MultiVersus pits fighters from Warner Bros.' various properties, from DC Comics to Cartoon Network, in a primarily team-based fighting game. Team members work together and use each other's powers to defeat their opponents, such as being protected by Steven Universe's shield or burrowing through Bugs Bunny's tunnels. There is also a solo player option as well. The game's story has all of these worlds coming together to face the Nothing, which has begun to destroy the WB Multiverse.

The closed alpha for MultiVersus ran on May 19-27, 2022, which was followed by an open beta beginning July 26, 2022 (with early access beginning a week before that, on July 19th) and ending on June 25, 2023 before relaunching in full on May 28th, 2024. The game was available for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC.

With the game's relaunch, DC Comics published a tie-in 6-issue comic titled MultiVersus: Collision Detected, the first issue of which was released on September 18th, 2024.

On January 31, 2025, it was announced that Season 5 would be the last content update for the game. In-game purchases were deactivated that same day, while the game's servers would be shut down and the game itself pulled from storefronts four months later on May 30th.

MultiVersus contains examples of the following tropes:

• 2½D: Similar to other games in the Platform Fighter genre, this game uses 3D models for its characters and environments, but movement is restricted to a 2D plane.
• Aborted Arc: Season 1’s story seemed to focus on getting Reindog’s gem back from the three villains, but it’s never stated if they get it back.
• Adaptational Badass: The regular Shaggy of Scooby-Doo is a normal, non-powered human who has little fighting prowess (that time he was hypnotized aside). This Shaggy has limitless powers and strength that easily allow him to contest with the likes of Superman, as shown in the trailer. This is actually explained in his website blurb; during a case with the gang, he found a magical crystal and, thinking it was candy, tried to eat it.
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • For obvious reasons, Superman, Wonder Woman, Black Adam, the Iron Giant and the Powerpuff Girls have their flight abilities heavily downplayed in-game, though they can still glide to a limited extent^note Superman via his air side special, Wonder Woman and Black Adam via their air up special, the Iron Giant as a movement option he can do instead of a regular jump, the Powerpuff Girls via their up special for both ground and air. On a related note, Agent Smith does not have the flight ability he acquired in The Matrix Revolutions.
  • Agent Smith in particular is based entirely on his appearance in the first The Matrix, including his agents' earpiece and the summoning of a second Agent with his down special, at the cost of having none of his new abilities from the later films.
  • Although he's still one of the more resilient characters as a Tank fighter, Jason Voorhees is nowhere near as nigh-indestructible as he was in his home franchise, especially when it comes to knockback, as he's made to be pushed fairly easily so he can be rung out without much difficulty.
• Addressing the Player:
  • Clicking on your selected character while waiting for a match to start will have them interact with you, the implication being that you're their teammate, helping them in battle. The more friendly characters (like Steven, Superman, or Shaggy) will ask you what you need help with, the more serious characters (like Batman, Black Adam, or Arya) will state that you should be focusing on the upcoming fight, and the temperamental/ruder characters (like Taz or Stripe) will outright scream at you in annoyance.
    Shaggy: Hey man! Like, is there something you need?
    Arya: Are we training, or just having a chat?
    Stripe: GO AWAY!
  • This can become a case of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You if you select certain villainous characters (such as Black Adam or the Black Lantern variants of Superman and Wonder Woman), as they sometimes imply that they're capable of acting outside of your control.
    Black Lantern Superman: You think you are powerful enough to control me?
• A.I. Breaker: The CPU is in love with the pit in the middle of the "Back to the Past" level. Very frequently, they'll fall through the soft platform of the bridge and make absolutely no effort to recover back to safety, despite the presence of walls on each side that they could climb up. Many players reached the Trigon Possessed Superman boss battle at the end of the "Trigon on the Loose" rift, only to watch Superman gleefully leap into the pit for all three of his stocks.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: It's Warner Bros.'s response to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl (another crossover fighter that features cartoon characters) and Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. (a major platform fighting game that is responsible for the entire genre).
• Alternate Self: Within the Rifts mode, most variant skins of characters are recontextualized as alternate versions of the "main" character, who is represented by the default skin. One of the earliest ones is Mad Love Harley Quinn, Harley dressed in her original skintight jester suit, representing her when she was still the Joker's sidekick and existing as a separate entity from the default Harley Quinn, who is working alongside Batman; other instances include Slicer Arya being separate from Arya Stark in the "Upgrade War" rift, and all of the Mythic Vista variants in the "Welcome to Mythic Vista" rift being residents at an alternate-dimension hero-training school and unrelated to their base fighters (as demonstrated when Batman shows up and scares Headmaster Wayne).
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The "A FestiVersus Vampire Invasion" rift sees Marceline hunting down the Vampire Court as they possess random people, right in the middle of the game's Winter event.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Many rifts tend to shift the narrative viewpoint to different characters. "Welcome to Mythic Vista" is a particularly strong case, as it promptly shifts the focus away from the rift-travelling Nubia to vignettes featuring the local Hero Academy students and their teachers.
• Antepiece: The "Multiversal Mayhem" rift includes bonus rounds where you use a cannon to shoot at distant targets and giant jack-in-the-boxes to hit a floating balloon, and stages which include a hazard where various prank items are dropped from the sky. They give you a preview of the mechanics that will make up the boss battle against the Joker.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Every character, costume, and perk is available to try in The Lab, giving you as much time as you need to try whatever you want out before deciding whether to unlock it.
  • In the beta and the full game from Season 2's 1.2.3 patch onwards, characters, costumes, and perks are also available for local matches, making tournaments very easy to set up. This wasn't the case during the full game's first two seasons before the aforementioned patch.
  • Characters who haven't been permanently unlocked yet will keep all progress you made with them, enabling you to pick up right where you left off with them when you do unlock them for good or should they enter Free Rotation.
  • Air attacks are never interrupted by landing - a character performing an air attack close to the ground will hover until the move completes, even for charged attacks. This makes performing air attacks at ground level significantly easier by removing the need for precise timing.
  • Missions that aren't explicitly marked with either the "PVP" or "PVE" tags can be completed in either, allowing players flexibility in completing them.
  • In Rifts certain characters and even skins have the "Guest" tag, allowing the player to use them for free. This has the side effect of giving players a way to complete certain character-specific and skin-specific missions if they don't otherwise own them.
  • The above element was expanded in a heartwarming way for the post-shutdown release. The same full character unlock from patch 1.2.3 is expanded to Rifts mode, and it temporarily unlocks skins based on all keywords that a Rifts mission tags. Which can mean a massive costume choice for tags like 'DC Characters' or 'Hero/Villain'... even ones that never got released.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • Most of the characters on the roster have moves that can break through super armor, indicated by a purple glimmer. A perk called "Armor Crush" allows all fully charged melee attacks to do the same, while "2 Fast 2 Block" makes your dash attacks break armor.
  • In lieu of grabs, the shield mechanic added in version 1.4.3^note After being open to test for a day each week during the entirety of Season 3 and the first half of Season 4 is countered by the Shield Break Attack, which is input via pressing the attack button while shielding (or, if mapped, a button that specifically performs a Shield Break Attack).
• Art Evolution: Tony Huynh would confirm in the March 2024 re-launch announcement trailer that development on the game changed over from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 between the closing of the Open Beta and the game's relaunch, causing the character models to become higher fidelity as a result.
• Ascended Fanboy: The Iron Giant famously brought audiences to tears when it said "Superman..." right before it sacrifices its life to stop a nuclear warhead. In the cinematic trailer, the Giant meets Superman himself and even teams up with him.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Shaggy powers himself up almost exactly akin to the "Ultra Instinct Shaggy" meme, and has a few lines referencing the fractional amounts of power he uses in said memes. The meme was also previously acknowledged in the Logo Joke for Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms, along with SCOOB!'s official social media poster.
  • If Tom taunts while Jerry isn't with him, he shrugs the same way he does in the Shrugging Tom meme.
  • If LeBron doesn't have a basketball when using his grounded neutral attack, he will instead attack with his infamous upset reaction to then-fellow Cleveland Cavaliers player J. R. Smith missing taking a shot during a critical moment of the 2018 NBA Finals.
  • One of Black Adam's Signature perks is named "The Hierarchy of Power" after Dwayne Johnson's memetic Catchphrase for the movie. He also has a Legendary profile icon◊ that references the Flying Black Adam meme.
  • Batman's Ugly Sweater variant depicts a Batmobile that lost its wheel, referencing the infamous "Batman Smells" version of the song "Jingle Bells".
  • One of the profile pictures added in Season 2 is a picture of the "Extra Thicc" meme from Samurai Jack.
  • One of the profile pictures added in Season 3 is a cropped redraw of the "Creepin' Cat" meme from Tom and Jerry, while Season 5 added a profile picture of Jerry's appearance after eating a wedge of cheese from the short Fit to Be Tied, with the title of the profile pic itself being a nod to the "I Know He Ate A Cheese" meme.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The final node of "The Megalodog" rift features the eponymous enemy, a giant Reindog in a shark costume.
• Back-to-Back Poster: One of the promo images for the game, mainly associated with the Closed Alpha period but still used in the pre-full game seasons beyond it, is Batman and Shaggy posing back-to-back, Batman holding Shaggy's sandwich and Shaggy holding a batarang, both ready for a brawl.
• Band Land: The map Space (Jam) is set on a giant keyboard that plays music when fighters step on its keys. A platform at the keyboard's left side has four buttons that can be pushed to modify how the keys affect gameplay, with the default red mode set at the beginning of the match not granting any changes at all, and the other three giving different buffs to the fighters (strength buff for the yellow mode, jump buff for the green mode, and speed buff for the blue mode). Incidentally, said buffs are the same ones as those that appear in Space Jam: A New Legacy's The Court 1.
• Beach Episode: The "Surf's Up!" and "The Megalodog" rifts are beach-themed, with the fighters donning tropical outfits, and including things like a volleyball minigame.
• Big Ball of Violence:
  • One of the promo arts for the game, used in-game for loading screens, shows various characters fighting each other, obscured in a giant dust cloud with various limbs sticking out (such as Garnet's gauntlet, Shaggy's hand holding a sandwich, Tom's hand holding Jerry, Bugs' ears, and Jake's fist).
  • The end of the cinematic trailer also features a Big Ball of Violence involving most of the characters who appeared in said trailer.
  • In-game, Taz creates one for his up special that gradually grows in size. The Signature Perk "I Gotta Get in There!" allows his teammate to get into it as well, increasing its damage and granting it armor.
  • An animation of a Big Ball of Violence similar to the one from the promo art is among the ringouts added in Season 3.
• Bonus Stage: Rifts can have bonus nodes, which usually include an Unexpected Gameplay Change like target shooting or jump roping. You can advance regardless of whether you succeed or fail.
• Boss Battle: The end of every rift sees the player face a boss. Sometimes this is a wholly unique encounter, like Joker piloting a hot-air balloon in "Multiversal Mayhem!" and Dexter using his Robo-Dexo 2000 in "Techno Terror", other times it's a normal fighter with special rules, such as Stripe and his kin in "Rift Detectives" or a temporarily invincible Jason in "Jason vs. Multiverse", and on rarer occasions it's a version of a standard map that emphasize one of said map's gimmicks, such as a version of The City of Townsville focused on dealing damage to Mojo Jojo's saucer in "Crisis in Townsville".
• Boss Rush: The Triple Threat rift consists of rematches with each of the seven bosses faced beforehand with new tricks before a final showdown with the rift's three villains (Joker, Jason and Agent Smith).
• Bowdlerise: Garnet's original losing animation from the alpha featured her turning to stone and poofing away. The open beta changes this to her meditating instead.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Since this game features characters addressing to each other during matches, this happens a lot, especially if the player taunts. To note some examples:
  • When DC characters are paired up, some will occasionally reference anecdotes from their careers and are familiar enough with each other to go by First-Name Basis (in regards to their civilian identities). Superman and Batman are naturally the most prone to do this, given their historical rivalry.
    Superman: Batman versus Superman, let's settle this once and for all!
    Batman: I don't have to be stronger than you, Clark. Just smarter.
  • Bugs Bunny is a natural at doing this, as always, generally making light of both his adversaries and predicaments.
    Bugs: [after getting rung out] We have ourselves a rabbit hater.
    Bugs: *about Taz* I got a snack for ya! A double decker knuckle sandwich.
• Characters Sharing a Slot: The game has multiple variations of this. Some swaps are of characters related to the fighter, such as Shaggy's uncle Shagworthy and Finn's clone Fern, while some have the canon Distaff Counterpart of themselves, such as Cake for Jake and the Rowdyruff Boys for the Powerpuff Girls. Rick had one of his alternate counterparts as a skin, while Morty's other two skins are both of Evil Morty.
• Collateral Damage: Tom and Jerry are mostly focused on fighting each other, it's just that everyone else is caught in the crossfire.
• Company Cameo: PFG Team, one of the exclusive ringouts from the Founder's Pack includes the caped avatar and large purple P from Player First Games' logo, alongside other unknown figures that supposedly represent the team's main staff.
• Continuity Nod: LeBron's website blurb and a couple of lines that Bugs says to him both indicate that this game's plot takes place after the events of Space Jam: A New Legacy. After the game's relaunch, it was confirmed that LeBron is taken directly from that period, according to the MVS Canon timeline by the game's lead writer.
• Cool Versus Awesome: It's a crossover fighting game that has several superheroes and cartoon characters among other Warner Bros. properties.
• Cross-Referenced Titles:
  • Gizmo has the Signature Perk "Bounce, Bounce, Boom!", while his Antagonistic Offspring Stripe has the Signature Perk "Boom, Boom, Bounce!"
  • One of the store bundles contains the Batman: The Animated Series incarnation of Batman, and is named "Animated Crime Fighting". When they added Joker and gave him a variant based on his animated incarnation as well, its subsequent bundle was named "Animated Crime Starting".
• Cuteness Proximity: Harley just squees over Taz and gives him the name "Slobber".
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: A week before season 4's mid-season update, the 1.4.3 patch released. While the patch was filled with the types of buffs, nerfs and bugfixes expected of a patch, there was also a major inclusion in the form of shields becoming a mechanic in all modes after being run through (and exclusive to) the Testing Grounds multiple times in the past months. This threw off people on both the offensive side — some moves were previously hard to punish but became much easier to retaliate against thanks to shields — and the defensive side — grounded neutral dodge is replaced with shield, so performing the former action (as well as parrying) now requires you to press the down direction while shielding, akin to how spotdodging works in Super Smash Bros..
• Darker and Edgier: The Black Lantern variants for Superman and Wonder Woman replace their kind and heroic natures with zombie-like demeanors and sinister voicelines, making these two variants the most villainous characters on the roster so far.
• A Day in the Limelight: Each rift in the Rift mode focuses on a different set of characters, with a different Arc Villain for each:
  • In general, each character added to the game as a fighter starting with Season 2 has a rift focusing on them (whether they be the protagonist or antagonist of said rift) released alongside them (e.g. "Path of the Samurai" for Samurai Jack, "Ghost with the Toast" for Beetlejuice, "Naptime is Over!" for the Powerpuff Girls, etc.).
  • The Tutorial focuses on Shaggy navigating the multiverse, with Batman providing the tutorial. Marvin the Martian shows up as a brief encounter to test Shaggy's abilities.
  • Multiversal Mayhem! focuses on Batman trying to stop the Joker's next evil plan.
  • Rift Detectives has Batman, Velma, and Joker teaming up to track down Stripe, who made off with one of Reindog's power crystals.
  • Jason vs Multiverse involves Finn, Velma, and Gizmo trying to survive against Jason Voorhees, who took Stripe's crystal and is now out for their blood.
  • Techno Terror has the Banana Guard, of all characters, exploring inside a mysterious computer system that is later revealed to belong to an unknown "boy genius".
  • Surf's Up! focuses on the entire cast enjoying summer, but the Iron Giant gets extra focus, with several events having him learning about different summer-related things and overheating a couple times, forcing the cast to fight him to calm him down. The final boss is a giant watermelon Steven that runs amok after Steven accidentally forgets about it.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: Though most of the fighter roster is comprised of characters from kid-friendly works such as Looney Tunes or franchises that have been regularly adapted into kid-friendly formats such as DC Comics, some of the characters include Arya Stark, from HBO's very adult Game of Thrones series, and the titular characters of [adult swim]'s Rick and Morty. The May 2024 trailer uped the ante by unveiling two characters from R-rated film franchises: bloody undead Slasher Movie killer Jason Voorhees and Agent Smith from the dark, existentially horrifying world of The Matrix.
• Developer's Foresight: If the Powerpuff Girls are using a gem that causes one of them to appear as a companion, they’ll be replaced by their corresponding Rowdyruff Boy.
• The Dividual: Some fighters, such as Tom & Jerry and the Powerpuff Girls, are multiple characters counted as a single entity, with their status as such coming into play as different kinds of special dynamics (e.g. a Puppet Fighter mechanism for Tom & Jerry, and numerous attack and strategy options that the player can use and/or switch between for the Powerpuff Girls, among others).
• End-of-Series Awareness: Shortly after the game was taken offline for good, its Twitter/X account was updated with a banner depicting the cast walking towards a sunset (a pun on the game "sunsetting"), as well as its profile picture consisting of a tombstone with the game's logo on it.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Inverted in the "Jump Into the '90s Parody" trailer, where the announcer highlights some of the "made-up, make believe characters" playable in the game, such as Shaggy, Bugs Bunny, and LeBron James.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: The variants released for the Halloween Crossover Costume Bash event on October 2024 averted this in regards to Superman, Batman, and Harley Quinn, who respectively have ones for their civilian identities of Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, and Dr. Harleen Quinzel.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Some trailers feature hints towards future characters (both characters that have been added since said trailers and those who have to see a release yet).
  • The relaunch trailer has multiple of these hints hidden throughout.
    • When the Joker hits the Water Tower, it opens and several items fall out. Pausing reveals the items as Aquaman's trident, Samurai Jack's sword, and Bubbles's plush Octi. The Wicked Witch of the West's broom can also be seen, but the game was shut down before she could be added.
    • As the Iron Giant looks at the unconscious Marvin, Dexter can just barely be seen in the upper-left corner, reaching for his glasses.
    • As Rick passes through multiple stages, hidden within them are Marceline's guitar by the Tree Fort and a box of Scooby Snacks in the Haunted Mansion.
  • In Joker's gameplay trailer, the Batcomputer loads up data entries from numerous characters already in the roster by then, plus an additional entry of The Powerpuff Girls.
  • The first teaser trailer used to announce Season 3, titled "Official 'Public Service Announcement' Parody", features Raven's symbol in a brief shot.
• Friendly Enemies: Tom and Jerry's character select animation shows the duo shaking hands while holding weapons behind their backs.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The patch that introduced Stripe launched with a strange glitch wherein a saw blade from Stripe's side-special picked up by an ally would become glitched upon being picked up and cause the blade to hit hundreds of times at once upon being thrown and hitting an opponent. While sometimes this would only result in players receiving ludicrous amounts of damage in one split second, more often than not the game would crash and immediately quit the match the minute the glitched sawblade collided with an opponent.
  • Season 4 caused PS4 players to suffer heavy amounts of lag whenever a match involved the Powerpuff Girls, with more lag the more of them were in the match. It's not an online issue either — the performance suffered even when playing local matches, or the "Welcome to Mythic Vista" rift that has the PPG as an opponent.
  • Midway through Season 5 it was found that the Powerpuff Girls can enter a permanent dodge state by being forced into a tech while in dodge meter burnout, turning the Ability Depletion Penalty on its head and letting them dodge everything despite not having any dodge meter.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: A lot of the characters' movesets are designed not just around their fighting style or what abilities they have, but rather their role or specific gimmick in their respective source material.
  • In Scooby-Doo, Velma is almost always the one who pieces together the clues and discovers who and why the culprit did it. This is reflected with her passive, which allows her to collect clues during gameplay to build up for a super move that summons the Mystery Machine to take the bad guys to prison (carry foes offstage).
  • Bugs Bunny's whole moveset is designed around iconic cartoon tropes popularized by Looney Tunes, such as a Pie in the Face, an safe smashing into one's head, and of course, a big ol' mallet. His Up-Special even invokes a Brick Joke, where something introduced early on comes back around later, just like his Rocket. It's like every one of his matches is just another Looney Tunes short starring him, at least from his perspective.
  • Tom is always trying to catch Jerry in the Tom and Jerry media, and (save for their more complex moves wherein they have to work together to pull them out) it's the same here. It's implied that neither of them are even aware of the other fighters; they're simply too busy fighting each other, basically making everyone else victims of collateral damage.
  • While the Powerpuff Girls are capable of attacking individually, many of their combo attacks have the three of them beat up a specific opponent together, or combine their forces to perform particularly dangerous special moves that can deal damage to multiple opponents. This reflects their usual fighting style in their home franchise of either repeatedly hitting a single target at a time or grouping themselves to take on multiple enemies at once.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The usual Mogwai and Gremlin weakness to sunlight doesn't apply to Gizmo and Stripe here, as fights in sunny stages like Trophy's E.D.G.E. and the Tree Fort can happen without ill effect.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: At the start of the tutorial, Shaggy says that he doesn't remember how he got here and that the last thing he remembers is eating some "rock candy" before bed. Batman immediately informs him that that wasn't rock candy; given Shaggy's reputation, the clear indication is that it was drugs.
  • In the promotional comic for the game, at one point Batman has Bugs Bunny tied to a chair. Bugs comments on how silly Batman's outfit is, to which Batman retorts that Bugs is naked. Bugs replies "Oh, am I?" then performs the infamous "unfold legs then refold legs" moment from Basic Instinct, though of course with total Barbie Doll Anatomy given it's Bugs Bunny.
• The Ghost: Several characters who currently aren't in the game in some form (not even as cameos) are merely referenced or otherwise name-dropped in dialogue. One especially notable case is Scooby-Doo, who was often mentioned by his friends Shaggy and Velma prior to his Scoobtober ringout animation's release on October 12, 2022.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: One of the Banana Guard's voice lines for when he wins implies this, at least in regards to the rest of his kind:
  Banana Guard: Why are the other bananas never here for my coolest moments?
• Guide Dang It!: Despite having two different sets of tutorials AND a glossary full of gameplay terminology, in the earlier versions of the game, nowhere in-game did it tell you what an Assist is (the best guess that the community had was that it involves using buffs on your allies and/or having two players attack and KO the same opponent), which was very frustrating when one of the possible Daily Missions is to perform a certain number of them. The glossary was later updated to include a definition for it.
• Halloween Episode:
  • When Stripe was released in 2022, the game started its first Halloween event, running from October 15 to November 15, where players could earn candy to buy exclusive items, such as a Calico Cake variant for Jake, and a Mummy variant for Reindog. A couple of new premium skins were also released during this event, such as Witch Velma, Frankenstein Iron Giant, and Black Lantern variants for both Superman and Wonder Woman.
  • The game's second Halloween event, named Halloween Crossover Costume Bash, served as a closure to the runtime of the full game's third season. It was similar to the previous Halloween events, with the added variants being mainly themed around certain fighters dressing up as other characters in the roster (e.g. Shaggy as Steven Universe, Bugs Bunny as Superman, Tom & Jerry as Batman and the Joker respectively, etc.), though Superman, Batman and Harley Quinn also received variants involving them dressed as their respective secret or former identities.
• Hero Academy: The "Welcome to Mythic Vista" rift centers around a universe where Headmaster Bruce Wayne runs a school for heroes. The students' objective is to achieve their magical transformations. Diana Troy serves as a physical exams coach, while the threat of this universe is their version of the Joker, who is able to turn into a masked supervillain called "The Laughing Death".
• Hero-Worshipper: The game's initial announcement trailer ends with the Iron Giant seeing Superman and whispering his name in awe.
• Homemade Sweater from Hell: Invoked. During the game's holiday FestiVersus event, a whole bunch of characters^note Superman, Batman, Finn, Jake, Velma, and Arya each received a new variant titled "Ugly Sweater", having the characters wearing Christmas-themed wool sweaters and other winter accessories.
• Home Stage:
  • Finn, Jake, Banana Guard and Marceline have the Tree Fort and Candy Kingdom.
  • Batman has the Batcave.
  • Shaggy and Velma have Scooby's Haunted Mansion.
  • Steven and Garnet have the Sky Arena.
  • Rick and Morty have Cromulons.
  • Bugs Bunny, Taz, Marvin the Martian and LeBron James have the Space Jam Court.
  • Arya Stark has the Throne Room.
  • The Powerpuff Girls have The City of Townsville and Destroyed Townsville.
  • Samurai Jack has Back to the Past.
  • Raven has the Teen Titans Tower.
• Joke Item: The "Troll Tactics" perk only gives your opponent an Enraged buff and displays a purely decorative rainbow banner and trumpets when you taunt, something disadvantageous to you on top of missing out on a better perk that could have gone into that slot.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The rift difficulties, from easiest to hardest, are Easy, Experienced, Crushing, Insanity, and Looney.
• Kid Hero: The Powerpuff Girls, Finn, Raven, Arya, Shaggy, Velma, and Steven are shown to be just as competent in battle as the adult heroes on the roster.
• Large-Ham Announcer: Besides the game's default announcer shouting every word, some of the characters he can be replaced with have their own unique boisterous calls, like Bugs Bunny, Steven Universe, Harley Quinn and (most incongruously) Taz.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: The website blurbs talks about events that were big plot reveals or events in their respective works:
  • Garnet's mentions her being a fusion between Ruby and Sapphire, which was a major reveal at the end of Season 1 of Steven Universe.
  • Finn's mentions his last name (Mertens) and alludes to him not being the only human in Ooo, which had an entire miniseries dedicated to Finn discovering this and where he came from late in Adventure Time.
  • Jake's casually talks about how he's the son of a shapeshifting alien, which was a plot twist from later in Adventure Time.
  • Arya’s flat out states that her father is dead and her family deposed; both of those events happen, respectively, at the end of Seasons 1 and 3 of Game of Thrones. Then it goes on to mention her adventures to Essos in order to train under the Faceless Men and become an assassin, which did not happen until Season 5.
  • Marceline's mentions her relationship with Princess Bubblegum, which began around Season 5 or 6 of Adventure Time, and was referenced in the Alternate Continuity spin-off comic.
• Left Hanging: The game's premise of the heroes banding together to prevent the universe from being destroyed by the Nothing ended without resolution upon the game's cancellation, the final plot development being Marceline joining the group with every indication that the story would still continue afterward. The final season's Rifts would be plotless Rogue Rifts with no mention of nor any resolution to the story at all.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Occurs a few times in Rifts with characters either mistaking another for a villain or sparring just for fun. One of the silliest examples occurs in the Jason Vs. the Multiverse rift, wherein at one point Batman mistakes Velma for a monster in disguise when she runs into the Batcave to escape Jason.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to the other modern fighting games published by Warner Bros. Games, this one is considerably breezier, as the general tone is comedic, the violence cartoonish, and the DC Comics superheroes are once again portrayed in a much less serious manner like in some other works where they've appeared.
• Lost Food Grievance: In the cinematic trailer, Shaggy is provoked into unleashing his power when Arya knocks his pie-sandwich to the ground.
  Shaggy: What'd I do to you?! HRRRRRRRRRRGGH!!!
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: MultiVersus pulls together many of Warner Bros.' most iconic properties plus a few more obscure ones, with the announcement trailer alone showing characters from DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera, Cartoon Network, and HBO, among others.
• Medium Blending: Downplayed. While the game uses 3D models for its playable characters, their attacks and all elements involved in the gameplay, much of the maps' backgrounds are made from 2D sprites. Most of these sprites match closely with the 3D models, but some sprites for certain non-playable characters present in the background (such as the running Dee Dee in the Dexter's Laboratory maps) are entirely obscured drawings or animations with little-to-no shading and clear outlines, which are usually given a shadow effect to blend in with the rest of the sprites in-game (the only exception to this effect are the titular Cromulons from the Cromulons map). Mojo Jojo in particular combines a 3D model for his saucer's exterior with shadowed 2D sprites for himself and his saucer's interior.
• Minsky Pickup: "Come On Down To The Warner Bros. Lot", the theme of Water Tower and Wabbit Season, uses the Minsky pickup a bit throughout, with the first appearance being 12 seconds into the song.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Gems and rift nodes are attuned to a specific attribute, e.g. Chaos, Digital, or Horror. You can only use gems that match a node's attunement; any other gems simply won't work.
• Mythology Gag: Has its own page here.
• New World Tease:
  • The Water Tower and Teen Titans Tower stages both appeared in the relaunch trailer and in-game in Rifts (with the former also appearing in the background of the full game's official thumbnail) well ahead of their official releases in Season 2.
  • Destroyed Townsville was prominently included in promos announcing the start of Season 3 and appeared in a node of the "Naptime is Over" rift before its release in the middle of the season.
  • Back to the Past was first shown in one of the promotional images used to announce Samurai Jack's addition to the game in Season 2, before being later added in Season 4.
• No Plot? No Problem!:
  • The "Batman Megamix" rift, added with the start of the Batman 85th anniversary event in Season 3, has no bearing on the game's plot, as it's mostly a compilation of Batman-themed challenges based on previous rifts.
  • Similarly, the "Haunted Megamix" rift made for the Halloween Crossover Costume Bash event (which closed off Season 3) is a compilation of Halloween-themed challenges with no plot to speak of.
• Not Quite Starring: LeBron James is not voiced by himself, but by John Eric Bentley.
• Old, Dark House: Scooby's Haunted Mansion. Everything about this stage is meant to invoke the numerous old creepy houses Mystery Inc. explored in the original show. The stage even has Booby Traps, with parts of the floor dropping down or rising back up with the flip of a switch. The stage got a roofless variant in update 1.05.
• Online Alias: Humorously, the player names in the reveal trailer are little puns on or references to the character the user is playing as, as if they were the ones playing the game. Bots also have punny player names based on them being bots.
  • Bugs: WhatsUpDoc
  • Batman: NotBruceWayne
  • Harley: HarleysAngels
  • Jake: JakeNBake
  • Arya: GirlHasNoName
  • Garnet: PreciousGem
  • Finn: FinnishLine
  • Tom and Jerry: BestFrenemies
  • Wonder Woman: CantSeeMyJet
  • Reindog: MakeItReindog
• Original Generation: Reindog is a completely original character made for this game, and at best, he seems to be a distant Canon Foreigner to The Never Ending Story.
• Palette Swap: By default, characters are colored to whichever team they're on (either by having either the clothes or entire bodies of their models colored, or by having a colored highlight on them) — the player is yellow, their teammate is blue, and opponents are red. In the game settings, the player has the option to change the colors and means of coloring freely in the options, or disable palette coloring entirely.
• Phrase Catcher: When Wonder Woman is in a match, some of the other characters occasionally use some variant of "wonder" when referring to her... which Wonder Woman herself also does.
• Portmantitle: The game's title aptly refers to its multiverse concept combined with its multiplayer versus fighting game genre.
• Power Creep, Power Seep: As expected from a fighting game crossover. Relatively Badass Normal characters like Batman and Arya or completely normal humans like Velma (who doesn't have memetic powers like Shaggy's) get to throw hands with blatantly superpowered characters like Garnet, Superman and the Powerpuff Girls, or even characters who actively weaponize Toon Physics to bend the rules, such as Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry.
• Power-Up Letdown: A few of the power-ups in the Rogue Rifts can be less than useful under certain circumstances, such as the Mojo Jojo power-up which grants the player Mojo Jojo as a companion who periodically drops Cartoon Bombs for the player to use. The problem is that your opponents can ALSO pick up the bombs and throw them at you themselves, and on higher difficulties they will almost certainly gun it for them as soon as Mojo spawns them, making Mojo Jojo a much less worthwhile choice on higher difficulties.
• Practical Taunt: The Taunt After KO gem lets you get a damage buff when you taunt after ringing out an opponent.
• Product Placement: A few characters in the game were added to promote then-upcoming or recent releases:
  • Wonder Woman and Harley Quinn are based on their versions from the then-ongoing DC Extended Universe, with Wonder Woman's design being based on Gal Gadot's take on the character and Harley Quinn being an Anti-Hero who's broken up with the Joker and taking minor design elements from her designs across those movies.
  • LeBron James' inclusion comes roughly one year after the release of Space Jam: A New Legacy, with a stage based on the movie coming a few months later and all of the Looney Tunes characters getting variants for their Tune Squad outfits from both Space Jam movies.
  • Black Adam's inclusion was clearly done to promote Black Adam (2022), with his gameplay trailer ending with an advertisement for the movie. He even has a variant based specifically on Dwayne Johnson's take on the character from the film.
  • Beetlejuice was announced for Season 2 to promote the then-upcoming Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, with one of his moves ("Toast With The Most") and his passive ability being specifically based on things he does in the movie, and the outfit he wears in the movie's climax being available as a variant. His gameplay trailer ends with an advertisement for the movie, and the Into the Verse livestream going over his moveset ended with a full trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
• Random Effect Spell: The "Goblin Mode" powerup in Rogue Rift makes all of your projectiles spawn as random projectiles instead of what they're usually supposed to be. Using it with Rick's spammable ray gun is a good way to see what it can bring to the table.
• Remixed Level: The "Batman Megamix" rift consists of older levels from the previous rifts, some with new twists and some with none. The rift concludes with a rematch with the Joker, who now has Harley help him after taking a certain amount of damage.
• Revisiting the Roots: Some of the character portrayals in this game are evocative of how they were in older works:
  • Bugs Bunny uses the same Bob Clampett-inspired design from Looney Tunes Cartoons but has his signature white gloves instead of the yellow ones he sports in that series.
  • Finn appears as he does in the early seasons of Adventure Time, complete with his signature golden sword.
  • In contrast to previous fighting games, Superman is back as his inspirational and kind persona once again.
  • Prior to his passing, Kevin Conroy's take on Batman here went back to having a stern personality with a dry wit much like his first performance as him in Batman: The Animated Series — as well as sillier lines more reminiscent of his silver-age incarnation — in contrast to the darker Batman: Arkham Series.
  • This game's version of Black Adam goes off the heels of his more distinct movie version as the traditional Well-Intentioned Extremist ruler from the comics, which even goes as far as bringing back his pointy ears from all pre-Flashpoint appearances.
  • The Powerpuff Girls and their related content mainly hew to how they are depicted in the original 1998 series, rather than their heavily promoted, more comedic 2016 incarnation (though some details from the 2016 series are still present in certain related artwork and cosmetic items, and some official tournament events hosted by the game gave merchandise from the series as rewards). This includes Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, and E.G. Daily reprising the roles of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, respectively.
  • Raven's depiction here is more akin to the Composite Character approach of other DC characters, rather than only the 2003 Teen Titans series or the heavily promoted and more comedic long-running Teen Titans Go! iteration (which are both referenced in the Teen Titans Tower map). This includes Tara Strong downplaying Raven's lighthearted aspects and bringing back her brooding, sarcastic tone.
• Rewards Pass:
  • For each season, there's a Battle Pass with a variety of paid and free cosmetic items like emotes, profile pictures, currency, and character variants, that are earned by filling up an Experience meter from completing missions and events.
  • Season 4 features two Battle Passes.
• Ring Out: MultiVersus being a Platform Fighter, it works around the same gimmick as most other popular games in the genre, where you rack up your opponents' absorbed damage and send them flying off the stage. However, MultiVersus differs from the others by having it so players can buy and equip different "ringout animations" that appear whenever they ring out an opponent, with most of the options being references from the works and franchises involved.
• Ruder and Cruder: The game actually allows you to invoke this yourself with the "Mature Language" option; enabling this will allow certain characters to use profanities. Harley Quinn, for example, will use words like "bitchin'" and "badass". Of course, it's still a family-friendly game, so a content advisory is included for kids.
• Running Gag: After getting a ring-out, some characters might dazedly ask if "anyone got the number of that truck" or something along those lines.
  Velma: Jinkies, did anyone catch the information placard on that subway train?
  Bugs Bunny: [after being run out by Taz] Yeouch! Did anyone get the number on that tornado?
  Uncle Shagworthy: Like, did anyone get the number on that trolley?
• Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet!: During the cinematic trailer, Bugs says his catchphrase and reaches for his back to pull his carrot out (as always). Batman mistakes this for a weapon and throws a Batarang at him (who's saved by Arya).
• Shout-Out:
  • As the reveal trailer cycles through Shaggy's costumes, one of his animations mirrors Bruce Lee's bouncing footwork.
  • One of Superman's intro quotes is "We're sure not in Kansas anymore..."
  • When paired with Wonder Woman, one of Bugs' victory quotes he can say is "The Amazon Lady always delivers!"
  • Shaggy's Ultra Warrior skin bears more than a passing resemblance to Hot Ryu, as both sport headbands, padded gloves, full beards, and have bare feet, not to mention the former being a Shotoclone. One of Shaggy's taunts (which has him rip off his karate gi) can complete the look. It could also be seen as paying homage to Chuck Norris.
  • Reindog's Tea Time variant is a clear reference to the Mad Hatter from the classic book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It could also be a Mythology Gag to Jervis Tetch, one of Batman's rogues who uses the same moniker.
  • One of Taz's selection quotes is "Snacks? SNACKS?? SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACKS!!"
  • Harley says "Send in the clowns, hot stuff" for one of her selection quotes.
  • Two of the sticker emotes added in Season 2 reference the Woman Yelling at a Cat meme, with one emote ("Birth of a Rival") having Harley Quinn yelling while Wonder Woman looks on from behind, and the other ("Troll-dog") featuring Reindog making the cat's expression.
  • When pulling a victory over Black Lantern Superman, Harley might say "More like Yawn of the Dead."
  • The Season 2 Battle Pass added the "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" taunt for Banana Guard, which has him performing the dance from the same meme. Banana Guard shaking maracas for the dance specifically invokes Family Guy's version of the meme.
  • The "Star Contenders" mode introduced to the Wacky Weekend queue in Season 4 seems to be inspired by Hyper Contender from UFO 50: the arena is a small, boxed-in area with platforms rather than an open space, the goal is to collect a certain amount of coins (rather than rings) that spawn periodically and can be knocked out of the other players by hitting them, the spawn location of incoming new coins is indicated by a ball of fire (like how rings in Hyper Contender are on fire when they spawn in to prevent them from immediately being collected), every character has their moveset pared down to a few attacks much like the small movesets of Hyper Contender, and characters get knocked down and stunned for a long time after being hit, just as they do in that game.
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover:
  • The game currently has both Shaggy and Velma as playable characters representing the Scooby-Doo franchise, but as of current writings, the titular Great Dane is nowhere to be seen.
  • In a case of a sidelined antagonist crossover, the game's entire beta period lacked Batman's most well-known archenemy, the Joker; his role was filled by Harley Quinn, who's normally an evil sidekick-turned-vigilante. This was changed for the full game's first season, when Joker was finally announced in the lead-up to the game's relaunch.
  • Black Adam was announced without his arch-nemesis Captain Marvel.
  • Subverted with the Gremlins characters. Stripe was originally announced without Gizmo. However, not only was Gizmo later confirmed to be playable, but he was officially added to the game before Stripe.
  • Agent Smith was the first character from The Matrix franchise to join the roster, even before its main protagonist Neo.
  • Naturally, as with many Villain-Based Franchises, Jason Voorhees is the playable representative for the Friday the 13th franchise instead of any of the movie's main protagonists. The same applies to the titular Beetlejuice.
  • Raven was the first of the Teen Titans to join the game, ahead of their traditional leader Robin/Nightwing.
• Skill Scores and Perks:
  • In most game modes, players can equip four perks for each fighter, on in each category of Signature, Team, Strong, and Standard.
  • Arena mode involves, among other things, players equipping their characters a variety of attributes that function and are classified similarly to perks, but unlike perks, players can freely customize said attributes regardless of category under the 4-attribute limit.
• Slapstick: This game isn't picky in regards to who gets seriously affected by the often goofy status affliction attacks, as male and female fighters, both super and non-super, can be frozen, turned into roast chickens, become smitten against their will, and so forth.
• Snooty Sports: While entering a golf minigame in the "Hunter on the Trail" Rift, Nubia relates how Diana referred to the sport as for "rich mortals with too much time on their hands".
• Snowball Fight: During the game's holiday themed FestiVersus event, the game's silly queue had a new mode where players throw snowballs at each other, trying to freeze each other while dodging giant ice chunks that would fall from the sky.
• Socialization Bonus: Enforced in the Rift mode, where every fight has an optional objective that requires you play it with a second player. They aren't required to get all the gem crates, but are nonetheless very helpful for reaching the required point thresholds to get them.
• Songs in the Key of Panic: When either team is one ring-out away from victory, the current stage's song will switch into a second phase that's much more frenetic, especially for more dramatic songs that already have Orchestral Bombing to start with.
• Spell My Name with a "The": The Joker and The Powerpuff Girls are specifically referred to with a "The" preceeding their name; since the characters are sorted alphabetically, this means both of them are grouped with the "T" characters.
• Take That!: Being idle for too long will have the game straight up yell at you to "Stop Camping!" This isn't just aesthetic, either - this is a debuff that drains your dodge meter and keeps you from regaining it until you re-engage.
• Taunt Button: As is standard for a platform fighter, there are dedicated buttons for taunting your opponents. Each character has one taunt by default, and can earn others by a variety of means.
• Temporary Online Content: While most cosmetic items can be freely purchased with Gleamium at any time, some of them are classified under a special rarity called "Elusive". These items are unique in that they're usually only available during limited periods of the game's run (most frequently a single season), and cannot be obtained otherwise. Some notable Elusive variants include Matrix Code Agent Smith (from the Matrix event during Season 1 of the full release), and the Ranked variants for Samurai Jack and the Powerpuff Girls that were only obtained by reaching certain tiers in the Ranked mode during Seasons 2 and 3, respectively.
• Toon Physics:
  • Discussed: Velma has a voiceline where she acknowledges that the laws of physics in MultiVersus operate differently, which allows the otherwise klutzy and nonathletic Velma to jump, punch and run in the same level as powerhouses like Superman and Wonder Woman.
  • Actively weaponized by Zany Cartoon characters like Bugs, Taz, Marvin, and Tom and Jerry.
• Traitor Shot: In their normal menu animation, Tom and Jerry shake hands with one another, with a bat behind the former's back and a bomb behind the latter. While this makes it clear they're going to backstab each other, Jerry also winks at the audience◊.
• Trapped in Another World: The "You're With Me" trailer has Batman mysteriously teleported to the world of MultiVersus by what the Batcomputer calls a "strange energy signature". Other characters are also shown appearing in a similar way, although aside from Shaggy and Arya, none of them seem bothered by this.
• Turns Red: On harder difficulties in Rifts, taking too long to defeat your opponent(s) will result in them receiving an "Angered!" buff that sharply raises their attack, which is eventually followed by an "Enraged!" buff that raises it further still.
• Tutorial Failure: While the tutorials in the beta were not an example of this, giving every mechanic its own in-depth explanation, the relaunch has been noted to do a worse job explaining everything, in part due to being presented as a level that's part of the Rifts mode narrative rather than a detached tutorial section. Additionally, the tutorial wasn't updated to keep up when later seasons added prominent new mechanics, like dodge attacks and shielding.
• Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: With this game being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover between any characters that fall under the Warner Bros. Discovery blanket^note and possibly beyond that, this trope is obviously in effect, but sometimes the characters themselves invoke this, wondering aloud which of their friends back home would win in a fight. And given how the devs said there's no roster limit, it's not impossible that we could one day see these matchups in-game.
  • If Arya pulls a win over Shaggy, she might suggest that they pit each of their dogs (Scooby and Nymeria) against each other.
  • Batman whenever teaming with Arya, in all his seriousness, might ask her who would win in a fight, Syrio or Ra's Al-Ghul.
  • Batman also states that Jake the Dog would give "Plas" a run for his money.
• Unmoving Plaid: Several of the more general variants feature moving patterns that ignore the characters' movements, like the ValentiNeon (hot pink with hearts), Matrix (green and black with Matrix Raining Code), Hypergalactic (pink and purple with a space backdrop), and Polar Vortex (shades of light and dark blue with snowflakes) variants.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Tom and Jerry rarely ever notice or react to the various beings summoned from other worlds and universes, as they're far too busy fighting with each other and often end up defeating their opponents via collateral damage.
• Valentine's Day Episode: February 14th, 2023 saw the start of the ValentiNeon event, where players could earn Candy Hearts to unlock prizes. Additionally, this event brought in a handful of pink and purple Valentines-themes variants for a lot of characters^note Shaggy, Velma, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Black Adam, Harley, Garnet, and Marvin. Silly Mode also got a new event where players would collect or steal hearts to unleash a powerful attack.
• Villain Team-Up: "Triple Threat" has the Joker, Jason, and Agent Smith team up to take down the heroes of the rifts' storylines.
• Voice for the Voiceless: A downplayed variant; Reindog and Tom & Jerry don't have any victory quotes^note as Reindog is only able to bark and Tom & Jerry, true to form, do not speak at all, so any characters paired with them will say theirs by default.
• Wall Jump: A universal mechanism in the game is the ability to cling onto walls and do a short hop from them, allowing any character to scale up terrain by jumping from them.
• The Worf Effect: The "Naptime is Over" rift basically involves the Powerpuff Girls beating up every villain present in the fighter roster at the time of the rift's release, plus Mojo Jojo as a boss.
• Writing Around Trademarks: One of the unreleased Jason skins, which appeared in the Horror Rogue Rift and was only usable in offline Rifts mode, was based on and named after Freddy vs. Jason. Midway through the season, the name was changed to just "Jason VS" with no mention of Freddy.