InCyberpunk 2077, Night City is your oyster. Truth be told, there are so many ways to enjoy your virtual adventure in Night City aside from following the critical path of the game’s storyline. You’ll meet plenty of alluring, provocative, and downright humorous characters on the streets of the urban sprawl V calls home.
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V’s adventure into the heart of adrenaline, tragedy, deceit, and casual violence is actually layered with a sensible dosage of self-awareness and humor despite the narrative’s more serious underpinnings. This is the (alternate) future after all where anything is possible. So, why not throw in a few cheeky gaffs along the way? Well, that’s exactly what developer CD Projekt Red did.
7Delamain’s Rogue Fleet
Shortly after you complete the prologue to the game, an eccentric AI named Delamain will reach out to you concerning a job opportunity. Del manages a fleet of self-driving cars that are all supposed to be connected to his network but have somehow freed themselves and are completely erratic.
Humorously, as V approaches each vehicle during the side mission, they each display a very human-like emotion and are often violent or paranoid. One vehicle, in particular, is homicidal, references cake, and sounds a lot like another famous video game AI. That’s right, it’s exactly who you think it is.
6A Machine Gun Named Skippy
Unmistakably, you’ll be packing a lot of heat during your stay in Night City. But one question you probably never asked yourself is: what if your firearm is sentient? To be specific, what if you had a machine gun named Skippy who had a mind of his own? You can find Skippy lying next to the corpse of a poor sap who likely fell for the wiles of this weird little weapon.
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When you first claim possession of Skippy, you must pick whether you are a puppy-loving pacifist or a stone-cold killer. Basically, it’s the difference between aiming for arms and legs or heads. Skippy doesn’t necessarily honor your selection (at least after 50 kills), however, and despite his incessant dialogue and promises of a partnership, he is prone to making decisions on his own like firing at enemies when you’retrying to remain stealthy, for example. It’s funny, at least until he gets you killed.
5Ozob The Clown
When you think of a clown, perhaps a big round red nose comes to mind. But chances are you never envisioned a merc with hair styled like a clown’s and a live grenade for a nose. That’s what you get when you meet a client by the name of Ozob who’s looking for your merc skills. That’s right, Ozob is clearly Bozo backward, which also happens to be his last name.
When V asks about the nose, Ozob informs V that his brother pulled his original schnoz off with a pair of pliers. So, he replaced it with something that was “more his style.” Later in the game, you can fight Ozob in an illegal match for some “serious scratch.” You can beat him into submission, but if you pummel his nose too much, it will explode with a bit of irony, making you the winner by default. Apparently losing your head to a nose grenade is considered a “technical knockout.”
4Brendan The Vending Machine
Imagine kicking a few quarters into a vending machine for a soda, and in turn, the machine asks you how your day was. That’s Brendan — a strange vending machine outfitted with an experimental AI. He would talk to his clients — you know, the purveyors of snack-related goods on the street — and learn a lot about them. Some felt he was kind of creepy just for his expansive knowledge of everyday people while others were endeared by the chats they’d have with him.
He is eventually scrubbed away by his maker for causing a stir and giving away free goods. His code is rewritten but offers to tell V a final joke in the best “dying hero” voice he can muster. It’s a funny parallel to V’s circumstance given that V also has a terminal sentence ahead.
3Flaming Crotch Man
Look, in an age of biomechanical augmentations and physical alterations to the human body, you can expect some, uh, misfires. One such pants-less gentleman is cradling his privates in pain while desperately requesting a ride from V to the nearest ripper doc.
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You see, he used a performance enhancement of sorts that did the opposite of priming the man for pleasure. It inflicted pain. While watching another human in pain shouldn’t necessarily be your idea of a hearty laugh, you’ve seen enough death and destruction this far in your Night City journey to appreciate the minor misfortune of a fool throwing caution to the wind. And yes, V inputs this man as a contact in the database with the title “Flaming Crotch Man.”
2Kerry Eurodyne’s Beef With K-Pop Stars
Cyberpunk 2077 focuses on a dystopian future, one ruled by greed, instant gratification, and violence amid the glow of a technologically advanced civilization. Just because humanity has reached a new level of technological advancement, no such thing occurred in the social sphere, clearly. V is put to the test in a series of missions and side quests that test his loyalty, empathy, and integrity. There’s a lot of seriousness to be had.
That is, of course, until you meet Kerry Eurodyne, a former bandmate of Johnny Silverhand’s in the rock band Samurai. Kerry asks you to help him out with a job that he primes as important and sensitive. You then learn, however, that he’s simply got a beef with a K-Pop band that is using his song as a cover. He brings you on a mission to stop their tour by blowing up their equipment. It’s a completely new level of absurdity.
1Stealing The “Batmobile”
In the Badlands, you can pick up a side gig that is titled, “Murk Man Returns Again Once More Forever.” If you have no idea what fabled cinematic superhero series this mission is clearly parodying, then you might live under a rock.
Inside a cave-like tunnel, you will find a shipping container containing a black Rayfield Caliburn,one of the sleekest cars in the game. If you search around for details, you will find that this hideout belonged to Murk Man, an individual who was orphaned after his parents were killed. And, as you’d expect with that sort of setup, he dedicated himself to becoming a vigilante to fight corruption in the city using the dark of night. But he’s not around, so fire up that Batmobile and claim it for yourself!
