Video Game / WWE Video Games

aka: WWE

The WWE 2K series of professional wrestling video games began in 2000 with the release of WWF SmackDown! for the PlayStation console. The series can be categorized into four separate sub-series/eras:

• The SmackDown! series (2000-2003); a PlayStation-exclusive series produced by THQ and Yuke's with fast arcade-like gameplay.
  • Games in this subseries:
    • WWF SmackDown! (2000)
    • WWF SmackDown! 2: Know Your Role (2000)
    • WWF SmackDown!: Just Bring It! (2001)
    • WWE SmackDown!: Shut Your Mouth (2002)
    • WWE SmackDown!: Here Comes the Pain (2003)
• The SmackDown vs. Raw series (2004-2010); continuation of the THQ/Yuke's partnership. Originally cashing in on the brand warfare theme, it later became known for its Genre Shift from arcade-like gameplay to simulation, becoming a yearly institution in the vein of the Madden NFL games. The series went multi-platform, appearing on the PlayStation Portable with the release of SmackDown vs. Raw 2006 and the Xbox 360, with the release of SmackDown vs. Raw 2007. SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 added the PlayStation 3, Wii and Nintendo DS to the list of platforms. The era was also known for suffering with Capcom Sequel Stagnation.
  • Games in this subseries:
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw (2004)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2006 (2005)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007 (2006)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 (2007)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2009 (2008)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2010 (2009)
    • WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 (2010)
• The WWE series (2011-2012); the final era from THQ. A major retool of the series gameplay-wise for the seventh generation consoles exclusively, a brand new engine and quite a number of changes made in the latter parts of the SmackDown vs. Raw era reverted.
  • Games in this subseries:
    • WWE '12 (2011)
    • WWE '13 (2012)
• The WWE 2K series (2013-); the result of THQ's bankruptcy and the pre-meditated selling of their WWE licence to Take-Two Interactive. Published under the 2K Sports label, the series abandoned the Wii for 2K14 and made its way to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC for 2K15 and the Nintendo Switch for 2K18^note Though 2K19 did not get a Switch release whilst still developing for the PS3 and Xbox 360 until 2K18. Building upon the simulation style, Yuke's continued to develop the games with additional help from Visual Concepts.
  • Games in this subseries:
    • WWE 2K14 (2013)
    • WWE 2K15 (2014)
    • WWE 2K16 (2015)
    • WWE 2K17 (2016)
    • WWE 2K18 (2017)
    • WWE 2K19 (2018)

The current era began after the departure of Yuke's in 2019. From this point on, the games began to be handled by Visual Concepts, who had already done some work on the series. Unfortunately, their first game 2K20 was largely lambasted by both critics and fans for being a glitchy, unfinished mess. After taking a year off (and some delays causing the game to release in March) they returned with 2K22, a much stronger outing, and the first one on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S with the series continuing from there.

• Games in this subseries:
  • WWE 2K20 (2019)
  • WWE 2K22 (2022)
  • WWE 2K23 (2023)
  • WWE 2K24 (2024)

• Other titles:
  • MicroLeague Wrestling (1987)^note PC, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64
  • WWF Superstars (1989)^note Arcade
  • WWF WrestleMania (1989)^note NES
  • WWF WrestleMania Challenge (1990)^note NES
  • WWF Superstars (1991)^note Game Boy
  • WWF WrestleFest (1991)^note Arcade
  • WWF WrestleMania (1991)^note PC, Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX81/Spectrum
  • WWF European Rampage Tour (1992)^note PC, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64
  • WWF Super WrestleMania (1992)^note SNES, Genesis
  • WWF Superstars 2 (1992)^note Game Boy
  • WWF WrestleMania: Steel Cage Challenge (1992)^note NES, Master System, Game Gear
  • WWF King of the Ring (1993)^note NES, Game Boy
  • WWF Rage in the Cage (1993)^note Sega CD
  • WWF Royal Rumble (1993)^note SNES, Genesis
  • WWF Raw (1994) ^note SNES, Genesis, Sega 32X, Game Boy, Game Gear
  • WWF Royal Rumble (1994) ^note Pinball
  • WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game (1995) ^note Arcade, SNES, Genesis, Sega 32X, PlayStation
  • WWF In Your House (1996)^note PlayStation, Saturn, PC
  • WWF War Zone (1998)^note PlayStation, N64, Game Boy
  • WWF Attitude (1999)^note PlayStation, N64, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color
  • WWF WrestleMania 2000 (1999)^note N64, Game Boy Color
  • WWF No Mercy (2000)^note N64
  • WWF Royal Rumble (2000)^note Arcade, Dreamcast
  • With Authority! (2001)^note PC
  • WWF Betrayal (2001)^note Game Boy Color
  • WWF Road to WrestleMania (2001)^note Game Boy Advance
  • WWF/E Raw (2002)^note Xbox, PC - Some copies are printed as "WWE Raw" after the name change in 2002
  • WWE WrestleMania X8 (2002)^note GameCube
  • WWE Road to WrestleMania X8 (2002)^note Game Boy Advance
  • WWE Crush Hour (2003)^note PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox
  • WWE Raw 2 (2003)^note Xbox
  • WWE WrestleMania XIX (2003)^note GameCube
  • WWE Day of Reckoning (2004)^note GameCube
  • WWE Survivor Series (2004)^note Game Boy Advance
  • WWE Aftershock (2005)^note N-Gage
  • WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (2005)^note GameCube
  • WWE WrestleMania 21 (2005)^note Xbox
  • WWE Legends of WrestleMania (2009)^note PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, iOS
  • WWE All Stars (2011)^note PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, 3DS
  • WWE 2K Battlegrounds (2020)^note PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC
  • WWE SuperCard (2014)^note Android, iOS
  • WWE Immortals (2015)^note Android, iOS

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Tropes associated with this series include:

0 to C

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • In many of the games, the referee has to take a substantial amount of punishment (i.e: accidental or intentional bumps) before calling the match off for a DQ. The referee tends to be a lot less lenient in real life, disqualifying competitors for much smaller amounts of aggression towards them. However, given how annoying it would be to constantly be disqualified for accidentally striking the referee, you won't find too many players who complain about this.
  • In most modern games, the controversial Saudi Arabia shows are completely ignored with none of the arenas being included in the game, despite the fact these shows are often quite important to modern WWE. The only exception (so far) was Elimination Chamber being included in WWE 2K23, which had to happen as Elimination Chamber matches are limited to that arena.
  • Early showcases (e.g. Attitude Era and 30 Years of WrestleMania mode in WWE ‘13 and WWE 2K14) allow you to play some underwhelming matches like the WrestleMania 20 match between Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg or the WrestleMania 12 match between The Undertaker and Diesel and make them much more entertaining. Or worse, whatever you prefer.
• Adaptation Decay:
  • The real Championship Scramble's main draw is that the title can potentially change hands multiple times before the end of the match. In the game, the AI will just break up every pinfall when after the third superstar/diva enters the ring, meaning that unless there was a pinfall early on, the title probably won't change hands.^note To get anything done at all in this match, you pretty much have to be one of the first 3 entrants and kill the other two with the ring bell
  • For the longest time, you couldn't get weapons such as tables in a Hell in a Cell match. These have been used in the matches for years, but you were only limited to chairs and kendo sticks until 2K20.
  • In their first appearance in SmackDown 2, Casket Matches were very odd. Instead of having a stationary casket that your opponent is put into, you pick up the massive casket and hit your opponent with it until they go in. Not exactly what people are thinking when they think of the match.^note A proper casket match that works like its TV equivalent appears in 2K24.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Stephanie McMahon in 2003 as Smackdown's General Manager was an Iron Woobie Honest Corporate Executive who stood up to her father and Brock Lesnar to make sure Smackdown rosters got fair treatment. Meanwhile in Here Comes the Pain video game which was also released in 2003, Stephanie was indifferent at best and condescending at worst. So much that you are advised to not interact with Stephanie in said game's season mode unless it is a mandatory situation.
• Adaptational Heroism: Battlegrounds sees Paul Heyman act as the Big Good of the story- despite Heyman being a heel throughout his employment.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Batista was a heel during the early 2010s until he left WWE but in Rey Mysterio's Road to WrestleMania mode in SvR 2011, Batista is a face. In the aforementioned mode, Batista had expressed relief seeing Rey okay after the latter got into a car accident and during Rey's route as a heel, Batista took part in helping Evan Bourne get a shot on Rey's title.
• All Just a Dream: 2007's "Uh oh, It's Magic" storyline was a result of this.
• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: In-universe, 2K23's "The Lock" storyline offers two choices: when faced with a bizarre and random gimmick, should the titular wrestler, a seasoned veteran from other markets and promotions who's just arrived in WWE, fight to keep the things that made them popular and beloved in the first place, or "trust the process" by leaning into the silly gimmick and making it their own? Both can succeed and both can fail.
• Alter-Ego Acting:
  • [1]'s famous "three faces"—Cactus Jack, Dude Love, and Mankind—feature in numerous games, either on their own or all at the same time depending on the game.
  • In "Undisputed," 2K24's male MyRise, Gabriel Slade insists that he and "Slade" are two different people. His given proof? He's clean-shaven while "Slade" has stubble. That's it. While he plays it entirely straight, neither the Dark Horse nor the commentators at ringside are buying it.
• Alternate Universe: A few examples of these.
  • The highly bizarre DLC for WWE 2K20 contains a myriad of strange universes with alternate versions of WWE Superstars (as they call them). A creepy universe where Bray Wyatt has literal swamp monsters, a Cyberpunk world, a Mad Max-inspired After the End desert world where you have to wrestle for gas and water, and matches set in the Southpaw Regional Wrestling universe.
  • WWE Immortals is based on this premise. The plot is that Bray Wyatt finds a lantern with portals to infinite worlds that open up and give strange, alternate versions of WWE superstars.
• Ambiguous Gender: Smackdown 2: Know Your Role and WWF/E Raw had a third gender as an option for create-a-wrestler mode called "???". Despite Chyna being eligible for every title in the game, her gender is classified as "Female" within her files.
• Anachronism Stew: For WWE 2K23's DLC, Wade Barrett has his appearance from 2010, theme from late 2012, a Titantron from 2013, and moves from his 2015 run as Bad News Barrett. Even better, the commentary constantly references the Bad News gimmick over anything else.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Road to WrestleMania mode for WWE '12 is played out this way, starting with Sheamus, followed by Triple H and finally a character of the player's choosing. There are also brief parts playing as John Cena, Randy Orton, Wade Barrett, and others.
  • Taken to its extreme with 2K23 and its Showcase mode. Whereas previous entries in the series focused on the player controlling a wrestler through their most notable victories, John Cena's Showcase instead focuses on his biggest losses, down to the player controlling his opponent instead of the man himself. Exaggerated in the three bonus scenarios after completing all of them: the first lets you choose your character only to lose to Cena in a Cutscene Boss fight, the second pits you against "Super Cena" (an SNK Boss version of him that is also fully invisible save for his clothes), and the last is a proper dream match scenario where control goes back to Cena for a fatal 4-way match against Bruno Sammartino, Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin.
• An Interior Designer Is You: 2006 and 2007 gave you the ability to design your own locker room. '12 introduced the longly-awaited Create-An-Arena mode, while '13 allowed players to edit the stage for the first time.
• Announcer Chatter:
  • This tends to vary on how good or bad it can be, with the worst case scenarios including getting the match type wrong and addressing wrestlers who are not even in the game. WWE 12 improved on it greatly, making it the best in quite some time.
  • "And this should be an amazing contest between these two men." It's odd hearing this in a Divas match.
  • Sadly though, aside from certain wrestler-specific cues, the commentary as of 2K16 remained largely unchanged from '12, which meant that most of the references King and Cole make towards one another were very outdated, since Cole was no longer a heel commentator by the time of the game's release.
  • Thankfully averted in 2K19, where Cole is accompanied by Corey Graves and Byron Saxton, making the commentary far less grating (apart from Corey complaining about repeated use of a finisher as being like "having the same song on repeat on my playlist").
  • 2K22 features specific commentary that will introduce both competitors in a singles match with discussion on their recent character actions if they’re on the roster or generic statements on their personality settings if they’re a created character. In addition, individuals in the Elimination Chamber, six and eight man tag matches, and the first two entrants in the Royal Rumble will be introduced by name during comments made about the match. These are obviously edited together, which brings back a bit of Just Bring It commentary.
• Anvil on Head: In WWE Raw 2, you can set traps during the career mode that people can walk into to prevent them from attacking you, one of them is a comically large anvil. Even more hilariously, there is only a small chance that this would ever happen to you, at 0.01%.
• Artifact Title: In WWE '12, "Road to WrestleMania" is no longer a three month path to the WWE's Pay Per View spectacle, & instead has the player play through three consecutive storylines occuring concurrently, the time period covering no less than three WrestleMania shows. The final nail comes when you realise the final match doesn't even occur at the event, instead coming at a revived WCW's "Starrcade" Pay Per View instead.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The AI, due to bad programming, will end up in a 1-vs-1 match with two AI's. Another person runs down while one has the other in a pin to distract the referee. Due to the way the game works, the one guy that's pinning won't stop the pin, the one guy that's getting pinned won't kick out, and the guy that runs out (occasionally) won't stop distracting the referee, leaving you caught in an Infinite loop. The only way to stop this infinite loop is to stop the match in some way.
  • Put the AI in a Tag Team match. It's gonna go on for a ridiculously long time because the AI won't acknowledge that the inactive partner is going to keep breaking up the pin or submission unless something is done to incapacitate them first.
  • The AI likes to use signatures and finishers as soon as the positional requirements are met. Not so bad in singles matches, but in tag matches or any of the many Mêlée à Trois matches, they'll throw out their best moves immediately rather than wait for a more advantageous moment, such as when most of the other opponents are stunned and/or outside the ring.
  • Some games, like SmackDown vs Raw 2010, have extremely bad AI, especially in multi-man matches. While it's not particularly hard to get the AI going in circles for hours in other games, there is a documented case of a 6 man ladder match in SVR 10 going for 3 full hours!
  • In later THQ games such as WWE '13, CPU will sometimes just leave the room to remove the covering for the announcers table and then do nothing with that the whole match.
    • Speaking of tables, there seems to be a constant problem in most of the games with the AI being obsessed with placing tables and ladders in the ringpost corners.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • The Road to WrestleMania mode in 12 features an Evil Brit Power Stable called the "United Kingdom" consisting of two Englishmen in Wade Barrett and William Regal, a Scotsman in Drew McIntyre and an Irishman in Sheamus. Nobody told the storyline writers that Sheamus is from the Republic Of Ireland, which is separate from the UK. Somewhat related, but apparently the UK is only made of England, Scotland and Ireland. This is despite the fact that the roster includes Welshman Mason Ryan.
  • 2K20’s MyCareer once again makes the mistake of adding Sheamus to a foreign heel stable, this time lead by Becky Lynch. It’s even more notable considering how Becky herself is also from the Republic of Ireland, and the other 3 members include McIntyre (Scottish), Pete Dunne (English), and Finn Balor (Republic of Ireland), making it another example of a ‘UK based’ heel stable where the majority of the members aren’t from the UK.
• Artistic License – History: In this case wrestling history.
  • While the showcase modes in late THQ games are fairly accurate, they have to avoid talking about many things, but usually they can work their way around it. Having the player control the wrestlers, though, leads to whole other problems. You can have completely different matches from what the wrestlers actually performed. André the Giant vs Big John Stud? Of course, I remember when Andre hit a diving crossbody off the top rope in that match!
  • In WWE ‘12, Rey Mysterio recalls a time where he and Eddie Guerrero had a match on WCW Nitro. This is, of course, an excuse to put Eddie Guerrero in the game when his death in 2005 made that impossible to put into a contemporary story. However, one can’t help to notice that instead of WCW-era Rey Mysterio vs WCW-era Eddie, it’s modern-day Rey Mysterio vs 2004 Eddie Guerrero.
    • Even more bizarre is that in 2K14, when you unlock Eddie (unrelated to any of the Mania modes as 2K could not come to terms on a deal with Kurt Angle), he’s not in his 2004 attire, he’s in his late Attitude Era attire. The unlock conditions for him reference his 2004 match with Brock Lesnar and his moment at the end of Mania 20 is one of the most famous in company history.
  • While it was patched out, 2K20 originally had a grey ring canvas for the Night of Champions 2015 arena. WWE events outside of NXT almost never have anything other than a white canvas, making this strange.
  • WWE ‘13’s Attitude Era mode gives you an opportunity to play the 1998 Royal Rumble… with basically none of the competitors. Most of the wrestlers in that rumble are simply not in the game such as Marc Mero, Steve Blackman, Savio Vega and Jeff Jarrett.
• Ascended Meme:
  • In the WWE 2K23 tutorial, Xavier Woods is the narrator and will reference his dream of facing John Cena. While introducing Cena, he references the famous “AND HIS NAME IS JOHN CENA” meme.
  • All the way back in SmackDown 2: Know Your Role, there were two variants of the Stunner: The Stunner and the Stone Cold Stunner. Both moves are identical except for the fact that anyone hit with the Stone Cold Stunner does The Rock's infamous oversell of the move.
• Asset Actor: In WWE 2K16's Showcase mode, Mike Tyson in the WrestleMania 14 match between Steve Austin and Shawn Michaels is replaced with similar model with a different skin colour named "The Enforcer".
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Edge and Randy Orton's 2010 Road to Wrestlemania.
  • Also, Chris Jericho's 2011 Road to Wrestlemania, somewhat. See Bittersweet Ending below.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: Many installments allow wrestlers to add insult to injury by giving them the ability to use their opponent's finishing maneuvers against them.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted in the current gen versions. While Divas still can't get busted open, they still will develop noticeable welts if they take enough damage.
• Berserk Button:
  • The AI treats gaining a signature or finishing move, or gaining the comeback mechanic, as this. It will do whatever it has to do, no matter how much it has to cheat, to prevent you from using it.
  • In SmackDown vs Raw 2008, if you’re using a wrestler with the Powerhouse class, they have an ability called Rampage, allowing them to go on a literally unstoppable rampage, being able to hit grapples with no way to reverse it.
• Betting Mini-Game: The PSP version of 2006 featured a number of console-exclusive minigames, including a Poker game.
• Beyond the Impossible: 2K20 can allow a champion of a belt to cash in on themselves and you can see them get beat up by no one to the point where they get lifted off the air and suplexed by themselves.
• Big Head Mode: Both 2K19 and 2K20 have this.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Chris Jericho's RtWM in 2011, where even after you win at WrestleMania Triple H ultimately attacks you and stands tall. Considering your actions up to Wrestlemania, this could fall under Laser-Guided Karma.
  • The "Villain Story" in WWE '12, starring Sheamus. He manages to win every title in WWE by beating your former peers in the United Kingdom, only for Triple H to beat Sheamus up and win the WWE Title off of him. This is the transition point into the "Outsider Story" portion of RtWM.
  • In WWE 2K20's MyCareer mode, after finding out best friend Red's secret that the letter that was from his birth parents was actually from her, given that it was used to motivate him in to becoming a wrestler, Tre feels used and betrayed. Even stating that there are some things that can't be healed. While they manage to make amends before their WrestleMania match against rivals Brooklyn Von Braun and Samoa Joe (which they would go on to win), the fact remains that they were forced to retire despite being at the prime of their careers. But at least they're in the Hall of Fame.
• Bookends: "The Lock" storyline in 2K23 begins and ends between the created superstar and Sami Zayn. The opening has the superstar made his debut as The Lock defeating Sami Zayn for the Intercontinental Championship on Raw, while at SummerSlam, it's for the WWE Championship after Sami's impromptu cash-in.
• Bowdlerize: In the second and third games, it was possible for players to create nude female characters via skin-colored outfit parts and creative use of patterns to make nipples. Since then, the game has tried various methods to prevent this. Shut Your Mouth disallowed adding patterns to female CAW torsos, but players figured out a way to hack the ability to add them back in. Later games caused the patterns to go behind the CAW's breasts instead of on top of them. This is all very annoying for players who just want to create female CAWs and have to settle for substandard ones because of the censorship-imposed limitations on them. 15 and 16 abandoned this, instead resorting to heavily monitoring community creations.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: A few examples.
  • Playing as Michael Cole in WWE '12 will cause him (on commentary, somehow) to go on a rant about how well the game designer's captured his image and how happy he is that he's playable in the game.
  • In WWE 2K22 if you play as Dolph Ziggler '09, you'll get some humorous dialogue from commentator Corey Graves, talking about how the young kid has been respectful and shaking everyone's hand backstage. Michael Cole points out how that is logically impossible as Corey Graves wasn't in WWE in 2009 and that Corey would only be able to meet him in an Alternate Universe, Corey admits that he imagined it soon after.
• The Bully:
  • In season mode of Here Comes the Pain, Undertaker can be this when you talk to him backstage, especially if your Superstar Point (some kind of popularity level) is low. 'Taker will rib you, talk you down, and demand you to respect him. Do so, and he will see you as an easy target, then knock you unconscious. The only way to deal with this version of 'Taker is to hit him and make him realize that he's not dealing with an average jobber.
  • Brooklyn Von Braun is this to Red and Tre in WWE 2K20's MyCareer, beginning in high school and spanning decades of their lives. Indeed, she's responsible for coining Red and Tre's nicknames.
  • The player character in WWE 2K22's women's MyRise becomes this in one of the NXT storylines where she repeatedly mocks and belittles her fellow performance center graduate Fanny. Michael Cole even refers to her as this. She also becomes this to Liv Morgan on RAW in one the storylines there, where she disguises her bullying as trying to toughen Liv up.
• But Thou Must!:
  • In the earlier SmackDown games losing during storylines had some actual effect on the storyline being told creating different scenarios, now in the newer games version of Season Mode losing forces you to either rematch or quit the mode.
  • After your final match in the Season Mode of Shut Your Mouth (at WrestleMania X8), Mr. McMahon comes out and disrespects your performance. You are given three options to choose from: "Shut Your Mouth!!", "Shut Your Mouth!!", and "Shut Your Mouth!!"... all of which result in a vicious beatdown on Vinnie Mac from you and your WM opponent.
    • Another cutscene in Shut Your Mouth has someone demanding the player come out, saying the show will not start until they come out. You can choose not to go, but the last line of dialogue will repeat every time you select that choice, until you choose to come out.
• Call-Back:
  • In John Cena's Road to WrestleMania in '11, he and MVP are forced to fight in a tag match under Better-Than-U-topian rules Now known as "Age of Orton" rules, a ruleset MVP had created to use against Cena back in the '09 edition of SvR. Orton directly mentions these rules as coming from MVP.
  • Shawn Michaels' Road to WrestleMania in 2010 had JBL play a farewell tribute video for HBK, that included clips from Know Your Role, Shut Your Mouth, SvR 2007 and SvR 2009.
  • In WWE '12, Triple H, at the start of his Road to WrestleMania mode will refer to himself as a 16 time world champion. According to WWE's standards, at that time, Triple H had only won 13 world titles. While this could just be part of the story, Triple H wins a world title in both SVR '10 and SVR '11 (wins it as part of his storyline with John Cena in 10, is already the world champion as part of Chris Jericho's storyline in '11.) so it might be an intentional reference.
• Canon Discontinuity:
  • WWE '13 retells the story of the Attitude Era. In the game's version, the first incarnation of D-Generation X consisted of HBK, HHH and nobody else.
  • The Diva’s Title is now exclusively referenced as a women’s championship in any games featured after the shift away from the term, much like how commentators in WWE avoidreferencing it whenever possible.
  • Strangely, WWE 2K22 avoids mentioning the World Heavyweight Championship in reference to Rey Mysterio’s accomplishments, at least during his entrances. Instead, it’s stated that he won the WWE Championship at Wrestlemania 22 and combines that victory with his extremely short reign as WWE Champion in 2011.
• Cannon Fodder: The battle royals in 2009 and 2011 in which the player has to eliminate an army of masked men and "lost soul" druids respectively.
• Canon Foreigner:
  • Sting was the Pre-Order Bonus for WWE 2K15 despite never having wrestled in WWE (until Survivor Series 2014.)
  • 2K15 introduced a number of dev-made created wrestlers in its Career Mode, the most infamous one being Barron Blade.
    • Barron Blade returned in 2k17, looking just as hilariously awful as before.
    • It seems he's now the mascot of the career mode, as he's back in 2K18, but with a personality, new clothes and (possibly?) a relegation to a backstage role.
    • And in 2K19, he's now the GM/head promoter for BCW, the indie promotion in which your MyCareer character starts their journey. Loading screen text states that he was released from the WWE after trying to pitch a new match type.
  • The random-looking wrestlers in Know Your Role that will occasionally beat up a wrestler on the card, then challenge whoever the player is using.[[note]]These wrestlers are composed of outfits and moves that are unlocked upon defeat.
  • Battlegrounds has seven of these unlockable via campaign mode- New York street tough Bolo Reynolds, Florida gator wrestler Billy "The Python" Huggins, Mexican shaman T.J. "The Cure" Salazar, drill sergeant twins Cassie and Polly Velle, violent Scotswoman Jessica Johnson, and Detroit hacker Gabriel "The Disruptor" Pierce.
  • 2K22 is notable for bringing back several characters from previous games (Barron Blade and Cole Quinn to name a few) while also introducing new ones for both the men and women’s routes. For example, both feature an affable superfan (Chase and Meilee Fan) and a snob who can become your direct rival (Paragon Jay Pierce and Josie Jane). Unlike in recent years, none of these characters are playable in Exhibition mode and can only be controlled in tag matches (unless downloaded from community creations, of course).
  • "The Legacy" in 2K23 introduces Justine, the aunt and surprise antagonist of LJ (the player character). Justine is a WWE Legend, Hall of Famer and former six-time WWE Women's Champion who was active during the Ruthless Aggression Era, but was forced to retire due to injury.
  • "The Lock" from the same title introduces Gabriel Slade, would-be friend and soon-to-be stablemate turned rival of the titular "Lock." And Chosen, the masked Luchador from Japan.
• Canon Immigrant: Certain matches debuted on the games rather than the show itself, such as TLC singles matches, Hell In A Cell Tornado tag and Triple threat matches, and Ring of Fire match.
• Character Customization: With truly a ludicrous amount of detail available the series is the standard bearer for wrestling games, perhaps in all video games. It has a budding community that produces thousands of works that you could download to the game in recent years, from competitors in other companies to pop culture icons.
• Charlie Brown from Outta Town: Attempted in SVR 2011 by Jack Swagger on Rey Mysterio's Road to WrestleMania story, taking on the disguise of a masked luchador named "Todo Americano" (which is "All-American" translated literally into Spanish, quickly giving his identity away for Spanish-speaking players).
• Combat Sadomasochist: Anyone with the Hardcore class in WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008. In order to power themselves up, giving themselves a Finishing Move, they bust themselves open with a steel chair.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • In short, before a match the winner is seemingly scripted or programmed in advance, especially if it serves to tell some universe or rival story, and the game has a very long list of tricks to ensure who it wants to win will win no matter what you say or do about it. There's a reason why it's specific page is The Long List.
  • A quite literal example happens in the WWE 2K17 DLC Showcase match between Godfather and Papa Shango. Using his magical powers, Papa Shango can sometimes prevent you from reversing during the match, which causes a lot of trouble.
• Cool vs. Awesome: Battles between the likes of Roman Reigns, CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, The Rock, Bruno Sammartino and Ric Flair can happen in a single game. With character customisation, almost anyone can be playable, from characters from other video games, to anime characters to even real life personalities. With enough time, you can have almost anyone fight in these games.

Costume Copycat:

• In Mickie James' 2010 Road to WrestleMania, Natalya dresses up like her.
  • Especially amusing, as Mickie gets really annoyed. But how did Mickie debut properly in the WWE? Oh yeah, by being the Natalya to Trish Stratus. She even lampshades this. And not only that, Trish can be in the storyline, as well.
• From 2K15 onwards, you can give the attire to other wrestlers on the roster. This is useful if you want to make some kind of big, matching stable, or if you just want something funny like The Big Show wearing attire from the The New Day.

• Creator Cameo: Game designer Bryan Williams makes one in 2009, providing the voice for John Cena's soldier friend Tony.
• Continuity Cameo: Under the suit of Ribbie in 2K22 appears to be James Ellsworth.
• Continuity Snarl: All MyRise stories from [2K19] to the present (currently [2K24]) are supposed to take place in the same continuity due to the presence of original characters such as Cole Quinn and Gabriel Slade as well as numerous references to events and protagnonists in past [MyRises], but this is all thrown into question due to [2K24]'s Undisputed picking up with Roman Reigns suddenly vacating the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship during his record-breaking reign, which renders any WWE or Universal Championship reign by someone other than Reigns in the past three games Canon Discontinuity.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Extremely common in the various "story modes" (such as MyCareer and Road to Wrestlemania). The typical formula for when the story needs you to lose a match is that you have to get your opponent down to low health, then you end up losing the match during the cutscene, however handily you were winning beforehand.

D to H

• Daddy System:
  • The PlayStation 2 served as this for the series from 2007 to 2011.
  • The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 served this as from 2014 to 2016.
  • The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One now serves as this since WWE 2K22.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The controls changed with every iteration up until WWE '12. They were changed again in 2K20.
• Deadly Euphemism: In WrestleMania XIV, you can fight in many bizarre locations, such as on rooftops and next to roads. From these, you can do many things that would definitely kill a normal person, like throwing them off a building. The announcer will say “ELIMINATED!”, which is definitely one way of putting it...
• Decade-Themed Filter: WWE 13 and onwards allows players to create arenas with filters from the 80s, 90s, late 90s and present day.
• Decoy Protagonist:
  • The RtWM in WWE '12 starts with the player controlling John Cena & walking him through the backstage area to the ring, until Sheamus jumps him on the stage.
  • In one '13 Attitude Era match, the player controls Steve Austin as he makes his way to the ring... Only for the player to switch characters when he reaches the bottom of the ramp.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Several superstars such as Cole Quinn, Josie Jane, El Mago, and El Mago Jr were playable characters. By the time in 2K22, they were exclusive to MyRise as a non-playable superstars.
  • Brooklyn Von Braun was the main antagonist of 2K20's MyCareer mode. In 2K22, she appears once for one match and plays no role in any of the storylines.
  • Ted DiBiase was playable in 2K14, but when he returned in 2K16 (and the two games following it), you could only use him as a manager. He later returned, fully playable, in 2K19 (and the following three games).
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Should you lose to Eddie Guerrero at Halloween Havoc in Rey Mysterio's showcase, his victory cutscene shows him unmasking the young Luchador. His unmasked face remains hidden, though.
  • If you lose to Cena in his match with RVD at ECW: One Night Stand 2006, they’ll show Cena being escorted out of the building by the security detail. If you’re wondering why, it’s because the fans would have seriously considered rioting if that result actually happened in real life.
  • If you defeat Roman Reigns too quickly in his match with Brock Lesnar at Wrestlemania 31, Seth Rollins won't cash in his MITB briefcase.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The ability to import faces and logos to use for customization. The same basic rules as the NBA series apply (not too large or small, any hair over the face will show and mess up, etc.) but this easy-to-use but powerful tool is the best so far, and for those who get it right it basically allows endless custom and modification options.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • In SVR 2007, if your chosen superstar is not a World Champion, you will have an intense rivalry with other superstar for one spot in Royal Rumble main event: JBL if you play as a Smackdown guy or Randy Orton if you play as a Raw guy. The game will asign other heel who is just as slimy to be your rival if you play as either JBL or Orton.
  • In 2k19's MyCareer Mode, Triple H is your archenemy, making "Buzz"'s WWE career a living hell, even reforming Evolution after "Buzz" won the Universal Title to take him down. After soundly defeating Evolution at Fastlane with the help of Finn Balor and AJ Styles, they turn on you, with Styles cashing in his MitB contract to steal your title.
  • In both modes in 2K23's MyRise, The former Lock has defeated Randy Orton to win the WWE Championship and beat the deadline at SummerSlam. HBK would make amend with him and hand you the title belt. Just then, Sami Zayn attacked you from behind with a briefcase and cashed in on you for a second impromptu title match, while in "The Legacy", LJ has defeated her own aunt and win the SmackDown women's championship at WrestleMania, but her celebration was cut short when she was attacked by Molly and/or Ava.
• Downloadable Content: Introduced with 2009 which allows players to download extra wrestlers, arenas, or costumes.
  • Shows up even earlier in SvR06, which lets you download Jake "the Snake" Roberts, a PSP exclusive character, to the PS2 version if you have both.
• Double Standard: In any match starting with 2010, it's okay for a Diva to attack a Superstar, but a Superstar attacking a Diva is an automatic DQ, even if it's accidental.
  • Even better - when your opponent has a manager, attack them. If they even so much as reverse the move, your opponent will be DQed.
• Downer Ending: If you fail to beat The Undertaker in his storyline in 2011, he turns your character into a druid.
  • And your character's hopeless battle against the four druids that carry out the task falls under Controllable Helplessness.
• Dream Match Game: Either play with the official dream matches already drawn up, or create your own, or create your own.
• Drunk on Milk: After Red is forced to retire from WWE in WWE 2K20's MyCareer, it then cuts to her in in a hotel room watching WWE, drunkenly yelling at the TV ... with a slice of pizza in her hand.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Due to technical limitations of the original PlayStation, there was no referee and matches could only feature 4 participants until Just Bring It.
  • Just Bring It marked the first time entrances actually showed the superstars walking to the ring. The first two games featured the superstars and divas miming their entrances in front of their titantrons. This was particularly funny with Austin as it would show him climbing on invisible ropes to pose for the fans (i.e., the player).
  • There was no submission system in the games until Here Comes The Pain. Before that, you had to cross your fingers if you were caught in a submission hold & hope you wouldn't submit.
  • There were certain moves that could automatically throw you out of the ring.
  • Divas were included in Royal Rumble matches in the first two games.
  • You could only assign one finisher to a character until Just Bring It.
  • There were no running finishers until Shut Your Mouth.
  • Just Bring It was the first game in the series to allow 8 characters in the ring at any time. It was the only game in the series to have this feature until it was announced that WWE 2K18 would do this as well.
  • There was no commentary until Just Bring It.
  • Just Bring It marked the first time that an existing superstar or diva could have their move set & entrance altered by the player.
  • You couldn't customize the physical appearance of CAWs until the second game. The original merely allowed you to create the characters from the body parts of existing character models.
• Easily Condemned: Almost as if they were trying to make her the opposite of Red, it doesn't take much for LJ to be hated by her coworkers. Whether by debuting on a major PPV as a surprise Gone Horribly Wrong, being given someone else's spot in a tournament, or mistakenly supporting a suspicious organization, the worst is always thought of her.
• Easily-Distracted Referee: May be prevalent in all games, but in '13, if a challenge is to pin someone in 10 seconds and that person has a manager at ringside, be ready for much rage, as that manager will make the referee stop counting for some reason, get up and have the referee try to keep that person out.
• Easy-Mode Mockery: Downplayed, but if you are easily able to defeat your opponent(s) in a match were you can earn stars, ^note Outside of a squash match where you'll earn more point for winning quickly, do not expect to earn many.
• Egocentric Team Naming: Implied with BCW, Barron Blade's independent promotion from WWE 2K19 and 2K20. Take a good guess what the B in BCW just might stand for.
• Evil Brit: '12 has a Power Stable full of them called the "United Kingdom", featuring the English William Regal and Wade Barrett, the Scottish Drew McIntyre and the Irish Sheamus (despite Sheamus hailing from Dublin, the capital of the part of Ireland that isn't part of the UK), and the game including the Welsh Mason Ryan who actually is from the UK).
• Evil Cripple: The Miz becomes one in WWE 12 after a career-ending leg injury. Or so it seems.
• Expy:
  • Buzz and Cole from 2K19's MyPlayer mode are clearly based on Daniel Bryan and Kenny Omega, respectively. Like Bryan and Omega, the two wrestled each other in the indies, and went on different paths afterwards, with Buzz going to the WWE (like Bryan) and Cole going to Japan (like Omega). Buzz even has Triple H making his WWE career a living hell, much like in the real world Bryan was in a storyline in which Triple H founded The Authority to screw him over, with Buzz even facing an Authority-like faction, Evolution reunion and all.
  • Brooklyn Von Braun from 2K20's MyCareer mode is essentially a mish mash of Ronda Rousey and Jack Swagger. She's an MMA fighter turned wrestler who portrays herself as a heelish "all American", who also happened to be an amateur wrestling star in high school.
• Fake Shemp: Ring announcer Greg Hamilton was released from WWE before WWE 2K22 came out, so while the introductions he recorded for the game are still heard, the ring announcer character model looks nothing like him. This is hidden by mostly showing the announcer from the back or from far away enough that his face is not clearly discernible.
• Fanservice:
  • Many of the games include Bra and Panties mode such as the original SVR game, along with appearing in WrestleMania 21. The goal of this mode is to strip your opponent down to her underwear.
  • 2006 introduced the Fulfill Your Fantasy Mode, a strange cosplay version of the Bra and Panties match with an interactable bed and pillows.
  • The previous game had various divas dancing during the menu screens.
  • Shut Your Mouth had an unlockable video: footage from the divas' swimsuit photoshoot.
  • Up until around 2010, you could put Diva CAWs in g-strings and tiny bras.
• Failure Is the Only Option: In 2010 and 2011 some of the RtWM storylines dictate that your character gets beaten up resulting in a loss or something close to it. For example, in Christian’s mode, his match at the Royal Rumble is ruined by Dolph Ziggler after he interferes and causes his opponent to hit him with a chair. Fortunately, Christian is able to exact payback by beating Dolph on Smackdown in the next match.
• Fire-Forged Friends: LJ and Ava Moreno started out as arch-rivals when the former came to WWE in 2K23's MyRise. But once she teams with Ava after her previous partner was injured from a falling lighting rig, they would form a Teeth-Clenched Teamwork. And once they won the Money in the Bank tag team ladder match, they are starting to get along and win the Women's Tag Team titles. LJ can cement that by getting tag back into the match, rather than turning on her.
• Fission Mailed: In MyCareer 2020, choosing to sign with Barron Blade's revived BCW will lead to Red and Tre being forced to remain there for the rest of their careers regardless if BCW is run to the ground. Luckily, the screen flashes back to the aforementioned moment where the "correct" choice is made automatically.
• Five Moves of Doom: As of WWE '12, the games have included an ability called "Comeback", if a player enacts this and complete the sequence, they will perform the first three moves of doom. After successfully completing this sequence player automatically gains their Signature Move with their opponent already set up for it, executing this of course gives the player their Finishing Move completing the sequence. For some wrestlers, such as Hulk Hogan (in games were he appears) & Ultimate Warrior (who has appeared in every game since 2K14) their Signature and Finisher is baked into their Comeback, replicating how it was used in their real matches.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: Mickie James's RtWM in 2010. Her RtWM involves Natalya as her crazy stalker, a part Mickie herself played against Trish Stratus when she arrived at WWE.
  • 2007 has a storyline with Stephanie McMahon that is very close to the "Higher Power" angle, with Roddy Piper taking the place of The Undertaker. Both involve Vince McMahon aligning with someone he was feuding with to rescue his kidnapped daughter, and Vince is the mastermind of both kidnappings.
• Following in Relative's Footsteps: The female MyRise 2K23 story The Legacy follows the niece of former WWE superstar and legend Justine as she attempts to forge her own path in the company as he aunt guides her along the way to help her avoid making the same mistakes she did. Although you soon find out that Justine isn't as noble as she appears to be.
• Foreshadowing: In Triple H's "Road to WrestleMania" story in WWE '12, there's a Rule of Funny scene where Kevin Nash just shows up and Powerbombs him to invoke Get A Hold Of Yourself Man. The next and final story - Jacob Cass's - features HHH as the Big Good, and Nash as the Big Bad.
• Fun with Acronyms: If you choose a created superstar for the Road to WrestleMania mode in '12, his name will be Jacob Cass, i.e., Create A Super Star.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game sure likes to crash or glitch in the event you are winning however this can result in losing your save data or even all the content on your system, turning it into an XBOX or Playstation breaking bug. There is no way to recover or download again what was lost, it all has to be done again from scratch. As of 2K18 you still risk destroying your system playing this.
  • 2K20 has its own fair share of these, notably crashing whenever the console's date was set to 2020 ^note Since patched, though.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Multiple cases, but here's one of the more egregious ones. When playing through Sheamus' "Road To WrestleMania" in WWE '12, you find yourself in a tag team match against John Cena and Rey Mysterio. You can beat the hell out of Cena to the point where you're just seconds away from hitting him with your finisher...and then before the match ends it goes to a cutscene where you're getting ready to hit Rey with a finisher and Cena (who seems to be in no pain at all) stops you before you can.
  • In The Lock’s story in WWE 2K23 and its MyRise mode, one of the big conflicts of the story is that The Lock is given a new name rather than being allowed to use his old wrestling name from the independent scene. However, whatever name you gave him will still show up on the introduction plate during his entrance.
• Gang Up on the Human: Triple threat or fatal 4 way matches usually end up just a glorified handicap match, to the point where in a triple threat match if you are pinned the third CPU opponent will happily stand by and lose, just so long as you do as well.
• Gaiden Game:
  • WWF Royal Rumble for the Dreamcast (originally an arcade game that ran on Dreamcast-based NAOMI hardware) serves this to the SmackDown games, considering it was also developed by Yuke's.
  • WWE Legends of WrestleMania is also this, being developed by Yuke’s and being a companion title to SvR ‘09.
• Gender Incompetence: Possibly as a consequence of pushing the "Women's Revolution" in 2K20, Red is shown to be a wrestling prodigy while Tre is shown to be an incompetent doofus. A running gag in the game is that people mention how they always expected Red to do great things. Tre, "...not so much."
• Glass Jaw Referee: Somewhat averted in recent games whereby you can still knock down the referee but now he can't be targeted, and he no longer stays down for very long.
  • ...But in 2K17, this is upgraded to subverted- You can't target the referee by default, but there is an option to turn on the feature.
  • The earlier games, by contrast, tended to play this straight. You could even leave a referee unconscious from performing a simple schoolboy on him by accident. A schoolboy does next to no damage to anyone else in the game.
• Groin Attack: Be honest, the first thing you did with the Create-A-Finisher mode was make a move that consisted of 10 consecutive low blows...
• Guest Fighter: The series has seen quite a number of guest fighters, notably the inclusions of legends since HCTP. The legends roster generally consists on a group of regulars (The Rock, Stone Cold, Bret Hart, Mick Foley; Shawn Michaels and Edge upon their retirements, etc.), legends particularly relevant to WWE at a given time (Eddie Guerrero in 2007 after his death, Kevin Nash and Booker T in '12 after their Royal Rumble returns) and filled up with a diverse group of random legends. Although the series has seen a few other non-legendary guests:
  • Fred Durst in Just Bring It and WWF/E Raw.
  • The Masked Man (aka Randy Orton and/or Mr. Kennedy) and John Cena's soldier friend Tony in 2009
  • Green and Red in 2010
  • Undertaker's Druid in 2011
  • Mike Tyson in WWE '13
  • The T-800 (both the Terminator 1 and Terminator 2 models) in 2K16.
  • Johhny Cage in WWE Immortals.
  • Cole Quinn^note Returns as a playable character in 2K20., Barron Blade, and El Mago in 2K19.
  • Brooklyn Von Braun, El Mago Jr, Josie Jane, Reilly Flash, and Ribbie in 2K20.
  • Damian Lillard and Rob Gronkowski (under the names Laheem Lillard and Gronkster) in WWE 2K Battlegrounds.
  • Machine Gun Kelly and Mr. T in 2K22.
  • Two versions of Bad Bunny in 2K23.
  • Muhammad Ali and Post Malone in WWE 2K24.
• Head Swap: Both played with straight and inverted in the first two SmackDown games with the Create-A-Superstar mode. You can use existing heads, torsos or legs from existing characters.
  • In WWE 2K14, CAW mode introduces Superstar Heads. You can create new attires and use different body templates for a few superstars. The Undertaker in a gorilla suit, why not?
• Hostile Show Takeover: WWE '12 rehashes the 2001 WCW invasion storyline. Strangely enough, the storyline features WCW acting nWo-like such as spraypainting WWE title belts, which is ironic considering the nWo did the exact same thing to WCW in the 1990s.
• Hollywood Hacking: The entire cyberpunk 2K20 story is this incarnate, even having an arena called The Mainframe. You also gain the ability to hack as a Payback attack… which somehow works on even non-technologically enhanced in any way normal humans… well, as normal as wrestlers get, anyway.

I to N

• Ink-Suit Actor: Played with for Brooklyn Von Braun in 2K20, who is voiced by Maya Rose Berko.
• Interface Spoiler: The Hero story in WWE '12 - Kevin Nash & Rey Mysterio have defeated Jacob Cass & Triple H at WrestleMania, bringing back WCW... And then the credits roll. The astute player will notice that the achievement/trophy unlock hasn't pinged to let you know you've unlocked the "Complete Hero Story" achievement/trophy, and then the credits are interrupted by Kevin Nash in the Nitro ring.
• Invincibility Power-Up:
  • WWE 2K20 has the Fortify ability, which allows you to summon a steel padding and become completely invincible to most damage.
  • In WWE SmackDown vs Raw 2008, one of the abilities for the Brawler class of wrestler is called Rampage, which allows them to become immune to most forms of damage for a limited time.
• Irony: In the male MyRise story in 2K22, the player character decides to reveal Hector Flores' secret that he's the real son of El Mago, stating that it's to help Hector. Considering that Hector and El Mago reconcile if you do so unlike if the player decides not to reveal the secret, where he decides to expose the El Magos instead, looks like he ended helping Hector after all.
• Jack of All Stats: John Cena is this in Here Comes the Pain, having 7.5 out of 10 points in Strength, Endurance, Technique, Submission, and Speed.
• Jerkass:
  • In RtW in 2011, everyone you talk to backstage (storylines aside) treats you like crap, merely asking you to leave them alone.
  • In 2K23, The Lock strays into this territory due to his refusal to accept help or even advice from anyone else (except his mentor, Tavish). When he does so, he does so quite grudgingly and clearly doesn't like it.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In The Legacy, Justine's speech about having to survive a world five times as hard and seven times as brutal to get to where she was becomes this when you consider how poorly WWE has treated its female roster in the past. It's just unfortunate that for all she blames management she has actually been taking it out on LJ this entire time, with the latter not even realising it until after Justine's betrayal at Elimination Chamber.
  • Much of Ava Moreno's severe dislike of LJ stems from the fact that she had worked extremely hard for her place in WWE, while in her eyes LJ is just a nepo baby who was only given a big WWE debut because she has a WWE Legend for an aunt, regardless of whether or not she has the talent to justify her spot — and was kind of proven right following LJ's embarrassing loss at said debut. Of course, you have the potential to change her views with Ava and LJ becoming Fire-Forged Friends.
• Jerkass to One: In 2K19 while Michael Cole is usually neutral towards the wrestlers, he doesn't hold back his disdain for Bryan Danielson, who he sees as bland and boring. He hates on Danielson as much as Corey Graves hates on Sasha Banks. However, it's worth noting that Cole's hatred for Bryan Danielson is because, at the time, Cole was in the middle of a heel run when Danielson/Bryan was a babyface contestant on the NXT reality show competition.
• Jiggle Physics: Introduced in the later SmackDown vs. Raw games. It was ridiculously cartoonish looking and since 95% of the women have oversized breast implants, their boobs shouldn't move that much and thus, was eventually scrapped, before being brought back in 2K15.
• Jobber: In MyGM mode starting from 2K22, you can hire generic jobber characters who are only meant to pad out your show.
• Jobber Entrance: Averted as the MyGM jobbers typically have their own entrances, albeit with unflattering commentary.
• Jump Scare: In Chapter 10 of WWE 2K20's Career Mode, Red is inside a broken-down house complete with spider webs. The scene spins around her head and the player can briefly see flashes of Nikki Cross climbing the wall like Spider-Man. When she lands, before giving the player her Pre Ass Kicking One Liner, her head abruptly snaps to the side of her neck with NO warning.
• Karma Houdini: In RtW Edge and Randy Orton in 2010. Subverted with Chris Jericho in 2011.
• Kayfabe: Defied in Here Comes The Pain season mode, which tells stories about you as a wrestler rather than you as a performer, from getting into a relationship with a diva; for real; not as part of a storyline, to earning the respect of your peers which can be difficult when trying to work out which options, if any, will positively or negatively affect them, or encounters that will have a bad result no matter what.
• Lampshade Hanging: See Leaning on the Fourth Wall below.
  • Also in Shawn Michaels' 2010 RtWM, his "highlights" are done in graphics from the appropriate previous installments
  • Jim Ross quotes a point made on Raw about keeping weapons under the ring so competitors can hit each other with them.
  • There's a scene in 2K19 where Matt Hardy acknowledges Barron Blade's many tortured existences, acknowledging how he keeps showing up in My Career in different roles.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In 2010's Create-A-Superstar's Road to Wrestlemania storyline, Santino points out that the wrestler is "like something some loser would make in a video game". He also looks dead on at the camera.
  • Pushed to even further levels in 2011 with Edge and Christian:
  Edge: "Dude, we totally fooled the player into thinking we weren't going to reunite."
  Christian: "I know, we totally ... wait a minute? Player? What player?"
  Edge: "You see that weirdo staring at us through the TV?"
  [Edge & Christian both look directly into the screen, with Edge waving at the player]
  Christian: "No, but I'll take your word for it."

  • Then again if you have the two wrestle each other at WrestleMania.
  Christian: "Y'know, I wonder if that player dork thought you were going to hit me."
  Edge: "As if!"
  • There's also a scene where The Miz and John Morrison insult Triple H, saying how only losers play games.
  • Both MyRise story modes in 2K23 are about longstanding criticisms of the WWE method, with "The Lock" starring a popular wrestler who came in from outside the WWE system and has to deal with both internal politics and WWE's attempts to slap them with a weird and on-the-nose gimmick, while "The Legacy" is about both the privileges and pressures of coming from a wrestling dynasty and about how WWE has poorly treated its womens' wrestlers in the past.
• Legacy Character: El Mago Jr. is one to El Mago Sr. Despite the fact that they're not even related or even the same nationality.
• Literal Metaphor: In WWE 2K23’s "The Lock" storyline, you can have a literal dream match against Andre the Giant. As in, you can have a match with Andre, in your dreams, while its also a dream match.
• Loads and Loads of Loading:
  • Mainly in 2010's Create a Storyline mode, after each cutscene, there's a lot of loading.
  • One of the few complaints of 2006, made worse if playing with created wrestlers.
  • SmackDown 2: Know Your Role was this series' first offender of this trope. Compared to the original SmackDown, it not only it took its time to load the arena during the Anywhere Fall matches, it has also reloaded the backstage scenery and the wrestlers despite all that data has already been seen in a cutscene right before that. As if that wasn't enough, in a Royal Rumble, each wrestler had to load after the countdown. This has to be done in its predecessor, but the loading times were even shorter. In fact, they took a couple of seconds. SmackDown 2's loading took roughly 7 seconds each.
  • The PSP versions of Smackdown vs Raw 2006-2011 constantly load between menu settings, cutscenes, and entrances. Getting to the matches themselves can take up to almost an entire minute. It's even worse with any CAWs due to the massive size of textures to load onto the PSP, so much that in SvR06, the game has to warn you about the load times before selecting through each and every single piece of clothing and wrestling moves. It brings the whole thing to a very slow tedious process.
  • Create a Superstar in 2K15 and 16 is ridiculously slow when loading or deleting parts. Well, slow for eighth gen gaming, that is.
  • Playing 2K17 and want to change the material of a piece of clothing? Get ready for a big wait, as the materials take an agonisingly long time to load, and there's no delay before loading, so if you want to get to material F, have fun waiting for materials A, C and D to load as you scroll down.
• Magic Wand: The infamous "Uh-Oh It's Magic" storyline in 2007 where Candice Michelle is in possession of a magic wand, turning the player's character into a woman (which attracts Viscera on the way), giving herself perfect attribute points and turning Edge into the Boogeyman with Daivari's voice.
• Make Some Noise: One of the Payback abilities in 2K20 is called Wooo! and it involves screaming so loud that your opponent is damaged by it and is knocked back.
• Male Gaze: Stephanie McMahon is subjected to this a lot in SvR07's story mode, with the camera regularly sneaking a shot of her chest and butt. The first shot of her in one storyline is literally a closeup of her Navel-Deep Neckline before panning up to her face.
• Manchild: Tre from 2K20's MyCareer mode. At times it feels like his friend Red is almost like his babysitter since she's constantly trying to talk him out of doing stupid things that will get him in trouble with the other wrestlers, not to mention he doesn't really mature at all throughout the story and remains Red's Bumbling Sidekick for over a decade.
• Master of All: Roman Reigns in WWE 2K23. His stats are possibly the highest for any non-created character in the series history. His statline is 99, far outclassing everyone else on the roster. Considering his predicament when the game was made (having not been pinned for years at that time), it makes sense. Defeating him on the highest difficulty will give you an Achievement.
• Mind Screw: 2007's "Uh oh, It's Magic" storyline mentioned above.
  • 2011's Vs. Undertaker storyline features its own moments like having an entire battle royal replaced with a Zerg Rush situation vs. Taker's druids, and the arena audience all replaced with druids.
• Mirror Match:
  • Averted in general - only one person can use a specific superstar in a match.
  • Averted in the SmackDown vs Raw series, which featured the 3 Faces of Foley (occasionally with plain old Foley himself there too), in addition to classic versions of Undertaker & Kane, but would lock the player out of variations of the character if another was used.
  • Zig zagged in Here Comes the Pain, which featured Undertaker in both his American Badass character and also unlockable in his 90s Deadman gimmick. The game didn't mind if you had both versions face each other in Exhibition, but if you tried to include both in Season Mode then it blocked you with an error message instructing you to pick one or the other.
  • In Smackdown VS. RAW 2006, there are 3 different versions of Hulk Hogan (his '80s version, "Hollywood Hogan", and his modern day version), and the game allows you to have them face each other.
  • From WWE '13 onwards players can play as the past and present incarnations of certain superstars, and does let you have the past versions of superstars face their future selves. In fact, WWE '13 has achievements for beating a past version of a superstar with their future self, and vice versa.
  • Parodied in 2K20 if a superstar uses their Money in the Bank briefcase on a championship they already won. The match will have the superstar against themselves where they and the referee are the only two people in the ring where they get punched and suplexed by invisible forces.
  • WWE 2K17’s DLC Showcase mode had The Godfather vs Papa Shango as a playable match, both gimmicks of Charles Wright.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Happens in both stories in 2K23:
  • The Lock: After Shawn Michaels forces Slade to forfeit the title to Randy Orton in preparation for the match against the former Lock. He seemingly appears during the match to support him, only to hit Orton with the RKO.
  • The Legacy: Molly Holly's job as a producer is to help the female WWE Superstars. But after LJ uses her aunt Justine's betrayal at Elimination Chamber as the catalyst for her verbally attacking WWE Legends, she ironically aligns with the current Smackdown Women's champion to teach the young stars aligned with LJ some respect.
• Moral Myopia: Bray Wyatt in 2K19's MyCareer mode. He vows Revenge on the Player Character for burning his cabin down... which was already retribution for what Bray himself had done to the Character's late father's van.
• Mundane Made Awesome: Give your created wrestler a really lame finish and SVR (starting from 06) will "sell" the move like it's the awesome most thing ever. Watch as the game goes into slow motion with dramatic "whoosh" sound effect when your created wrestler does his finisher... an eye poke.
• Mythology Gag: Christian's RtWM in 2011 is filled with these.
  • WWE '12 also features a short reference to the infamous Fingerpoke Of Doom Incident.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The intro video for Just Bring It is one of the most infamously misleading examples in history. It is not representative of what the actual game looks like at all and considering how mediocre the game itself is, it makes you wonder if most of the budget was spent on the intro.
• No Flow in CGI: Played straight in the early games, averted in the later ones (though it has resulted in the highly ridiculed "seaweed" hair).
• Not the Intended Use: In Here Comes the Pain, if you lean a table on the turnbuckle and run into it, you will be "stunned" for a few seconds and it is possible to be grappled by your opponent while in this condition. This counts as a table attack, and will result in DQ if this happens in normal matches. It is possible to keep doing this and if you do so, you will get easy wins in most of your Season mode campaign.
• No Theme Tune: In earlier SmackDown games, the various WWE "Legends" lacked their iconic entrance music which they used in their heyday.

O to R

• Oddball in the Series: WWE Crush Hour. It's a Vehicular Combat game much like Twisted Metal where wrestlers drive random vehicles with weapons. It also has an equally bizarre storyline involving Vince McMahon buying all the networks and putting WWE superstars in TV shows and commercials.
• Original Generation: In WWE 12, one of the three Road to WrestleMania stories centers on a new character named Jacob Cass.
• Palette Swap: Superstars Threads is literally a mode built around this trope.
  • Red and Green is a more straight-forward example.
  • 2K16 subverts this with the various unlockable Steve Austins throughout the game. The five versions all have different stats, and in the case of "Stunning" Steve Austin and "Superstar" Steve Austin, different movesets as well.
• Perfect Play A.I.: Often, the AI will become an unstoppable reversing machine for no rhyme or reason, this is almost a gameplay mechanic: in a bid to be more...um, realistic a match will ramp up the difficulty as much as needed to make it competitive, action orientated, Always Close. It just so happens that it doesn't matter how much the game has to cheat or glitch to do so.
• Pet the Dog: The notoriously slimy Raw GM Eric Bischoff in Here Comes The Pain will be surprisingly supportive of the player if they chose to create a Power Stable, even if the player and said stable are Faces.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Red and Tre in WWE 2K20's MyCareer mode went to school together, went to the prom together (simply because no one else would be their dates), and know just about everything there is to know about each other with Red even keeping the secret of Tre's birth parents being deceased from him since their youth, but are stated and shown to never be anything more than best friends. Tre, however, does attempt to pursue Josie Jane, an Indy wrestler he and Red trained with early on in their wrestling career, showing he at least tries to expand his circle. Red, however, is singularly focused on her wrestling career.
• Power Stable:
  • D-Generation X, Right to Censor, the Radicalz, the nWo, Evolution, the Nexus, the Corre, the Shield, the Wyatt Family, The Club/The OC, Undisputed Era, Sanity, Imperium, The Way, Retribution, the Hurt Business, Damage CTRL, Legado del Fantasma, the Bloodline, the Judgment Day, the Brawling Brutes, Gallus, and the lWo have all been included in the games due to their presence on WWE TV.
  • Here Comes The Pain has the player create one during story mode, even choosing the group's name; subsequently another is formed to fight the player's.
  • WWE '12 features the United Kingdom, the Mizfits, and WCW in Road to WrestleMania.
  • WWE '13 focusing on the Attitude Era meant that D-Generation X, the Corporation, Ministry of Darkness & the Brood were all featured.
  • WWE 2K14 features the Million Dollar Corporation due to the 30 Years of WrestleMania, and the WCW-era nWo as DLC.
  • WWE 2K22‘s MyFaction mode specifically focuses on crafting a dominant of superstars, including a logo and manager when acquired.
  • WWE 2K23's male MyRise, The Lock, has a major plotline where The Lock joins either Randy Orton or MVP and Gabriel Slade to form Evolution 2.0 or The Hurt Business 2.0 respectively, then get fired from WWE for accidentally injuring Shawn Michaels, work his way back up from the indies to WWE, then form his own faction to battle his former faction over the WWE Championship.
• Pre-Ending Credits: "Road to Wrestlemania" in WWE '12 rolls the credits after the player's custom wrestler loses his WrestleMania match. Shortly into the credits, they get interrupted by Kevin Nash, who has now performed a Hostile Show Takeover, WWE being replaced by a revived WCW, leading into the final stretch of the story, which entails reversing said takeover.
• Pretender Diss: Here Comes The Pain has Ric Flair declaring that a World Heavyweight Champion player is not worthy of the title and that they have brought disgrace upon the World Heavyweight Championship, which will result in Ric getting into a match with the Royal Rumble winner just to get a shot at the title.
• Pro Wrestling Is Real: Both the game mechanics and most story modes. 2K15's MyCareer mode sort of zig-zags this. A lot of pro wrestling jargon is used and the goal of the mode is to put on good matches instead of winning. However, you still get text messages and tweets from guys saying "I want to beat you up!", etc. and the angles are portrayed as real.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Sheamus's branch of RtWM in WWE '12 ends with him winning every title at WrestleMania, only for Royal Rumble winner Triple H to make his return & promptly beat Sheamus for the WWE title.
• Railroading:
  • A minor example in the 2K Series. In those games, you are strictly only allowed to have Royal Rumble or Elimination Chamber matches in their respective arenas. If you want to have Rumble or Chamber matches in other arenas (or even custom arenas), forget it.
    • 2K22 does allow Rumble matches to take place outside the titular arena, but Chamber matches are still only allowed in the Elimination Chamber arena. ^note Though you can play a Chamber match in a non-EC arena in Universe mode
    • This is sometimes ridiculous, as WWE 2K20 had the Elimination Chamber arena from 2017, but it didn’t allow anyone to use it in Elimination Chamber matches. Similar problems cropped up in previous games such as 2K15 having multiple different Royal Rumble arenas but only allowing one to be used for the titular match.
  • Also, in WWE 2K19 and 2K20 you are not allowed to change, copy, or create custom attires for certain MyCareer story characters such as Barron Blade, Cole Quinn, El Mago, or Ribbie. Justified for Ribbie due to his special rib mascot costume. This might also be to prevent spoilers for the story mode (such as Barron Blade's "Masked Attacker" attire).
  • In the GameCube exclusive Day of Reckoning series you are only allowed to use a custom superstar to compete in the story Mode. Somewhat justified since the first DOR story mode is about you as an up-and-coming WWE trainee working your way up the ranks. Also, you are unfortunately only allowed to use a male superstar in the two Day of Reckoning story modes.
• Reality Subtext:
  • In-universe, the strong implication that's never quite said out loud in 2K23 is that someone told Vince McMahon that a newly-arrived wrestler was "a lock" to one day be world champion, and the infamously weird, impulsive, and Literal-Minded Vince took it as a pitch, got very excited, and insisted that the wrestler in question be given "the Lock" as their new gimmick. The end result is "the Lock" being introduced to the audience for the first time climbing out of a giant safe as part of their entrance, covered in chains and padlocks. (The part that is said out loud is that some of this excitement probably also came from "the Lock" sounding an awful lot like "the Rock.")
  • Perhaps unintentional, but in the MyCareer mode in WWE 2K15, you play a bunch of random matches where you are promised a push with no payoff before being put into random storylines with no end goal with no sense of progression. Some have pointed out that this replicated what many WWE wrestlers end up doing in real life (at the time, anyway), although it’s hard to know if it was intended.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Chris Benoit being dummied out in SmackDown vs. Raw 2008 due to his ill health leading to the tragedy that ended his and his family's life.
  • While it was a pretty good version of a WCW invasion storyline, the Jacob Cass story in WWE ‘12 is still missing many names. This is because they were either contracted to another company (Sting, Ric Flair) or had unfortunately passed away by the time of the game’s release.
  • All over the shop in WWE 2K14.
    • Jim Ross & Jerry Lawler are on commentary for every single match in "30 Years of WrestleMania" due to Gorilla Monsoon's death, Bobby Heenan losing his voice, Vince McMahon due to his backstage responsibilities, Jesse Ventura being busy with politics meaning it would be impossible to recreate the actual commentary teams for the first eight events.
    • WrestleManias 14 and 15 are largely glossed over due to WWE '13 already covering that period in the "Attitude Era" mode the prior year.
    • WrestleManias 2000 and X-Seven omit some of the most memorable matches that took place at the events due to several of the participants being under contract to TNA. This notably doesn't apply to Hulk Hogan, who was also under a Legend's contract with WWE in addition to his TNA contract.
    • WrestleMania 20 highlights Big Show vs. John Cena, and Goldberg vs. Brock Lesnar. Whilst Show/Cena is justifiable due to it being Cena's first ever title win, Goldberg/Lesnar is largely considered one of the worst WrestleMania matches. The choice in matches is due to the main events featuring Kurt Angle (Contracted to TNA) & Chris Benoit (See above).
  • Due to Benoit, parts of the Shawn Michaels and Triple H feud in their rivalry showcase in 2K15 had to be entirely skipped over. The match is alluded to with the narrator mentioning that “neither came out the winner”, but all that is shown is simply a zoomed in image of the ring canvas.
  • 2K16 replacing Bill DeMott with Matt Bloom as NXT's head trainer, which was done in real life after DeMott resigned following allegations of racist and homophobic bullying from former developmental talents. Bloom acts almost like a saint (which anyone who has seen the WWE Network show Breaking Ground knows this is not the case, as he's stern, but still fair) as opposed to DeMott's loudmouthed, obnoxious behavior in the previous game.
  • 2K16 again with the Steve Austin career Showcase Mode. While Owen Hart is mentioned in cutscenes, he does not appear within the gameplay. This is because Owen's widow Martha Hart refuses to allow the WWE to use Owen in any video games after Attitude as she holds the company responsibile for his death.
  • Here Comes the Pain was meant to feature Hulk Hogan both in his modern incarnation (perhaps even including Mr. America), as well his '80s self. However, Hogan fell out of favor with the WWE and was let go early enough for his modern self to be removed and his legend self to be Dummied Out. Similarly, the Ultimate Warrior was also going to be an unlockable legend, but he apparently raised his asking price to be included, so he, too was removed. Both characters can still be accessed with a cheat device.
  • Due to Adam Cole signing with AEW and Bray Wyatt supposedly retaining the rights to the Fiend character, both ended up being removed from 2K22. Entrance motions and win poses can still be found for both in the base game, but title entrances, MyCareer storylines, and even logos and taunt audio have all been removed (some of which can be viewed or accessed on PC through mods).
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In The Legacy, LJ delivers a pretty brutal one to her aunt in a scene prior to their championship match at Wrestlemania, and by this point, it can hardly be said that it was undeserved.
  Justine: What do you know about it? You don't understand.
  LJ: But that's just it—I do understand. You've been teaching me since my first day in WWE. And you know what I finally really get? Everything that you've complained about, that you're mad at? For all that you blame management, or other things beyond your control, it's always been me who's been your real target. Because I'll never know the limitations that you did. I will get to push myself in ways you never could, have opportunities that you never would have been given, and see how far I can really go. And you? Justine, you're a Legend. The best of her time. Maybe could have been the best of all time if you had a level playing field. But the fact that you'll never know and I will? That's what you'll never forgive me for. And that's what's going to allow me to replace your legacy with my own.
  Justine: You ungrateful piece of—
  LJ: You're a selfish, self-centered, only thinks for herself—
  Justine: Because I'm the only one I could ever count on!
  LJ: Looks like we have something in common then, because I certainly couldn't count on you.
• Relationship Values: A plus and minus personality system was used for created wrestlers in the earlier SmackDown games that would determine match interference. The system was revived and revamped for 2010, now involving every wrestler in the game. It would also play a major part in 2011's WWE Universe mode.
• Rubber-Band A.I.: In 2010 especially, acquire a finisher and your opponent goes into full on berserk, The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard mode and will do anything, anything, to prevent you from using it. Of course this is in line with at real events a wrestler might bail out of the ring to collect themselves if they are being badly beaten, but good luck trying that yourself. The computer has no problems doing this.
  • After a few wins in WWE 12 the computer will see fit to give your opponent a finisher whenever it is losing, and take away the kickout meter virtually guaranteeing a loss. This has carried over each year so that you virtually have to play each match like a pro wrestling event: take a beating and hope the game will let you catch up and use a comeback or special move to shift momentum, rather than actually try and get better and beat an opponent.

S to Z

• Shock and Awe: In WWE 2K20, you can quite literally hit your opponent with an electric punch as one of your Payback attacks.
• Shown Their Work:
  • The 2006 game especially had lots of little nods and touches to make the game just like a live broadcast. Everything from a jab at Muhammed Hassan to someone in the crowd laughing at Mick Foley just like at a real event to references to the Montreal Screwjob.
  • The move lists of the superstars heavily invoke this. As an example, superstars who started out on the indies - Such as Cesaro, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan & CM Punk - have moves in their repertoires that they've never used on WWE television but had done on the indies.
  • 2K18 has Corey Graves call—incorrectly, sadly—a springboard spiked tombstone piledriver as a Meltzer Driver.
  • 2K22 features a lovingly mocapped version of Rey Mysterio’s Backflip DDT, a move that very easily could have been relegated to a cutscene given how difficult it was to accomplish in the first place. Even better, the move can be given to anyone as a move or finisher.
• Shout-Out:
  • One fan in SvR 2006 loves to yell out "Johnny, you're a cream puff!" every now and then.
  • Some of the items you can give a created wrestler fall under this category. For instance, you can give your character a hood that's not unlike Cobra Commander's.
  • On that note THQ's wrestling games made it pretty easy to create characters from other games. They clearly realized this as one of the default custom wrestlers in the original SmackDown vs. Raw was an Expy of Chun Li from Street Fighter.
  • Many storylines in Here Comes the Pain are references to real WWF/E segments in the past, such as (insert rebellious superstar here) vs Vince segment, The Royal Rumble segment where you and your rival are out of the ring "almost at the same time", and an unlikely tag team segment where your partner gives you a birthday cake when it isn't even your birthday.
  • Modern titles (starting from 2K18) have options for eyes in Create a Wrestler which looks a whole lot like a [2] and options for Super Saiyan hair.
  • During the WWE 2K23 tutorial, if you successfully perform a combo breaker, Xavier Woods will chime in with “C-c-c-combo breaker!”.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: In The Lock’s story in WWE 2K23’s MyRise story, the attire you make for The Lock is not used (as the story is that he is given a new gimmick and name by management). For one of the side quests, you get to go back to your old promotion, PWJ, and for that match you wear the attire that you picked.
• The Sociopath: Brooklyn Von Braun, the Big Bad of 2K20's MyCareer mode. She spends every moment of her time onscreen trying to make Tre and Red's life an absolute nightmare, showing that there's absolutely no lows she won't stoop to just to hurt the both of them. She's also incredibly vain and narcissistic, clearly seeing herself as being above everyone around her while putting on a "babyface" facade. Though she admittedly doesn't try very hard to fool people.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Of sorts. In WWE '13's Attitude Era mode, possibly stemming from using archive audio, whenever the original WWF initals or the full name of the company are spoken, the "F"/"Federation" part will be muted out.
• Squash Match: In 2K17, 2K18, 2K19 and 2K20, squash matches are random events that can happen when you are much stronger than your opponent. With animations referencing the famous Survivor Series 2016 bout between Goldberg and Brock Lesnar, they allow you to quickly overpower and defeat your opponent.
• Spinning Piledriver: Can be created using Create a Finisher mode in SvR ‘09, 10 and 11 (with 11 even having a top rope variation).
• Spiteful A.I.: The game mechanics are thus: do well enough to build momentum most of the way and you get a signature move, hit it and you get a much more powerful finisher. In recent years the computer hates this and will go all out to stop you hitting the signature move.
  • If you are trying to beat the clock, especially to fulfill an objective, the game will use the longest, most time-wasting moves in their arsenal.
  • 2K17 has you earn VC points based on how good a match is. The problem is the CPU is hell-bent and determined to force you into the most boring match possible. Ever were it Lesnar vs Blake, on easy, cheating like crazy is old hat by now but now it comes with Irish whipping you all day, using the same move over and over and over again, countering everything you can throw at it and not allowing you to counter or dodge any move, or even recover.
  • How bad is it? Gang Up on the Human being in full effect is standard, but it gets taken up to eleven when even in the middle of a move during a triple threat or fatal four-way your opponent will be attacked: because the third or fourth man wants to beat up on you. They're not content to stand back and let you get hurt, oh no, they have to be the ones to do it and will fight everyone else to do it.
• Stalking Is Funny if It Is Female After Male: In 2K22's MyRise, Meilee mentions having seen Buzz (2K19's MyCareer protagonist) wrestle over 2,000 times, cornering Edge at a gas station for an autograph, and at one point maintains she's in a relationship with Dexter Lumis, who flat out denies this.
• Superior Successor: Deconstructed in The Legacy as LJ constantly facing the pressure of measuring up to be as good as her multi-time champion aunt as well as dealing with accusations of nepotism. And then there is Justine's resentment towards her own niece's ability to surpass her in both talent and legacy, not helping that her own career was Cut Short.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: After almost a ten-year tenure, Green and Red were Put on a Bus for WWE '12 and replaced in the create modes with two generic wrestlers with black and red trunks. Guess which of the two is getting beat up in the Create-A-Moveset mode? Yeah, it's the red one.
• Take That!:
  • Against your character in Road to Wrestlemania, who has to do everything from fight in handicap matches in a stupid outfit chosen by Vince McMahon to being forced to wear a chicken suit. Santino against the player, heck, even the game itself regards you as a loser.
  (in-game text describing Mr. McMahon's business suit) While your work attire might be a paper hat and smock, Vince McMahon wears luxurious suits.
  • At Unforgiven during Attitude mode in WWE '13, Good Ol' JR will soundly tear apart Eric Bishoff over his real-life statement that "Stone Cold" Steve Austin would never make it in the wrestling business. Later, when Mick Foley wins his first championship, the game brings up the attempt at a take-that from WCW that spectacularly failed and essentially killed the company.
  • Look through the games from HCTP to 2k14. Pay attention to the damage rating on the Styles Clash. It seems to drop every damn game. Also of note is the Scorpion Death Drop vanishing for 5 or so games, the version of the Edgecution that looked like the Angel's Wings being removed altogether after 2006, and, from the same game, Jimmy Hart using Rhyno's entire moveset (sans taunts).
• Take That, Critics!: After Just Bring It was heavily criticised by fans & critics alike over the heavily outdated roster^note None of the WCW/ECW superstars introduced during the InVasion storyline ongoing that same summer were included in the game & several technical flaws^note A story mode that lasted 3 matches at its longest, graphics that simply looked like a cleaner version of the prior year's SmackDown 2 on the original PlayStation & requiring a save file that took over half of the space on the Memory Cards, the severely improved follow-up released the next year was appropriately entitled Shut Your Mouth.
• Taunt Button: Which has the purpose of filling a superstar's "Adrenaline" a bit, in order to reach a point where they can use a signature manuever on an opponent.
• The Computer Shall Taunt You: During Chris Jericho's RtWM in the 2011 game, you have to wrestle a match with Triple H sitting in on commentary and continually talking about what a joke you are, providing incentive to go after him later on.
• Trolling Translator: In 2K19, Shinsuke Nakamura^note Who, as of the making of the game, had recently started on a heel run. gets to be one of these - or at least a mocking one - to the player character in MyCareer. During the WWE's tour in Japan, but before a match against one another, he plucks a magazine out of the character's hands and reads from the cover.
  Shinsuke Nakamura: It says you had a successful Japanese debut last night. But, tonight, you face the King of Strong Style in his kingdom and you will be lucky to go back to America... with all your teeth.
  Buzz/Player Character: D-.. Does it really say all that?
  Shinsuke Nakamura: ...more or less.
• Tyrant Takes the Helm: Randy Orton in 2011, The Miz and Kevin Nash in '12.
• Vagueness Is Coming: After a main event in 13's universe mode one possible scene is the message The End is Coming as the competitors look freaked out. Get ready for someone on the roster to get a big push.
• Version-Exclusive Content:
  • The PSP port of SVR 2006 has Jake Roberts. However, he can be imported into the PS2 version by connecting your PSP to the console if you have him already unlocked.
  • 2K22 has the Starrcade '96 Rey Mysterio Pack featuring the 1996 Rey Mysterio Jr. and the Starrcade arena, that only be bought for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
• Versus Title: SmackDown Vs Raw 2005-2011 (2004 was the first game and didn't have the year on it)
• Video Game Caring Potential: Yes.
  • In earlier games with GM mode where wrestlers were more vocal about being mistreated, or Universe mode you can to some degree control how they are utilized. Naturally you'd want your favorites to gain momentum, but you might want to give someone who is crapped on for real a push or help build the tag team and Diva divisions.
  • When you are fighting to save a Diva, or you go to them (or better yet, they come to you on Valentine's Day, especially if you made a CAW you dearly love).
  • The storyline in Here Comes the Pain where you receive a Diva as your manager. Another Diva will attempt to seduce you, and another wrestler will attempt to steal your Diva from you by wrestling her. If you help your Diva win but have mistreated her, she will slap you and storm off. The Diva who seduced you will also abandon you. However, treat her well, flirt with her, and then help her win, and the two of you will share a passionate kiss on the entrance ramp. Twice. Jim Ross, the man who set the two of you up in the first place, will congratulate you from commentary.
  • In one of the Smackdown storylines in SVR 2007, you're part of team Smackdown with Batista and Booker T. Unfortunately, Booker gets attacked by Triple H, and accuses Batista of being a mole due to his past ties with HHH and Ric Flair, who are on Team Raw. Choose to believe the rumors, and you and Batista will have to face Raw in a 3-on-2 handicap elimination match after Booker himself is revealed to be the mole. However, if you defend Batista, you will be rewarded with the right to replace Booker, keeping it 3 on 3.
• Villain Protagonist:
  • SmackDown vs Raw 2006, it can be whoever you're playing as at the end of the SmackDown season, either because you defected to the ECW faction or were revealed to be the one who ran over Teddy Long in the parking garage.
  • Edge and Randy Orton in 2010.
  • Chris Jericho (and possibly Rey Mysterio) in 2011.
  • Sheamus in WWE '12.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • In Here Comes the Pain season mode, your superstar and his tag team partner will have some internal conflicts, which can turn bad pretty quickly if you made bad decisions on early parts (such as throwing your partner's book into the trash can or forcing your partner to drive the car despite him having leg cramp after the match). Your partner then tries, misguidedly, to fix this problem by preparing a party on the ring^note similar to "This Is Your Life" segment between The Rock and Mankind in 1999. If you choose to no show or to attack your partner on the ring, the partnership will end on bad terms right there.
    • Averted if you treat your tag team partner nicely, and when your partner buys you a birthday cake, come to the ring and calmly explain that today is not your birthday. The representative of current tag team champions from your brand will appear to mock both you and your partner. Should you and your partner defeat them in the title shot next week, your partner will apologize to you and promise to be a better partner in the future.
  • Justine and Molly Holly used to be friends and tag partners before the latter turned on the former. Though in Molly's defense, she had just found out that Justine was already planning on turning on her so she decided to just beat her to the punch. They decide to put aside their differences and join forces if LJ decides to make an enemy of all legends.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: 2K22's MyRise story mode is confirmed to take place in the same universe as 2K19's and 2K20's MyCareer modes due to presence of Barron Blade, Josie Jane (who serves as closest to a main antagonist of sorts to the female MyRise superstar), Cole Quinn, Brooklyn Von Braun, El Mago, and El Mago Jr, while fellow Performance center trainee Meilee mentions having seen Buzz wrestle over 2,000 times. 2K20's MyCareer protagonists Red and Tre get no mention even though their careers spanned 15+ years and would have overlapped with the MyRise protagonists'. Though considering their unpopularity, it's possible that they may have been removed from continuity.
• What the Hell, Hero?: SvR 2011, Rey Mysterio throughout his RtW get these from Superstars and Divas, stating that he's Not Himself. Justified as he's been in a car accident and has since been hanging with Jack Swagger, the person behind the accident in the first place.
• Wolverine Publicity/Covers Always Lie: Bret Hart is front and center on the Canadian cover for 2011 but is not in the game unless you download him from the Play Station Network/Xbox Live.
• Would Hit a Girl: For most of the series, you could put divas in the ring against the men. Many pre-SvR games could even extend the female characters' rights by making them either male or genderless. WWF SmackDown: Shut Your Mouth, in turn, had no other option of putting a female CAW into the Career Mode rather than choosing the second option. As of SvR 2010, there is no more intergender competition other than Mixed Tag Team matches, and in those attacking a female wrestler with a male one is an instant disqualification (and DQs cannot be turned off in this match). The reasoning behind this is officially part of WWE's post-2008 efforts to clean up the company's image, which included banning male-on-female violence. There's also persistent speculation that some executive somewhere thought that the possibility of the girls beating the guys devalued the guys and removed it for that reason.

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