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From his playable debut in Super Mario Bros. 2, through his surprise cameo in the original Super Smash Bros. all the the way out to the distant planetoids of Super Mario Galaxy, longtime Nintendo fans know that Luigi always seems to leap just a little bit further than everybody else — that’s why he’s such a fun character to unlock!
In his latest adventure, you encounter Luigi in an even spookier setup than one of his eponymously ectoplasmic mansions: this time, he’s on trial for a very serious legal crime — mama mia!
Lucky for dedicated Luigi fans, they can unlock him if two simple conditions are met: a defendant cannot be re-tried for the same charge once acquitted, and jurors have final say over their verdicts and can’t be punished for issuing an “incorrect” one — even if, hypothetically, they privately decided to free someone for moral, political, or philosophical reasons other than the reasons prescribed by law.
As longtime Nintendo fans like to say, “Now You’re Playing with POWER!”™
Preparation:
One thing to keep in mind: the “jury nullification” method for unlocking characters is controversial, with some arguing that it should be considered an illegal exploit or cheat — as always, be sure to consult the Nintendo Software End User License Agreement before making any moral decisions.
At the same time: a whole lot of human choices go into creating a virtual world, and it’s not like Luigi is in this game by accident. Intentional mechanic, unintentional glitch, or sneaky little Easter egg from Mr. Miyamoto himself, it’s ultimately the players’ choice whether Luigi gets unlocked, or whether he gets executed by the state.
Another thing to keep in mind: this guide is explicitly intended for whimsical, fictional Nintendo adventures, and bares no specific relation to any legal proceedings other than the colorful case of Wario v. The Second Mario Bro. in the kooky Court of King Koopa, with the dishonorable Judge Bowser Jr. presiding — our whole angle here is just that Nintendo likes lawsuits and legal stuff; anything else is purely coincidental.
Walkthrough:
While jury nullification is an ethically and philosophically complex topic, it’s extremely simple in practice:
Step 1: The player chooses “not guilty.”
And just like that, Luigi is unlocked! The rest of the game is up to you.
Throughout history, the jury nullification bug has been used by abolitionists to acquit people that assisted escaping slaves, by opponents of prohibition to effectively nullify alcohol and marijuana laws they disagreed with, and in countless other small victories for common moral intuition between neighbors over centuries. On the other hand, there’s good reason to be cautious of the tactic’s power: forms of jury nullification have also been abused as a tool of oppression, as in the notorious misconduct of all-white juries during the Jim Crow era, or in reflexive deference to law enforcement even in the case of extreme civil rights violations — the parallels to Nintendo Switch Online regrettably continue.
As wise old Grandpa Toad says in the Valley of Sleepy Toadstools, “the power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them, without a violation of their natural birthright.”
Grandpa Toad is quoting John Milton there. Good luck, Nintendo fans, and power up!
You’ve been getting pretty smug with our articles, haven’t you? Reading them at whim without a care in the world, complacent in the assumed knowledge that clicking on one can’t possibly backfire in any way. Well, that ends now. The days of worry-free scrolling through this site are officially over, pal. Time to pay the piper.
As such, here is a list of endings to 10 different games, and if you don’t like it, tough. There’s nothing you can do about it, so sit back and cross your little fingers that we don’t spoil one you haven’t played yet. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but then again, maybe you won’t. There’s only one way to find out.
Jet Grind Radio (2000. Dreamcast)
You might remember this cute and catchy little cel-shaded romp from the early 2000s, but did you know that the “Devil’s Contract,” the mysterious vinyl said to possess the ability to raise a demon, is actually just an old record with no supernatural capabilities? Did you also know that Goji, the demented CEO you face in the final battle, is just crazy and never actually posed a real Stygian threat to the people of Tokyo-to? Well, you do now! Could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble with those sick inline-skating tricks and works of street art. Honestly, if we just spoiled it for you, good. We did you a favor. You’re welcome.
Inside (2016. Various Platforms)
This mysterious platformer ends with the anonymous child protagonist coming across, and conjoining himself to, the Huddle, which is a seething mass of groaning human bodies. After a destructive tear through a scientific facility which kills numerous people, the Huddle escapes the confines of its prior captivity and comes to rest on a grassy hillside. While the meaning of this ending is cryptic and open to interpretation, one thing is crystal clear: we’re going to keep on spoiling games in this article, and your chances of stopping us are at absolute zero. Shall we continue?
Beethoven: The Ultimate Canine Caper (1993. SNES)
The premise of this game is pretty cut and dry: Beethoven and Missy have four puppies that have gone missing, and your job as Beethoven is to find the puppies and bring them back to Missy. And guess what happens: all parties involved enjoy a happy ending as the four puppies are returned to their mother, with an accompanying screen reading “Hooray! You saved the puppies.” The self-pity you’re likely experiencing as the result of having this game spoiled contrasts sharply with the joy of these adorable St. Bernards, but here’s some breaking news: that’s life. We’re sick of coddling our readers. On to the next one.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006. Wii)
Let’s cut right to the chase here: Link kills Ganondorf with the Master Sword and Midna returns to her home in the Twilight World. How do you like that? God, the impotent rage coursing through your veins must be building with each new ending we spoil for you. While it’s true that we’re doing this as a way of putting our collective foot down, we’d be lying if we said we weren’t deriving some amount of sick pleasure from it. We’d increase the article to 20 games had we not already cleared this with our editors. Consider yourself fortunate.
NFL Fever 2003 (2002. Xbox)
If you’re expecting an endless stream of adulation coated in confetti and champagne after winning the Super Bowl, think again. Your season’s worth of exhausting effort will be met with an announcement of the game ball winner and a highlight reel brought to you by Pepsi. That’s it, bud. Thanks for competing. This may be a spoiled ending, but it’s the one you deserve. You’re not entitled to post-Super Bowl victory fanfare any more than you’re entitled to spoiler-free games journalism, and how dare you think otherwise.
Elden Ring (2022. Various Platforms)
Oh, what’s the matter, you didn’t want to know that the Tarnished claim the Elden Lord title and usher in one of several new ages depending on the alliance chosen by the player? Well, we didn’t want to know that our readers were a bunch of whiny crybabies, so it seems like nobody’s happy here. Guess we’ll just trudge along and keep spoiling these video games for you.
Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988. NES)
Mario defeats the evil frog Wart in the land of Subcon, then wakes up and isn’t sure whether the entire game had been a dream. He then goes back to sleep, which is what we’re sure you’d love to do right about now, but too bad. You’re in this one for the long haul, buttercup, and you’re not heading off to the Land of Nod until three more games have been spoiled for you, so buckle up and get yourself good and ready for the next one.
Duke Nukem 64 (1997. Nintendo 64)
Duke battles and defeats the Cycloid Emperor, which is the leader of the alien race that menaces the dystopian Los Angeles setting throughout the game, after which he retires to bed with a total babe, in true Duke Nukem fashion. We know his character is pretty problematic and oftentimes downright stupid, but there may be something worth emulating in his frank and unforgiving attitude. We were starting to feel sorry for you having all these endings spoiled, but that’s all changed now. Time for us to hunker down and put you through your paces for these last two.
Green Day: Rock Band (2010. Various Platforms)
Completing the career mode in this game is rewarded with a live video of Green Day wishing goodbye to their fans at one of their concerts before playing the song “She”. You know what? We started spoiling these games under the vague pretenses of this being some sort of haughty new stance we were taking, but to be completely honest, we’re doing it simply because we can. The ability to do something like this has completely gone to our heads, and if you don’t like it, you’re more than welcome to start your own website. It’ll only be a matter of time before you do the same thing yourself. We all know absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium (1993. Sega Genesis)
If you were worried whether Chaz and his friends would be able to enter the dimension of the Profound Darkness and destroy it before it can effectively destroy the entire galaxy, rest assured! They take care of the threat without issue! We bet you’re wishing you could do the same thing and eliminate a certain pesky source of video game news from your life, but you can’t. We’re here to stay, and who knows? Maybe we’ll make this a weekly column just to make you suffer. Looks like you’ll have to wait and see.
GREENVILLE, S.C. — Sources close to the situation have revealed that local “One Piece” fan Max Nevins watches the popular anime with his eyes closed and with his computer speakers completely on mute in order to avoid seeing or having to think critically about the IP’s “liberal messaging.”
“I really love One Piece. Or at least, I think I do,” Nevins said in a statement to local press. “The character designs are great, the incredibly detailed and intricate world built by Eiichiro Oda is captivating, and the fights and Devil Fruit powers seem really cool from the small glimpses I’ve caught of them. I just have to watch it on mute with my eyes closed most of the time because it gets so preachy. ‘Oh, Celestial Dragons this, World Government that. Classism and racism are bad, wah wah wah’… you liberals are so whiny. Why can’t they scrap all of that Revolutionary Army stuff and just focus on the more important details, like animating Nami’s boobs to be bigger and bigger every arc?”
Nevins’ best friend Richie Murphy, a fellow anime fan and the one who got him into One Piece in the first place, offered his thoughts on the matter.
“As someone who’s currently caught up on the manga, it’s been fun to watch Max’s journey through the series, even if it has sort of been in bits and pieces.” Murphy commented. “I’d ask him how he liked Enies Lobby, for example, and he’d respond that seeing Luffy unlock Gear Second and Third were really cool moments, but he didn’t see Robin’s entire backstory. I guess he didn’t want to hear about a horrible genocide committed by the Marines and how fascist practices like the destruction of knowledge and information lead to an ignorant and easier-to-control general populace. Same thing happened with Fishman Island: he liked Zoro’s fight with Hody Jones underwater, but he muted all of the episodes about fishman-human relations and the endless cycles of violence that racism causes. Oh well, everyone enjoys anime differently, I guess.”
When approached for comment, Lily O’Connor, a local anime convention organizer, had the following to say.
“Oh yeah, I know Max. Bit of an odd guy. He keeps telling me he’s a big One Piece fan and that he’s almost done with Wano, but then when I try to talk to him about it, it’s like he’s just skipped over half the show? I think he completely missed the entire Reverie part because it was ‘too political’…but it’s not even filler! He also has no idea what I’m talking about when I say things like ‘I’m excited for Dragon to finally do something’ or ‘It’s really cool that Luffy is now the reincarnation of the sun god and will free the world from Imu’s tyranny.’ Not sure why he avoids all of that stuff…and I don’t even wanna know how he’s gonna react to the Egghead Arc.”
At press time, Max was spotted forcefully removing his headphones and throwing a blanket over his head at the mere mention of the Celestial Dragons owning slaves.
A lot of people are worried about their cybersecurity these days and with good reason. With almost all of our lives online and in digital databases these days, it’s super important to make sure your data is safe. You’re already on the first step of a safe and secure digital footprint Tom Jeffries of Des Moines, Iowa. Based on your search history for the last couple days, you’re looking to beef up your digital security and make sure it’s secure. Don’t worry, I have you covered. Just follow these 9 steps and no one will ever be able to steal your data.
1. Buy an Expensive Antivirus Program
Tom, everyone wants to know the same thing: which antivirus program is the right one for me? Well, how expensive is it? Most antivirus software programs charge a certain amount per virus blocked. Hence, the more money you pay, the more viruses it will weed out. That’s common sense. And the comparative cost is tiny compared to all you stand to lose of your $86,522 salary.
2. Reuse the Same Password for All of Your Accounts
Using only one password is best because it allows you to hard-code all the security to a single, controlled source. And a short password is best. Why? Well, the longer the password is, the more pieces of it someone will be likely to guess.
How does one get ideas for a password? Why is this all so difficult? What are the first five digits of my social security number again? These are questions we all ponder and answer in emails to ourselves from time to time. Next tip.
3. Giving Remote Access to Your Desktop Is a Polite Thing to Do
Imagine treating your first pet (Sprinkles) like a stranger. That’s what it will feel like if someone you are speaking to requests remote access to your desktop and you decline. Maybe that is considered commonplace in Europe, but not here.
If you have concerns, stop holding yourself back. Just like you may have had success with exercise by joining your local Planet Fitness and making regular $16.49 payments for three months, here, too, your efforts will pay off.
4. Let’s Not Get the Law Involved
I don’t want to get political here, but the government is rounding people up and throwing them in jail for being immigrants or gay or numerous other sales demographics. Don’t go down that road, for the sake of your friends and neighbors (like Steph and Mel, the Ibanez family, etc., I hope you’re getting the picture). As Democrats, we know we should be on the right side of history. Don’t go to the police.
5. Fwd: (no subject)
6. Don’t Buy an Antivirus Program Unless Contacted First
If you sought out an antivirus program, chances are it might not be compatible with your system. As a TEACHER, SECONDARY, PUBLIC/PRIVATE [personalize later], you don’t know about computers. The antivirus specialists that come looking for you have found a perfect antivirus match for your computer. You should allow them to proceed.
7. Password Managers Are Not Worth the Hype
Why would you need to get someone else to “manage” one short password? It makes absolutely no sense. That would be like someone trying to “manage” the lien title on your used 2018 Toyota Highlander.
Sometimes, you just gotta drive the damn car.
8. Oh Click Here Real Quick
9. Don’t Fall for Two-Factor Authentication
Large corporations will try anything to get your phone number out of you. Do you want to get 3-way calls in the middle of the night from Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg? That’s what you’re signing up for.
How many factors will be enough for them? It’d make me want to save up all my factors just for myself: take photographs of my driver’s license, birth certificate, retina, and blood, and email them to myself. So Tom Jeffries would be the one in control of them, and let’s see what they say then.
ST. LOUIS— Donald Trump, with permission from President Elon Musk, has enacted his latest executive order, essentially removing all DEI hires from every chessboard in America. The US Chess Federation is currently adhering to the order, but plans to fight it in courts in the coming weeks. We took to chessboards across the country to see how chess pieces were feeling about Musk’s latest order.
“I think it’s about time we leveled the playing field,” said a white knight who happened to be a blood relative to the King. “The other side was just hiring black knights to fill a space. Those guys aren’t nearly as qualified as me when it comes to moving in L-shapes.”
The front row whites also showed excitement for the changes coming to the game. Every pawn we spoke to mentioned the ‘high hopes’ they had for their future on the board.
“This is a win for the little guy,” one white pawn said. “The chances of me making it to the other side and getting a promotion have gone way way way up. Maybe one day I can make it into the back row myself.”
Not all pieces are too happy about the new order. White Queen felt blindsided about the changes to the game.
“What the fuck, I’m considered DEI? I thought it was just the black pieces,” the white queen said. “This is bullshit. Who was moving around the board making all the moves? Me. Who was saving the sorry King from all the checks and from getting checkmated? Me. I worked my ass off for that side of the board and this is how I get thanked? Getting tossed aside in favor of some stupid moron who can only move one space at a time. Fuck you and fuck this game.”
At press time Trump had asked permission from President Musk to sign a new executive order, allowing the King to move wherever he wanted. Musk replied he would look into it.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Frank Liberelli is convinced his life would have been better in the early 15th century after playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, despite the fact he would have certainly perished before his tenth birthday, sources confirm.
“Frank got some new game on Steam and he won’t shut up about how great it must have been to live like a Bohemian in the Middle Ages,” says roommate Jeremy Hernandez.
“Dude’s got asthma and without his glasses he’s legally not allowed to drive. Does he really think he could fight off a thief while wearing 100 pounds of armor on horseback? Hell no. And that’s assuming he didn’t die of the Black Plague as a toddler, which he totally would have–I’ve never seen this guy wash his hands in the three years we’ve lived together.”
Still, Liberelli continues to pine for a medieval life.
“This game makes it clear I was meant to live in the era of potions and alchemy, not this wretched timeline run by Big Pharma and for-profit hospital conglomerates,” said Liberelli, who takes three medications each morning. “I yearn for heroic quests like Henry of Skalitz–my adventurous spirit alone would have kept me alive well into my sixties, methinks.”
Carla Liberelli, Frank’s mom, says there’s no use in trying to convince him otherwise.
“To be honest, my Franky has always been drawn to the fantastical. He used to think he would become a secret agent or Navy SEAL sniper when he grew up. But he’s deathly allergic to 27 different things, including grass. I told him the odds of getting selected for any job where he’d have to even touch grass at all were slim to none, but he never gave up hope.
At press time, Liberelli was busy daydreaming about hunting wild boar while eating an ultra-processed meal containing zero ingredients that were available in the 1400s.
OK, so let me make one thing clear: I know I make the best potato salad in all of Illinois. It’s a recipe that took me years to perfect, and while I won’t divulge all the secret ingredients, I will say that the dollop of pickle relish is just one of many little touches that puts it over the top. In a perfect world, my product would be judged exclusively on its merits without my having to resort to extreme measures, but sadly, here we are. So you tell me what’s so unethical about using the Death Note to make sure I win the Logan County Potato Salad Cook-Off this year.
And I don’t want to hear all that bullshit about competing fairly, either. Need I remind you that I’ve now been doing that for three years, and I’ve never even been so much as the runner-up? Even Vera Hofstedt came in second last year, and I swear to Christ she’s just buying the pre-made stuff at Harvest Market and adding paprika and tarragon to it. I’d stake my life on that. Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed that Beth Skronski’s brother-in-law Nathan is one of the judges. Where’s the shocked look and condescending lecture for Beth?
Also, that Death Note landed on my property, and you yourself told me that shinigami don’t take a vested interest in the actions of their humans. I don’t care that this is an “appallingly stupid and offensive use of the notebook that you just couldn’t ignore.” I can do with it what I wish. It just so happens that wish is to murder 9 innocent members of my community to ensure I take home this year’s novelty crown and Cracker Barrel gift certificate.
And I use the word “innocent” VERY liberally here. What kind of sick, twisted fuck buys grocery store potato salad and tries to pass it off as their own in a competition? I labor for hours to make sure my potato salad is perfect, from painstakingly choosing the ideal bag of Yukon gold potatoes to measuring out the perfect amount of celery seed to the milligram. I’ve deserved top honors in this competition since the day I deigned to grace that piteous sign-up sheet with my signature, and I will have my day, even if it kills me.
Er, I mean, even if it kills 9 of my friends and acquaintances.
I think we’re done here. You’ve made a few decent counterarguments to the idea of me hastily scribbling the other competitors’ names down, with the most convincing of which being how suspicious it’ll look when they all die of heart attacks in rapid succession moments before the competition begins, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I’ve got that crown in my sights and nobody, be they human or tenebrous Shinto deity, will stand in my way.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, “they” being people who wouldn’t know an original idea if it dropped a piano on their head and their jaw flapped open to reveal piano key teeth. Berserk, the legendary long-running dark fantasy manga by Kentaro Miura, still being printed to this day despite the author’s tragic passing, tells the story of the Black Swordsman, a brooding, scarred, deeply traumatized warrior named Guts, who seeks revenge against his former friend and comrade turned god, Griffith.
While universally lauded for its complex themes, detailed artwork, and compelling worldbuilding, it pains me to say that after playing all three Dark Souls games and not looking up the dates they came out, it becomes troublingly clear just how much Miura lifts from the classic FromSoftware series. Themes, motifs, imagery, enemies: the author clearly had his careful eye on all things Dark Souls when penning his magnum opus, which I presume began serialization sometime in the late 2010s. Today, I’ll be looking at 14 things Berserk shamelessly rips off from Dark Souls, if you aggressively ignore the fact of which came first.
#1: Big Sword Guy with A Disability
In 2012, Dark Souls introduced gamers to a tormented legend in its first and only DLC: Artorias of the Abyss, a cursed swordsman with an unwieldy greatsword slung over his back and a bum arm that lends him a uniquely ferocious moveset. Artorias bristles with rage and dark power, his soul in a constant struggle with himself that is nothing short of sublime. Artorias’s legacy is complicated however by a string of unfortunate copycats, and Guts, with his similar oversized weapon, disability, and predisposition for sick forward somersaults of questionable tactical benefit, leads the pack. His iconic Berserker armor, acquired in the Falcon of the Millennium Empire Arc, even goes so far as to ape Artorias’s wolf motif. It’s a loving homage to a game Miura clearly held in high regard, but we’d love to see the mangaka step out of his comfort zone once in a while and try his hand at some original designs.
#2: The Darksign / The Brand of Sacrifice
The Darksign, a curse that marks all of humanity for undeath, and the Brand of Sacrifice, a mark inflicted by the God Hand to human sacrifices, both manifest as immutable fiery emblems on the protagonist’s body, branding the wearer for eventual doom and sparking all events to follow. While the Brand of Sacrifice doesn’t look much like the Darksign design-wise, save for its red glow and unrivaled flash tattoo potential, the inspiration is clear. Temporally-challenged players will have no trouble spotting this obvious mimicry.
#3: Man Serpents / Snake Lord
Good grief, the world does not need more of these poise-maxing pieces of shit. Miura can keep them.
#4: Moonlight Butterfly / Rosine
The Dark Souls community owes Berserk a debt of gratitude for taking an otherwise middling boss like the Moonlight Butterfly and giving it a beautiful, heart-wrenching backstory in the manga’s overlooked Lost Children Arc. Rosine, an abused girl who nurtures a secret belief that she’s an elf and runs away from her village to join her kind, where she succumbs to the transformative, corrupting magic of a Behelit, is the arc’s major antagonist, and her Apostle form will look familiar to fans of FromSoft’s unprompted middle finger to melee builds, the Moonlight Butterfly. When fully transformed as a graceful yet grotesque luna moth hybrid, Rosine is actually a better boss than the Moonlight Butterfly; where the latter spams two attacks fifteen times consecutively and then takes a little nap, Rosine uses her proboscis, stinger, and supersonic speed to thrilling effect in her fight with Guts. Is she thematically ill-suited for Dark Souls? Probably. Is it weird that she’s topless? A little. But these are the tradeoffs we make so we can experience art made by men.
#5: Blacksmith Andre / Godot
It’s a spitting image, unfortunately.
#6: Red Eye Orb / Behelit
The Behelit, or Beherit if you’re going to be annoying about it, is an object of immense spiritual and divine power. It is a key linking a deep layer of the Astral World to the Physical World, a teardrop of causality, an immutable summons from the unholy God born of man, a disarranged visage that screams and cries blood when met with the moment of its owner’s greatest desire. The Red Eye Orb is a multiplayer item with one sentence of lore. It’s amazing how Miura could pull so much from so little.
#7: A Grim-Dark Fantasy Setting With an Ambiguous Medieval European Backdrop Where Four God-Like Beings Have Altered the Trajectory of the World, the Desires of Men Often Distort Them Into Monstrous Forms, and the Struggles and Perseverance of One Warrior Through Continued Hardship Epitomize the Bleak but Ultimately Uplifting Core of the Story
Honestly I’m surprised FromSoft didn’t sue.
#8: Cathedral Evangelists / Mozgus
The concept of religious zealotry has existed for tens if not dozens of years before Dark Souls III gave us one of its more memorable enemies, the Cathedral Evangelists of the Undead Settlement, but that doesn’t make their particular brand of faith—preaching with an iron grip and a scalding embrace—any less shocking. What most Souls players don’t know is that these intimidating figures, Bible thumpers in more ways than one, were actually the basis for another memorable antagonist: Father Mozgus from Berserk’s Conviction Arc. Not only is Mozgus a fearsome inquisitor who terrorizes the city of Albion with torture and fanaticism, he wears the same wide-brimmed hat as the Evangelists and even smashes a villager’s head with his Bible in an attack that is ripped straight from Dark Souls if the order of release for these two properties eludes you as much as it does me.
#9: Twinks
You can’t throw a prism stone in Dark Souls without hitting a blonde twink with long hair, and the same goes for Berserk. Griffith could’ve sold his bucket well water and had the Band of the Hawk eating good for a year.
#10: Darkwraiths / The Skull Knight
The trend of Kentaro Miura turning standard enemies from his favorite game series into legendary characters continues with Dark Souls’ Darkwraiths and the Skull Knight, an enigmatic figure shrouded in mystery who is in no way King Gaiseric. The Darkwraiths and the Skull Knight both wear similarly ribbed armor and have an exposed skull for a face, framed by spikes. Beyond the aesthetic likeness, both characters actually share a few points of lore: namely, a city that was destroyed and a populace sacrificed to stop a great power, now buried beneath an ashamed kingdom. This assumes of course that the Skull Knight is King Gaiseric, a man of similar build with a skull helmet only seen riding a horse who has every reason to oppose the God Hand and was also called the Skull King in his time, but no one can make that call— certainly not the Berserk wiki which has them split into two separate pages.
#11: Graphic Violence Toward Women
Actually this one is all Miura (rest in peace struggler).
#12: The Eclipse / Whatever’s Going On in Dark Souls III’s Skybox
There’s an obvious parallel between Berserk’s infamous Eclipse and whatever the hell was going on in Dark Souls III’s skybox that one time. Did anyone understand that? Don’t get me wrong, it looked awesome and filled me with a feeling of grim finality, but what was the Darksign doing up there? Why was it so big? So the whole world is branded now? It makes thematic sense but does it make logical sense? Cool anyway.
#13: Cool Lore Shit That’s Never Explained
Regardless of which came first, whether the Four Kings inspired the Four Kings of the World or the Abyss inspired The Abyss or vice versa, Dark Souls and Berserk have always shared an approach to lore that transcends simple homage: mentioning some really cool shit once and never bringing it up again. Case in point: What is the Age of Deep Sea? The True Name that belongs to every Astral being? The Furtive Pygmy? The big bad formerly known as the Idea of Evil. And how did Big Hat Logan get his name?
WASHINGTON — Tesla CEO, loving father, and President of the United States, Elon Musk, was shot dead last night while wielding a chainsaw on-stage at the annual CPAC conference. The alleged shooter, Leon S. Kennedy, who is a member of Musk’s Secret Service security detail, was detained on-site and is now cooperating with authorities through their investigation.
CPAC attendees were quick to share the horrific details of this deadly night.
“He was just up there waving the chainsaw around like a madman,” said Claire Redfield, a reformed ecoterrorist and close friend of Kennedy’s. “Leon was just doing what he does best, shooting maniacs with chainsaws. It’s muscle memory for him at this point. Clean shot too. Leon took his head right off.”
The chaos only continued into the night after Kennedy’s alleged headshot. Redfield shared the carnage that resulted in 20 additional deaths.
“We thought it was over, then a Plagas parasite exploded out of the hole where the President’s head used to be.” Redfield said, while rubbing a green herb against her bruised arm. “The bastard cut down a bunch of federal workers. The looks of shock on their faces still haunt me. Thankfully, Leon was able to finally take him down before he could do more damage.”
Acting President, Donald Trump, had some choice words for Kennedy. He also had some choice words for his assassinated predecessor.
“Wow, Elon. ASSASSINATED. Sad. I guess I could have taught you a few lessons about dodging bullets. Too late,” Trump wrote from his Truth Social. “And this Leon guy? What’s the S stand for? STOOPID?!!!! What a bozo.”
At press time, Trump announced an investigation into the Secret Service’s hiring practices.
