Video Game / Gravity Rush

Fall into a gravity-defying adventure.

Gravity Rush (Gravity Daze in Japan) is an Wide-Open Sandbox Action RPG game for the PlayStation Vita^*  February 9, 2012 in Japan; June 12, 2012 in the U.S.; June 14, 2012; and June 15, 2012 in Europe and a remastered version on the PlayStation 4^* December 10, 2015 in Japan; February 2, 2016 in the U.S.; February 3, 2016 in Australia; and February 5, 2016 in Europe.

Set in a floating city-state known as Hekseville, the player takes control of Kat, a young woman suffering from amnesia, who gains the ability to control the gravity around her from a mysterious cat. The gravity-controlling mechanic can be used to fly through the air, walk on walls, and thrust devastating kick attacks towards enemies. Gravity Rush also boasts some role-playing game elements, such as powers and abilities to level up, side quests to undertake, optional villains to fight, and large worlds to explore.

The game received critical acclaim and is considered to be one of the essential games on the PlayStation Vita. A PlayStation 4 sequel, Gravity Rush 2, was released on January 18-20th, 2017. Kat also became a Downloadable Content fighter in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

An anime short created by Studio Khara, called Gravity Rush Overture, was released late 2016. It tells the story that takes place between Gravity Rush and Gravity Rush 2.

As of August 2022, a feature film adaptation is in development from PlayStation Productions and Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions. Anna Mastro (Secret Society of Second-Born Royals) is attached to direct and Emily Jerome (Panopticon) is attached to write.

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This game provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Kat, Raven, and Yunica all fly around and fight enemies like the best of them.
• All Bikers are Hells Angels: The Snakerabbits from the Spy DLC missions. They're a group of rowdy drag racers who fly customized airboats recklessly. Though they get better once they made Kat their boss after she saved them from Nevi. They stop being thugs and move on with their lives, but reunite to help Kat stop the bombs set by Kat's crazy fanboy.
• All Just a Dream:
  • According to Cyanea's "Dream Guardian," everything and everyone in the world of Hekseville are figments of Cyanea's dream. Before the finale, the Dream Guardian saves Kat from suspended animation only because that was the only way to keep the dream going.
  • Episode 19, with Dusty splitting into multiple copies and Alias inexplicably reappearing, turns out to be this, .
• And I Must Scream: Kat's fate after being tricked and frozen in the last episode. Thankfully, Syd and Cyanea free her.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Reversing the usual way things go, the extra outfits for the DLC missions are given to you at the start, rather than at the end, for the purposes of the story.
• Animal Motifs: Crosses over with Meaningful Name; Kat gets her gravity shifting powers from a cat, while Raven gets hers from a crow.
• Animal Theme Naming: The military loves to name things after ocean creatures; the special force they set up is the Jellyfish, Yunica has the code name Sea Wasp, Kat gets the code name Sea Cat, and their Nevi-killing superweapon is called the Sea Anemone.
• Ankle Drag: Done to Kat by Nushi right after she defeats it.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The ending song from Jeuchalais Evule Plelat. From the title it looks french, and the lyrics being sung sound french but it was all just made up for the song.
• Automatic New Game: Starting up Gravity Rush for the first time automatically starts up the opening.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: The Chaotic Evil master criminal Alias displays a unique fashion sense, as he combines a tailored pinstripe suit with headgear that looks like it was modeled after that of a Tusken Raider.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: You thought a Nevi was gonna be the boss of episode 8, but Raven worfed it and fights Kat instead.
• Bonus Boss: The rare Nevi hiding in each of the Rift Planes. Each one is significantly tougher than regular Nevi, deals more damage and is inexplicably immune to your special attacks.
• Canned Orders over Loudspeaker: Once Kat returns from the bottom of the World Pillar, D'nelica has become mayor, and enjoys blaring uplifting military propaganda over the city PA system, especially in Vendecentre.
• The Cape: Kat, personality wise. She will always save others above anything else, even if it means disobeying another order.
• Cel Shading: The game uses cel-shaded graphics, deliberately chosen to make it stand out from the usual western photo-realistic games from the time. The game uses a special shader system being used for character model lighting so as to preserve both realistic lighting and the cel-shaded graphics.
• Childhood Friends: Newt and Echo, the former of which hopes for a Childhood Friend Romance.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Being the good-natured girl Kat is, she can't say no. It is to the point where Adreaux takes advantage of her in episode 18.
• Convection, Schmonvection: You have to be really close to fire or lava before it starts hurting you.
• Color Wash: Each section of Hekseville has its own color wash; Auldnoir is reddish-brown, Pleajeune is dark, Endestria is yellow, and Vendecentre is light green.
• Coup de Grâce Cutscene: When you whittle down a boss's health bar, you're told to "finish them" by tapping a crosshair that appears on their weak point, causing a cutscene where Kat attacks them with what appears to be a powered up version of the Spiraling Claw. This is subverted in your first battle with Raven; she does the same move to counter it and sends Kat flying back. Every cutscene is actually different from each other, and the last ones ramp it up even further by having Dusty assume his Panthera Awesome form with Kat.
• Combat Stilettos: Both Kat and Raven are Kick Chicks who fight in heels, with their most common attack being a Diving Kick which plants their heel at an unlucky Nevi.
• Creative Closing Credits: An epilogue plays out while the credits roll, showing what the characters are doing after saving the town and throwing in more Sequel Hooks for good measure.
• Creepy Doll: When Kat goes to Aki the fortune teller, Aki tells her fortune through a somewhat damaged, perpetually grinning ventriloquist's doll named Pandora. Kat is considerably unnerved by the entire encounter and is relieved when Aki conducts subsequent readings without the doll. In the Spy DLC's second mission Alias ^note Who is actually Kat's #1 fan blows up Aki's shop, and while they are alive, Pandora is broken, making it creepier
• Curb-Stomp Battle: A literal example in the cutscene with Kat's first face-to-face encounter with Raven, who knocks Kat around and then steps on her head hard enough to cause a concussion. Luckily, by that part of the game, it had been well established that Kat can take quite a lot of punishment without getting seriously hurt.
• Cute Clumsy Girl : Behold, the most well-coordinated superhero of all time.
• Cyborg: Although the game never states it outright, "Sea Wasp" Yunica apparently is partly machine. She sports a multifunctional arm cannon, she initiates a self-repair protocol when she is injured, and she has legs that are mechanical in appearance and that terminate in impossibly tiny stilettos.
• Degraded Boss: Some of the bosses in the game appear as regular enemies in later episodes and challenges.
• Deus ex Machina: Despite saying she wouldn't disrupt the dream, Cyanea steps in to un-freeze Kat and free Dusty so they can save the town.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • When fighting the boss Nevi's first form in Episode 7, its "head" looks like the wrong kind of head. It's even more disturbing with Echo partially trapped inside of it.
  • The spear and shark type Nevis also have their cores in highly suggestive places (respectively on the rear and on the crotch. It doesn't help that the former has unnecessarily shapely legs and rear, and the latter is dealt with by kicking it in the core while it's lying on the ground.)
• Downloadable Content: Extra missions and unlockable costumes in the form of Spy Catsuit, Meido, and military outfits.
• Dub Name Change: In Japan, the game is called Gravity Daze, while the heroine is named "Kitten". Raven was originally "Crow".
• Eccentric Mentor: Gade appears to be an elderly, homeless man who is regarded to be crazy since he claims to be the creator of the world. However, he provides Kat with the means to access the Rift Planes and to restore the missing parts of the city and all of the people who were trapped there.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Nevi give off this vibe, particularly some of the larger ones.
• Eldritch Location: Hekseville, a floating Steampunk city built around a titanic stone pillar and plagued by gravity storms, probably qualifies. The World Pillar itself and the Rift Planes definitely qualify.
  • A special mention goes to the World Pillar. The Rift Planes at least have the excuse of existing in an entirely separate dimension distorted by Nevi within a zany old man’s coat. The World Pillar features enormous gravity storms all around it, is surrounded by floating objects which are heavily reminiscent of human teeth, its interior is filled with Nevi and noted by the game to possess unique time-space properties that nullify Kat’s powers, part of the interior looks like an unending shaft made out of vertebral columns, and it seems to be a place where the spirits of the dead can interact with the living. That’s not even going into how there’s a space-time anomaly that makes time pass much slower the further down one goes.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The rare Nevi. They're green-tinted versions of regular Nevi, take many hits to defeat, are extremely strong, and immune to special attacks. Fortunately (Or not), they're also Bonus Bosses. If they actually appeared in regular gameplay like standard Elite Mooks, the game would become Nintendo Hard to the extreme.
  • In a more standard fashion, Nevi with orange cores. They are stronger, have more health, and attack more often than regular Nevi. Similarly, the bigger Nevi types^* Like the "Golem", "Dragon" and "Dinosaur" types. are much deadlier and harder to fight than the smaller-sized Nevi.
• Familiar: Kat's cat and Raven's raven, who are integral to Kat and Raven's gravity-shifting abilities.
• Fanservice:
  • The most likely reason as to why Kat wears things like maid uniforms and spy outfits and feels the need to lounge and stretch out on her bed whenever you return home. It's also shown numerous times throughout the game that she Sleeps in the Nude, and there's a few times where she's wearing nothing but a Modesty Towel... which falls off in one scene when Syd interrupts her bath, causing a Naked Freak-Out. Syd gets the full view but the player only sees her covering herself with her hands.
  • Raven is dressed in a typical superheroine-type costume that covers up strategic areas while still managing to expose quite a lot of skin.
  • You can touch Kat inappropriately using the Vita touch screen (or DualShock 4 touchpad) for no reason other than to make her react uncomfortably.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Alias, who gets crushed to death in an industrial-size garbage compactor. Apparently anyway. Later on Kat has some kind of strange dream where she faces him again but it isn't clear how real that was.
• Foreshadowing: The game is rife with it, but a lot of it you won't learn unless you go out of your way to hear the rumors going around Hekseville.
  • One of the first things you do is collect furniture for Kat to use, one of which being a chair which she doesn't use at all... instead Cyanea uses it once she meets Kat in Hekseville.
  • Nevi are shown to be able to communicate, to a degree, with humans, as shown with Echo. Come the end of the game, and D'nelica is seen doing the same thing, and receiving what looks like very important information for the sequel.
  • Nevi and humans can fuse, creating a much more dangerous monstrosity. Echo being a victim of it foreshadows Alias doing the same later on.
  • A student tells Kat an urban legend about a bus that took some kids to an excursion that disappeared a long time ago. Kat doesn't believe it actually happened. It did, as she learns when she goes to Boutoume. The mythical bus is even used as the Save Point for that portion of the game.
  • Several people comment on preferring a "man of action" like D'nelica in power over Bolsey, claiming he’d actually get things done in the city. Not only was D'nelica undermining Bolsey’s actions through Raven, when he does take over, he quickly turns Hekseville into a Dystopia, complete with Police State policies, overwatch and mass conscription.
  • Kat eventually gets dubbed Gravity Queen by Hekseville, as a nod to her Gravity Master powers and heroic actions and personality. It’s heavily implied she used to be a literal queen before she lost her memories.
  • Before going to The Mirage, Dusty nibbles on some Nevi Killer, which makes him get sick and severely affects your gravity powers for that episode. That Dusty is even affected by a substance designed to harm Nevi implies that Dusty himself is a Nevi, which coupled with Alias being able to control them, foreshadows him appearing to do so to Dusty during Episode 19. It’s a bit confusing.
  • A legend goes that a man climbed the World Pillar to a castle far above the world, where he was treated like an honored guest and stayed for many years. When he chose to climb back down and return home, he found only a day had passed, and so no one believed his tales. When Kat is forced to go to the bottom of the World Pillar and back, she finds a whole year has passed in Hekseville, even though it's only been a few days for her. Furthermore, this is all-but-said to be the very reason why Sachya is now much older than Zaza. For bonus points, what is implied to be the very same castle in that tale was apparently where Kat used to live before she lost her memories.
  • When Kat goes to Boutoume, she is met with a bunch of kids led by a boy wearing a raven mask, who eventually talks about his missing sister. Sure enough, Raven turns out to be his adopted little sister.
  • A child in Boutoume comments that the “Ark” relic that lies beneath the city apparently used to fly once—“apparently”, since no one actually knows. Naturally, you get it flying soon after in order to evacuate the children from Boutoume.
  • During Kat’s Journey to the Center of the Mind, she sees herself, frozen and restrained, alone, with no Dusty in sight to even imply she could be saved. This is exactly what happens to her right before the final battle, and only the Dream Guardian’s direct intervention prevents it from sticking. For bonus points, this vision happened in a trance induced by the Guardian, who explicitly says that memories of the future may be seen mixed with those of the past, so this also counts as a Dreaming of Things to Come.
• Genre-Busting: Not quite a platformer, not quite an RPG, not quite a straight-up action game...
• Girlish Pigtails:
  • Cyanea has them, and they're blue! She noticeably has them in her "child" form to make her look more innocent, once she becomes awakened, her tails hair stood on end and twist, giving her a creepier look.
  • Kat herself gains them when wearing her school uniform costume, giving her a younger look.
• Gravity Screw:
  • While the main basis of the game, there's a more traditional puzzle level in the trance Cyanea induces to Kat... and Dusty isn't there to help you. This is also present during Chapter 19 which is All Just a Dream, also out of your control (at first).
  • In a twist to the usual for this trope, the player can freely inflict this on almost all of the NPCs in the game.
• Gravity Master: The basis of the game's mechanics. Kat (and other gravity shifters) can hover and alter the direction "down" is for themselves; by pausing and adjusting, shifters can basically fly. Kat can also use her power to carry items in a stasis field and chuck them at enemies. The culmination of her gravity manipulation is a localized miniature black hole that draws in enemies and annihilates them.
• Hero Antagonist: Raven attacks Kat because D'nelica promised that he will send a search team down to rescue the children down in Boutoume if she kept the missing cities apart, and Kat was in the way. But he really just wanted to make the current Mayor look bad.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Raven becomes allies with Kat when she sees that Kat is trying to rescue the Lost Tribe from Nushi. That's also the point at which Raven realizes that D'nelica is not as trustworthy as he had seemed to be.
  • As soon as the Sea Anemone takes out the military command ship, Yunica rationalizes that she can now make her own orders and chooses to side with Kat to destroy the shared menace.
• Homing Projectile:
  • Kat can actually turn into one of these using the Gravity Kick. Also, when using the Gravity Typhoon Special Attack, Kat summons a ton of debris and throws it in a primitive version of Macross Missile Massacre. All of the pieces boast some serious homing ability.
  • Some of the Nevi shoot homing bullets. Most notably are the “multi-turret”-type Nevi and the “dragon”-type Nevi. Two of the green Nevi have extremely good homing bullets, which is half the reason for their difficulty in their cases.
• Honor Before Reason: The Jellyfish defense force put completing the mission above anything else, even downed comrades or potential civilian casualties. Yuri reneges on this position in the second military episode once the Nevi assault the city. Yunica steadfastly maintains this stance even when the main battleship goes down and there's no one to give her orders anymore.
• Jiggle Physics: Subverted: Kat's hair and scarf react to her orientation and speed, becoming a gameplay mechanic (while shifted and idle, both will point towards the “true” down, allowing players to re-orient themselves). Her bust isn't affected, though.
• Just Following Orders: Yunica's rationale for trying to arrest Kat even though Kat had done nothing to deserve it. Yunica later neatly sidesteps this trope when the Sea Anemone goes berserk and incapacitates the military command, leaving no one in a position to give Yunica orders anymore.
• Kick Chick: Kat's default attacks all involve kicking in some way. Or stomping from on high. Upgrading her Kicking ability eventually adds knee strikes and palm strikes though.
• Left Hanging: There's a climactic final battle with a nearly-unstoppable monster, and afterwards the apparent Big Bad gets injured and impeached, and all the monsters stop showing up, but there's no definitive explanation for anything.
• Lethal Lava Land: The aptly named Inferno Rift Plane level. Kat even has to be careful not to run into lava on the ceiling.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Upgrading your health also completely restores it. It can come in handy in a pinch.
• Limit Break: Kat eventually learns three powerful special attacks that have to recharge once used. A red dot in the HUD tells you when it's ready.
• Little Miss Snarker: Kat, but she mostly keeps it to herself. Her sarcastic side is shown in her thoughts in dialogue, but she occasionally opens up, and gets shots at Syd for example.
• Living Weapon: The Anemone. It was an attempt to harness the Nevi's power as well as a replacement for Kat. It didn't end well.
• Macross Missile Massacre: When using the Gravity Typhoon attack, Kat improvises one with the gratuitous application of gravity shifting, and a ton of debris.
• Made of Iron: Kat's powers are not of her own, they're a result of Dusty, so she herself is relatively normal. In spite of that, Kat can fall from extremely great heights without taking any damage at all; and it takes multiple hits from Nevi opponents to cut into her health meter significantly. She can even walk on lava as long as she doesn't do it for too long.
• Mirror Boss: Raven, since she's a gravity shifter she mostly uses similar attacks to Kat's in her boss fights, although she has a couple of new ones, to demonstrate Raven is a more experienced shifter than Kat. She even subverts the Coup de Grâce Cutscene by countering with her own.
• Ms. Fanservice: Both Raven and Kat attractive girls who wear revealing outfits.
  • Kat has a variety of different costumes she can wear, such as a maid outfit and a Spy Catsuit. She also gets many gratuitous fanservice moments, such as losing her towel and being shown sleeping naked in her room, albeit under a Modesty Bedsheet.
  • Raven's outfit is Stripperific and shows off her cleavage, her thighs, her back, and her midriff.
• Non Standard Game Over: The game occasionally throws you into some situations where a secondary condition must be taken into account. It always has an indicator for it, and is thankfully kind enough to explain the what and how.
  • During the first heist of a sacred gem by Alias, Kat must sneak around the security to replace it with a fake^CONTEXT  She's operating according to Syd's request outside the knowledge of the force to prevent an info leak.. A counter shows how suspicious Kat's presence is to the police, and will rapidly climb once she's spotted. If you don't hightail it out of there soon (and NOT by shifting into the airspace above), you'll get caught. If you enter a highly guarded area ^*  (Like the airspace you probably just panic-shifted into), you'll be arrested immediately.
  • During the fight against the Nevi-possessed Echo, a counter shows how much Echo has before they are gone fully assimilated into the boss. It raises as the fight drags on and if you accidentally hit the endangered NPC. For bonus points, the higher the counter goes, the more deranged Echo's ranting will become, complete with insane laughter. So not only do you get punished with a Non Standard Game Over, you also get punished with a huge dose of creepy too.
  • During the second heist of a sacred gem by Alias, it's revealed he set up a bomb and Kat must search for it while he takes the opportunity to do his thing. You have two minutes to find the bomb and take it to Chaz so he can disarm it, or, well, take a guess. Oh, and in between the pickup and delivery, for the love of the Creator, don't drop it.
  • During the first two phases of the Final Boss battle, every time the Sea Anemone attacks, the "Destruction Level" of the area rises. If you can't deal enough damage to trigger the final scripted event of the second phase before the Final Boss attacks too many times in those two phases, the Sea Anemone will destroy Hekseville. This is an odd example from this list in that the boss's different attacks raise the destruction level by different amounts, so the time to failure varies, but nonetheless, the player is on a timer and the boss is hard to hit, so they are, figuratively, still Stalked by the Bell.
  • Finally, during the final phase of the Final Boss, you have five minutes to win the battle before the Sea Anemone's self-destruct sequence is completed and it blows up, taking Vendecentre and everyone in the city with it.
• Not Quite Flight: You don't really fly so much as control the direction you fall in.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: At first Adreaux appears to be a bumbling high level worker under pressure from his boss, and unable to perform his Nevi research. But this is actually a ploy to get Kat's sympathy and have her help him, as he's not researching Nevi, he's researching her.
• Obviously Evil: D'nelica. If the oppressive Glorious Leader vibes don't tip you off, his chrome dome and classically villainous goatee might. And then there's the not-quite-loosely-inspired Nazi imagery his militaristic regime is so fond of...
• One Name Only: Played straight except for the commander of the Special Forces, Yuri Gerneaux.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Happens multiple times because Kat has built a reputation as the Gravity Queen. She lampshades this by questioning the purpose of her Spy Catsuit.
• Playable Epilogue: Once you beat the game and return peace to Hekseville you're free to roam anywhere to collect gems and complete challenges.
• Power Nullifier:
  • In Episode 10, Dusty nibbles on a Nevi killer, which severely weakens Kat's powers for the episode's duration. He vomits it out at the end, and Kat returns to normal.
  • Gravity storms and some sections of the World Pillar disable Kat's gravity powers entirely. During the climb back up from the bottom of the World Pillar, Kat’s powers are no longer disabled while inside the World Pillar. Whether this is because of a change in its properties or because of Kat awakening her inner power is not explained.
• Punny Name:
  • Cyanea, due to her cyan hair.
  • Alias, apparently due to his Master of Disguise abilities.
  • The locales of the game have this going on with their names, together with Meaningful Name: Auldnoir^* ”Old”, as in the “Old Town”, and “Noire” which is “black”, since it has a rustic and aged feel., Pleajune^* ”Playing”, since it’s the entertainment district., Endestria^* ”Industria”, which means “Industry”. It’s the industrial sector., Vendecentre^* ”Vending Center”. It’s the downtown area, so it has tons of establishments and shops. and Boutoume^* ”Bottom.” It lies at the very (current) bottom of the World Pillar. And of course, Hekseville^* "Hecksville", as in "what the heck is going on in this city?!", or, "Hellsville".
• Reality Warper: Gade and Cyanea, the Creators. They have the ability to transport others to different realms and alter elements or the world as needed.
• Required Secondary Powers: Because Kat isn't actually flying but rather changing the gravity around herself in order to "fall up", she has to be immune to any sort of fall damage or she'd constantly be injuring herself if she hit a surface.
• Scenery Porn: A given, since this is one of the major selling points of the PlayStation Vita.
• Sequel Hook: The ending outright says the fight is just beginning, and several dangling elements remain, like Kat's origins, the slumbering children, and the mysterious figure D'nelica is told about by a Nevi.
• Slide Attack: Kat can hover across the ground with her Gravity Slide, and enemies she comes into contact with are automatically hit with her Slide Kick.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: Much of the conflict between Kat and Yunica is attributed to their different philosophies on how to fight the Nevi and help the people of Hekseville. Yunica is the Soldier, as she believes following strict protocol and operating as a single organized unit is better for the bigger picture. Kat, meanwhile, is the Warrior, who prefers to operate on her own and do what's right no matter what. Fittingly, Kat's stint in the Special Defense Force is brief because of her inability to follow orders.
• Speaking Simlish: What little voiced dialogue is in the game really sounds like French combined with Japanese, but is actually gibberish influenced by French.
• Stalker with a Crush: Kat's "#1 fan". She has no idea who he is. He goes so far as to impersonate Alias and set up fake bombs around the city in order to get her attention.
• Super-Persistent Predator: The "Plant" Nevi from The Mirage comes back for round two, and a unique and very powerful Nevi dubbed "Nushi" not only incessantly assailed the city of Boutoume prior to Kat's involvement, it's the single most stubborn foe in the game! ^{Click = Spoilers!} First a standard boss battle where it's periodically invincible, followed by a protracted battle where one has to lead it to Raven's traps. It's fended off, only to return when making an escape from Boutoume where a third battle has to be waged with it. This apparently kills it off, but then it returns to stop the Ark from leaving Boutoume and knocks Kat off it. When climbing back to Hekseville, its roars can be heard, implying its still alive and continuing its pursuit. Sure enough, when Kat finally makes it back to Hekseville, she is again beset by Nushi. It's finally Killed Off for Real by Yunica before a fourth boss battle has to be fought.
• Superhero Story: Set in a large metropolis with a main character that uses superhuman powers, and imitates the comic book aesthetic of superhero lines like DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Made all the more obvious when Kat is given the moniker "Gravity Queen".
• Teenage Wasteland: Boutoume is inhabited by a tribe of children led by young Zaza. They were all stranded there when their bus fell off the edge of the world; and only Zaza has realized that the adults are probably no longer looking for them.
• True Sight: After coming out of her trance induced by the Dream Guardian, Kat's "Mind's Eye" is awakened, allowing her to see and interact with objects that were previously invisible to her. This ranges from a bonanza of Precious Gems, to seeing the entrance to the Ark, up to being able to see Nushi's hidden cores (which finally allows her to defeat it).
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • At the start of the game, Aujean gets Kat to save his son Eugie from a gravity storm, but then both Aujean and Eugie hold a grudge against Kat when she couldn't also save their house. It sounds like they have skewed priorities... right up until Eugie says that his Mom's stuff was in there, and she's implied to be dead. Their resentment gets more context once you find out that real estate is extremely limited due to Heksville being attached to the World Pillar, as opposed to being on the ground like on Earth. They gets over it by the end.
  • Same goes for the woman that asks Kat to retrieve the letter she lost from her dead lover. By the time she gets back, the woman had moved on and tells her to throw it away.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Kat's powers tend to pick up whatever is in her immediate vicinity when she shifts gravity, including people and stray dogs. It is also entirely possible to use Stasis Field to pick up random civilians and hurl them into the void. There is no penalty for this whatsoever.
  • It gets better/worse. In the second mission of the Spy Pack, the game outright tells you how to drop someone from the Stasis Field as you carry him over the void. It's a rather large distance, and he also doesn't stop (s)talking the entire voyage. All the pieces are in place to make you want to drop him.
• Video Game Perversity Potential: Included by design. If you tap the Vita's screen around Kat's backside she'll act concerned and look around herself. You can do this on the PS4 as well with the controller touchpad but it isn't as direct an interaction so players not familiar with the mechanic won't know what it's doing.
• Wolverine Publicity: Kat is often played up as the face of the Vita, and Sony makes sure to let her appear in plenty of Vita titles. Along with the aforementioned playable appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, she can be seen here playable in Ragnarok Odyssey Ace along with Alias (and the Sorcerer from Soul Sacrifice). Following in the footsteps of Sweet Tooth, Ratchet, and Kratos, she was made a playable golfer in Hot Shots Golf 6/World Invitation as well as a Sack costume in LittleBigPlanet (in line with other mascots like the Pipo Monkeys, the Patapon, and the LocoRoco). Kat, Raven, and Yunica were added as summonable spirits in the free-to-play Vita game Destiny of Spirits, and finally, Kat along with Yunica, Gade, Alias, and Raven are playable Cocoroids in the Japan-only dungeon brawler Picotto Knights (a game whose servers have since been shut down).
• World in the Sky: As there is little to support much building on the World Pillar itself and nothing but endless sky around it, most major settlements are built as ledges hanging from the sides of the Pillar (like Hekseville) or as free-floating clusters of islands hanging in midair (like Jirga Para Lhao).
• World of Action Girls: The major action characters, Kat, Raven, and Yunica, are all female. The males largely have supporting roles and rarely get in on the action.
• World Pillars: The setting of the game is set around a gigantic pillar, and there are different "levels" that are each populated by different societies. Several characters theorize as to what's at the top and bottom of the pillar, though the bottom specifically seem to be covered in black gravity storms. Unusually, at one point in the first game the player character actually gets to traverse inside the pillar.
• Wreaking Havok: You can use stasis field to pick up objects near you (unlike a tractor beam, it works on a radius) and throw them away at your enemies.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Boutoume. Kat only spends a few days there, though when she returns to Auldnoir, an entire year passes. It’s implied to be a space-time anomaly created by the enormous gravity storms that surround the entire Pillar below Hekseville.

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Every day various things occur
But there's no need to worry
After all, you're dying

Good things, bad things
Being glad or being worried
All of that will vanish eventually
And we can't do a thing to change that

It's futile to fight against it
It's meaningless to sigh about it
The destination is the same
It's easy enough after a clear explanation, right?

Every day various things occur
But there's no need to worry
After all, you'll be dying

— English translation of "Douse Shindakara", ending theme to Gravity Rush