story is mostly a solemn mentor figure, would come and try to get some sake even though he'd become red after the first cup.
• Normally, you can shell out 20 sen for Anayama to sell a hint at the Flame Vent prosthetic being in the hands of his gang of bandits in the Hirata Estate memory, but if Wolf already has it, he'll instead tell the merchant he's already got one. When Anayama goes to protest before asking what he just said, Wolf growls out that he's "already got one", his voice clearly threatening that he just paid 20 sen for a tidbit that effectively means nothing to him. Anayama sheepishly (and very WISELY) backpedals and says it's on him and gives you a jar of Oil, the implication being that things were about to get messy if he didn't cough up something more worth Wolf's money....
  • The whole thing is funny as it is, but if the Bulging Coin Purse is to be taken at face value, then Wolf canonically loves money, so the thought of him getting pissy because he parted with 20 bucks he didn't need to just adds to the layer of humor in it.
  • After Anayama sheepishly says "This one's on me then" and gives over the jar of oil, nothing more is said. It's really funny if you take it in the sense that Wolf is parting before he literally lays the shinobi smackdown on the greedy man and not that the oil was enough to pacify him.
• Progressing through the Divine Child's storyline reveals that Wolf is unfamiliar with the idea of cooking food, and has been eating rice raw all this time.
• The Fistful of Ash item is, well, a fistful of ash you throw at an enemy to distract them. Fairly useful in some situations, but it gets immensely funny once you start drawing comparisons to Dale throwing pocket sand.
• A recurring enemy is giant roosters. Yes, giant roosters. Giant roosters that players can stealth kill.
  • And for the gutter-minded, there's the amusing Visual Pun Double Entendre of the game being filled with huge cocks. Huge black cocks, at that.
• As much of a Wake-Up Call Boss as the Chained Ogre can be, getting hurled off a cliff after it grabs you can be pretty funny.
  • Not to mention the fact that it fights you with wrestling moves of all things. Not only because it has the sense to do so, but also because of the definite possibility it was taught wrestling by its captors.
• Arriving at the Ashina Castle Gate for the first time triggers a boss fight. Who introduces himself as such:
  MY NAAAAAAAAAME! IS GYOUBU MASATAKA ONIWAAAAA!!!
  • The moment after you beat him also counts. After meeting Tengu and the nearby merchant, you would be likely running around like an idiot looking the next way to progress with no luck. Even the nearby Sculptor's Idol is next to a closed gate. Except that said closed gate can be opened normally. Hours of sneaking by enemies has pretty much conditioned you to avoid the doors while looking for gaps and ledges to enter a place, only for you sheepishly enter Ashina Castle by the normal way.
• The Say My Name death cry of the Armored Knight once players manage to push him off the edge of the boss arena: "ROBERRRRRRRRRT!" Doubles with Black Comedy when the Knight hits the ground off-screen with a resounding "thud", so much that even the screen shakes, as if it was a Looney Tunes segment.
  • On the topic of the Armored Warrior, a YouTube commenter came to an... interesting revelation about him.
  Nottan Ajin: Giant guy.
  A father.
  Immense poise.
  Lotsa stamina.
  Huge, slow, slashes that hit like four trucks.
  Heavy armor.
  Huge-ass greatsword.
  Spooky mask
  ...
  What rings u got bithc
• Similarly to the Armored Knight are the Nightjar Shinobi on the rooftops of Ashina Castle. There's a few who are strapped to kites, and upon seeing you will detach from the kite and divebomb you while screaming "WOOOOOOOOO" at the top of his lungs. It's every bit as absurd as it sounds. Fans have dubbed him "The Woo Guy" for just how sudden and out of place it is, as well as being absolutely hilarious.
  Youtube Commenter: Everybody gangsta till the sky starts screaming.
• The Guardian Ape is a savage fighter with the aggression and power you'd expect from a giant gorilla beast. It also poisons you by releasing massive farts (complete with wet fart sound effect) and pulls giant turd balls from its behind to be thrown at the player. It's quite a sight.
  • A meta example: People just aren't prepared for the decapitated ape to stand back up.
• If you break a shield-bearing Taro Troop's shield with the Loaded Axe, their posture meter fills up instantly. Why? Because they just stand there, breaking down and crying, utterly confused as to how their precious shield could be broken.
• A minor one in the Great Shinobi Owl boss fight, sure to offer some relief in the overly tense boss-fight. Particularly as it's spoken in the middle of a fight to the death.
  Owl: One! The parent is absolute! Their will must be obeyed! ...Yet I'm sensing some insubordination...
• At certain points after reuniting with Lord Kuro, Wolf can find him gently snoozing. Choosing to "let him be" will result in more snoozing... then more snoozing... then more snoozing. This goes on for an unreasonably long time before Kuro wakes up, complaining that you could have just woken him up. Wolf's response: "No, I could not."
• While Emma is telling her backstory, in which she was found on a battlefield by the Sculptor, she calls the Sculptor a "monkey". After saying that the monkey gave her a rice ball, Sekiro comments "What a kind monkey" in his usual, deadpan tone.
• You can give Isshin some Unrefined Sake (the same thing he gives you the first time you formally meet), and he calls you out on this. Then he happily accepts and swigs it down.
  • In fact, you can give him back the exact bottle of sake he gave to you as a gift. He finds this hilarious and compliments the brazen nature of your "gift", then cheerfully chugs it.
• On one occasion of sharing a drink with Emma, she will teasingly complain about a patient who was so much The Stoic that it hindered her from helping him properly. When Sekiro doesn't react, she makes it clear who she's talking about by asking if any of it sounds familiar. He doesn't get it.
• The giant Shimenawa man who carries Wolf from the Mibu Village wedding cave to Fountainhead Palace is so absurd as to be hilarious on its own. But how it gets him to the palace is even more ridiculous: it lowers a rope end over Wolf, stops, then drops the rope end and crushes him. Then it pulls itself back up, takes a few looong strides, and then proceeds to fall over against the cliff, stiff and very dead. The only thing missing is Wolf, rather than calmly extricating himself from the rope hand like he does in the game, fighting his way out of the straw rope's strands that he's been stuck in.
• Enfeeblement is not a fun status effect to get caught in, since it reduces the normally lightning-quick Sekiro into a fragile, hobbling old man who can barely lift his sword. However, it might be worth it to face the camera while Enfeebled — Sekiro looks ridiculous as a geezer, and trying to use items or the Shinobi Prosthetic will only have him look up with a quizzical tilt of his head while going, "Duh?"
• The fight against the Old Dragons of the Tree basically boils down to a bunch of old men coughing up phlegm as Wolf desperately tries to avoid the germs. As the fight progresses, so many of the Old Dragons start to spawn that the ever-growing ca-cough-phony drowns out everything else.
• The fact that most breakable objects can be destroyed simply by having Sekiro sprint through them. This reaches its peak in Ashina Castle where most of the internal walls are made of paper. Sekiro can utterly destroy the delicate Sengoku decorations by taking a lap around the palace without even slowing down as he bulldozes through them, and can even burst through walls to ambush enemies like a murderous Kool-Aid Man.
• The description for Sen Throw in the Prosthetic upgrade tree:
  The dirt poor throw dust, the poor throw a little money, the rich throw a lot of money, and the filthy rich throw enough money to make all of the rest cry.
• After the Sculptor heals from the dragonrot, Emma gives sake to Sekiro. If you try to give her the exact same sake, she expresses disbelief at your actions and forces you to give it to the Sculptor instead, rather than sharing Isshin Ashina's amusement.
• Sword Saint, Isshin: (Pulls out gun) "Hesitation is defeat..."
  • Sword Saint, Isshin seems to prefer to fight with anything but a sword. You'll spend most of his fight dying to the aforementioned gun, a wind-enchanted polearm, or inexplicable divine lightning.
• With the game being on PC comes mods, and with them Carl Johnson: Grove Streets die twice.
  • And then the final showdown between Ryu Hayabusa and Ayane.
  • There's also a mod which changes Chained Ogre into Shrek; it's all too fitting for an… ogre.
• If you forgot to turn off the shortcut key for Sticky Keys in the Windows platform (press Shift five times repeatedly), expect to be thrown out of the game interface in the middle of combat to the Desktop screen with a dialog asking you about Sticky Key (especially when you are trying to use Mikiri Counter, which requires you to press Shift to dash into an enemy thrust attack), as seen in this video.
• There is something inherently hilarious about the spectacle of a stoic, deadly Ninja desperately brawling with a horde of murderous monkeys. It gets even better when you start running into monkeys with guns and katanas. This reaches its logical peak with the white-furred monkeys, who are dual wielding katanas, and will curbstomp you more thoroughly than the Interior Ministry's Elite Mooks if you aren't careful.
• The randomizer mod. It randomly swaps items and enemies all over place, making every run from the beginning unique and hilarious. You can either die to the Demon of Hatred after escaping with Kuro via secret gateway, that is supposed to be Genichiro's job, or easily murder a Mist Noble that takes one of the late game minibosses' place! The room in Senpou temple that previously was filled with peaceful crickets now suddenly becomes a battle zone filled with Red Guard samurais, Lone Shadows, or any other elite enemies you can only find in late game. You can even wonder why Ashina soldiers decided to raid Hirata estate, which is supposed to be Ashina's ally and retainer! If you are a true masochist, you can even turn every enemy into Isshin the Sword Saint himself (the hardest boss in the game), effectively making the game become a horror movie. The items can also be swapped, resulting in a lot of beards and memories in the early game that helps you plow through most of the content more easily. The merchant will also sell random items that make the game experience truly refreshing and unique. After all, this is a mod that is supposed to make you laugh wholeheartedly!
• On a slight meta level, there's something humorous about the fact that Owl's name is intended to be cut off, yet we still know his full name because of a translation quirk; in Japan, family names go before first names, so in the Japanese dialogue he's cut off after saying his family name (Usui) and doesn't get to his given name, while in English it's the other way around, so he says his given name (Ukonzaemon) and is cut off before his family name. Stick the two translations together and you get his full name, just like that.

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