A little bit of Mood Whiplash from the Jefferson Trade Center story-mission, where a Hyena head honcho realises just how hard it is to find good help after the apocalypse:
When Black Tusk show up, and the Agent starts mowing down their best and brightest, one of their honchos soon finds himself moaning to his boss about similar problems with the dregs he's left with:
"... if you want me to rebuild this unit, stop sending me fucking idiots. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go shoot myself in the fucking head."
Manny demanding that Agent Kelso retrieve supplies from a toy store because he is running out of figurines to put on his map.
The names of the starting equipment have some extra adjectives added to them just to emphasize how garbage they are. In the first game, the names were simply "Backpack", "Kneepads", etc. In this game, they're "Uncomfortable Backpack", "Awkward Kneepads" and the like. These pieces of gear are even technically part of a "set" called "Exhausted Equipment" (predictably, they don't actually have a set effect) and have Flavor Text describing how ramshackle they are.
Enemy reactions to getting set on fire went from blood-curdling screaming in the first game to 100% bonafide ham in this one.
Outcast Controller: Fuck, do I look like your ex or something!?
True Son: Go shoot someone else!
Hyena: *Other Hyena is killed* I never liked them anyway!
Mook: Do you ever run out of ammo?note Seems to be faction-independent
The above is doubly amusing because while NPC enemies do have to reload, they never run out of reserve ammunition while players can definitely run dry save for their comparatively-weak sidearm.
Some of the enemies in the original game had death-screams that were obnoxiously over-the-top. In this game, when you riddle an enemy with a half-a-magazine or more of bullets, sometimes all you get from them is "... ow."
Hyenas seem to have a fondness for the word "bitch", considering a good chunk of Hyenas bounties have it in their name. Special mention goes to the "Basic Bitches", lead by a tank unit wielding a backpack-fed light machine gun named "Virgin".
And speaking of the Hyenas, their Engineers wield the Marine Super 90. Now, normally, this wouldn't be on here...except a bug makes them use the same set of animations for pistols; meaning they Gangsta Style a full-size 12 gauge shotgun.
Agent Kelso's rather blasé tone of voice to Manny when he identifies the Black Tusk after they start their invasion is at least chuckle-worthy.
Even though The Division 2 tries its best to iron out the still existing flaws from the first game, Incredibly Durable Enemies and absurd damage scaling still exist (albeit much less in the low to mid-game) It's still a bit amusing when a fully equipped SHD agent armed to the teeth with cutting-edge tech somehow loses to a random punk who casually mows you down with a machine pistol held Gangsta Style in just a few hits.
In the National Air and Space Museum, it appears that someone's vandalized their A-10 Warthog display◊, as it's missing its 30mm GAU-8 Avenger, and whoever was responsible left a little "BRRRT!" graffiti on the nose. It gets less funny when you manage to track down the gun, as the faction that stole the thing has re-purposed it as the armament for an automated turret for one of their strongholds.
As you attack said stronghold, it can be a bit jarring when the agent(s) need to breach an entrance with it, only for an unaware team member to walk across the line-of-fire and promptly get buzzed - further still, the unfortunate victim is outright killed. No downed state or chance at ressurection, just straight up obliterated.
During an otherwise serious discussion about the supplier of their munitions and other high tech equipment, one Hyena is overcome with happiness and their reaction is literally "ooooh, this gun has BUTTONS!"
A side mission involving an Outcasts Control Point takes the player through a maze-like dump, eventually ending in a gate going to the outpost that the player has no choice but to blowopen. Manny chews them out over it.
Manny: Dammit! What's with you Division Agents and blowing shit up!? Kelso:Catharsis.
In the District Union Arena mission, Dime's nonchalance at his "fellow" Hyena Council members falling one by one is pretty hilarious.
Dime: You still there, sweetie? Hello? ...Fuck. (later on, after the next boss dies) Dime: Diesel, are you dead too, you inbred son of a bitch!?
In the Dark Zones, Agents can sometimes come across single Mooks who've gotten so absorbed in trying to open a loot-box that they don't realise they're in danger until the Agent starts kicking their ass. Simply goes to validate Senait Ezara's little speech about the perils of greed, right? Well, in an Occupied Dark Zone - where Black Tusk and their combat drones rule the roost - that lone hostile can be a Warhound. So much for machines being superior for warfare because they don't share human frailties....
All main missions have scripted dialogue that plays out at given points, not only to the Agent but from and between enemies. In all difficulty setting above Story, almost all NPC archetypes and veterancies other than bosses are randomised, to counteract some of the monotony of replaying missions. This can do interesting things to the scripted dialogue. At the start of the Viewpoint Museum, for instance, a True Sons NCO harangues his sentries about staying sharp and doing the job right. In Story mode, that NCO is a Heavy, a big, burly machine-gunner further bulked out by body-armour, but in other modes, the NCO can be randomised to any True Son archetype... like a Grenadier, in which case voice-lines spoken by a muscular six-foot-tall white man are heard coming from a short, slim, black woman.
The Snitch's Deck of 52 collectibles are written by the Snitch himself, with lots of off-color remarks and Black Comedy about his targets. Special mention goes to the walking Ascended Meme himself, Andrew "Negative" Ramos, otherwise known as the 7 of Diamonds to the Snitch.
Outcasts calling for medical help when a friend is wounded? Sensible. Outcasts calling for a medic when said friend is a suicide bomber that detonated their own vest, on the other hand...
The Outcast audio log "Cistern", which (probably) doubles as a Call-Back to the first game's "Pharmacy" audio log.
Outcast B: What's a cistern? Outcast A: Are you kidding me? It's like a tank. Outcast B: Then why didn't you call it a tank? Outcast A: Because it's a goddamn cistern. For catching rainwater. Outcast B: You could've just mentioned that right away instead of showing off your damn vocabulary. Outcast A: It's a fucking cistern! That's what it's called! Do you call an ambulance a van? No, because there's a word for it: ambulance!
Every once in a while, a squad of True Sons can be seen in free roam with one of them doing pushups, with the following dialogue taking place:
True Sons soldier: You call those pushups? My grandmother could do better, and she's been dead for fifteen fucking years! You're a disgrace! A fucking travesty! You make me ashamed to be in your presence!
Enemies that have a chance to drop a component of the Exotic Dodge City Gunslinger holster are indicated by said enemies wearing a cowboy hat with no changes to the rest of their outfit. It's about as silly as it sounds.
During the Camp White Oak mission, (ex-)President Ellis hears the callsign his Black Tusk bodyguards have assigned him. He's not impressed.
Almost every enemy in the game has some sort of humorous Flavor Text that only appears when they kill you. The Hunters' text are quoted verbatim from Exotic weapons' descriptions in the first game, which gives some of them a clash in tone for a faction that's supposedly stoic assassins. For example, Cross's text says "Get rekt,son."
Kelso flaunts a little bit of her genre savviness in Warlords of New York:
Ceasing fire after destroying a Rikers Shield unit's bulky riot shield gets you a humorous Idle Animation of the poor sap looking at his shield arm for a good couple of seconds in bewilderment, as if to say "Did he really just do that?" Considering how much firepower it takes to destroy it even on Story difficulty, the reaction's warranted.
In a bit of black comedy, an ECHO you can find near the Lincoln Memorial has three friends acting like they're the heroes in an action movie. They're all deceased. Even better? They made all their gear and costumes from stuff they stole from work, and the blurb below their leader, who even has a sword strapped to his back, says "This was all his idea".
There are a number of rubber duck Easter Egg locations in the game, which is already silly enough, but one such location has "PRODUCKTIVE" written over it.
There are several fake arcade machines of other Ubisoft IPs littered across the world map, but thisFor Honor cabinet in particular has what looks like the Kensei's katana stabbed through its screen.
In Coney Island, you can see a child-sized Teddy Bear sitting on one of the racing game's arcade cabinet.
One line of dialogue◊ in the last mission of the Season 3 Manhunt will make veteran players laugh, regardless of whom it seems directed at (themselves or the game's publishers):
One thing that often gets overlooked in Tidal Basin is that the Black Tusk Sigil Spam is so prevalent that they apparently have the budget to plaster their logo even on rows and rows of porta-potties. Coincidentally, this area is placed right before an encounter where the Agent has to sabotage three helicopters, the exact moment when shit starts really hitting the fan for the Black Tusk.
If the player gets killed by a mingun-mounted Warhound, the "Your Killer" text reveals that these things apparently only exist because President Ellis's drunkenly tried to ride an unarmed Warhound like a bull. Somehow, that translated to mounting a minigun in the heads of the Black Tusk engineers. The grenade launcher Warhound, on the other hand, was basically a "sure, why not" moment Ellis signed off on, claiming there's "nothing more American than explosions".
There are interactive touchscreens scattered throughout the Space Administration building, some of which simply give weather reports and the like. One right near the entrance, however, reminds people that NOA was, quite inevitably, populated almost entirely by nerds.
In State of the Game Episode #111, one of the game's developers, Trick Dempsey, talks at length about the game's bounty system. When the stream cuts to a video illustrating what he's talking about, the first thing he notices is that the bounty's posse is named "North Lawn Bitches". All he has to say on the matter is this:
Dempsey: I love video games!
For April Fools' Day 2021, a user on The Division's official subreddit made a fake reaction post for a supposed update that reworked the much hated Kenly College into a Division 1-esque Dark Zone. The fact that so many people fell for it is already funny enough on its own, but one of Ubisoft's staff members topped it off with their own comment:
