Whacked

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

An Xbox game about seven cartoon characters competing in a game show for the grand prize: anything they want. The game plays like a Platformer, and players use various cartoon weapons that spawn randomly to win six different game types in thirteen different arenas.

Tropes used in Whacked include:
  • Attack Animal: The Good-Bye Doggie chases the targetted opponent with a stick of dynamite in its mouth.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Finish Game Show Mode and your character does indeed get his or her Hearts Desire, but is also trapped in a void, presumably forever. Also, the epsiode shows that Van survives the Final Battle, which caused his show to be a ratings smash and the network to change their mind about cancelling it. This may have been intended as a Sequel Hook that never made it to sequel.
  • Basement Dweller: Eugene.
  • Battle Cry: Each character has their own stash of quotes for picking up a weapon. A lot of these quotes could count for other tropes too, like pre-asskicking one-liners or evil laughs.
  • Bee-Bee Gun: The beehive weapon unleashes a swarm of bees on your opponents.
  • Butt Monkey: Lucky and Eugene both get picked on in cutscenes featuring them.
  • Censor Box: Don't let the box art fool you. Lucy is dressed in nothing but gloves, stockings, and a couple of censor boxes.
  • Color Coded for Your Convenience: The characters are all associated with a different color. Blood is color-coded so you can tell who was recently in a spot. Characters can't collect stars of their own color. Characters emit a glow of their color from afar, so you can always tell them apart. The screen even flashes a certain color for a split-second when you get hit so you know who just hit you.
  • Combat Commentator: The announcer comments on various situations as the match progresses, such as when a character's score is way below the others'.
  • Cute Bruiser: Charity.
  • Cycle of Hurting: Question Marks can give you the Plague, which can't be cured. You have to watch your life bar dwindle away until you die. Fortunately, it's highly contagious and you can pass it on to opponents by simply brushing up against them, but you still won't be cured. It is also possible to endlessly pass it on to each other every time they respawn, potentially turning the rest of the match into one big Cycle of Hurting.
  • Deadly Game: Of the Bloody Hilarious type.
  • Defeat Means Playable: Defeating Van in Gameshow Mode unlocks him for Battle Mode.
  • The Devil Is a Loser: Van is a demon, but not a particularly competent one; while he assures the network it is impossible for anyone to win the game, he is completely unprepared when someone actually does, especially when the winner proves to be Genre Savvy enough to have memorized the initial contract they signed. This leads to a Villainous Breakdown leading to the final round in Hell itself.
  • Dragged Off to Hell: Happens to the winner, but in this case, it leads to the final round being a Bonus Level of Hell.
  • Everything's Better with Chickens: The "Chicken" game type.
  • Extreme Omnisexual: Lucy seduces Otto's chair. It develops a crush on her for the rest of the game.
  • Fighting Clown: Everyone.
  • Fish Eye Lens: One of the Big Red Button events forces the display to become this.
  • Flaming Sword: Flaming meat cleavers, actually. Attacking any player with fire when they're holding a meat cleaver results in the meat cleaver being set on fire instead.
  • Frank's 2000-Inch TV: The Highrise stage features one of these.
  • Full-Frontal Assault Despite what the game box shows, Lucy is naked, save for her boots and gloves. Her chest and hips are covered by censor bars.
  • Gallows Humor: Happens whenever a player is "whacked"; for example, Lance shouts "Wipe Out!" and Lucy says, "That wasn't nice!"
  • Gotta Catch Them All: The objective of the "Combat" games is to collect a certain amount of stars.
  • Gotta Kill Them All: "Chicken" games involve killing a certain amount of chickens and collecting their stars. "Fragfest" requires you to kill the other players, and get the most amount of kills before time runs out.
  • Hand of Death: The Big Red Button can spawn a literal one of these. It chases players around the stage. Anyone who touches it dies.
  • Harder Than Hard: "Insane".
  • Heavy Sleeper: Otto. He's literally asleep during the entire game, except for when he wakes up for a short moment in one cutscene. You're technically playing as his chair.
  • Homing Boulders: Besides homing missiles, meat cleavers also have very limited homing capabilities, at least homing in on an opponent's general direction. The Yolk-O-Matic's eggs also home in.
  • I Am Not Weasel: In one of the backstage cutscenes, Lucky repeatedly calls Eugene a penguin to troll him. (Eugene claims he's a falcon himself, but he's obviously a mallard.)
  • Improbable Weapon User: Pretty much a given for a game like this. Improbable weapons include rubber duckies, staplers, dogs, cacti, shish-ka-bobs, dodgeballs, and cans of soda.
  • Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Eugene often daydreams about pulling out a flamethrower and burning everyone.
  • Ironic Name: Lucky. Know how they say that, before you guy a rabbit's foot for luck you should consider how much luck (or rather, lack of it) the rabbit had? Lucky is one of those rabbits.
  • Interspecies Romance: Lucy the human bangs Lance the lion backstage at one point. (She isn't impressed.) In her ending, she seems to fall madly in love with Otto's Chair.
  • Is This Thing Still On?: Happens to Van twice, both times when speaking to the network and spilling some rather incriminating info on his motives.
  • Killer Rabbit: Lucky.
  • Kitchen Sink Included: Sort of. The back of the box says the stages are everything including the kitchen sink. There really is a stage that takes place on a giant kitchen sink.
  • Lotus Eater Machine: Appears to be the ultimate fate of the winner.
  • Most Annoying Sound: A literal in-universe example. One of the intermission commercials in Gameshow Mode is a "breaking news" report, confirming that scientists just discovered the most annoying sound.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: Lance has huge muscles, yet his generic punch when not carrying a weapon still just invokes Scratch Damage.
  • Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Grabbing a weapon when you already have one makes the previous one disappear. Try to grab a Question Mark when you're already under the effect of one, and you'll just knock it aside.
  • The Namesake: Whacked! the video game is named after Whacked!, the gameshow in the video game.
  • Notice This: Anything you can pick up sparkles and hovers above the ground while spinning. Also, far-away opponents glow brightly.
  • One-Hit Kill: Making direct contact with a regular missile or the Good-bye Doggie results in one of these. Question Marks can give you "Da Bomb" instead of a power up, which is basically a bomb floating above your head and counting down from 10. Other players can die from the explosion too if you're near enough. Also, the "Death" Big Red Button event spawns a giant skeletal hand which chases players around the stage, and touching it instantly kills you. Toof's Exclamation Point turns the other players into walking hamburgers, allowing him to eat them by attacking them without a weapon. Lucy's Exclamation Point causes her to constantly blow kisses of death, which if they come into contact with anyone, causes them to levitate into the air and die instantly. Some stages have unique features that can cause one-hit kills. Finally, chickens die instantly when hit with any weapon.
  • Planet Heck: The final level takes place in Hell itself.
  • Power-Up: Question Mark pickups give characters a random one of these... mostly.
  • Power-Up Motif: A hard rock theme plays whenever a character is under the effect of an Exclamation Point. The "El Vampiro" power up has a Mexican theme. Each Big Red Button event also has its own theme, though not all of them involve characters powering up.
  • Random Event: Grabbing the Big Red Button activates these, and the Buttons can appear in any weapon spawn point, at any time.
  • Really Gets Around: Lucy. In her ending, she borders Anything That Moves territory.
  • Regenerating Health: Health regenerates very quickly. It's actually very useful because there's no other way to heal, and you're constantly getting crushed and maimed.
  • Ring Out: It's possible to die in some arenas by falling.
  • Scratch Damage: Characters can do a simple punch/kick if they're not carrying a weapon. It only takes about a pixel off the life bar, but still possible to kill someone with. Chickens can't die at all this way, though.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: The contestants reflect all of the 7 sins: Lucky is Wrath, Eugene is Envy, Toof is Gluttony, Lucy is Lust, Lance is Pride: Charity is Greed and Otto is Sloth.
  • Sequel Hook: After the final battle in Gameshow Mode, the show is renewed after it was cancelled in the cutscene before the battle. Too bad the game's developer went out of business.
  • Spread Shot: Possible with the Rubber Ducky weapon. Holding down the attack button longer results in you throwing more rubber duckies at once, and they'll be spread out.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: There are a lot of explosive weapons, including missiles, cannons, dogs carrying sticks of dynamite in their mouths, rubber duckies, star mines, and sticky bombs.
  • Super Mode: This is what Exclamation Points give. Each character has their own unique Super Mode.
  • Super Move Portrait Attack: Sort of. Being killed by another player displays "Whacked! by" and the portrait of the character who killed you on the screen.
  • Take Cover: Death Wall is the only stage that doesn't feature objects to hide behind or under.
  • Talking in Your Sleep: All of Otto's quotes are this.
  • Temporary Platform: Stand on the roof of the broken-down car in No Trespassing, and it collapses to reveal Spikes of Doom. The chicken cages in Hell sink into the lava when you stand on them.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The AI is naturally immune to any Big Red Button events that mess with the camera.
  • This Is the Final Battle: The announcer always announces the conditions of winning at the start of every match, but he specifically notes that the final match in Gameshow Mode is the last one.
  • Top-Heavy Guy: Lance.
  • Verbed Title
  • Victory Pose: Characters have their own animations for winning and losing a match.
  • Victory Quote: When your character wins or loses a match, they say a random quote from their own pools of quotes.
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Lucy has literal blue hair and Lance has a purple mane.
  • Your Heart's Desire: What the characters are killing each other for on the game show. Otto's chair wins Lucy, Lucy wins Otto's chair, Lucky the rabbit wins a supergun, Eugene wins everything he's ever wanted, Lance wins a giant action figure of himself, Charity wins a mountain of presents, and Toof wins a massive hamburger.