Visual Novel / Pizza Game

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Every boy have a secret. One of them is bones.

Pizza Game is a 2019 comedic "shitpost" visual novel written by Plasterbrain, and with art by her brother Brendan Blaber.

Kiane is a college graduate who has just landed her dream job: the secretary of Mr. Arimnaes, billionaire tech CEO and serial killer (which is a very poorly-kept secret). While her main goal is trying to win Mr. Arimnaes' heart, she has plenty of time for other tasks, such as taking night classes or working as a pizza waitress. There are also plenty of other single people she could choose to romance, such as the mascot for the local pizza restaurant, or her incredibly buff Driver's Ed instructor. With the help of her sassy thought bubble, Inner Me, there's nothing Kiane can't accomplish!

Tropes:

• Aborted Arc: In most routes, Kiane stops going to her job at the Microsoffit and/or the driving school without a good reason for doing so.
• Actor Allusion:
  • In Sensei’s route, Kiane makes a self-insert OC named Chula, which happens to be the middle name and nickname of her voice actress and namesake, Kiane Chula King.
  • In Chris’s route, he tells Kiane that he sometimes places zucchinis on people’s doorsteps, which his voice actor Christopher Gilstrap also does.
  • During Lamp’s route, William-sama mentions that he used to keep Jolly Ranchers in his pockets, which is also true of his voice actor, Will T. Sopp.
  • Also during Lamp’s route, it’s mentioned that Sensei owns every Scooby-Doo movie. His voice actor, Brendan Blaber, has also seen every movie in the franchise.
  • In the True Route, William-sama mentions that he used to hose off his roof when it was raining so no one could tell he was hosing off his roof, which Will T. Sopp also used to do.
• Aerith and Bob: Characters with normal names like Kiane, Johnny, Nancy, and Chris (though his full name, Chrisanthemum, is more “Aerith” than “Bob”) live alongside characters with bizarre names like Keenarnor, Roobit, Sav, and Brain.
• Afraid of Clowns: Every character in the Chris route except Brain seems to be this, as Chris is able to damage them just by saying the word “clowns”.
• Age-Gap Romance: The Mr. Arimnaes and Sensei routes are this. While Kiane is a recent college graduate, Sensei is in his 30s, and Mr. Arimnaes’ exact age isn’t stated, but he remarks about the age gap during his route. (The True Route reveals that he’s in his 30s or possibly early 40s, as he was a child during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.)
• All Just a Dream: In the Brain Drain gameshow segment of Chris’s route, the third question is “Why are you answering questions about Sensei when this is Chris’s route?” If you answer “This is Sensei’s route”, Plungersei and Chris will cryptically allude to the current events being an illusion before Kiane suddenly wakes up in the grocery store with Sensei. Sensei and Inner Kiane explain that they’re buying groceries for Sensei’s family reunion (which Kiane has no recollection of), and the game will continue on Sensei’s route from there. Chris’s bad ending can be achieved from this point if the player talks to Plungersei at the family reunion.
• Ambiguously Human: Sensei and his family seem human, but there's enough off about them to bring that into question. For example, one of them is able to adjust his eyeball, and later does the same with his "earball." Flower Sensei also supports this idea, both in being a regular flower who was transformed into a Sensei and in openly questioning whether or not the other Senseis were something else before.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • You have the option to skip any content you’ve already seen, allowing you to play every route without experiencing the same scenes repeatedly.
  • You can go back and view previous dialogue, allowing you to redo choices and see all of the funny dialogue.
  • There are three save files that can be used to return to a specific point in the game. When you save, a doodle appears on the file indicating which route you’re currently on.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Parodied in Mr. Arimnaes’ route. When Kiane kisses Mr. Arimnaes for the first time, a screen telling the player to take a break appears, claiming that playing too much Pizza Game is dangerous.
• Anyone Can Die: The nature of the game as a visual novel with Multiple Endings makes this a less dramatic example of the trope, but most routes include the death of at least one main character. For example, Sav dies at the end of Chris’s route and in one ending of Keen’s route, Sensei becomes a murder victim in all but a few routes, Inner Kiane dies of Senseless Sacrifice in Roobit’s route, Kiane herself dies via Clone by Conversion in one ending of the Keen route, and in the True Route, all of the datable characters can die.
• Bad Liar: Mr. Arimnaes' murderous tendencies are made incredibly obvious (to the audience) despite all his attempts to explain why his office is covered in human bones. Thankfully for him, Kiane is an Idiot Hero that can't see the truth even when it's spelled out for her.
• Body Snatcher: In the Keen route, if you choose to shoot Sav in the Town Pizza, you’ll get the option to select “I’m Sav” as a secret to tell Keen during the dating minigame at the end. If you select this option, Sav will reveal that he’s stolen Kiane’s body by jumping across dimensions.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Most of the characters seem to be aware that they’re in a video game, as they mention elements like the game’s title, the roles of characters, quick-time events, the dialogue beeps, and even the Kickstarter that funded it in casual conversation.
• Brown Note: A more literal example than most cases. In Chris’s route, Sav reads part of a magical haiku that causes diarrhea. He stops before the diarrhea-inducing seventh verse when it’s pointed out that haikus do not have more than three verses.
• Cast Full of Crazy: Kiane is an Idiot Hero, and almost every NPC is either evil, stupid, nonhuman, a Cloudcuckoolander, just plain odd, or some combination of these traits. Inner Kiane and Keenarnor are the most normal characters in the cast, and even they have their moments. To add on to this, the game’s dialogue is written to emulate a purposefully bad fanfic, so even “normal” dialogue is tinted with ridiculousness.
• Cast Full of Gay: About half of the cast is some shade of LGBTQ+. Kiane is bisexual, Keenarnor is polyamorous and implied to have feelings for Baron Von Boo, Roobit likes women, Warped Lamp is a trans woman, Siv Illian is androgynous and uses they/them pronouns, and William-sama used to be a girl (though he never confirms whether he’s actually transgender).
• Censor Box: A black censor bar is used to censor Warped Lamp's nipples (but only if Kiane asks about them in Lamp's route).
• Cerebus Syndrome: The True Route is pretty dark compared to the rest of the game. From Kiane finding out on the first day that Mr. Arimnaes is a serial killer, to learning that Flordaddle is stuck repeating the same five days until he gives the Eldritch Abomination MOTHER her bone powers back. That said, it's still Pizza Game, so there are still some light, comedic elements, such as MOTHER's friendly attitude toward the people of Flordaddle, even as she openly judges whether or not to spare them, or the flashbacks having everyone speak Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe during the Carter administration.
• Chekhov's Gun: The character bios. For most of the game, they’re just amusing flavor text, and the information on them isn’t needed for any part of the game, but in the True Route, if Roobit survives to defend Flordaddle, you’ll need to check MOTHER’s bio to correctly answer a question about their favorite food.
• Clone by Conversion: In the Keen route, if you kill Sav, then select “I’m Sav” as your secret during the dating segment, Kiane will transform into Sav, who will reveal that he’s stolen her body by jumping across timelines.
• Cloudcuckoolander: To an extent, everyone, but in particular:
  • Sensei has a very strange thought process, to the point that even Idiot Hero Kiane is weirded out by him.
  • Most of what Warped Lamp says comes across as either completely bizarre or outright crazy.
  Warped Lamp: Uh, ACTUALLY? I’m pretty sure sidewalks are an illusion.
• Color-Coded Characters: Most of the characters have prominent colors in their designs to make it easier to distinguish them. Keenarnor is red, Siv Illian is scarlet, William-sama is orange, Brain is yellowish orange, Chief Stabby is bright yellow, Chris is a more muted yellow, Sensei is green, Baron von Boo is teal, Mr. Arimnaes is muted blue, Sav is bright blue, Warped Lamp is purple, Kiane is pinkish purple, Roobit is reddish-purple, Johnny is grey, and Inner Kiane changes color. According to Word of God, Roobit’s color is less distinct from those of the other datable characters because she was added later in the game’s development.
• Connected All Along: William-sama is revealed to be Mr. Arimnaes’s childhood love interest and Sav’s mother.
• Copy Protection: Parodied in Mr. Arim’s route. At one point, he asks you to put on the 3D glasses that came with the game (for context, the game is digital download only, and comes with no Feelies). When you reveal that you don’t have them, he asks you where you bought the game, and if your answer makes him suspect that you pirated the game, he disappears briefly as a prank.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Mr. Arimnaes is a massive Jerkass who fires Kiane repeatedly for the smallest screw-ups and claims to only eat pizza with her to mock her standrad of living, among other things. Near the end of his Boastful Rap, he mentions evicting 40,000 orphans. Oh, and there's also the whole serial killer thing.
• Creator In-Joke:
  • The “family skit” Sensei describes in his route — where family members act out funny anecdotes about other family members, often from when they were children — is something Plasterbrain’s family does at reunions that she finds baffling. After Sensei describes it, Kiane says it sounds terrible, and both characters give a disapproving look to the creator’s dad (made especially funny by the fact that Sensei is voiced by Plasterbrain’s brother).
    • Another example relating to Plaster's dad: Sensei's cousin Stunkel calls Aunt Tabasco's mustache "a real whopper swapper". According to Brendan Blaber, Plaster's brother, in his Twitch stream of the game, that's what their dad calls Burger King.
  • At one point in Lamp’s route, Kiane says “I wish I wish upon a fish”, which, according to Brendan Blaber, is a reference to an embarrassing story from his childhood.
  • In his route, Chris mentions that his nickname is Killstrap. His voice actor and namesake, Christopher Gilstrap, also gained that nickname in a high-stakes, weeks-long squirt gun battle.
• Credits Gag: The closing credits include just as many typos as the main text, even misspelling some of the credited people’s names.
  • The credits for Roobit’s route credit the voice of Roobit (a character “voiced” by computer-generated voice clips) and Doobit (Roobit’s Paper-Thin Disguise) as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen respectively.
  • The credits for Sensei’s route credit Brendan Blaber as "Every Goddamn Sensei".
• Cute and Psycho: Rare Male Example. In his route, Chris is a little too willing to kill people to place his zucchini beacons.
• Deal with the Devil: The True Route reveals that Mr. Arimnaes made a deal with a demon as a child to grant him the power to instantly kill people.
• Deletion as Punishment: In playthroughs of the True Route after the first, if you declare that you dislike Pizza Game at the start and then let all the datable characters get killed, the route will end with your data being deleted and the game becoming permanently unplayable.
• Dreadful Musician: In Sensei's route, Mr. Arimnaes plays the piano while Kiane and Sensei try not to be caught by him. Kiane has a hard time not screaming in pain, making perfect didgeridoo sounds, or karate-chopping Mr. Arimnaes in response to how horrible his playing is.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Once you’ve beaten the True Route, you get the option at the start of every new game to declare if you love or hate Pizza Game. If you declare that you hate it, then play the True Route again and let every datable character die, the game will assume you really do hate Pizza Game, and give you the option to stop playing for good. You’ll get an ending CG of Chief Stabby looking off into the sunset, then the game will become unplayable.
• Evil Laugh: Mr. Arimnaes will let out one of these in Warped Lamp’s route if Kiane chooses to speak to him after checking the trash can in the alleyway, before claiming that skeletons like the one she found in the trash can aren’t real and urging her not to reveal her findings “or else”. He also gives one in the True Route if Kiane doesn’t take a picture of the severed head in his office, before revealing that he’s a murderer and giving a chilling villainous speech.
• Evolving Title Screen: At the start of the game, the title screen shows the outlines of Kiane and most of the datable characters. When a datable character’s route is completed, their picture is colored in on the title screen. Completing the True Route will color in Kiane, completing the image. (Roobit was added late in the game’s development, and as such, isn’t featured in the title screen art. When her route is completed, a small image of her face will appear above the selectable options on the title screen.)
• Fake-Out Twist: At the end of the Keen ending, when Keen says he wants to share a secret, he initially claims that he killed Sensei, and describes his motives and method. After this, he says that it was a joke, and reveals his real secret. The method of murder he describes involves ridiculous elements such as pizza clones, but the overall ridiculousness of the game makes it believable until it’s revealed to be false.
• Fictional Counterpart: Microsoffit is very clearly named after Microsoft.
• Fictional Province: The game is set in Flordaddle, a combination of Florida and Seattle, two locations in the opposite corners of the United States. The palm trees in the background indicate that Flordaddle is indeed in Florida, and an image of the Earth shown in the Roobit route includes a large canal spanning from Washington to Florida, implying that Seattle was literally floated over to Florida to create the setting.
• Final-Exam Boss: Defeating the final boss, MOTHER, requires convincing from every still-living datable character, and all of their methods of convincing are Call-Backs to previous routes. Keenarnor asks her for a pizza order and asks you to identify three errors in it, Roobit requires you to take a photo to light up the room, Chris reads an acrostic poem of your creation, Warped Lamp summons another Warped Lamp to testify, Sensei gets thrown in the trash a la Warped Lamp, and Mr. Arimnaes is convinced to apologize through pointing out all the times he failed in his route.
• Flashback: Multiple flashbacks to Mr. Arimnaes’s past occur in the True Route.
• Flashback Cut: These occasionally occur in multiple routes, usually viewed by clicking on bold text.
• Flashback Within a Flashback: During Mr. Arimnaes’s first flashback in the True Route, he has another flashback within it, and repeats this until there are four nested flashbacks. This turns out to be a stall tactic so he can recharge his bone powers.
• Foregone Conclusion: Any route where Mr. Arimnaes being a serial killer is treated as The Reveal becomes this after playing a route where this fact is made blatantly obvious and casually mentioned as a joke.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Mr. Arimnaes wears a pin on his suit jacket consisting of black and white circles, resembling Go pieces. Similar black and white circles also appear on Nancy’s necklace and the windows of his office. Near the end of his route, he reveals that he’s an expert Go player, and Kiane must best him in Go to win his love.
  • The background of Chris’s café hints towards the reveal that he’s a demon. The bathroom signs have horns on the male and female symbols, one of the menu items is fried chicken (his domain), and another menu item is Non-Demon Coffee.
  • If you save the game, a doodle will appear on the save file identifying the route you’re currently on. Most routes use a doodle of the dated character, but the True Route uses Chief Stabby. The player will likely assume that the True Route’s doodle is an exception to the rule due to the route not being focused on dating and that Chief Stabby is used because he only appears in the True Route, but Kiane does get together romantically with the chief at the end of the route.
  • Mr. Arimnaes is often suspiciously seen with human bones, implied to be his murder victims, but the blood, organs, and other parts of the human body are never present. The True Route reveals that Mr. Arimnaes kills his victims through a power that instantly turns them into a pile of bones.
  • In the True Route, while William-sama is going into detail about his past, an image of a flowery field and a cottage replaces the background. He claims that it’s just a nice image he likes to look at. Later in the route, Mr. Arimnaes’s Flashback uses the same background to represent his childhood home. William-sama, formerly known as Lillibean, was the childhood lover of Mr. Arimnaes.
  • Getting a Game Over will show a poorly written fanfic written by Kiane telling her teacher she forgot to study for a spelling test and wrote an erotic fanfiction shipping Mr. Arimnaes with herself. The paper has red ink marking the paper, one giving a grade of "F—" and "See me after class". The Reveal at the end of the True Route reveals the whole game is actually a 200,000+ word story that Kiane, a high schooler, is reading to a class taught by Mr. Arimnaes. He warns her if she reads another similarly written story instead of a book report, he'll send her to the principal's office; when she offers to show erotic artwork she drew, he makes good on that threat.
  • Near the end of Mr. Arimnaes’ ending, Kiane claims to have beaten him with the power of “a teen girl in love”, before Inner Kiane reminds her that she’s a college graduate. She brushes it off, stating that “teen” is a state of mind. The True Ending reveals that Kiane is, in fact, a teen girl, and the game is a story she wrote for a high school project.
• Game Over: If you fail in certain ways, it’s possible to get a Game Over screen. A Game Over can be achieved through various unusual methods, such as selecting Mr. Arimnaes as an ingredient eleven times in his route, or not making a decision for fourteen minutes at one point in Sensei’s route.
• Golden Ending: After attaining at least one ending for every dateable character’s route, the True Route can be played, concluding in the True Ending. In this route, it’s revealed that Flordaddle is trapped in a time loop because Mr. Arimnaes refuses to return his death powers to their original granter, and Kiane must prevent her friends from getting killed by Mr. Arimnaes before his trial. During the trial, the surviving characters team up to convince the source of the powers to free them from the time loop, and they succeed. After this ending, all subsequent playthroughs will start with a notice that everyone is free from the time loop, and the current game is just a reenactment.
• Gratuitous Japanese:
  • "Sensei" is a Japanese term, yet this game takes place in an American town and no one calls him anything else.
  • Characters sometimes lets honorifics slip into their speech, like Kiane calling Chris “Chris-kun” and Keenarnor referring to Flordaddle's financial situation as "economy-kun" being down on hard times. William-sama is also consistently referred to as such (except when he’s referred to as Lillibean or MOTHER).
  • At one point in the Chris route, Kiane refers to her heart as her “kokoro”.
  • In the True Route, Sav hands Kiane a card explaining that he’s a Hikikomori.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: The True Route reveals that Flordaddle is stuck in a five-day time loop because Mr. Arimnaes refuses to return his bone powers to Lillibean. Once the player successfully completes the True Route, everyone will be freed from the loop, and subsequent playthroughs will begin with a disclaimer that the events of the current game are historical reenactments.
• Guide Dang It!: A player trying to obtain every bad ending, whether it’s for the achievement “Master of Disaster” or just to explore all of the possible endings, will find that some are easier to get than others. Most of them divert from the good or neutral endings at a single choice near the end, where one option is obviously the “bad” choice, but the bad ending to Chris’s route is particularly tricky to reach without a guide. To get it, the player must answer one of the questions in the Brain Drain game show with “this is the Sensei route”. Doing this will cause Kiane to wake up in the grocery store with Sensei, revealing that the previous Chris-route events were All Just a Dream. As the save file doodle indicates, the player really is on the Sensei route, and the game follows the normal plot of the Sensei route from that point. The player is likely to return to an earlier save at this point to continue the Chris route, especially if they’ve already played the Sensei route, but those who choose to continue up to the family reunion and talk to Plungersei (the host of the aforementioned Brain Drain game show) will achieve Chris’s bad ending.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: On the player’s first route, Kiane will mention the controls for functions of the game like the camera and the menu at random points. On subsequent routes, the player can decide at the beginning to not include these messages.
• Horned Humanoid: Chris gains a pair of tiny red horns upon the reveal that he's a demon.
• Hyperaffixation: During the slideshow in Roobit’s route, Roobit frequently refers to objects from roobit society with the word “roobit” before them, such as “Roobit Sorcery” and “roobit cigarettes”.
  Roobit: we did not see… roobit-eye to roobit-eye.
  Inner Kiane: You don’t need to prefix everythign with Roobit yknow.
  Roobit: please do not do an interrupt during the roobit slideshow.
  Inner Kiane: roobit-sorry
• Hypocritical Humor: During the Keen arc, when Kiane says “conscious” instead of “conscience”, Mr. Arimnaes suddenly appears to correct her, despite his dialogue (and the game in general) being full of similar typos and errors.
• Idiot Hero: Kiane is not the brightest bulb in the box. Inner Kiane is smarter and more of a Deadpan Snarker, but not by much. That said, she's probably squarely in the center of the spectrum of this game's characters, with Warped Lamp and Sensei being distantly behind her. Then again, it could just be because they have an even looser grasp on reality that Kiane.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: The entire visual novel is grammatically butchered, as part of the joke.
  (From the trailer): "over 185,000 WORDS! all of them are TYPOS!"
• Ironic Name: Chief Stabby is a police officer who fights crime and an overall extremely kind person.
• Joke Item: One of the RPG items available for purchase at the Twist Shop in the Chris route is Very Hot Sauce, an item that heals 300 damage, then inflicts a status effect that deals 400 damage per turn for 2 turns. If you use it at the start of a battle, you get an achievement titled “Hard Mode”.
• Jump Scare:
  • The final question in the Brain Drain gameshow segment in Chris’s route is “Why?” If you answer “why what?”, you’ll repeatedly ask Plungersei to explain the question, and each time, he’ll only reply “Why?” The fourth time you ask him, he’ll get a Nightmare Face with black eyes and mouth and scream “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy”. The game then abruptly cuts to the café, with Chris, Kiane, and Inner Kiane all having no memory of what happened. The game cannot be rewinded back to this point.
  • While Kiane is talking to William-sama in Lamp’s route, he gets really close to the screen for a few lines of dialogue, then his sprite will turn white with red eyes as the voice of “MOTHER” replaces his. He’ll begin to spout an ominous warning before the scene suddenly cuts away.
• Lame Pun Reaction: One of Chris’s attacks is Bad Pun, a Damage Over Time attack that deals 100 damage each turn for three turns, because the pun was just that bad. Additionally, in Sensei’s route, Cousin Stunkel makes a particularly bad pun, and the player gets to choose whether or not to forgive him.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: For some routes, the ending you get is determined by a choice made near the end. For example, the bad ending of Keen's route is obtained by selecting "I'm Sav" as your secret during the last scene (though you also have to have let Sav die earlier in the route for this option to be available).
• Late for School: Invoked by Kiane and Inner Kiane on day 4 of Sensei’s route, because they determine that being late is an “endearing character trait”.
• Leitmotif: Most characters have at least one.
• Long Song, Short Scene: On the Keen route, when Sav is defeated, a dramatic lyrical piece plays. The piece is much longer than the actual moment of defeat, and it’s unlikely that the player will listen all the way through. Lampshaded at the end of the song by Plasterbrain (the lyricist), who says “They’re probably not still listening.”
• Looped Lyrics: The lyrics to the song “Undercover Date”, played in the True Route when Kiane and Chief Stabby are pretending to date in the café, consist of the words “Undercover date. Undercover date, yay.” repeated in Kiane’s voice. Additionally, the final boss music is a dramatic opera where the only lyric is “pizza”.
• Meaningful Echo: During Day 1, Kiane does not read the fine print on the contract she signs to work at the Big Microsoffit, stating that she doesn’t care about it. Mr. Arimnaes says a similar line in the True Route during a Flashback to the deal he made with Lillibean to grant him the power to skeleton-ize people.
• Medium Awareness: Characters express this frequently.
  • During the Mr. Arimnaes route, Johnny asks Kiane why she likes Mr. Naes but not him, and mentions that their vocal beeps are only one semitone apart in pitch. He then asks her if she’d even notice the difference if he started speaking in Mr. Naes’ pitch, lowering his vocal beeps by a semitone to prove the point.
  • At one point, Kiane can attempt to get Mr. Arimnaes to kiss her by taking control of a Dialogue Tree. (It doesn’t work.)
• Medium Blending: Real photographs are sometimes implemented into the game, such as the stop sign that Inner Kiane turns into when she’s extremely against what’s happening.
• Multiple Endings: Twenty in total; three for each possible love interest, plus the True Route ending, and a second True Route ending that deletes your save file.
• Mystery Episode: The Keen route is a murder mystery where Keen is one of the suspects, and the player must attempt to clear his name. Roobit’s route is also a murder mystery, with the same plot from a different perspective.
• Nap-Inducing Speak: One of Baron Von Boo’s moves in Chris’s route is Diatribe, where his talking causes the opponent to fall asleep.
• Nightmare Sequence: One of these occurs during the True Route, with the focal character depending on who the player earned the most date points with previously.
• Nipple and Dimed: Parodied in Lamp's route. After Lamp (who's been shirtless the whole game) reveals that she's a trans woman, if Kiane asks her about her nipples, they will be censored out by a black Censor Box.
• Odd Job Gods: Chrisanthemum, AKA Chris, is a demon that presides over fried chicken.
• Omega Ending: To play the True Route and get the Golden Ending, you must complete each of the love interests' routes at least once.
• Once More, with Volume!: During Kiane's pizza date with Mr. Arimnaes, the latter adds "hold the bitching" to his ordering of a pepperoni pizza. Kiane, offended at his rude assumption of her constantly whining, asks a rhetorical "What did you just say to me?". Arimnaes gladly repeats it louder to her.
  Mr. Arimnaes: One pepperoni pizza please, and hold the bitching
  Keenarnror: what did you just say to me?!?
  Mr. Arimnaes: Oh, was I not loud enough? I said HOLD. THE. BITCHING.
• One Bad Mother: The main villain of the True Route is simply named MOTHER.
• Only Sane by Comparison: Due to the Cast Full of Crazy, many scenes end up treating the comparatively least weird character as a Straight Man. Chris, Mr. Arimnaes, and Johnny are all this to Kiane at times, with Mr. Arimnaes occasionally playing this role to other characters such as Brain, and Kiane herself becomes one to Sensei in his route.
• Only Sane Woman: Inner Kiane plays this role, providing snarky commentary on everyone else’s ridiculous decisions.
• Our Demons Are Different: They’re able to hide in the form of ordinary humans, and can revert to their true form at will. They stay alive by creating beacons, which prevent them from dying until all of them are destroyed. More powerful demons, like MOTHER, are able to do things like grant powers of death to humans and create time loops.
• Pacifist Run: In Chris’s RPG-themed route, it’s completely possible (though sometimes very difficult and time-consuming) to complete every fight without attacking the opponent. You’ll have to lose the final fight to achieve this, but if you do, you’ll get an achievement.
• Pajama-Clad Hero: Throughout the entire game, Kiane never once remembers to change out of her pajamas before leaving her apartment.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Roobit’s “Doobit” disguise consists of a single slice of pizza placed on her face. Keenarnor’s disguise is somehow even thinner: he’s actually a musician from the famous band Secret Flower (which happens to be Kiane’s favorite), but no one recognizes him because he’s not holding a boombox.
• Phrase Catcher: When a character pranks or deceives Kiane, they announce their deception by saying “Trick!”
• Pokémon Speak: While Kiane is hiding behind Mr. Arimnaes’ piano during the Sensei route, Mr. Arim hears her voice and gets suspicious. In a panic, she shouts “Piano!” repeatedly.
  Inner Kiane: It’s a piano, not a Pokémon!
• Portmanteau: Characters regularly include hybrid words in their sentences, such as “restaurablishment” and “chumpatriot”.
• The Power of Friendship: In the True Route, Kiane and her friends ultimately convince MOTHER to end the time loop and not destroy Flordaddle by coming together to shout “Friendship!” repeatedly.
• Premature Aggravation: Implied. Mr. Arimnaes orders Kiane to "hold [her] bitching" about his choice of pizza during their date out of nowhere. He seems to have assumed Kiane would be nitpicking at and complaining about about his choices all night for who knows what reason.
• Press X to Not Die: Some of the quick-time events will result in a Game Over if the correct input is not pressed rapidly enough. Some, like one of the choice in the middle of Sensei’s route that gives you 14 minutes to select an option, only qualify if you move your mouse at the speed of a snail, but others, like the one that occurs when Flower Sensei threatens to shoot Kiane, are typical examples, with a very short time frame to select a button.
• Punny Name:
  • Kiane’s last name is Pepper, as in “cayenne pepper”. Downplayed in her full name, Kiane Pronounced Like the Pepper, which isn’t exactly a pun.
  • Siv Illian is (or claims to be) a civilian, and definitely not a police officer.
• Rewarding Inactivity: Near the end of the Mr. Arimnaes route, when Kiane and Mr. Arimnaes finally kiss, a pop-up appears asking the player to wait 30 minutes before continuing. It’s actually possible to continue playing without waiting this long, but if the player actually waits 30 minutes, they’ll get an achievement.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Roobit, the alien cop/pizza shop employee, with long rabbit ears and adorable eyes.
• Romance Game: A ridiculous, self-aware, typo-tastic version of a typical otome visual novel.
• Schmuck Bait: Certain Game Overs are achieved by clicking a button you’re explicitly told not to click, such as the Heckle button in the True Route.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: On Day 1, Mr. Arimnaes complains about not getting his bonus for dealing with the garbage proletariat. He then remembers that he's the boss and puts the bonus back in, saying he'll get it from Kiane and Nancy's paychecks.
• Self-Insert Fic: Kiane makes one of these between Sensei and her self-insert (Chula) in the Sensei route.
• Senseless Sacrifice: In the Roobit route, when Mr. Arimnaes, the murderer, is attempting to escape, Inner Kiane leaps at him, but he punches her away easily. She does not appear again for the rest of the route, and is treated as dead.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Sensei’s route, when Brain asks Kiane who her celebrity role model is, one of the possible answers is Goku.
  • On Day 4 of Sensei’s route, Inner Kiane describes a dream she had where she was a fourth-wall-aware otome game character who made the other characters worse so she could date the protagonist, then deleted one of the other characters’ files to eliminate them. Inner Kiane also has a .chr file in the games files (opening it reveals it to be a shopping list).
  • When the player attempts to go to the community center in Chris’s route, Kiane thinks that she doesn’t want to go there and should roll back and pick another option. If the player does not roll back the dialogue, Kiane will think that some strange force is compelling her to make poor choices, then say “Bandersnatch was pretty cool show.”
  • One of Keen’s voice lines that plays when his voice is selected in the menu is “It’s-a me! Keenarnor!” He also says this in the True Route if he’s called to protect Flordaddle.
  • When Kiane is hiding behind Mr. Arimnaes’s piano in Sensei’s route, she starts saying “piano” over and over, and Inner Kiane says “It’s a piano, not a Pokémon!” Another Pokémon reference occurs in the True Route, where Inner Kiane calls Chris to help by saying “I choose you, Chris-a-chu!” and he responds by saying “Pika pika!”
  • In Warped Lamp’s route, when the ghost of Old Man Pizza claims via spirit board that he was killed by “VBF”, Lamp asks if that’s the organization from A Series of Nonfortunate Events, before realizing that she’s thinking of “VFD”.
  • In one of the possible endings of Roobit’s route, Kiane asks to go to space with Roobit, and she refuses to allow her to go, citing potential dangers such as “space rocks”, “space pirates”, and “space thunder kids”.
  • If Roobit survives to the final boss of the True Route, the room will go dark when she arrives to help, and the player will have to light it up by taking a photo. Roobit remarks “it is just like...... the fatal frame....”
• Show Within a Show
  • Several moments in the game are treated as this, such as the cooking and exercise scenes in Mr. Arimnaes' route, with the characters even calling them shows.
  • The Reveal at the very end features Pizza Game itself as a 200,000+ word story being read by a high school student named Kiane, with her teacher, Mr. Arimnaes, sending her to the principal's office when she offers to show some erotic art she drew for it.
• Soul Jar: As revealed by Chris in his route, demons create beacons to store their life energy, preventing them from dying unless all the beacons are destroyed. Chris uses zucchinis as his beacons. MOTHER uses people.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Everyone in Sensei's family is as incredibly buff and strong-jawed as he is.
• Stuffed into a Trashcan: The player can choose to do this to Lamp. This also happens to Sensei in the True Route.
• Stylistic Suck: The game runs on this trope. The dialogue and menu screens are littered with typos and errors intentionally left in, starting with the main menu's "Start/Contine/Extars/Leave".
• Suicide as Comedy: In the True Ending, after everyone is successfully saved from doom, Sav kills himself. MOTHER immediately resurrects him, much to his annoyance.
• Take That!: One of the options for the acrostic poem in the True Route spoils the twist of Zero Time Dilemma.
• Talking to Themself: Kiane frequently chats with Inner Kiane, a mental version of herself with a different personality who appears as a thought bubble.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: During Mr. Arimnaes’ route, when Kiane goes to Mr. Arim’s house to cook a pizza with him, he turns it into a cooking show to monetize it, covering Kiane’s face with an ad, and makes her play an ingredient selection minigame in which all of the answers are wrong. Later, when Kiane invites Mr. Arim over to play Truth or Dare, he once again turns it into a show and covers Kiane’s face with an ad. But when he is forced to reveal that he can’t cook, Kiane initiates her own cooking show, covering Mr. Naes’ face with a cute “boyfriend” icon and forcing him to select the wrong options in the ingredient minigame.
• Teacher/Student Romance: The Sensei route fits this trope, with Kiane dating her driver’s ed instructor. It’s a Parodied Trope in this case, as Sensei was purposefully written to be the least appealing datable character in the game. Additionally, the ending of the True Route reveals that Kiane is actually a high schooler attempting to invoke this, but her teacher, Mr. Arimnaes, is rebuffing due to this being inappropriate.
• Themed Cursor: The cursor is a slice of pizza.
• Third Is 3D: In his route, Chris’s level 3 is called Chris 3D.
• This Loser Is You: Implied by the true ending, which reveals Kiane wrote all of Pizza Game, and is actually a failing student with a crush on her teacher who presented the story to class instead of the book report she was given, and has drawn Rule 34 of the characters.
• Transformation Sequence: Kiane attempts to get dressed through a magical-girl transformation at one point, but the transformation ends prematurely because the game designers couldn’t afford it.
• Tuckerization: Multiple characters in the story, such as Warped Lamp, Roob(it), and Siv (Illian), are named after Plasterbrain and JelloApocalypse's actual friends.
• Turn-Based Combat: Chris’s route turns into an RPG with turn-based battles and a combat system.
• Unending End Card: If you obtain the ending where you choose to stop playing the game for good, you'll get a CG of Chief Stabby looking off into the sunset with peaceful music. Since this ending messes with your data, it's impossible to play the game again without editing the files.
• Unlockable Content: Completing a character’s route will unlock their voice as a narrator for the menu. Completing the True Route unlocks developer commentary, which can be turned on in the Options menu. Additionally, completing Lamp’s route will increase your Coolness Level, allowing you to purchase a certain item from the Twist Shop in Chris’s route.
• Unreadably Fast Text: Characters will sometimes speak like this to indicate that they’re talking excessively and/or very fast.
• Vampire Hunter: In Chris' route, Sav reveals he is a vampire-demon-slayer that's hunting down Chrisanthemum, AKA Chris.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There are many opportunities to be mean or do bad things to other characters, ranging from insulting them to murdering them to throwing them in a trash can. In some cases, it will lead to either a Game Over or a route’s secret bad ending.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Most opportunities to be cruel are at best not punished and at worst punished with a Game Over, but after you beat the True Route, if you declare that you want Pizza Game to end at the start of a new route, begin the True Route again, and get every single datable character killed, you’ll be given the option to end Pizza Game for good. Confirm every time that you want the game to end, and the game will become permanently unplayable (unless you delete your save data or manipulate the files).
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The True Route ends in one of these, narrated by Kiane in-universe.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: In the flashbacks to his past in the True Route, everyone speaks like this, using “doth” in random places and adding “-eth” to the end of words for no reason. Lillibean continues to speak like this when she appears in the present.