No More Heroes/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alas, Poor Villain: Jeane. It's one of the few kills Travis isn't proud of. That they just had a reconciliation before Travis has to kill her makes it worse.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: Travis' dream on the train to the Rank 4 fight. On the other hand, it is a fun little Bullet Hell minigame, even if it has no logical reason to exist.
    • Travis is a huge game and anime freak and he has that video game at home. Clearly he's just experiencing The Tetris Effect.
  • Bowdlerise: Spain's translation removes a lot of the swearwords. Jarring since it's rated 16+ and Spain makes no fuss over swearing, plus since the voices are still on English, anyone can hear and clearly tell all the times a character says "fucking" or something, yet the subtitles omit them in a painfully obvious way.
  • Breather Level: Letz Shake. Destroyman, despite being a fan favorite, is a fairly easy boss to take care of and his stage is nothing special either. And it comes right in between Shinobu and Holly, considered two of the harder bosses in the game.
  • Complete Monster: Bad Girl is named Bad Girl for a reason. She feels absolutely ZERO remorse for killing anyone and will kill you if you fall for her mercy pleas. She's so bad, she's called out by Travis as a "perverted killing maniac." Travis has no grounds to call out anyone for evil actions unless that person is just that evil, so there you have it.
  • Crazy Awesome: THE WHOLE GAME.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Jeane's backstory.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: With an equally awesome name, Mach 13 Elephant Explosion.
  • Ear Worm: The main No More Heroes jingle wont ever get out of your head. Ever. Bad Girl's theme, "Pleather for Breakfast," also counts. The lyrics are indecipherable, but the song's very earworm-y.
    • Or, how about that stupid buzzing before you fight the boss in the Pure White Giant Glastonbury dream sequence. Or that squeely whining in the beginning of "Vioectrolysis", the music from Harvey Volodarskii's fight.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Henry is a parody of this trope. It still didn't stop him from actually becoming one to the point of becoming playable in the sequel, although only for one boss battle.
  • Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: From the standard "is the hero imagining the whole thing" to fairly interesting examinations of the way the game links sex and violence, particularly in Travis' interactions with female opponents.
  • Freud Was Right: The way Travis charges his sword looks like he's jerking it off. It gets worse in the sequel when the icon for the beam sword's power meter turned out to look like a dildo...
    • Speed Buster's weapon is very long and BIG. Speed Buster's stage is very long. The laser that comes out of Speed Buster's cannon is HUGE. And if you try to attack Speed Buster without damaging her weapon, this boss can easily become hard. It's like the entire level was designed to secretly joke about someone with a huge penis.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The first game has Bishop's ex-girlfriend texting him once in a while to tell him to go die. Guess what happens in the sequel...
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The original game bombed in Japan but was a huge hit in the U.S., which is why the sequel was released there first.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: "Too bad there won't be a sequel!" There is.
  • Misaimed Fandom: Believe it or not, there are many fans who revere Travis and aspire to be like him. You know, despite him being a loser otaku who spends all of his money (which he earns mostly from killing people) on anime stuff rather than move out of a hotel room. Suda 51 must be laughing his ass off at that.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: Travis' beam sword, as well as Henry's. Your ears will have an orgasm during the fight against Henry at the end of the game.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Travis' motorcycle, which is needed, obviously, to get from one part of town to another. The controls for it are very stiff and takes a lot of getting used to.
  • Shocking Swerve: Played for Laughs in the final cut-scene of the real ending, when Henry reveals he's both Travis' long lost twin and Sylvia's husband.

Travis: What the hell? That's the craziest shit I've ever heard! Why would you bring up something like that at the very last minute of the game?
Henry: I would have thought you and the player would have at least expected a twist of fate of some kind.

  • That One Boss:
    • Bad Girl is guaranteed to kill you at least once unless you already know that she's going to pull a Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Then she's... still very hard, having great damage output, health and mobility.
    • Shinobu is one of the more reviled bosses, especially on Bitter. She's extremely dodgy and evasive, she'll outright make you lose every weapon clash, and she has that damn Gengoken (nearly instant-kill) and multi-shot Sonic Sword that will make you beg for mercy. Doing nothing but low charged attacks and some occasional sword swipes can make the fight easier, though.
    • Holly Summers. Take Shinobu's speed, add a tendency to run away whenever you get close, pits all over her arena that will interrupt your game flow and wear out your thumb, and unblockable butt rockets that seem to hit at least 50% of the time assuming your timing's average. Which she loves to spam. It may get to the point where you're purposefully falling into the pits just to dodge the rockets, because it's easier to dodge the grenade she throws into the pits, but that'll also give her plenty of time to run away again, which wouldn't be a problem if she wasn't faster than you (despite having a pegleg) and able to run over her own pits for no apparent reason.