Billy vs. SNAKEMAN
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Billy vs. SNAKEMAN is a browser based MMORPG by Al McMasters (Eleventy Billionth HoKage in game), in which you play the star of a ninja anime (read: Affectionate Parody of Naruto). You start as a lowly genin who dreams of one day becoming a mighty sannin. However, as you rise up the ninja ranks, you gain new goals that take you to the Other Side with your reaper friends, to the Awesome-blasted Wasteland, to the mastermind manipulations of The Trade, to the secret reaper war of Monochrome Academy, to the wage-slave purgatory of Burger Ninja, to the infinite Fields of the multiverse as a R00t, to the breakneck delivery routes of the Pizza Witch, and to Kaiju Island on a Hero's Quest.
The game's mechanics are based on a system of ability checks where the game rolls a number of dice based on your level in the relevant ability, and if the number of dice that come up at or above the check's difficulty is equal or greater than its necessary successes, you win the check. Of course, various power-ups can modify this process: Bonus Levels and Edge add to the number of dice you roll, the former on a one-for-one basis and the later on a less predictable but potentially more beneficial method (without counting towards your level for other purposes,) Strength is added to each die result (but can't push those results beyond the number of sides on the dice), Range increases the number of sides on the dice, and free Successes are added to the number of successful dice. Ability modifiers that don't specify an ability work on all three primary abilities (Genjutsu, Ninjutsu, and Taijutsu), while modifiers that specifically work with all abilities effects both primary abilities and secondary abilities that are only used in certain areas (like Doujutsu and Raijutsu). Tertiary abilities like Drain or Piloting are only modified by power-ups that specifically mention them.
The game can be found here. Please, no editing it into a referral link.
- All Your Powers Combined - The Quest rewards "Letter of Marque" and "Knightmare Mark 86" give all the bonuses of all the items you had to give up to complete their respective quests. The Mark 86 even maintains the Plot Coupon functionality of its components (especially important, because only one of its parts actually does anything other than be a Plot Coupon).
- As well as Combo Attacks in World Kaiju, which are gigantic monsters that the entire playerbase fights all at once. Combo attacks require a certain number of players to join in and deal increasing amounts of damage to the monster.
- A case could also be made for Villages being this.
- Anachronic Order - Hero's Quest takes place entirely in flashback.
- McM has joked that any order-of-events based Gameplay and Story Segregation[1] is a flashback.
- Ambiguous Gender - the player character is referred to in the second person except when an NPC is talking about you to another NPC, in which case they refer to you as a 'they'.
- Additionally in the options screen, you don't choose a gender but instead choose 'What kind of Ninja you are in to'.
- Anti-Poopsocking - Players have a limited amount of stamina a day to performs actions with.
- The game structure also seems to encourage and/or enforce this; some areas simply can't be run by repeating them every day, because you'll run out of a resource (most often, money) that you need to get from elsewhere.
- This has been further enhanced by the various "mega actions", which save time by multiplying the costs of an action, but multiply the rewards at least as much, usually even more (typically x10/x11).
- Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny - Your character when entering the store and seeing MC Stripeypants: "Let's see, you've got to get yourself some HOLY CRAP THOSE ARE SOME STRIPEY PANTS!" Because they are.
- Awesome but Impractical - Some bonuses that make progression through the game easier at the cost of slowing it down (The Rack, Lil' Shammy, most of the Monochrome and Pizza Witch Jutsu), while others speed up one type of grinding at the cost of other penalties. (Timmy, EDUT, Nadeshiko and the Jutsu she teaches).
- Lethal Joke Bonus - Some Awesome but Impractical bonuses are obtained during a part of the game that either mitigates the Impractical to nothing, or exaggerates the Awesome to mandatory (most Wasteland Jutsu, The Power of Greass, Shift to Drift)
- Ax Crazy - If you put Euthanasia in a team with anyone from outside her Gameplay area, she will shoot them. In the face.
- Badass Grandpa - Triple-H. He also gets a synergy bonus when teamed up with his grandson
- Bee-Bee Gun - The Tiny Bee weapons. Currently comes in four flavors: Tiny Bee 2.0, Tiny Bee Rifle, Tiny Beezooka, and the original, now Lost Forever, Tiny Bee Pistols.
- Betting Minigame - All the games at the Party House to a certain extent, but especially Roulette, where you can bet permanent items.
- The Festival event provides even more of these, naturally.
- Boring but Practical - When you start out, Clone Jutsu, one of the first attacks in the game, will solve nearly everything. This includes cleaning the litter box, catching kunai, healing an injured man, putting out fires, sewing up holes in clothes, safely taking explosives, sneaking past guards...
- When you validate your email address, you get "Basic Ninja Gear." The +1 Level bonus you get to your rolls increases the success rate of your early missions dramatically, and it's a permanent upgrade that you will never lose. Yet most players never think to validate their e-mail address until after the buff has gone from extremely handy to just handy.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory - Pains were taken to limit this to speeding up PvE, but it's still present in the Karma bonuses.
- The new Referral Booster takes this even further. 10-20 bucks (depending on how in-bulk you buy Karma) and you can get what would otherwise take 50 referrals or looping to Season 44.
- Brutal Bonus Level - The Impossible Mission used to be one of these, back when Monochrome was considered endgame content. It wasn't even possible when it was first added to the game[2]. Nowadays, the only challenging requirement is being the leader of a mid-level or higher village at the population cap.
- Call a Smeerp a Rabbit - In-Universe example: The Kaiju that attack villages are survivors of the losing side of The War That Shattered The World. Worldkaiju are a complete Giant Space Flea From Nowhere that are only called that because they are giant monsters like Kaiju battle forms.
- Cap - One of the main perks of looping is improving your level cap. Obtaining certain items also increases your level cap.
- Chekhov's Armoury - Any throwaway detail can be brought back up later in a more substantial form, from MC Stripeypants making a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Seasons in a He Knows About Timed Hits, to the Zombieland reference McM put in as soon as he got home from watching the movie.
- Commonplace Rare - You don't have pants until halfway through Monochrome.
- Admittedly, the pants are awesome.
- You also have to travel deep into the Awesome-blasted Wastelands to get T-Shirts.
- Contest Winner Cameo - Two allies, Proof Reader and Tempest Kitsune, were designed by winners of lots in the Child's Play auction.
- Some parts of the game namedrop a random winner of The Impossible Mission. (The "Monument" Wasteland Mission, The name of a particular instance of the "Playerkai" Kaiju)
- Some IM Winners are given the opportunity to trade in their Playerkai variant for a Custom Kaiju (with individual stats/drops) as special rewards - often, but not always, for contests, raffles, etc.
- And now Robert the Sage has a Customkai for winning the ToraCon Charity Auction.
- You can sponsor the game to create a custom sponsor item that any Season 3+ player can get
- More recently there was an offer, pay 30$ to help the game creator seal a deal to distribute a Japanese TCG in the states, everyone who bought into it got some awesome bonuses and were also put into a raffle to become Custom Kaiju. Originally, there was only going to be one chosen, but the deal was so popular it made four times the original estimate. Thus, four people were chosen to become Custom Kaiju through the raffle.
- Cool Old Guy - In a game that literally runs on awesome, anyone over where ever you place the 'old' line is either this or a Cool Old Lady.
- Cosmetic Award - The Enough Already Trophy is earned by hitting season 111 (which takes months of grind), and gives... one point of awesome. Since it is the only trophy that gives less than five points of awesome, and all awesome costs are divisible by 10, that one point can't be spent on anything and thus serves no purpose other than ranking.
- Crutch Character - Flipper, the first ally you get, is invaluable to genin, but useless to anyone else. This is within a season and not the game at large though; he's actually more useful to high season genin.
- Cute Monster Girl - Several of the Kaiju, including Persocomps, Magical Girls, Cardcatchers, Vampires, Metal Idol, Sexy Lady Cops, Psycho Zombja Girl, and several Playerkai. Though some of the above only qualify because they are classified as Kaiju.
- Fan depictions of Noms. Emphasis on the 'cute' part.
- Also the allies Haro and Robogirl, at least until she hits level 3. The paper, being made out of paper, probably also counts.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique - Some jutsu are like this, with the best example being the 100 damage, self-bingoing This Hand Of Mine.
- Another good example would be Ninja Art: Hottie Regeneration, which gives you +100 Stamina (and +1 Levels), but seals your chakra for 2 day(roll)s so that the only jutsu you can use are ones that don't need chakra.
- Death Is a Slap on The Wrist - Failing missions give you a Have a Nice Death that barely lasts a sentence (Word of God attributes this to stunt doubles.) Player Versus Player provides a more lasting death (Bingoed), but the consequences are limited to locking you out of PVP and village support actions for a while.
- Averted, when fighting phases. Failure gives you a daily stamina penalty (and locks you out of further fighting with Kaiju and Phases) until you dump 300-2000 stamina into getting better.
- Death World - The Wasteland, Monochrome Academy. Also The Jungle is later revealed to be this as well.
- Defeat Means Friendship - There are several allies that only join you after you beat them in some way.
- Early Installment Weirdness - In Anime Versus, the game from which BvS eventually spun off, one of the quests revolves around a Naruto parody called "Billy the Snake Man".
- Element Number Five - Varies. In the quest The Five Rings, the titular Big Book of War lists Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Void as the elements; someone crossed out void and wrote in Awesome. In the Elemental Mastery minigame in Worldkaiju, the elements are Fire, Lightning, Water, Earth, Wind, RNG, and Awesome. It's implied there are more out there.
- Emo Teen - Emosuke
- Expy - Every ally except Proof Reader and Tempest Kitsune[3] is an expy of at least one existing character.
- Eyepatch of Power - Legacy bloodline and the ally Billy who manages to wear another eye patch each time you upgrade him, ending up with three - and no, it's NOT explained what the third is covering up.
- Face Heel Turn - Mr. Tea, though fans should know this already.
- You if you decide to follow Mr. Tea and betray Strawberry
- The creator has hinted that one of your allies has been planning on doing this from the beginning
- Fake Difficulty - Based around the second variety. Most of the game gives you limited chances to succeed even with perfect play and maxed stats, requiring you to hope that the game will let you win. SuperFAIL is probably the best example of this, but Flower Wars, R00t's S-Ranked keys, and Glowslinging can rapidly become this.
- Fanon Discontinuity - Robo Fighto is loathed by a significant amount of people to the point that some pretend it doesn't exist. Too bad it's the only way to get a certain item.
- Fetch Quest - Including both Give Me Your Inventory Item and Twenty Bear Asses subtropes. Thankfully, all the fetches that require anything harder to get a hold on than Dark Draft or more than 100 of anything only need to be done once.
- Filler - Parodied in the Filler Episode quest, which requires you to accumulate 2000 successes to complete.
- The reward? Three themes that, when all turned on at once, allows you to make use of Holiday Mode content without waiting for the right month to come around (does nothing for day of the month based requirements).
- Final Boss - The Portal of Awesome, which includes Stephen Colbert, Gary Gygax, Shigeru Miyamoto, Optimus Prime, Chuck Norris, Billy Mays, and William Shatner.
- The 11-Tailed Fox is the Final Boss of r00t.
- The original final boss was dependent on your initial bloodline and was encountered at the end of the Jonin Exam.
- Five-Man Band - Optional, depending on which allies (up to three once you hit Chunin) and summon you select to form your team, though you are 'stuck' in the hero role.
- The Wasteland Rockers, which is Bones and the Four Sounds, who are ninjas as well as rockers: Bones (The Hero, lead singer), Flutie (The Chick, flute), Tubby (The Big Guy, drums), Sticky (The Lancer, tambourine), and The Twins (The Smart Guy and Stepford Smiler, double-bass).
- With Pets available, your pet can take the place of your summon, allowing the summon to play the part of a Sixth Ranger.
- Forced Level Grinding - Oh so much. Glowslinging, Mahjong, Flower Wars, Pizzawitch, WorldKaiju, even Speedlooping for R00t - if there's an area of content, you will have to do the earlier areas over and over again to complete it.
- Fridge Brilliance - The first Mahjong ally you get is Lil' Rack, a Captain Ersatz of Nodoka Haramura from the anime Saki, one of the best Mahjong players in her anime and would make perfect sense as one of the last allies you get rather than the first. So why is she first? Because Lil' Rack plays a lot of online games, which is what you're doing when you play Billy vs. Snakeman!
- If you doubt McM's claims that he had been planning the Two Aliases, One Character twist in the Quest "The Look" from the beginning, compare Timmy's "goggles" to Mister Tea's glasses.
- Frothy Mugs of Water - The "Juice" bar.
You sidle up to the bar as a bounty hunter downs a glowing, whirling drink. "Yeah, the whole place is dubbed, so they sell 'juice' here. It gets the job done, though. Here, take a drink list..." |
- And yes, you can get a hangover from too much Juice consumption.
- Fun with Acronyms - The H.A.R.O. - High-Explosive Anti-RNG Ordnance
- For that matter, the RNG itself.
- Game Mod - BvS has a small but active community of Grease Monkey scripters on the official forum. Additionally, McM encourages script use as long as it doesn't violate the rules he posted.
- Gimmick Level - Mission types that have an actual name rather than just a letter-rank lock out most allies and jutsu for being off-theme, and most have further gimmicks on top of that.
- Gladiator Games - the Arena and Robo Fighto.
- Global Currency Exception - So many different flavors to choose from.
- The Arena: Reputation earned and used in The Arena.
- r00t uses Core, Bits, and Errant Bits.
- PizzaWitch uses tips, Ryo Coins (which are not the same as Ryo), and Bingo Style
- Zombjas gives and requires 'Z Rewards'.
- MJXP in Mahjong is used to buy 'Mahjanigans' (cheats).
- Monies at BillyCon.
- For that matter, BillyCon passes and Candyween games can only bought with RP.
- Village Upgrades require resources as well as large sums of Ryo.
- Lampshaded in the Count Change mission With a multiverse of currency, this is much harder than it seems!
- Guide Dang It - Not bad enough for Try Everything to be unfeasible (At least not in terms of the main plot lines), but close, at points.
- there have been (and still are) many items and other unfound mysteries that are Try Everything and Moon Logic Puzzle
- Holiday Mode - With holidays as mainstream as Christmas and Halloween, and as obscure as Shark Week and CAPSLOCK DAY.
- Kaiju - What kind of Japan-themed parody would it be if you didn't have (frequently-bizarre) giant monsters attacking your village with some level of frequency?
- Did we mention that these can include players, resulting in you getting attacked by, in an extreme case, barbers?
- Taken Up to Eleven with World Kaiju; the entire BvS world is being attacked by kaiju made of the entire gameworlds of it's Bland Name MMO "Competition", such as Craftworld of War and Aspen Story.
- If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You - BurgerNinja, based around working in a ninja-themed fast food joint while actually a ninja, includes 'edible' items such as "greassy burgers". You're limited to a small number of greassy (sic) items each day, but they provide bonuses to your Dou ability. The game is very explicit that you're not very happy about having to eat this gross, greassy stuff (but you have to anyway).
- The geassy foods added with Pizza Witch tend to taste better according the flavor text, and give bigger bonuses (while still only counting as a single item's worth of greass intake).
- Infinity+1 Element - Two of them. RNG beats all mundane elements; Awesome beats all mundane elements and RNG.
- Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha - Robo Fighto (complete with Doughman giving you the tutorial), the Knightmare Frame that BurgerNinja and PizzaWitch's plots hinge on, and a variety of lesser references such as the Soul of Steel, several kaiju, and Robogirl.
- Interface Spoiler - Subverted to good effect. The Trophies page lists a number of possible achievements you can complete, most of which give you Awesome points you can use to buy abilities. However, newer content areas tend to also have secret trophies that are above-and-beyond what you can expect to obtain. Rumor has it that not even all of these have been found yet.
- The Trophy page also plays it straight, as, other than the initial set of trophies, most of the non-secret trophies have been listed since months before the area of the game they are obtained in went live.
- Item Crafting - Three different implementations:
- The Just Add Water workshop. Used for potions and Wasteland gear.
- Shoving the ingredients into a Quest and receiving the finished product. Used for the occasional Permanent Item.
- Pizza Witch Garage crafting, basically a one click, no stamina version of the Quest method. Used for pizza and upgrading Pizza Witch gear.
- Konami Code - Pinky3's belt, the K-Belt, has this written across it. She'll even give it to you if you finish a certain quest.
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- Level Grinding - Players must reach certain levels to unlock the ability to loop and ninja rank promotion quests (and, as a result, content with a Season or rank prerequisite).
- Level Up At Intimacy 5 - "Lisa Lisa makes the night so much more relaxing! +40 Stamina!".
- More Friends, More Benefits - There's a reason a team of Lisa Lisa, Pinky, and Stalkergirl is called the "Orgy Team."
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Billy Vs SNAKEMAN has this in a few areas.
- BillyCon's Cosplay minigame lets you reroll once per level of Combat Sewing you have.
- High level opponents in Mahjong and Flower Wars can redraw cards to make them more formidable. You can do the same, but doing so causes you to lose your "No Cheating" bonus, and puts you at risk of getting caught cheating.
- Once per Zombja map you can break Rule 17 and "Be a Hero", automatically giving you the best rollable result for one attack[4].
- "This Fist Of Mine" does the same thing with Worldkai, but with a stamina cost instead of a frequency limit.
- "Escape Jutsu" lets you reroll what Mission you're assigned, and "Sight Beyond Sight" forces your next Mission to be the same as your last one.
- Male Gaze - The Character Portraits for The Rack, Lil' Rack, and Hotsumoto.
- Minmaxer's Delight - To some extent, the Legacy bloodline. It is by far the best bloodline choice for everything except speedlooping (where Red Eye gets a big +AP% bonus)
- Money Sink - The Party House and Robo Fighto, in addition to numerous subtler Sinks. In fact, nearly every "earn and spend" stat (and there are several) has something you can spend it on faster than you can earn it, most often in exchange for stamina.
- The marketplace, in which MP Ryo is worth less than regular Ryo when converted back. Ash-Covered Tiles, which are required in large amounts for both pizza witch and Mahjong (nearly 900 are needed to 100% both) seem to be a very popular money sink/farmed item at the moment.
- Moral Dilemma - Fate or Destiny, Right or Anonymous, and perhaps most important of all, Pants or No Pants.
- More Dakka - The Quest called "The Horde" involves you grabbing a minigun and unleashing ninja death upon random extras. Bonus points for giving you the minigun (called Sascha) afterwards.
- Multiple Endings - Some storyline quests have 2 or more versions. Some change depending on the basic bloodline you have this Season (like the mastermind behind the attack on your village in the Jonin exam or the enemy in the tower at the center of the Wasteland); others depend on a player choice (Who you turn on at the end of The Trade, or who you side with at the climax of Monochrome); still others change based on how far you got in previous Seasons (Cici doesn't give you a Grind Core if you've already used one for Item Crafting, building the H.A.R.O. device doesn't require taking apart a Polar Star if you've already made a H.A.R.O. before).
- New Game+ - Once you reach a high enough level, you can "loop into a new Season", starting over with any 'looping' powerups you've picked up along the way, and all the perks of being a higher season.
- Also, Immortal Realms are NGPs for the village leading part of the game.
- Ninja
- No Backwards Compatibility in the Future - Averted Hard, in Real Life no less. McMasters deliberately uses archaic code to keep BvS compatible with older browsers for people who can't upgrade their computers (playing at school or a library, for example).
McMasters: I know it isn't as pretty / low-load as many other games, but you really can play from anywhere, so it gives an equal footing to Commander T3 and Lieutenant Library. |
- Numerical Hard - Once you've unlocked The Crank, you can numerically increase the difficulty of Random Encounter style missions for more money/experience.
- Obvious Rule Patch - When the game added MegaMissions, which let you do one mission for ten times the cost and eleven times the rewards, a patch had to be put in place on the Escape Jutsu, limiting you to 500 uses a day (MegaMission uses count as ten) to try and limit the abuse of the missions for farming specific hard-to-acquire items. There's been plenty of others, as well, each put in to try and prevent certain specific Game Breaker behaviors.
- The latest 'mega action', Megaarena deserves special mention as apparently McMasters figured out a way to do it with only one line of code.
- Billy's auto-win ability and Flying Thunder God Technique (auto-win any one mission a day) don't work on missions with difficulty over 100. This was added in anticipation of the then upcoming Pizza Witch plotline, which features the game's first use of difficulty over 100.
- The Recode, when McMasters overhauled the entire game's code from the ground up, included scores of rule patches, both obvious and subtle.
- One Stat to Rule Them All - Taijutsu is this to some degree. Looping requires leveling one of your main three stats high enough. Not only is it the stat which gains the most bonuses, but it's also the only stat whose missions drop Stamina bonuses at ranks where specializing in the stat you're planning to loop on is more important than getting your overall level higher, making it the best stat to specialize in when speed looping, or to start with in a level capping Season.
- Appetite became one of these when TACOS and her TACOs redefined the App to Stamina exchange rate.
- Appetite has always been better than stamina with GP and Sugar Candy but before only top teir players could afford to eat those every day.
- Appetite became one of these when TACOS and her TACOs redefined the App to Stamina exchange rate.
- The Other Darrin - In-Universe; the cast of Billy TV is different each week, playing the same characters.
- Overly Long Gag - The CAPSLOCK DAY quest, which requires 1111 successes at 11 difficulty (second longest rolling challenge in the game) for a near-useless Joke Item. And it can only be done on October 22 (22nd of any month if you use the "Extend Holiday Mode" bonus).
- Parody Names: Literally everywhere.
- Pop Quiz - The quest "Chunin Exam Part 1". "Don't do what that OTHER guy did and just sit through the whole test - that doesn't work anymore." Unless you're Season 4+ and make sure to punch the proctor in the jewels whilst shouting "BELIEVE IT!" on the way out.
- The questions are subjective (or just nonsensical) to the point of defying deductive reasoning (and change each season!); but (unlike the test that OTHER guy took) you can retake as many times as you want. Unless you just get lucky on the first try. And your allies can help you cheat potentially.
- Lethal Joke Character: Billy's actually useful because he literally never gets an answer right when cheating, but is very unlikely to get caught, allowing you to at least rule out one answer per question.
- Power Creep, Power Seep - Inevitable, considering the abundance and variety of Shout-Out. For example, the Polar Star is about six times as useful as Sascha. Also, how hard a given Kaiju monster is has no correlation with what it is. (Second weakest kaiju? Nine Thousands. Strongest (non-World) kaiju? Sexy Lady Cops.)
- Puzzle Boss - Several quests have hardlocked ability checks where the only conceivable way to pass is to use the proper jutsu (thankfully, each usually has at least two solutions).
- The four quest ability checks with only one auto-win jutsu are all 1.) heavily hinted at through a pop culture reference (i.e. you counter the attack that goes to eleven with the Spinal Tap jutsu) and 2.) not so hard as to be impossible to beat normally (if not when you first encounter them, than a Season or two later).
- Triple H lvl 2, the final Mahjong ally you get, certainly qualifies. If you ever lose a hand of Mahjong to him, you lose the battle, and the tile order is set so you can plan out strategies that would be suicidal in any other situation.]]
- Random Number God - The setting's cosmic force of destruction is called The RNG, after this concept. However, this RNG stands for Redheaded Ninja Girl, the identity she assumed when infiltrating ninja culture during The War That Shattered The World
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? - The RNG can be summoned as a Kaiju. Notably, it's very Cthulhu-like, being the first kaiju to require Doujutsu and constantly reporting a false/gibberish HP value such as "Four-ish / Fish".
- Broke Your Arm Jumping Over Cthulhu - Your character's personal encounter with the RNG during PizzaWitch does not end well for you. Enjoy the automatic mission failures until you get the Special Attack Uniform!
- Relationship Values - Friendship Points
- Rule of Cool
- Samus Is a Girl - The RNG.
- Sarashi - Pinky Level 3.
- A mini-version (about bikini sized) can also be found on Crazy Jutsu Lady on the Jutsu page.
- Self-Imposed Challenge - For a time it was quite popular to try to beat the r00t content at season 4 (the lowest season you could possibly get the necessary keywords). When an item (Training Montage) came out that let you compete it at season 3 due to letting you crank higher, there was another brief spate of people beating it at season 3.
- Pretty much the entire purpose of The Crank, which jacks up both the rewards and difficulty of missions depending on the setting you choose. Additionally some rewards are only unlocked at certain levels of crank or higher.
- "I've got a bad idea, Duck!"
- Shout-Out - Tons of them.
- Show Within a Show - Most of the gameplay takes place within an anime starring your character. The rest plays with the inner show's fourth wall.
- Someone Has to Die - At the end of the "Face To Face" Delivery Mission, you sacrifice yourself so your mysterious rival can succeed in your common goal (You manage to loop before you actually die from the sacrifice, even if you stop to sell all your non-looping items on the way.) The same thing happens in "Face To Face 2", except you are the rival and the old you sacrifices himself
- Speed Run - Some high-end players with nothing better to spend their stamina on have taken to rushing through Seasons as quickly as possible. With enough luck getting TACOS' appetite refund it is theoretically possible to complete unlimited seasons in a day (in practice, the current record is six), and nearly any player that far into the game can manage boosting their rank back up to Jonin on the first day.
- Phase Battles, with their directly Season-derived difficulty, along with Pizza Witch and World Kaiju increasing incentives for high end players to stay late season for meaningful periods of time, have made "speed looping" more an activity for mid-range players over the past few months.
- Stalker with a Crush - Stalkergirl
- Super Serum - Literally: you can buy an item from the shop called a Super Serum.
- Tabloid Melodrama - The Daily Fail; "None of the news that's fit to print!"
- Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors - Shows up in Glowslinging, with each attack type being effective against one other attack type and really effective against a second.
- Theme Music Power-Up - Encoded into the rules, no less! After completing the first season (or before that, if you get the right Holiday Mode items...), you can start using theme musics - one Opening, one Battle, and one Ending. Each theme provides a different power up. You can eventually get an Overworld theme as well.
- Throw It In - One area of the festival has the 11-tailed Fox challenge players that have beaten r00t to a rematch. Due to a typo in the rematch's stats, it is significantly easier than originally intended. Word of God has it that, not only will the battle remain so easy, but the implication of Villain Decay is now slated to be a Running Gag of "post-r00t only" content.
- The Dev Team Thinks of Everything - Players start with levels of 2 in the three core stats (Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, and Genjutsu). It so happens that it's possible to lose 2 levels (by acquiring the Reaper Sword). The result? One player managed to get his Ninjutsu level to 0 by picking up the sword right after looping (which resets your levels). The programmer, however, had thought of this - there is in fact an amount of AP to level from 0 to 1 (500), and even failing missions gets you some AP.
- The Wiki Rule - This Wiki-format guide.
- Too Many Halves - In mid-January 2012, McM broke down what parts of BvS he was working on by percent on the forums. Someone noticed that the percent added up to 110, and the thread quickly turned to explaining where the 111st percent was.
- Twenty Bear Asses - Blatantly used in higher-level content. Want to be able to summon a WorldKaiju, and stop randomly failing 1% of your missions? You're going to need to drop over 20 Kaiju Asses on the items you need, plus one of the rarest items in the game. Want the best Mahjong or Flower Wars decks? Be prepared to grind up over a thousand ash-covered tiles or cobalt dust, respectively.
- Prize Letdown - Ash-Covered Tiles used to be this, being the only Wasteland crafting components that couldn't double as Vendor Trash[5]. This was fixed by making tiles necessary in large quantities in both Pizza Witch and Mahjong, to the point that 3000 each is now a fair price for them in the marketplace.
- Super Potions became one of these for a few months, after TACOs took their place as the best stamina consumable that wasn't either prohibitively hard to get or prohibitively impractical. It had to get its appetite cost cut and its stamina payoff increased in order to restore its relevance.
- Smokeblossoms are similar to Ash-Covered Tiles, in that they used to be worthless, but new content (Flower Wars) now requires 600 of them.
- Ultimate Gamer 386 - There are 7 players that have so much in-game stuff and are so good at Moon Logic Puzzles and Min-Maxing bonuses that McMasters doesn't make new content with them in mind for fear of said content becoming impossible for anyone else.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change - Depending on how you look at it, over half the game could be argued as being one of these, but even the most conservative interpretation of the term includes Glowslinging, Mahjong, and Flower Wars.
- Vaporware - Pirates, dating, Reaper's Game, Billy House, Holy Pail War, and so on, and so on...
- Versus Title
- War Reenactors - The Robo Fighto is supposedly a reenactment of the Giant Robot Wars of the setting's distant past.
- What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? - So much of it. One of the best examples is Billy himself: His level is directly proportional to how many eyepatches he's wearing.
- His level up message? "Billy gets a weird look on his face? and puts on a THIRD EYEPATCH!"
- Wizard Needs Food Badly - One of the main challenges of BillyCon is maintaining your Sleep, Nom, and Stink levels to be able to actually do events, keep your skills active, and avoid penalties.
- Writing by the Seat of Your Pants - McMaster's favorite kind of Billy Club Q & A question is the kind that requires him to Word of God by the seat of his pants.
- Yes but What Does Zataproximetacine DO - "MegaMission side effects may include include double vision, dizziness, kunoichi obssession, and sleepcrime."
- You Require More Vespene Gas - Gathering and stealing various resources are about three quarters of making a high-end village. The fourth quarter is beating upgrades out of Kaiju.
- Zombie Apocalypse - Zombjas, complete with Zettas (Special zombies) with types like Thriller.
- Zonk - First Loser, which has the EXCELLENT 1ST-nTH PLACE PRIZE of a shiny new Kunai. As the name implies, the goal is to come in (n+1) place.
- Ash-Covered Runes have a significant chance of turning into Worthless Runes when identified. Unknown Pizzas, Tarnished Wheels, and Idol Trash also have Zonks in Cold Pizza, Broken Wheel, and Regular Trash.
- ↑ Such as, say, anything you do between Face to Face 2 and Reaper's Game.
- ↑ It was added before Monochrome, but required that you have beaten Monochrome
- ↑ and arguably Olmec, as he supposedly actually is the character he's based on
- ↑ not counting the flamethrower's special effect; that's still an honest roll
- ↑ They have to be identified into one of the other types of tile before the NPC vendor will buy them, and then at half the cost of identification