Victory Quote

"You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance." —Ryu, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior

A Fighting Game trope, often going hand-in-hand with the Victory Pose, where after the match is over, the winner is rewarded with a shot of their character saying something interesting.

While 2D fighters will have a separate screen devoted to the pose and the quote, 3D fighters will often combine the two.

What a character says while standing victoriously over their opponent's battered body very often give players insight into the character's personality. It can be anything from waxing philosophic to gloating over their victory, from cocky (Maxi) to slutty (Lilith) to modest (Talim). A character's quotes are usually selected randomly from a few stock ones that reveal nothing about their opponent, but will often have a special one for when they defeat their Rival or another character they have a connection to. They can vary depending on which mode is being played, and even the conditions of victory in more modern fighting games.

See also Bond One-Liner.

Tropes used in Victory Quote include:

• Street Fighter: The screen displayed after a battle features the faces of both fighters, with the loser's face bloody and bruised and the winner's quote below. Street Fighter II only had one per character, but later games would add more.
  • And of course, a (in)famous incident in Street Fighter II gave rise to the rumor of hidden character Sheng Long.
  • In Street Fighter IV's Arcade mode, each character has a specific victory quote for every character.
  • The first Street Fighter inverted this; your defeated opponent would say...

"What strength! But don't forget there are many guys like you all over the world."

• • • • Not that you would understand it if you only heard the voice.
• Super Smash Bros. Marth and Ike get noticeably Out-of-Character Moment ones.
• SNK's fighting games usually have very bad translation, leading to hilariously cheesy "victoly" quotes (except in more recent years). The King of Fighters XI's Final Boss Magaki is notable for having a individual victory quote for every character in the game.
  • One inversion from SNK: Art of Fighting story mode. Your defeated opponent tells the player where to go look for (your/your best friend's) missing sister next.
  • SNK's other series, Fatal Fury follows this most happily. Fatal Fury 2/Special had specific ones for certain fighters if they beat someone special as well as special intro quotes in Arcade mode for certain matchups (for example, Geese's fantastically Narm worthy quote to Terry of "Die like your father you pin-headed son of an ice-cream maker!!") and by Fatal Fury 3, everyone had a specific win quote against everyone else (and generic ones for Vs. Mode). Real Bout 2 downgraded to everyone having 2 generic quotes and only on VS Mode on the AES version. Garou: Mark of the Wolves went back to this with a vengeance, everyone having winquotes against everyone as well as generic ones.
  • For some reason, The King of Fighters '97 had no quotes. KOF 2000 was notable in that it also had defeat quotes in the Continue screen.
• The Guilty Gear series has a unique quote for every possible match combination, including ones for mirror matches, where the winner berates the loser for impersonating them.
  • That goes for it's Spiritual Successor Blaz Blue as well.
  • And for friendly rival series Arcana Heart.
  • As well as Fighter's History and its sequel, Karnov's Revenge.
• In Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3, fighters who have an existing relationship will have different dialog both before and after combat.
• Appears in Final Fantasy X. All games before that (along with X itself) stick with the traditional Victory Pose.
  • For a fair while into the game, if the right combination of characters were present, there would be one-off quotes that had to do with their current situation, both after a victory, and when starting the battle. For example, Tidus would try to act cool around Yuna from the get-go, especially in Besaid. And Yuna would be in awe of "Sir Auron" on the Mi'hen Highroad when he had finished off some enemy.
  • In additions, every playable character in Dissidia Final Fantasy has several, depending on factors including the opposition's level (when compared to their own), and their remaining health. When fighting duel battles, every character is given a separate taunt against every other character (that's 144 in total). Some are really specific (such as Kuja and Zidane from Final Fantasy IX talking about Garland from Final Fantasy I as if they know him because their game had a Garland as well), others are more generic.
• Advance Wars has win quotes for each CO. In Dual Strike, pairings that have specially-named Tag Breaks have special quotes that are quick exchanges between the two.
• The Touhou series, being a collection of shooting games with dialogue, features many examples, but the versus shooters PoDD and PoFV, as well as the fighting games (IaMP, SWR, Hisoutensoku) contain straight examples of victory and defeat quotes.
• Tatsunoko vs. Capcom gives each character a handful of stock ones, one "fill-in-the-blank" (where they refer to their partner by name), and individual ones for each opponent (in reference to the starting fighter). They're used at random.
• Marvel vs. Capcom 3 gives each character two victory quotes per match, one spoken aloud during a Victory Pose, and the other written in a speech bubble on the next screen. There's quite an impressive selection, which sometimes leads to apparent mood swings from the victor.
• Persona 3 gives the Victory Quote to the character who lands the final blow. Notably, these change late in the game as each character reaches reaches the turning point of their Character Development, and they range from pithy (Shinjiro's "Adios, asshole.") to Tear Jerkers (Akihiko's triumphant, "Did you see that, Shinji?" following Shinjiro's death).
  • The same goes for the Tales (series) games as well.
• Companions in Dragon Age give these at random at the end of battles, though it's easy to miss them in the BGM and SFX. They also have Defeat Quotes if they need to be revived after combat.
• Xenosaga would feature a quote from whichever character struck the killing blow on the last enemy of random encounters.
• Team Fortress 2 has various domination quotes and quotes for when a team has won.
• At the end of each fight in Fate Unlimited Codes, the winner makes a brief speech (it's based on a Visual Novel after all) to the loser. Usually it's something generic that boils down to "You suck," but between certain character pairs they'll say something relating to the storyline.
• In Valkyrie Profile, each character has multiple victory quotes. The game would randomly pick one active party member to say one of their quotes after each battle.
• Characters in The World Ends With You will comment at the end of the battle, and an additional comment if you do exceptionally good or bad during the fight.