Forspoken Trailer Parodies

About

Forspoken Trailer Parodies refer to a series of memes and jokes referencing an ad for the 2023 Square Enix action video game Forspoken that grew infamous online as many deemed its voiceover narration cringeworthy and reminiscent of Marvel one-liners. The trailer quickly inspired many parodies in August 2022 following its release in which people rewrote the dialogue as a phrasal template to fit various plots of other video games.

Origin

On August 8th, 2022, the Twitter account for Square Enix's upcoming video game Forspoken released a trailer for the game. The trailer featured the main character quipping about the discovery of her newfound powers. The text read:

"So, let me get this straight. I’m somewhere that’s not what I would call Earth… I’m seeing freaking dragons, and… oh yeah, I’m talking to a cuff! Yeah, okay, that is something I do now. I do magic, kill jacked-up beasts -- I’ll probably fly next."

The trailer (shown below) gained over 1,000 retweets, 6,000 quote-tweets and 9,400 likes in two days.

A beautiful and cruel new land? Twisted monsters? An array of magical abilities? Sentient jewellery!? Welcome to the world of #Forspoken. pic.twitter.com/46diiLnQ7M

— Forspoken (@Forspoken) August 8, 2022

Spread

Starting around August 10th, 2022, the trailer began being parodied on Twitter, as many found it gratingly quippy and similar to the "Marvel one-liner" type of writing that is typically associated with writers like Joss Whedon.^[1] Parodies typically involved Twitter users rewriting plots of other video games to humorously fit the text of the Forspoken trailer, turning it into a phrasal template. For example, on August 10th, Twitter user @Subakeye^[2] wrote it to fit Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, gaining over 50 retweets and 270 likes in less than an hour. Twitter user @fromhappyrock^[3] didn't use the text as a phrasal template, but wrote a similarly quippy narration from the perspective of Kratos in God of War, gaining over 780 retweets and 11,000 likes in one day (shown below, right).

Others posted video parodies referencing the trailer. Twitter user @funnywes posted a video on August 10th reading the Forspoken trailer text but fitting it to Bloodborne, gaining over 3,200 retweets and 17,000 likes in three hours (shown below).

https://t.co/1CCDZjh0jK pic.twitter.com/9IpBvw06a5

— wes (@funnywes) August 10, 2022

Also on August 10th, Twitter user @bobvids posted a parody trailer for Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Remake by making the lyrics to Goldfinger's "Superman" read like quippy dialogue, gaining over 1,100 retweets and 4,400 likes in one day (shown below).

https://t.co/riyBDxeY8X pic.twitter.com/E6Xh8Vl7XJ

— 🐢 bob 📼 (@bobvids) August 10, 2022

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References