Narm Cleanup

• The entire opening scene with Cress, Mint, and Morrison's ancestors fighting Past Dhaos is just one big case of Narm. Yes, even in Japanese it's hilariously overacted (although Japanese Dhaos does manage to sound badass at least).
• The inclusion of voice clips during cutscenes is very narmful, especially in the SFC version.
  Mint: I'll create a barrier around the tree. BARRY-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!
  • Mint's voice acting in the SFC original was quite narmy in general. When she gets damaged, she sounds like a dog yelping.
  • Indignation. * ahem* sorry, IN-dig-NAY-shun!
  • WHAT the HECK is THAT???
  • "This ends HEEYA! INDIGNAYSHON!" - "It can't beee~!"
  • If there is eeeeeevil in this world, it lurks in the hearts of men...
  • Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
  • Klaus's voice acting is outright hilarious. When he says "Origin" and "Volt" in the english Game Boy Advance version, it sounds like someone smacked him in the stomach.
  • The Japanese version didn't fare much better, when he says "Volt", it still sounds like he got hit in the stomach... or like he said "Bowl!"
• Someone ran the English translation through a spell-check program that didn't recognize (and, apparently, automatically "corrected") the word Ragnarok. The end result is that the elves tell legends of a great cataclysm called Kangaroo.
• Another unintentional gem from the GBA localisation: Dhaos, accused by Cress and his friends of committing his evil acts for the sake of the environment, sardonically asks "Do I look like a tree-hugger to you?" He isn't but the very visual of Dhaos being nothing more than an eco terrorist hippie, or even just plain hugging a tree...what's not to like? Not to mention such a sardonic and informal line is very unfitting for Dhaos anyhoo.
• Dhaos's final form has a white suit, which people have nicknamed Disco Dhaos.

• In the game version of Leon's Side in the remake, we hear Marian tried to kill herself after being held prisoner by Hugo's generals. In the manga, we get treated to the scene of Marian loudly proclaiming she will kill herself when all of them are standing mere meters from her while she holds a butter knife of all things. It's completely ridiculous and blows any serious weight the scene might have had out the window.

• In Tales of Eternia, after you counter the Final Boss's instant death attack she/it utters the line "This cannot be..." in the flattest voice possible. You have to hear it to believe it.
  • Pretty much everything in the English Tales of Eternia is entirely free of drama. Meredy's enraged declaration that Shizel is dead at the end of the game, after dubbing, mostly sounds like she's about to gag. Speaking of Shizel, her English VA in this at times sounds more like a Sassy Black Woman than an intimidating villainess.
  • When Shizel returns as a cameo boss in Vesperia, her dub actress plays her with a bombastic near-screeching voice that makes her sound like Rita Repulsa.
  CURSE YOUR MISERY!!

• In a more obscure example, Karell's death in Tales of Destiny 2. You see, his sister, Harold (yes, it's a long story), already knew from the time-traveling main characters that he was going to die; her response was something among the lines of "Well, I can't do anything to change the future, so I'll focus on our goal right now". However, when Karell dies, she goes on to dramatically cry about it like a helpless little girl. Sure, some could say that even though she knew it she wasn't prepared to face it, but it's still pretty hard to feel sad by the scene. The way he's stabbed is also very narmful, as it looks like he was gently poked in the stomach rather than getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice.
  • Made worse by the fact that a healer who doesn't know Karell is supposed to die is right there... And does nothing.
• Judas breaking his mask off in his "Infernal Suffering" Mystic Arte to reveal that he's Leon Magnus? Awesome. Him doing it multiple times in a single battle, breaking off multiple ghost masks all the while? Goodbye, suspension of disbelief!

• From Tales of Symphonia, Zelos's death on Kratos's ending is hilarious.
  • This scene is made even more hilarious when Zelos is wearing his "Pickup Artist" beach outfit. If you choose to let him live and he wears that outfit, he rescues the party from Mithos in the Hall of the Great Seed in the same outfit.
    • Abusing the outfits in New Game Plus can be funny in general. For instance, near the start of the game, Lloyd is taken into custody, breaks out, sneaks around the base a little, and ducks into a room when some guards are about to see him, eliciting a "And just who the hell are you?" from the villian who was standing just inside the doorway. This is all fine in-context, but if Lloyd is wearing nothing but a pair of swimtrunks, a googly-diving mask and flippers the whole time...
    • Similarly, there's the scene at the end of Disc 1 where Colette is shot by Forcystus, tearing her clothes and revealing her crystallization to everyone. With the character's normal outfit on, the scene is fairly dramatic, but if Colette is wearing any other outfit, her outfit suddenly changes right back to her default costume without warning (due to the scene using a special character model for Colette to show her clothing damage and crystallization). With this happening at the exact moment she is hit by Forcystus, it almost looks like she's a Mario character who lost a power-up, making the scene unintentionally hilarious.
    • There's also the way she screams, "Don't look! Ugh! Don't look at me!" and then promptly falls over backwards.
• When Colette loses her soul you get this famous scene-killer:

  Colette learned Judgment

• After Presea regains her true self and discovers what has become of her father, you can't help but laugh at the scream.
  • It doesn't help at all if you recognize that same scream as the exact same scream that Timmy Turner's dad occasionally belts out.
• Also from Tales of Symphonia, the Bonus Boss's line, said in a very overly dramatic deep voice: "I will show you my true power!" The actual battle aside, that only just increased the ridiculousness of the laughably cliched villain storyline-wise.
• "What is this ominous light that threatens to ENGULF US?"
• The weirdly executed attempts to avoid gendered pronouns and names after Mithos possesses and kidnaps any one party member apart from Lloyd or Kratos. It was hilarious that the missing party member would only be referred vaguely and strangely to as "Our Friend" instead of he/she/him/her/it/insert name here while Heimdall gets rained on by fragments of the Tower of Salvation. Even more so that Genis says it unless he got kidnapped.
  • Around that same time, when the party realizes that Derris Kharlan is about to leave, dooming the world to die from mana deprivation, Genis will say "This is a much bigger problem then reuniting the worlds." and then immediately after, respond with "Who cares?! Our friend just got kidnapped!" Genis, we're already worried about your mental health. Arguing with yourself doesn't help your case. The same incident also occurs with Zelos if Genis is the one that got kidnapped, and the player isn't as worried about Zelos' mental health as they are about Genis'.
  • In the final area, reuniting the party requires Lloyd and his friend of choice to remind the other party members of what they have learned during the journey. They're divided into thematic pairs of Genis and Raine, Zelos and Sheena, and Presea and Regal. If one of the six is your friend of choice, Colette replaces them. Thus, if Regal is your chosen party member, you get to see a dramatic scene in which Presea tries to stop Colette from killing Alicia. Really?
• Regal obtained the title, "El Presidente"! Averted in the Spanish translation, for obvious reasons.
• The scene after the first dungeon, when Lloyd manages to figure out that Colette has lost her sense of touch...by giving her possibly hot possibly cold coffee. Even if you could stand that, the fact that Colette dramatically drops the coffee cup at the end of the scene just pushes it into Narm. It also helped cement Lloyd amongst the fandom as a guy who's really good at mindscrewing people with a cup of coffee.
  • And the sound the cup makes when it hits the ground makes it seem as if it was actually empty.
  • Try watching the same scene in Japanese in Chronicles. All drama remaining in the scene is hurt by excessive owl hooting and background music that's loud enough to drown out Colette.
• The scene where Magnius's forces attack Palmacosta. There's one part where a Desian mage, taking a page from the infamous Pebble Dance, does an interperative dance around his staff for about five seconds in order to produce one fireball; one-third of the game's weakest black magic spell. Then Genis just blocks it with Force Field, so it was completely useless.
  • The best part of this is how Genis struts offscreen after blocking the fireball with the smuggest look on his face, like he's just done something amazing.
    "Amateurs."
• "It's Magnius from the eastern ranch!" "That's LORD Magnius, vermin!"
  • If you look at Magnius as he says it and crushes the poor guy's neck, he finishes the line by making an extremely goofy face.
  • Magnius is just narm on legs.
• When starting the boss fight against Magnius, he has the scripted line, "You really think you're gonna live through this?!" which is bad enough on its own. However, each character has their own individual sound bite reacting to a number of events, one of which is 'enemy spellcaster is charging an attack' - every time this trigger happens, one of the party members the player isn't controlling will shout their alert phrase. Lloyd's alert phrase for that trigger happens to be "Not a chance!" Magnius begins casting immediately after saying that opening line, so if the player isn't controlling Lloyd at the time, he sounds awfully pessimistic for an Idiot Hero.
• The scene where Lloyd finds out that Kratos is his biological father. It goes along pretty smoothly until Colette comes out. Lloyd is in complete shock upon learning that Kratos is his dad and Colette, just finding out and seemingly not shocked at all, proceeds to give him a heartfelt speech about how it doesn't matter who his (Lloyd's) parents are or what his background is and that he's him no matter what. There are also two Renegade mooks right in front of her ready to kill on command while this is going on (but then again they're such pitiful enemies, it's not surprising she's not feeling too threatened). Lloyd then approaches Kratos and gives him a speech about how "no life should be born for the purpose of dying" and how he disapproves of what Cruxis does. Did we mention the guy's lying on the ground in pain after taking one of Yuan's...electricity ball things to the back? Thank God Mithos comes out and points out how corny it was!
  "Wow, that was an amazingly corny speech. Congratulations."
  • That entire scene was funny, just for the little things: The scene starts with Lloyd waking up to find Yuan just standing next to him, saying "Do you want to meet your father?" No context, no warning, he's just there. Gets better when, instead of asking why the hell he's there/how he got in/what it is he wants, he just asks "What have you done with my dad?!", as if that's the most bizarre/worrying thing about the situation. When he leaves the house, and he finds out that Kratos is his father, he says in his anguish "No...Kratos can't be my dad. I c...I can't believe that! I won't believe that", which would be great and all if the guy wasn't still there, hearing everything he was saying. Even if you didn't like Kratos, that's still a little harsh. Then you get Yuan ruining whatever menace he'd accumulated with the line "You changed once you got a family!", as if he was just complaining that Kratos had just stopped going to the pub or something. And then, to top it all off, there's Mithos' hilariously over-the-top evil laugh when he's kicking the shit out of Yuan. Combine it with his incredibly bored expression, and overall, what should be a sad and heartfelt scene turns into comedy GOLD.
  • It gets even better. Don't press anything while Mithos is kicking Yuan. He keeps doing it while Lloyd looks on. Even Colette at least bothered to look shocked.
  • Don't forget when a random Renegade mook knocks Lloyd down with a cheesy "thunk" noise, and Lloyd immediately gets back up like nothing happened! He then approaches Yuan and says, "Don't mock my mom!" and tries to hit him with his sword, which Yuan dodges by apparently ice-skating out of the way, then tries to blast Lloyd. Kratos takes the shot, kneels down before Lloyd and says, "Are you all right? ...Good." and promptly falls over backwards, still kneeling.
  • It gets worse when Mithos shoots at Presea and Altessa takes the shot for her. He jumps about three feet into the air for no apparent reason upon getting hit, and the animation makes it look more like he's slipping on a banana peel than being shot.
  • Right after that, Tabatha responds to her master getting shot by saying that Mithos saved her once. His response? "Shut up." He then shoots her with magic, knocking her down while she says her line again. It's supposed to be a dramatic moment, and it is, but Tabatha's voice and tone makes that particular part more funny than serious.
• Right after some of Zelos's best character development in his Flanoir scene, we get this gem:
  Zelos: Did I piss you off?
  Lloyd: Hell yes! Of course! It'd be a huge problem for me if everything were destroyed!
• After dodging a punch from Dirk, Lloyd gives us this:
  Lloyd: Ugh...! You don't have to hit me!
• Lloyd's exclamation "Don't even start spewing the word, "justice"! I hate that word!" was more than a little mood-ruining. Taken out of context it can easily be used to portray Lloyd as a super criminal.
• One of the lines Zelos can say at finishing a battle is, "Man, I rule! I'm soooo cool!" You can also choose to have someone cook at the end of a battle. So having Zelos say this, and then getting the message "Zelos failed to make a sandwich!" is incredibly funny.
  • Another of Zelos' battle lines is going "Damn, I must be a genius!" at inventing a new arte. It's entirely possible to spam his base Demon Fang move, have him throw out his attempt at a Badass Boast.. and then promptly belt out a Double Demon Fang. The tone of his voice for using it almost seems like it was made to emphasize the likelihood of this happening.
• More wonderful battle Narm. The characters all take their battles - including their opening battle quotes - very seriously...but apparently the artists who designed the monsters didn't get that memo. So you'll have Kratos commanding, "Don't let up!" or "Give them no quarter!" while facing a pair of ladybugs.
• One of Zelos' lines when choosing a battle plan mid battle: "We're goin' with mah pimp plan."
• In the final battle of Tales of Symphonia, the boss will teleport next to you and then yell "get away from me!" Geez, if you don't want me near you, why'd you teleport next to me?
• Tales of Symphonia has a scene where there are a bunch of guards holding their spears up who are then ordered not to attack. In the English language version, the order is, "lower your weapons!" Lowering a weapon is actually an *aggressive** stance when the weapon in question is a spear.
• Right after you defeat the monster in Iselia at the beginning of Symphonia, you find out that said monster used to be Marble. It's just as disturbing as it sounds, but the effect is quickly lost because of how Genis chooses to handle the situation: He says Marble's name twice, looks toward the sky and spreads his arms out, then screams "NOOOO!" from his place on the ground. All while the camera dramatically zooms out from him. All these details combined made the scene come across as so cliched that it's hard not to laugh at him.
• Also, one of the Iselia civilians has the same voice as Lloyd, just pitched slightly deeper. It's such a bad attempt at covering it up, it sounds like Lloyd's mastered ventriloquism.
  • Interestingly enough, another villager in that same scene is voiced by Jennifer Hale, so technically you have Sheena asking the mayor to spare a child!
• There's also how Presea chooses to handle things at Rodyle's ranch. Rodyle is a ridiculous villain anyway (probably only being beaten by Magnius in that regard), but when he tells Presea he would have treated her better if she'd just made him a Key Crest, Presea yells, "...DIE!!" ...And then she just stands there. She was previously an Emotionless Girl, but come on. And then Rodyle ruins any credibility by giggling.
• Botta's death was really stupid. First, the aforementioned "DIE!!" events, then Rodyle drowns the humans at the ranch just to try and slow down the group, and Colette goes, "No!!" in a really whiny voice. Things get a bit more serious when you fight Rodyle (aside from the fact he equipped a Cruxis Crystal straight onto himself...shouldn't he know that turns you into a monster?) but then, he hits the destruct button. By staggering really slowly over to it and then collapsing on top of it. So, Botta and his mooks burst in and order everyone to leave so they can fix the machine...then they decide to kill themselves rather than let the whole ranch flood, because they need the mana canon. But, the room Lloyd and co are in has a dome in the ceiling they could have easily escaped from. Lloyd even tries to tell them that, but they ignore him and shut the screen. Regal then tries to kick in a gigantic metal wall, which just looks ridiculous. Then everyone starts shouting about being "surrounded" by three dragons, even though they've battled dragons without much problem before. All this than leads to Mithos conveniently riding in on some Rheairds to save everyone. It's also never explained how they all manage to get on them, and they totally forget about trying to save the rest of the captives at the ranch.
• So you have your absolutely awesome duel with Kratos. Then there's a heartwarming scene where Lloyd forgives Kratos for betraying the party. You think a Tear Jerker might be coming up when Kratos goes to release Origin's Seal. Then he goes through with it, and what happens? Yuan shows up and catches the barely-living Kratos, who flops his head towards the camera at the most disturbing of angles, and offers up this beautiful narmy, wangsty gem.
  Kratos: It looks like I've failed to die once more.

  • The funniest part is Kratos' expression during that line. He looks like he got a little too into the angel dust there.
  • There's also when you defeat Abyssion. The Nebilim then tries to possess Presea, saying Presea's loneliness and isolation make her the perfect vessel. The group manage to snap her out of it, then Genis apparently cremates Abyssion's body. Only then for a box to pop up with cheerful music, "Presea earned the title: Empty Soul!"
• The overseas version of the game removed the voices from the skits, but failed to alter the lip flaps just in case. As a result, on one skit which was just fine in the Japanese version, for the overseas version you instead get the infamous moment where a despondent Sheena takes a strangely long time and a large amount of syllables to say "I..." (She was saying "Watashi..." a few times in the JP version with voices on and matching lip flaps. no voices and unaltered lip flaps result in her sounding rather slow.)
• Regal's original concept art (used in the first game's manual as page number artwork) and appearance on the cover of the PS3 compilation Tales of Symphonia Chronicles both display a ridiculously over-the-top frown, even for him.
• One particular Good Bad Bug introduced in either the PS2 version or the Chronicles version is Sheena's character model remaining in its dirty state after recruiting her in Luin. Its easily fixed but not doing so leads to otherwise serious moments becoming quite silly when Sheena looks like she hasn't had a bath in forever.
• Mithos delivers a line that sounds like he's about to say the B-word, and was told to tone down his language. What's even better is what he chooses to replace it with.
  Mithos: You... son of Kratos!
• "Goodbye... (8 seconds later) Mithos." It's even funnier in the Chronicles version if the subtitles are turned on.
• Early in the game, when trying to get the summons, one of them mentions Mithos. The characters all question if it was the same Mithos from the stories they've heard regarding the Church of Martel, only for Raine to randomly claim that Mithos is a common boys name. Not only do you not encounter any characters named Mithos, but the one character who is named Mithos is so obviously the same Mithos being talked about makes the comment silly, as if the game was trying to deflect a Captain Obvious Reveal.

Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World

• "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality." It can seem such a lame phrase; as Arc Words they may/may not fit into the story well, but everyone keeps saying it. Not to mention the game flashing back to that conversation every five minutes for the first hour of play, then having next to no flashbacks for the rest of the game, even when they might actually be helpful.
• Possibly, Marta's Mystic Arte. After a pretty cool incantation, she leaps up into the air with some glowing effects and then... near-dead silence followed by damage (and healing to the party). Apparently the god of healing's volume isn't that high.
• Early on in Luin, when Emil tells Richter that he saw Marta, Richter proceeds to grab him and shake him. The animation makes Emil move so loosely that he looks like a rag doll, not helped by the fact that Richter's shaking goes on for an unnecessarily long amount of time.
• The voice acting, compared to the first game (which still showing its age with its high-pitched voices and sometimes over-enthusiastic characters]] feels much more stilted, it feels like half the voice actors were just in it for the paycheck, aside from Bosch, Smith, Kawaye, and Hebert.
• Most dramatic moments are hit hard when one takes into account Emil's rather naked shoulder-tastic outfit (Thanks, Tenebrae). You just can't unsee it.
• The amount of times Emil does his head-tilt animation can start to get plain silly. You'll start to wonder if the scarf is to keep his head from falling off from tilting it so damn much.

• Veigue constantly uttering the name of "Claire", or in some instances, "CLAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRE!" is so frequent that even Namco constantly makes fun of it. It's even undergone a small degree of Memetic Mutation.
  • From the same game, there is Eugene's "GUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRGHHHH!!!!!!!". Wouldn't be so bad, except that he does it A LOT. Not as much as Veigue's "CLAAAAAAAAAIREEEEE", but close.
• Agarte's death can also be this if you don't find it a Tear Jerker. She carries out a perfectly normal conversation, then suddenly... Keels over and dies. It's equally sad and stupid.

• The main character, Senel, sees his long-lost girlfriend, Stella, fly into the sky and sacrifice her life to stop the beam of the Nerifes Cannon from reaching its target. The cutscene ends with Stella's limp body falling to the floor, a short pause, and then Senel leaning down and yelling "STELLAAAAAAAA!". Due in large part to the apparent reference to Marlon Brando's famous line in A Streetcar Named Desire, many fans reported bursting out laughing at the end of this otherwise tragic scene.
  • Not helping is the fact that, as she dodges in front of the beam, it looks like she explodes like a rather spectacular firework.
  • Watch ANY of the characters walking animations. Just... just watch. Moses, Shirley and Norma are the biggest offenders.
  • The skits in Legendia. Whenever someone walks or runs, the picture of the character is simply bobbed up and down, like a paper cutout stuck to a popsicle stick.
  • Will and Chloe's English voices. This is especially bad in the case of Chloe, as she's an emotional character and many of her scenes are emotional in nature, but it's simply ruined by the voice actress' hilariously flat delivery (a drinking game could be made out of all the times she says "Coolidge..." out of concern for Senel yet sounds completely bored.) Its just as bad for Will, who's VA did a perfectly good job as Kratos in Symphonia.
  • Quite a few of the games have this problem (wind eleth takes some time to get your head around), but special mention goes to Tales of Legendia, where these terms have a tendency to rhyme, because the in-game language, Relares, is ideographic. Which means some words will share morphems. So, we get to remember Ferines, Orerines, Merines, etc. Rather fun, if one has the time for it.

• Early on, Luke, Tear and Ion are about to be attacked by the Liger Queen. The scene is supposed to be really intense, but given that the characters have Dull Surprise expressions, all sense of danger is gone.
• Tales of the Abyss has a very dramatic and mostly well voice-acted cutscene near the end. And then, at the very end...

  Asch: (in a deadly calm voice) Well said. I will make those words your last, replicaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

  • From the same scene, a line that explains pretty much everything about Asch:
    Asch: Shut up! This isn't about logic!
• The scene with the Malkuth and Kimlascan forces going to battle may count, considering that they're charging fiercely into battle armed with tubas. And the Off-Model soldiers. My god, the Off-Model soldiers!
• The scene in Yulia City where Asch reveals that Luke is his replica is pretty heartbreakingly dramatic in the game. But in the animated version, for some reason, poor Chihiro Suzuki was forced to scream like a banshee the whole way through the reveal and the upcoming Curbstomp Battle, so that Luke sounds like he's legitimately snapped and gone hilariously stark raving. Too bad the anime was never dubbed - hearing Yuri Lowenthal yowl for a good minute and a half like that would have been priceless.
  • Even then in the game if you manage to defeat Asch you get a scene where he is Wangsting over the fact he lost to his replica and Luke is still in a Heroic BSoD afterwards.
• Similar to the "get away from me!" example from Symphonia, one of Jade's in-battle quotes is "looks like we're still okay!" It tends to trigger when Jade survives a strong attack with a shred of health. Problem is, he'll say it even if the attack kills everyone else on the field. Looks like you're still okay, Colonel, but what about everyone else? The best part of this is that it's actually perfectly in character.
• Much like the Symphonia example, dramatic moments can be shot to hell depending on what costumes the gang are wearing. Dramatic moment where Luke's being chewed out for refusing to accept responsibility for the fall of Akzeriuth, just before he cuts his hair? Easily ruined by putting him in a short haired costume with no shirt on, put Jade in his bathrobe outfit and Natalia in her breast-tastic Star of Malkuth outfit and enjoy the narm!
  • One that can potentially happen accidentally: on a New Game Plus, you can get costume titles where Emperor Peony decided to dress the gang up as Power Rangers expies. This includes one for your Guest-Star Party Member, even though they're not with you at the time. Thing is, at the time you get those titles the point when they're in the party for plot reasons is long past, so the only way you can see that costume in combat is during a specific sidequest, after which they leave again. If you forget to change their title back, you'll be stuck with them dressed as "Abyss Silver" for the rest of the game. Needless to say, Asch being dressed as a Super Sentai kinda ruins a few scenes. Sadly, he won't be sporting the costume when you have the actual battle with him at the end of the game.
  • The "Costume with a short hair" before Luke's Dramatic Haircut also itself can be quite funny, and the game even voices this line. In the beginning, Guy asks Luke what's up with his hair and Luke tells him it's a wig. Funny bit of Developer's Foresight there. However, when Luke cuts his hair off, Tear then asks Luke "Why did you take your wig off to cut your hair?" and it becomes hilarious.
  • Luke can get the "Dragon Buster?" title on a New Game Plus, which is nearly identical to the "Dragon Buster" title you can get in an ordinary playthrough, except the "?" variant has a hilarious mask that covers all of Luke's face and most of his hair. So a scene like Tear confronting Luke about the fact that he's dying can be ruined if you accidentally left Luke in it. Even the "Dragon Buster" title itself can be ruinous to a scene, because Luke's clothes are a blue and a green that manage to be brighter than his hair.
• In the original PS2 version of the game, after Grand Maestro Mohs goes One-Winged Angel, his voice is distorted, with a Voice of the Legion effect. The 3DS version, though, removed that effect. The perfectly ordinary voice coming from a giant demon sounds really silly.
• Said One-Winged Angel form gets even sillier later on, when it's said to be slowly sapping their sanity. The scene that proves they're too far gone... features the character responding to the Jewel of Lorelei by flying all over the screen like a deflating balloon while repeating "Score" over and over.
• For some unholy reason, when you receive Ion's Fonstone from Anise following his death the damn noise that plays when you receive an item will still trigger, wrecking the scene since it'll be louder than anything else in the scene. Then there's the hilarious, Mundane Made Awesome fanfare that plays when you get a recipe, which you can trigger at inopportune moments if you neglect to get the recipe in question at a non-serious time.
• So you're think going to go defeat the Big Bad at the Absorption Gate, the brand new World Map music has you pumped and ready to go and it's playing even before you leave Keterberg, and you enter the world map and walk down to the port to board your badass flying ship... and then you enter the port and the cheerful Keterburg theme plays.
• Sync's Japanese voice is almost impossible to take seriously. Otani does a good job as the far more serene and friendly Ion but as Sync she uses an angry little kid voice that, when in battle, makes Sync sound too much like an angry Pikachu.

• Tales of the Tempest can be considered a long endless streak of Narm. For an example, the game's introduction has an evil villain killing Rubia's father while Caius is secretly watching, inside of a church. Then Rubia's mother shows up in front of Caius; the kid warns her that the villain just killed her husband. She then decides to enter the church for no reason and gets killed after two lines of dialogue (yes, exactly two lines of dialogue). Not easy to feel sorry for her...
  • Also, any scene with people talking about how ruthless and scary Caius' wereman form is sort of falls flat. Because Caius' wolf form is actually pretty cute◊.
  • Caius's father's death is horribly anticlimactic. It's supposed to be a horrible dramatic event, but instead his killer shows up out of nowhere then casts one measly spell, turning him into the weirdest posed stone figure ever. It just ends up being silly.

Tales of Innocence

• The scene where Chitose kisses Luca, in the NDS version. Iria is supposed to be a Tsundere, yet even without the compression artifacts, it comes off as absolutely hilarious.
• Chitose's death in the PSVita remake. As opposed to the original wherein she stabs herself to commit suicide, here she explodes into a million pieces - and her model literally just flies to pieces - before her soul is collected by Kongwai.

• In Tales of Vesperia, Yuri Lowell has a really awesome animation in which he shucks his sword from his scabbard and catches the sword in midair. The problem is that it sends the scabbard flying offscreen. It's especially incongruous in long shots or outdoors, when it flies absolutely ridiculous distances. It's hilarious to imagine him digging through the sand to unearth his scabbard after the fights are over.
  • It's also funny when he does it with axes... which do not have scabbards.
• A title that was meant to comment on Judith's perceptiveness and wisdom gets translated as "Trophy Wife."
• Two out of the four cameo bosses have some...questionable English voice work. Dhaos and Kratos sound just fine (considering they're both reprising their roles from prior material) but Shizel sounds like her VA was trying too hard to sound raging evil and instead more like a Rita Repulsa wannabe and Barbatos' English VA has an odd slur to his voice that makes some of his lines sound plain silly (especially when he shouts "I'll crush your bonesh!"
• Like the other Tales games, the player can invoke this by putting silly costumes and visible accessories on characters, destroying the seriousness of some scenes.
• Much like Tales of the Abyss, the Final Boss will actually speak directly to the character the player is controlling, and they will speak back. Unfortunately, if the player is playing as Repede, it becomes unintentionally funny because they are speaking to a dog.
  • At the same time, Raven starts talking about womanizing, making it come off as a massive case of Skewed Priorities. He breaks character in the second phase though.
• The release of the Definitive Edition has been well received, but some Narm occurs when the newly voiced content is inserted into already existing cutscenes because in most cases, with some of them having slightly different pitches or even voice actors. For example, when going to talk to Don Whitehorse at the Leviathan's Claw manor, he has his original dialogue where he talks to the party. However, in the Definitive Edition his new dialogue was done by someone else when he talks to the newly added character Patty, meaning mid way through the cutscene he abruptly switches voices before switching back to his normal one when he resumes talking to the rest of the group. It can be jarring since it is very obvious when this happens.
• Most characters have a generic battle grunt noise they make when taking a heavy attack. Raven though yells "Hey! That hurt!" instead. It falls into this trope when ever he gets hit by a Mystic Arte, because he says it several times back to back, making it unintentionally funny to hear him being hit by someone like the Big Bad, and all he yells is "Hey! That hurt-Hey! That hurt-" so on and so on.

• Richard's famous "Tomodachi ''NANDA''!? TOMODACHIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!! HUAAAARGH" in either version of the game is considered this.
  • In case you were wondering, the English version is just as if not more full of narm than either of the Japanese versions.
    • This is, of course, to say nothing of the inherent hilarity that comes with Richard's incredibly tiny anime pupils and absurd facial expressions whenever the game tries to convey his anger. Lack of storytelling tact at its finest.
• The only purpose of the Attachments you can find throughout the game is to turn scenes into this.
  • Step 1: Get the cardboard box attachment from the Playstation Store. Step 2: Equip it on Richard. Step 3: Watch as any drama involving this character gets absolutely DESTROYED!!!
• After one of his dramatic boss battles, Richard, who has spent the whole encounter leaking streams of eleth and screaming for help in his Voice of the Legion, collapses. Sophie crawls up to him and says "Richard...let's make a friendship pact!" At which point Richard abruptly pulls himself together, points his sword at Sophie's head, and says "die!", and she's catapaulted across the arena. I'm sorry Sophie, but you kind of deserved that one.

• Punching God in the face and knocking him out of his flying throne should be dramatic, but the slow-motion effect applied to the punch ends up making it look hilarious.
• Something about Jude's line "I always wanted to live up to Professor Haus's expectations...but now...he's dead" makes this troper laugh every time. It's probably Sam Riegel and his completely sincere delivery.
  • Actually Sam Riegel was on sparkling Narm form for a while. In one early scene featuring Agria, she threatens his life and his response is "But...I don't want to die." Only he doesn't say it desperately or with terror. It sounds more like dying would be slightly irritating and a little inconvenient.
• Also everything about Nachtigal is Narm plus ham. Just listen to the way he casts AIR PRESSURRRRRRRE
• Just like some of the above examples (especially the ones from Symphonia and Abyss) this game has a few amazingly intense moments that are disrupted by a few poor decisions. The scene in which Alvin shoots Leia and fights Jude in the orchard after Milla dies is absolutely heartbreaking. It's perfect until Jude says they have to learn to think for themselves and Alvin's response is a very angry "HOW DO WE DO THAT?" and it just comes across as "THINKING IS HARD."
  • And the same scene is even worse if Alvin wins the duel, because at one point he gets frustrated and high-kicks Jude in the jaw with the fury and flexibility of an angry Rockette.
• Attachments return once again. Kill the mood of dramatic cutscenes by having your party wear giant Ba'ul plushies, "Emo" glasses or a drippy nose! You can also make all the scenes where the party wonders whether or not to trust Alvin by giving said character devil horns, wings and a tail.
• During the second visit to the Laforte Research Center, the party finds Hamil's mayor who dies in front of them. The Narm comes from the voice actress making the end of her sentences sound like she's gargling water in the back of her throat.
• Muzet's freak out moments are really over the top at times and can be really funny.
• Jude's Say My Name towards Mila at Fort Gandala. It's particularly jarring because Jude is usually one of the better voice-acted characters.
• Jude's Say My Name towards Alvin right before their duel might come across as silly to English players thanks to a certain famous series about singing chipmunks and the yelling of Alvin's name.
• The "chess game" between Wingul and Rowen can be narmy because it's Serious Business for them. The music itself is really over the top with the characters acting as if they were really fighting.

• The Jiggle Physics in general, especially since they seem to have been turned up for Muzét and Alternate Milla. Just try to keep a straight face during the penultimate scenes against the Final Boss, when the camera shows Muzét approaching and stop, leaving her breasts to jiggle at the worst possible moment. Sure, they are lovely, but it's difficult to take potential annihilation of your party seriously at that point.
• The attachments and costumes from Xillia 1 can be carried over to Xillia 2 and applied in the exact same way. There's even more attachments now so any sad or serious moment can be screwed up just because you can't see Ludger's face thanks to him wearing a comically oversized Beryl Benito witch-painter hat or Rassius Luine's feathery thing angled over his face or he has a giant Quickie on his head, or the fact that everyone will have a Sophie doll hanging off of their arm that'll probably be big enough to take up 25% of the camera. Either that or a Yuri Lowell doll sitting on their shoulder.
• And eventually, you can get transformation items which turn characters into various other NPCs as well as the game's cameo bosses. Unlike Graces f and Destiny DC's transformation items, these are purely cosmetic...but they bring with them their own form of narm in that they persist outside of battle and in New Game Plus as well. What does this mean? Why, you can turn Ludger into Rutee Katrea and have items that Ludger was holding now float awkwardly above Rutee's own hands because she's far shorter and thinner than Ludger was. Then turn Gaius into Elle! The camera never once accounts for sudden height change (which can also lead to the camera becoming very interested in the top of the aforementioned Rutee-Ludger's head) and can barely focus on Gaius-Elle's face and all thought-provoking speeches Gaius has to give now sound like Elle just had a snort. And on the other end of the spectrum, turn Elize into Presa and the camera becomes a flat out pervert because half of the time when it should be focusing on Elize's face, because of the aforementioned height issue, it leers at Presa's breasts instead.
• When the Final Boss transforms, using his Chromatus ability, the cutscene looks oddly like a Magical Girl transformation. It needs to be seen to be believed. Try to keep a straight face - and fail miserably.
• A cutscene during the Final Boss battle involves Elle running towards Ludger, holding the pocketwatch towards him and yelling each other's name. Overall, a very dramatic scene, as Elle is being attacked during this, and the scene had Ludger being thrown onto his ass by the boss. But the overly long way Ludger is yelling Elle's name makes it hilarious. Especially weird since Elle's yell isn't that long.
  Elle: LUDGER!
  Ludger: EEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEE!!

• In the Ladylake Aqueducts dungeon, there is a cutscene where Mikleo wishes to become a Sub Lord so he can fight the Hellions and not be The Load, but Sorey urges him to reconsider due to the costs associated with this, since it means that Mikleo will have to reside within Sorey's body and dedicate his life to fighting the Hellions, abandoning any other dreams. Mikleo then says that as a Seraph, it's natural for him to wish to eliminate the Hellions. The Narm is in Sorey's reply: "Do frogs try to eliminate snakes?". They definitely could have worded things better.
• The event to restore Lastonbell's Lord of the Land ends with a little girl and her dog pitifully dying after you manage to purify them. It was supposed to be a very sad scene, and is scripted in a very dramatic way, but for some reason the song chosen to play was The Exciting First Journey. It's pretty jarring to hear a whimsical song playing during arguably the darkest moment in game.
• Dezel's death in the dub. It was supposed to be a touching moment, and for the most part it is. That is until Rose speaks and all she responds with is "Kay" to his final words. It's really distracting and funny because it demeans what is supposed to be a tragic moment and makes Rose come across as uncaring that someone close to her just died.
• The way Mayvin's death is handled is unintentionally funny due to how abruptly he dies. Towards the end of the fight, Sorey is about to shoot him with Siegfried in a specially made battle cutscene, when it just cuts to a normal cutscene of Mayvin just falling over. The timing is so quick and off-putting that it's too hard to take seriously, and without a natural segue into it, it almost looks like he just gave up and died.
• In the manga, the implication that Heldalf is Sorey's father comes off as a desperate attempt to connect two characters that have absolutely nothing in common and the twist has no impact on the plot.

Given the nature of the game, the developers tried to give it as little Narm as possible, but in some moments it was inevitable:

• Much like in other Tales Series games, the player has the ability to invoke this. Velvet and Magilou's outfits already look ridiculous enough, but you can make it even more silly by, say, giving Velvet a red sombrero and sunglasses◊ or making the party wear swimsuits into battle. Or watch every dramatic moment be made completely absurd by dressing the party in giant Normin mascot costumes◊.
• "The Lord of Calamity" is meant to sound ominous and imposing, but it ends up sounding corny (at best) or downright cringe-worthy; especially when read aloud. Made moreso, since the one it refers to is a moody teenaged girl, rather than the awe-inspiring force of destruction one might have envisioned.
• Velvet's Arte Discord (Finishes off a combo when you therionize a human) ends with her giving out an angry cry. While it fits some situations (ie, early-game when a bunch of exorcists are sent to kill Velvet and Rokurou), it feels weird in other parts.
• Velvet and Innominat link together and feed off of each other's power so that Velvet can seal Innominat away and Innominat makes a rather ungraceful *nom* sound as he bites down.
• The awe-inspiring feel of Laphicet becoming a dragon after ascending to to the status of a full-fledged Empyrean in the ending is deflated the moment he speaks and reveals his voice didn't change.
• "Why do birds fly?" Not quite as thought-provoking a question as some of the characters believe, even on a metaphorical level. It often comes out of nowhere, too. And one of the answers given is "because if it can't fly, it's not a bird".

• Like many Tales games, the player can invoke this by using ill-fitting DLC costumes that make them look ridiculous, turning serious scenes into hilarity by the characters being in such ridiculous costumes. However, this game has a neat little easter egg sidequest where you can get accessories for free. Nothing says "Darker and Edgier Tales game" like putting a bunny tail or cat eats on your main characters. Bonus points since you can get some of this when Alphen still has his iron mask.
  • One of your free costumes is Alphen's ruined clothes. Just like Velvet's Rummage Sale Reject clothes? Make Alphen and Shionne go through the game in their first costumes which consist of ruined clothes and what look like pajamas.
• An early conversation between Zephyr and Alphen has Zephyr say something to the effect of "I can tell by looking at your face". An innocent comment, but this is before Alphen has any of his mask off, so it turns an otherwise normal conversation into unintentional comedy because Zephyr can't even see Alphen's face, making the comment stand out. Other phrases certainly would have fit better given the context.
• The first skit in which Shionne talks to Alphen. Alphen mentions he can't take the mask off, and points out how difficult it really is, including how hard it is to eat. Realistic? Yes, but the fact he can see what's going on despite a face-covering mask makes it... hilarious. This is very likely an Intended Audience Reaction though - as the characters deliver the lines in such a deadpan way it's hard not to laugh.
• In one skit, Alphen and Shionne sneeze because they walk into a cold area. Their models are completely static except for their mouths, and the panel shakes when they sneeze. Of course, it's intended to be a more humorous skit making this the Intended Audience Reaction.
• Much like Kratos, Shionne takes every single battle seriously. Fair enough up until in a common battle she faces something as mundane as a boar or hawk and yells "I won't forgive you!" at them like she's become unhinged.
• If Alphen drops off of too high a drop, he fortunately doesn't take Fall Damage — instead he just falls down and says "Ugh! Guess I misread the landing." While it actually makes sense early on, later in the game when his ability to feel pain returns he still delivers this line.