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Webcomic / Funkinverse

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Jump into, swing across, go beyond... but this time, let's take The Power of Rock for a spin.
Funkinverse is a Friday Night Funkin' Film Fic art project by Reddit user LemonDew/That_Frog_Robo. It is a rough retelling of the first two Spider-Man: Spider-Verse films with the cast of FNF and its associated fanworks.

The plot is somewhat similar: after the original Boyfriend bites it, Salty steps up to be his replacement, battling his old foes and more with the help of Boyfriend's Alternate Selves from a freshly-opened multiverse. After Salty saves the day and builds up his career after the fact, Grimbo starts gathering power to become a multiversal threat, and the existence of a society made from Boyfriend's counterparts is revealed — but not before its leader Agent Blueballs comes at odds with Salty over what it means to be "the Boyfriend" and the Existential Horror their clash of ideologies leads to.

    List of featured mods 
Mods with non-cameo roles are listed in the rough order of appearance for their corresponding counterparts in the original Spider-Verse script.

This list currently excludes most cameo roles.

    Covers created for the story  
Covers without visuals are stored in this Google Drive folder from this thread.

Into the Funkinverse

  • "Shoulder Touch" ("Harley's Heat," Salty and Gracie)
  • "Kill That Guy" ("Danger," Hank vs. Salty)
  • "Housebroken" ("Prey;" Hank, Tabi, Whitty, and Sky vs. Salty, Brooke, Gracie, Aloe, Toon Boyfriend, and Bunfriend)note 
  • "Collider Fight" ("Top-Loader" CYANCAT Remix; Tabi, Zardy, and Sky vs. the Funkin' Gang)
  • "The Final Fight" (Hellhole REDO, Solazar vs. Salty)
  • "Point Funker Point" (Buffer, Agent Blueballs and Player)

Across the Funkinverse

  • "Mindscape Fate" (Last Chance TeamRisen Remix, Grimbo vs. Salty)
  • "Transdimensional Exchange" ("So Cool," Grimbo and Dirk Strider
  • "2BEEP2BOOP" ("2BEEP2MEOW;" Brooke, Brooke Jr., and Blueballs)
  • "All Stations - Stop Boyfriend" ("Final Escape," Agent Blueballs and various Funkin' Society members vs. Salty)
  • "Wank" (Self Paced, White Hank vs. Salty)

Side Jams

  • "Funkin' Attack" ("Monotone Attack;" Gracie, Bunfriend, Toon Boyfriend, and Aloe)
  • "Funkin' Bells" ("JINGLE HELLS;" Brooke, Player, and Salty)
  • "Mad and Sus" (Suspai, Blueballs and Alice Malicious)
  • "XBREAKER" ("Gamebreaker," Grimbo vs. Salty)note 
  • "Trypophobia" ("Paranoia," Grimbo vs. Sunday)
  • "The Recruitment of Ms. Sawyer of Earth-33109" ("Dissension," Blueballs and Veronica Sawyer)
  • "Fatigued Funk" ("Close Chuckle," Keith Taylor and Benjamin Fairest)
  • "Iodine"note ("Identity Crisis," Iodine vs. Salty)
  • "GAMESOLVER" (Drone Boyfriend/Absolute Solver vs. Galfriend)
  • "Bluepocrisy" ("Lore Awesome Mix," Blueballs vs. Cadence)

A lore document is also available, summarizing various odds and ends not documented on LemonDew's main accounts.

Note that spoilers are based on the original Spider-Verse script and any significant Meta Twists.

Tropes:

  • Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • Adaptational Badass:
    • Downplayed with most Boyfriends featured, who have the strength and wit to fight their opponents but are rarely given opportunities to show it off in canon. The actionized script of Spider-Verse, however, takes off that limiter.
    • Played straight with Aloe, who is often physically outclassed by those that actually intend to hurt her. Between being a Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond outside her world and gaining the power of NEO everywhere else, this is no longer the case.
  • Adaptational Context Change: The events of The Spider Within, while still following the same general narrative, add Salty's struggles with his Adaptational Gender Identity as a trans man to the list of problems his anxiety manifestation (now named Iodine) embodies.
  • Adaptational Curves: Ruria has put on weight compared to her original appearances, explained as a side effect of her retirement from mercenary work to become a music professor.
  • Adaptation Expansion:
    • Earth-16063's Point of Divergence from the original HoloFunk starts by taking "BIG SHOT" seriously and building on it to realize that a) it means NEO's schematics canonically exist in that universe, b) Aloe is a perfect fit for NEO's original purpose (to give a "nobody" the chance to become a superstar that can stand and fight for their people), and c) there are people both able and willing to use NEO's schematics to reconstruct it for Aloe. This trope also works for NEO itself, as in both Undertale and Deltarune, the use of it for sympathetic purposes ended in its immediate destruction. Sure, it still gets wrecked, but not for a long while and gets rebuilt into a larger form anyways.
    • The notion that the "canon event" theory is bogus, as well as the idea that disruption always ends in universal collapse gets touched on a bit more. Aside from symbolic speculation, it's stated that Earth-1124 (Hoodrats!) has five variants of Sky, but Kenji, Judith, and that world's Boyfriend all cook the books to ensure Cam thinks the only "Sky" of that dimension is Skyblack.
  • Adaptational Mundanity: The remaining SSN cast has been severed from the original mod's supernatural elements, just like Salty and Itsumi themselves. Hunter and Ava continue living a normal life, and the others now work jobs related to their original roles (e.g. Connor is a police cadet, Itsumi's parents are entertainers, and Opheebop is the mayor of Salty's hometown.)
  • Adaptation Origin Connection:
    • Peni Parker and Ben Reilly's universes have no connection to each other. Here, Aloe and Kenji's corresponding universes are parallel timelines — one without important characters that don't originate from hololive, and one with said characters, Kenji included.
    • Inverted with Grimbo and Mobian Boyfriend; although the latter debuted in the former's home mod and therefore should be from the same universe, he is instead rewritten to be a native of the original Sonic's world. Grimbo, meanwhile, is from his own universe, which aligns more with the true origins of his basis.
  • Adaptational Villainy: As a whole, the Funkin' Society remains as fundamentally flawed as the original Spider-Society and is ruled by Agent Blueballs with the same iron fist as Miguel's such that canon events abandon innocent people and disregard the emotions of the Society's members, making him and dozens if not hundreds of Boyfriends worse off than their original counterparts. As for specific examples:
    • Kenji Tensei was chronologically the first protagonist before his world's Aloe, and remains on the side of good in the background afterwards. Here, he replaces Ben Reilly/the Scarlet Spider and is thus one of Agent Blueballs's major confidants... for some reason?
    • As they fill in for the Prowler and Green Goblin respectively, Hank J. Wimbleton is much more open to collaborating with Tricky the Clown, whereas the original would never have even considered working with Dr. Hoffnar from the amount of grief he's given him and the AAHW.
    • The original Ghost Peppered Salty is just a mature version of both of Salty's canon counterparts. Here, he's the true identity of White Hank & Miles G. Morales's counterpart, and thus more prone to violence.
  • Adaptational Wimp: The Absolute Solver, originally portrayed as a nearly-unstoppable rogue AI capable of manipulating matter on the atomic level, is kicked out of Drone Boyfriend's body without permanent functional damage through a mere Dope Slap by the human Galfriend.
  • Aliens Are Bastards: Zig-zagged. Crewmates and Impostors exist in most universes, but the only ones that matter to each Boyfriend are typically counterparts of the Vs. Impostor cast, specifically Black's crew. On the other hand, more humanoid aliens seem to be more trustworthy if they're involved in a Boyfriend's life, as a couple (Nenechi and Starcatcher Girlfriend) outright serve as Love Interests.
  • All There in the Manual: While largely an art project, additional context for many of the characters featured is given or implied in the comments of each post and update.
  • Ambiguous Situation: The Corruption, Venom's counterpart. It exists and is most likely a canon event per the Across script, but to what extent is deliberately left unclear both due to the Law of Conservation of Detail when reading said script and because the Symbiote has had its fair share of uncomfortable interactions with the original Spider-Verse cast. It's later established to have been neutered into something more akin to the original Venom Symbiote, but the jury's still out on how much havoc it's caused across The Multiverse (not helped by the fact that its first mention is confirming it exists in HoloFunk's universe as a counterpart of VEN#M, who is mostly known for killing Addy Brock and the original Peni Parker's Aunt May.)
  • Anyone Can Die: Not the protagonists, but the confirmed list of people connected to them who have died in canon events. While some of them are simply literal adherence to canon from both Spider-Verse and the original mods (e.g. Speedz, Mickey), the list also includes a surprising amount of Alternate Universe counterparts of vanilla and modded characters who were not direct participants in their mods' stories (Cyan, Parker, and Skarlet's variant from D-Sides being the biggest examples), showing just how much damage the Funkin' Society's enforcement of canon events does to each member's universe.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The easiest way to maximize the physical damage against a Boyfriend is to go for whichever organ glows in their original mod's game over screen, as that gives them their Spider-Sense. It's usually somewhere in the balls or ovaries, but there's a good chunk of counterparts that use different organs. Solazar learns the hard way he has to go for Salty's heart to kill him this way.
  • The Bad Guy Wins:
    • By definition, Benjamin Fairest working with the Society in any capacity counts as this, as his parents abused him in order to force him to follow their legacy as musicians. Considering Blueballs is a Control Freak due to being in Miguel's shoes, this may very well be an intentional detail.
    • Though Arthur/Legion remains dead, he ultimately got what he wanted in this continuity by killing Girlfriend and allowing the Disaster Dominoes to fall, letting Agent Blueballs lose it and become a new Knight Templar half-Trollge similar to JJ on his own in his pursuit of justice.
  • The Cameo:
  • Cerebus Retcon:
    • The Deltarune gags in HoloFunk are taken completely seriously to give Aloe her SP//dr counterpart in the form of the NEO body. This throws her into all the ups and downs being Peni's counterpart would suggest.
    • Played for laughs with the slot for the sentient Spider-Popsicle; rather than another ice cream treat or one of the bootleg plushies the original Boyfriend calls out in place of Spidey's regular popsicles, it's a normal human-sized variant of Ice Boyfriend.
    • The Rubik's Cube Spider-Man Noir is so fascinated by. In the original films, it was merely because being from a monochrome world meant it stood out to him. For Toon Boyfriend, however, it's much more than that — he begins projecting his memories of the Funkin' Gang and the first taste of happiness he had felt in years onto the cube, and while he still gets some attention once he takes it back, what's more important is his ability to use his interest to keep Satan at bay, which together with his new outlook on life allows him to slowly steer his fate away from history repeating itself and towards a brighter future.
  • Cloudcuckooland: Earth-16063, Aloe's homeworld (at least relative to the rest of the Gang's homeworlds.) It's a cutesy, colorful Urban Fantasy centered around Tokyo, Japan where gag anime logic can trigger at a moment's notice, all of the focus characters have at least a couple screws loose in spite of their hyper-competency, and everyone has five fingers on their hands.
  • Crapsaccharine World: Earth-13166, Kenji's homeworld. It's got extra crossovers & fanon logic compared to Earth-16063 and the interactions that form the bread and butter of crossover fanservice, sure, but government corruption and organized crime run rampant to the point of their effects being a Central Theme. Consequently, its cast is more powerful and connected than their 16063 counterparts, but are often secretly miserable and/or on the run from violent persuants. Not that the main story bothers to take it seriously once Kenji brings its baggage to the Society, given that it's the counterpart of Spider-Verse's resident punching bag representative of bad melodrama, Ben Reilly's homeworld of Earth-94B.
  • Dark Fic: Downplayed; while the story doesn't go out of its way to treat each source work's characters like crap, it's still a Film Fic of a story with major character death, a higher projected body count, and everything wrong with the way Miguel ran the Spider-Society. In particular, one major plot point that still sticks is that canon events suck, and conflict arises from that titanic amount of misery being swept under the rug. Being the counterparts of Peni Parker and Josh Keaton's Peter Parker respectively, Aloe and Bartholomew can attest despite their fun-loving origins.
  • Death by Adaptation: Cyan, Parker, Sen, Cam's Girlfriend, Porker Lewis, Neko, and D-Sides Skarlet are all dead in this continuity, wiped out by canon events.
  • Death World: Earth-666, based on the Surreal Horror animation series I Can't Sleep. People are maimed and killed in nonsensical ways, and its Society representative Keith can barely explain what he sees there to Benjamin without sounding like a lunatic — not helped by the fact that Ben really does not like him for that.
  • Decomposite Character: Earth-65B Peter Parker's arc is split between two characters, neither of which follow his role perfectly, due to a mismatch with the personality of Gracie's Boyfriend. The first is Sen, a separate protagonist from a Role Swap AU different from the one Gracie's world is based on, while the second is Cyan, a non-protagonist version of Kenji whose universe placement also gives him overlap with Addy Brock, the most prominent major death in Peni's story.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: Earths-2819, 120607, and 2920 are all in black-and-white, representing old cartoons, notebook sketches, and digital sketches respectively.
  • Disabled in the Adaptation: Sunday ends up encountering Grimbo/The X in the "Paranoia" cover/"Trypophobia," which ends in their hospitalization and an injury that somehow renders them fully protanopic, unable to see the color red whatsoever.
  • Film Fic: It's Spider-Verse, but with Boyfriend, his friends, and his rivals instead.
  • Gecko Ending:
    • DJX has Judith and X tie the knot and start a family before the events of the Across acts.
    • Inverted with The Blueballs Incident; Arthur gets the last laugh by killing Girlfriend, meaning Agent Blueballs never stops fighting and ultimately undoes all of his development throughout the original mod after he begins enforcing canon events.
    • Downplayed with the old HoloFunk script Kenji originates from; it's extended long enough to nab him for the Society, but none of the plot's loose ends are ever wrapped up.
  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face:
    • The only mention of where HoloFunk's other protagonist Fubuki Shirakami is at any point in the story is her kneecapping Coco with her revolver after mistaking her for Spamco. As our page on Gun Safety will gladly point out, a police detective should know that you do not open fire unless you know exactly who or what it is you're targeting.
    • This is apparently the lethal fate of Skarlet at .XML's hands in the D-Sides universe.
  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog: The premise of "Bluepocrisy." Cam's been sent to the world of the first Boyfriend replacement, Cadence, following a sizable lead from Kenji. He doesn't want to be there or take Cadence back with him, since he doesn't know anything about her himself. Cue him inexplicably deciding to harp on Cadence's age when he's already hired Lexi rather than anything more plausible on the Society's end to try and get out of the whole thing.
  • In Spite of a Nail:
    • Itsumi replaces Ganke Lee instead of any potential Love Interest for Miles, indicating that she and Salty are still hopelessly clammy about their actual feelings for each other (if not demoted to really just being friends outright.)
    • Even without the original mod's story to bring them together, the SSN cast has still turned out remarkably similar to the situations the arcade machine put them in, working jobs that mirror their original roles. Opheebop even still has a position of power, as mayor of Salty's hometown.
    • Although the Aloe featured isn't the one who met Boyfriend and Girlfriend and learned from them, Salty's Tabi notes that she reminds him of the duo for some reason. This serves as the impetus for him to destroy the NEO suit and attempt to kill Aloe outright in the climax of the Into act.
    • More generally, apparently Boyfriend's mere existence as Cyan in Aloe's world means the latter counts as a Boyfriend, despite the plot of HoloFunk 6.0.0 simply being a harmless jaunt with her ex-coworkers unrelated to FNF. Cyan himself is also this trope compared to Kenji, as he still looks up to Kanata Amane despite being unrelated in his universe. He also gets involved in the story anyways despite being written to move him away from HoloFunk's plot. This ultimately ends up killing him.
    • In a more dramatic example, Benjamin Fairest ultimately winds up in the same position as all the other Boyfriends: in or around music.
    • As the Corruption is Venom's counterpart, it or its vessels likely exist in every universe, including the ones that aren't supposed to have it. However, nobody in the Funkin' Gang has actually encountered it except for Aloe, and while the Society is aware of its existence, their records of its awakenings are far and few between.
  • Meet Your Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The old script of HoloFunk is its own universe separate from the one that brought Aloe to the Funkin' Gang. The end result is Kenji's coexistence with the prime Aloe and his role in the Society, much to everybody's chagrin as he mulls over his world's lore and tries to act like a flamboyant anime protagonist.
    • The beta/"Unsalted" version of "Best Girl" is brought up as a single Salty once composed. Its in-universe reception is rather poor.
  • Meta Twist:
    • The Corruption is Venom's replacement, meaning it fits into The Stations of the Canon as a counterpart for encountering the latter. However, the story puts a double-layered twist on its involvement — not only has no one encountered it sans a scant few individuals, the first documented case (Aloe) originates from a world whose original writing explicitly rejected the idea of the Corruption's existence.
    • Boyfriend's rogues still exist on Earth-16063, even though they've also been branded rejects by the script it's derived from.
  • Misery Builds Character:
    • Like in the original Spider-Verse, the dark side of the "canon event" theory is that it repeatedly implies the stress of fighting and losing people is always a net benefit for a Boyfriend. The Funkin' Gang comes into conflict with the Society when they realize Cam's enforcement of this is increasingly likely to be completely unnecessary.
    • Earth-13166 operates on this at the narrative level, with its backstory almost actively conspiring to make its cast miserable compared to Earth-16063 by recreating its constituent canons but also showering them in connections and access to increased power. Which makes Kenji's loyalty to Cam fit him like a glove.
  • Mythology Gag: Every universe identifier is derived from a release date or other number relevant to them, with the digits moved around or changed slightly:
    • Salty's Earth is numbered 409, which is the anniversary of Salty's Sunday Night in US notation (04/09, April 9th).
    • Brooke's Earth is 88, the anniversary of Five Nights at Freddy's (August 8th.)
    • Aloe's Earth is 16063, which is the Japanese notation for Cover Corporation's founding date (June 13th, 2016) with the "1" in "13" dropped.
    • Toon Boyfriend's Earth is 2819, which is a rearrangement of the digits for 1928 (the year his world is stuck in, and also the release year of Plane Crazy.)
    • Mobian Boyfriend's Earth is 623, the anniversary of Sonic the Hedgehog (June 23rd) in US notation.
    • Sketchy's world is 120607, which contains the anniversary of Jason the Art Kid's remaster in UK notation (June 12th.)
    • Blueballs's Earth is 1249, referencing how the last update of The Blue Balls Incident before 2.0 was denoted with a 1 followed by a decimal point and 24 nines.
    • Judith's Earth is 221711, which is the US notation for November 17th, 2022 (the release date of DJX) backwards.
    • Kenji's Earth is 13166, which is also Cover's founding date, this time ordered in DYM (highlighting the nature of his universe as an Alternate Continuity of Aloe's own.)
    • Player's Earth is 804, the anniversary of Friday Night Funkin' Logic (April 8th) in UK notation.
    • RecD Boyfriend's Earth is 1215, the upload date of Dadbattle WITH LYRICS in MYD with the third 1 dropped.
    • Clay Boyfriend's Earth is 5619, which is a rearrangement of the year Play-Doh was patented (1956.)
    • Ghost Peppered Salty's world is the Odd Name Out of the bunch, being numbered 21 after the "what's 9 + 10?" meme for Rule of Funny.
  • Narnia Time: The six worlds of the original Funkin' Gang have their time flow at different speeds, which conveniently covers for their characters' plot developments. Using Earths-409 and 1003 as the baseline, Earths-88 and 16063 flow at twice their speed, Earth-2819 flows at five times their speed, and Earth-623, well... no thanks to how the original Sonic's age is handled, nobody knows for sure.
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Happens a few times with the multiversal Boyfriends:
    • Aloe's use of NEO is much more successful than Mettaton due to the lack of characters on the level of the Genocide Route player. The result is a hardy fighter on the level of Spamton in terms of durability and relative strength. This trope also comes into play with respect to Spamton, as his use of the body is limited by the plans being literal garbage in his world, with no access to repairs or refinement. In a different world, one where the schematics on the surface can be taken to a person that can refine and iterate on them, the result is what Spamton could have only dreamed of.
    • Aloe herself counts, too. In her homeworld, she's "merely" a physically-immature demon where powerful fantasy races and occupations are dime-a-dozen. In the multiverse of FNF fanworks, however, she's one of the stronger Boyfriend counterparts unassisted, simply because most of them are human or equivalent.
    • Toon Boyfriend is ultimately unable to escape Satan's wrath, but does a damn good job holding back against it. As most other villains are regular transhumans, he has no problem dealing with them thanks to this experience.
    • Blueballs kills Reality Warpers for a living and once killed an actual god once he was pissed off enough. This is a problem, as this version of him is slowly losing it and wants to use his powers on the comparatively-normal members of the Funkin' Gang.
  • Not His Sled:
    • The live-action Prowler cameo is occupied by a version of Sky. If this were translated back to the original Across script, that would mean a Doctor Octopus appears in place of the Prowler.
    • Toon Boyfriend and Mobian Boyfriend switch places in the Spider-Verse script relative to Spider-Noir and Spider-Ham's roles when contextually appropriate. For example, it's the former that saves Aloe from Tabi when he's close to killing her, while in the original script it was Spider-Ham who bailed Peni out from the Scorpion.
    • Blueballs is not the original, but rather a version where Arthur won and killed Girlfriend.
    • The Corruption is a canon event, replacing the Venom Symbiote. However, it has only actually showed itself (thus warranting a Boyfriend's intervention) in very few universes, Aloe and Bartholomew being cited as specific examples.
    • Boyfriend remains alive in Gracie's universe, despite replacing Gwen's Peter Parker. Sen, from a different Role Swap AU, takes the fall instead. There is technically a "swapped" Boyfriend that still dies in the form of Cyan, but he appears to be more akin to Addy Brock.
  • Off the Rails:
    • Earth-16063, compared to the game it was derived from. The simple act of making "BIG SHOT" fully canon and remembering why the NEO frame was originally drafted slowly but surely sets Aloe's arc on a wildly-different path compared to canon that gradually turns her into a completely different type of fighter. Further derailing things is the reveal that opponents like Tabi have begun appearing in the two years between Aloe's return home and her reappearance to Salty, even though due to the portrayal of Cyan, Crystal, and Earth-16063 Daddy Dearest as well as why they're written that way, they aren't supposed to exist in the original script.
    • It's suggested this is what the death of Earth-3110 Skarlet amounts to for .XML's story compared to the original mod, as it implicitly occurs right after her intended appearance in D-Sides. While .XML by nature doesn't need much (re-)railing, it's still enough to throw him for a loop, especially since the cause of death is confirmed to be an Accidental Murder.
  • Police Are Useless: The only mention of a police figure actually doing something is Fubuki Shirakami (an Idiot Hero detective that may or may not be subsidized by her world's local police) mistaking the real Coco Kiryu for Spamco. And then promptly kneecapping her with a revolver.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: A number of character choices have creative liberties taken with them due to limitations in both canon and available preexisting fanworks, or because it would be more entertaining:
    • The live-action Prowler cameo is covered by one of Sky instead, maintaining the joke of not being animated but with a different character that, like Davis, already has many different variants.
    • Certain Boyfriends do not mirror their counterparts perfectly due to the aforementioned limitations. For example, Plush Spidey's counterpart is instead a member of Kirby's species (from Funkin In The Forgotten Land)note , and neither Peni Parker nor Takuya Yamashiro's counterparts (Aloe Mano and Cerbera respectively) have giant robots in canon — necessitating the need to create new companions for them. Peter Parkedcar's counterpart is also simply a Boyfriend driving a car (from "Race Traitors") instead of a sentient vehicle.
    • Although Peppered Salty would be the most obvious choice for Miles G., being Salty's official Alternate Self, that version of him is too cowardly and weak to ever be an effective villain. Instead, the unofficial Ghost Peppered Salty, a ruthless Older and Wiser counterpart inspired by both canon versions of Salty, takes his place.
    • Anything resembling the backstory of Gwen's Peter/the Lizard would be out of character for Gracie's Boyfriend to pull, since he has no reason to want to become stronger. Thus, this character arc (including his demise) is shunted onto Sen from Friday Night Flippin', who is more of a Flat Character that can be molded into a Lizard counterpart.
    • Cyan dying in a canon event allows for an equivalent to Addy Brock's death without killing off someone from HoloFunk's cast, which is a huge faux pas in fanfiction when done for shock value.
    • For Sky counterparts, since the only one that's been seen in Friday Night Funkin' WITH LYRICS is Ski (who has still not recovered from RecD!Pico's storytime fiasco), she represents the character in Earth-1215 instead. And since there isn't a world correlated to Faker Sky at the moment, she gets her own universe designation (Earth-02235).
  • Recursive Canon:
    • "REALiZE," the Japanese ED for Across, is a real song on Earth-16063.
    • Adjacent to the above is Earth-13166 where a very basic version of FNF is a Playstation game, serving as Kenji's spark of inspiration for his career.
  • Retired Badass: Ruria, a mercenary from her own mod, is seen as a regular music teacher at Salty's college, having hung up her arms some time in the past.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: As the stand-in for Spider-Cat, Pikafriend embodies this, the art he's featured in showing a cute face during the scene where Salty is holding him during the climatic chase.
  • Rogues Gallery: The original entourage the Spider-Gang encounters is filled in by Zardy (Tombstone), Tabi (Scorpion), an unrevealed Lizard counterpart, Tricky (the Green Goblin), Green (the Vulture), Sky (Doctor Octopus) and Hank J. Wimbleton (the Prowler.)
  • Rule of Funny: Rather than come up with any complicated diegetic explanation for wall-crawling, the story opts to dismiss it as a side effect of each Boyfriend's sheer force of will because of this trope. Hey, it still covers for Miles's original bout of Power Incontinence, too!
  • Rule of Symbolism: The chase scene is represented through a cover of a "Final Escape" remix, originally meant to be the final song against Xenophanes. Now remember what Miguel's true failures as a hero are and how that applies to Blueballs, and what the villain the whole shebang is distracting the entire Society from is based on.
  • Shout-Out: The characters featured in the scrapped covers are represented through Stylistic Suck caricatures. Most are simply Super-Deformed versions of the originals, but Bunfriend's portrayal specifically resembles TerminalMontage Sonic/"Chilidogs." Aloe's portrayal also bears a passing resemblance to Walfie's Smol Ame and derivatives thereof, which HoloFunk itself references in the original Ame's sprites.
  • Spider-Sense: Each Boyfriend has one of these in the form of a pulsing, adrenaline-like feeling coming from whichever organ glows in their game over screen. Yes, this means most of them feel it exactly where you think it does. No, this does not apply to at least half the members of the Funkin' Gang, Salty included, since they're either girls and/or use a different organ. Which is the reason Solazar can't kill him in the collider fight.
  • Spared by the Adaptation:
    • Tricky, having had a long history of Joker Immunity justified by his mad science, survives the initial collider explosion where it had originally killed Earth-1610B's Green Goblin.
    • Toon Boyfriend escapes Hell, unlike in canon. Although Satan tries to ensure he won't enjoy it, the Into acts give him the second wind he needs to defy him.
    • The Mario's Madness songs are their own universes, meaning the worlds within are no longer slaves to Ultra M.
    • Hunter and Ava are stated to be living a normal life without many complications, implying the incident that required Opheebop to intervene in order to save their lives in the original SSN either never happened or had a much more positive outcome.
  • The Stations of the Canon: The trope is discussed in much the same way as the original Spider-Verse films, with the topic of canon events and how all of them, good and bad, seemingly must play out uninterrupted if they begin to happen — even if that means others must die. Notably for this story, Kenji is also made out to be an Allegorical Character for the trope where Ben Reilly was not, as he comes from a story that enforced it as much as possible and focused on the deeper ramifications of each individual event occurring.
  • Sugar Apocalypse: Downplayed. During the two years Earth-16063 experienced during the Time Skip, Aloe was forced to take a stand against Boyfriend's darker rivals, Tabi and the Corruption being mentioned at the bare minimum. She manages to beat all of them back before they can do more damage to the world's cutesy, colorful setting, but isn't quite the same afterwards.
  • Super Mode: The Nightmare forms, supposedly accessible to any fighter in The Multiverse but requiring intense focus to activate. If they're anything like the original mod and Indie Cross: The Series, they supercharge the host's abilities and grant them new thematically-appropriate superpowers.
  • Take That!:
    • The controversial Vs Brightside is used as a stand-in for Earth-1610B Peter's "bully Maguire" phase. While enough of a jab on its own considering it's a particularly low moment in Raimiverse Peter's life, there's also the consideration that "bully Maguire" himself is a hot topic of debate over how much he's supposed to be lame.
    • Earth-67's counterpart is the world of Friday Night Funkin' Logic, making fun of its simplified animation and Adaptation Deviation. Even the Society itself thinks the world is lame, even though Player's accomplishments there would look pretty good in a personal file.
    • In place of the popsicle, Boyfriend's introduction calls out his Real Life Shoddy Knockoff Product plushies.
    • Kenji being made more immature and The Friend Nobody Likes is meant to align with the heavy criticism surrounding his home universe's script, often judged for its Kudzu Plot and excess melodrama. Hilariously enough, the Spider-Verse version of Ben Reilly himself is a jab at The Clone Saga for the exact same reasons.
    • Amor is a wanted criminal who has been publicly executed in most universes.
    • One canon event is that every Boyfriend must compose a bad song at some point. Any song from any mod is apparently fair game to be mocked through this regardless of universe, with the "Unsalted" version of "Best Girl" and Vs. Flaky's "Whammy" being mentioned as what Salty and Brooke respectively ended up putting out.
  • There Are No Therapists: Averted, unless your name is Keith Taylor. Benjamin loves his job and isn't as desensitized from repetition as Ezekiel Sims, but seems to think Keith is beyond saving since nothing from his world of Earth-666 makes enough sense for Ben to properly talk him through.
  • They Killed Kenny Again: Cerbera is fated to die in every universe in amusing ways that always end with his corpse disposed of in a trash can. There's exactly one exception to this, where he becomes the story's counterpart of Takuya Yamashiro.
  • Time Skip: Unlike Spider-Verse, it's been confirmed each universe has time flow differently. As a result, each member of the original Funkin' Gang experienced a different amount of time between Into and Across.
    • Earths-409 and 1003 have had one year pass, the same for Miles and Gwen in Spider-Verse.
    • Earths-88 and 16063 have had two years pass, enough for Brooke Jr. to be born and appear as a developed infant. On Aloe's side, this timeframe has given her the opportunity to upgrade NEO after it was destroyed on Earth-409, but has also exposed Tokyo to Boyfriend's Rogues Gallery and hit Aloe hard enough in the ensuing conflict to have developed a drinking habit once she was legally able to do so.
    • Earth-623 has its time progression left expunged because of the various inconsistencies in the original Sonic's age, leaving Bunfriend's new age unclear.
    • Earth-2819 has had five years pass, though the world is still stuck in 1928 and nobody's aged. Toon Boyfriend is thus 30, but is still stuck in the body of a 19-year-old.
  • Transplanted Character Fic: Subverted, and justified in-universe. The Society goes to great pains to ensure recruits have the experience required to align with the story's themes and narrative causality.
    • For universes whose Boyfriend counterparts are not Alternate Selves of the original or the FNF cast (caused by mods featuring them as protagonists), the Funkin' Society screens their lives for canon adherence. This is implied to be the reason Earths-16063 and 13166 use different characters for representatives despite having the same protagonists, as Earth-13166 Aloe has a very messed-up life story that doesn't play nice with Boyfriend's canon. While she was still forced to take up the role like Salty did, it's more a means to an end and it was implied Kenji was still out somewhere in Tokyo still singing and fighting even after his story ended prematurely at Week 7.
    • The universes themselves are also screened for how well they'd be able to tolerate dealing with the typical shenanigans a FNF mod entails. The universe of Heathers: The Musical (used as the focus of a bbpanzu mod) is specifically called out as one Judith rejected despite the Society initially kidnapping Veronica Sawyer, since by all accounts it's close enough to our world that the whiplash of integrating it would be disastrous.
  • Truer to the Text:
    • Grimbo inhabits his own universe instead of sharing one with Mobian Boyfriend, who instead comes from the actual world of Sonic the Hedgehog. Per the original creepypasta of his basis Xenophanes, this is actually a more accurate representation of the former, as he is a demon originating from the real world. Since Mobian Boyfriend is at best an avatar, that would likewise make him an inhabitant of the real blue blur's universe.
    • About half of all manifestations of the Darkness are based on the leaked storyboards for Pibby, which downplay the deliberate malice in its maneuvers and are themed after early internet culture. Of course, however, that means the other half (which play into the fanon portrayal of an apocalyptic corrupting force actively driven by villainous intent) gets more attention, since they create more of an actual crisis to resolve immediately.
  • Undignified Death: Cerbera, again, and again, and again. A trash can is always involved. It's only natural that the one universe where he survives this fate is the counterpart of Earth-51778, itself a hamtastic Denser and Wackier take on Spider-Man.
  • Urban Fantasy: Most universes have undertones of this due to the diverse range of fantasy races and machines the heroes and villains are, but Aloe and Kenji's worlds play this up especially, being centered around a more deliberate Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting within a modern Tokyo.
  • You Wanna Get Sued?: Sarvente does not make an appearance in the story, not just because she has no character to replace, but because LemonDew assumed he may get in trouble with the devs of the mod. Ruv only cameos due to the cameo being relatively inconsequential. Sarv does have a design for Earth-409 however, and to get past potential trouble, her name was changed to Lucifer "Lucy" Morningstar.

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