#ryu number

[ryunumber]

Indoril Nerevar's Ryu Number? Also Nerevarine's, by extension?

The Nerevarine has a Ryu Number of 2.

(clarification below)

As for Nerevar himself, while his body is presumably in his tomb in Morrowind, I'm not super keen on counting it when we never technically see it in-game. There's also a projection of him in Elder Scrolls Online that I'm also not keen on counting, since his voicelines seem to be recordings of the past.

[kchasm]

Ryu Number: Keanu Reeves

[neververy4]

Who cares? You don’t even have a Ryu number

[crimsondestroyer]

Ryu Number: The M.C. from The Under Presents

Alright. I've done a few Ryu numbers in the past, but none as elaborate as this one, so for once, I figured I'd make my own post explaining the... elaborate, to say the least, path I took to get here. Several dead ends and a couple weeks of research later, here we are.

So. To those of you who don't know anything about the Under, hi. I'm crimsonDestroyer. One of my many hobbies is playing VR games, and one such game is The Under Presents, by Tender Claws, a game I play somewhat often and speedrun periodically. A while back, I wondered in passing if I could figure out a way to connect any of the Under's characters to Ryu, like, say, The M.C. This seemed like a simple question at the time, but, well, let's see.

To start off with, there's a fairly simple Limited route. One aspect of The Under Presents in the past was its live actors, in-game characters played by real people who would interact with mute player characters in the game's multiplayer areas. Unfortunately, the actor run has since ended, and though there's been brief returns of actors here and there, it seems to be mostly over. However, one such actor-played character was a skeleton going by the name of Amelia. As Amelia's lore would later highlight, she is, in fact, the one and only Amelia Earhart, prior to her death and entrance into the Under. There are many hints around the game's world that Amelia Earhart was in the Under in the past, but she herself is nowhere to be found - except for this live actor. Given this was, by its nature, a time-limited occurrence, this would give the M.C. a nice, clean Limited Ryu Number of 3.

However, Limited Ryu Numbers are lame. Can we do better?

One of the many locations you can visit in the Under is the Crob Pit. There, by solving a puzzle with some fellow players, you can summon a massive crab monster who will eat you, sending you to the Den, inside him. There, you can find an assortment of crab bones and other gruesome things, in addition to one peculiar fixture.

This is the only intact human skeleton in the entire game, within the stomach of an enormous crab. Now, given the fact that Amelia Earhart is mentioned excessively by props around the setting of the game, with items such as her plane and a banner for a show featuring her scattered all over the place, her physical absence within the Under is quite suspicious. Additionally, the actor-played character was created after the game released, and it's implied that the actor characters have some degree of the supernatural to them, meaning the existence of the actor in no way means that the character's physical body cannot remain elsewhere in the Under. Given the popular theory that Amelia Earhart's body was never found in real life because it was eaten by coconut crabs, this seems... intentional. If you consider this to be Amelia Earhart's body, the M.C. has a Ryu number of 3.

However, given the complete lack of any verbal confirmation or hints to this skeleton's identity, and this being solely based on context clues, I'm not confident calling it for certain, so let's keep digging.

One feature of the Under is the scripted stage shows, which play on loop on the main stage in the game's theater area. One such show features a man by the name of Sal Sisyphus. Sal's act consists of him rolling a boulder up a hill while giving a motivational speech that inevitably descends into nonsense after he slips and drops the boulder back down. That sounds quite a bit like traditional Sisyphus - endless torture, endless repetition, endless suffering, pushing a rock up and down a hill forever. Plus, as far as I can tell, the mythological Sisyphus has no second name given, so who's to say Sal isn't his first name? If you buy into that, the M.C. also has a Ryu number of 3.

But this one DEFINITELY felt pretty sketchy to me, so I went back to the drawing board once more.

Finding a way out of Tender Claws is... hard. See, Tender Claws has made three big commercially-released VR titles: The Under Presents, Virtual Virtual Reality, and Virtual Virtual Reality 2, all of which can be linked without much issue. A sentient skeleton named Tina works in both a stage act in the Under, and her namesake bar, Tinas', in VVR2's setting, Scottsdale. And, as a sequel, VVR2 features numerous returning characters from the original VVR. All you need is to find one character, just one, across those three games, and you have an out. There HAS to be something.

It was at this point that a friend mentioned that Elon Musk is in Virtual Virtual Reality 2, and I had to do a double-take.

Meet Elon. He's a talking onion. More accurately, he's an AI upload of a human consciousness who takes the form of a talking onion in the digital world. Between his name, his personality, his mannerisms, the fact that he was the second human to ever upload himself (after an extremely important character from the first game), and the fact that VVR2's virtual worlds are referred to as "metaverses", the implication as to who he is seems to be pretty obvious. I didn't know he existed, because I never finished VVR2 due to some technical issues. Regardless, here he is!

With a proper pop-culture figure in our hands, we can finally find our way out of Tender Claws. Elon Musk is still a relatively modern person, so there aren't many games with him in them yet, but with some clever googling and the help of TV Tropes, I tracked down an obscure little game called Good Pizza, Great Pizza, released for mobile and later ported to PC and Switch. In this game, you make pizza for an assortment of customers, real and fictional, which just so happens to include one Mr. Musk. From there, it was just a matter of tracing the rest of the way to Ryu from one of the other noteworthy characters who appear in the game. There was a tempting Dracula connection, but unfortunately, he's exclusive to a time-limited Halloween event. How ironic, that the first and last dead ends would both be time-limited characters. In any case, Albert Einstein will do the job of giving us our final two jumps nicely, passing through Mario's Time Machine, and finally bringing us home.

The M.C. has a Ryu number of 3/5, and a Limited Ryu Number of 3.

[ryunumber]

Does Comic Book Guy from Simpsons have a Ryu number?

Jeff Albertson a.k.a. the Comic Book Guy has a Ryu Number of 3.

[ryunumber]

chaz from vvr

Chaz has a Ryu Number of 4/does not have a Ryu Number.

(CORRECTION: Per @crimsondestroyer, Chaz may have a Ryu Number through Elon Musk.)

[ryunumber]

Jiro yamashita from the idolm@ster sidem

Jiro Yamashita has a Ryu Number of 3.

[ryunumber]

Does Alex Mercer from Prototype have a Ryu number?

Alex Mercer does not have a Ryu Number.

[ryunumber]

Minnesota Fats from Minnesota Fats: Pool Legend for the Sega Genesis

Rudolf Wanderone a.k.a. Minnesota Fats does not have a Ryu Number.

[ryunumber]

does phil collins have a ryu number?

Phil Collins has a Ryu Number of 4.

[ryunumber]

The player character / protagonist from THE DOG Island for Wii?

The player in The Dog Island does not have a Ryu Number.

[ryunumber]

Correction: sans has a Ryu Number of 10.

(explanation below)

If it wasn't clear, this isn't a real correction and the number in the linked post above still stands. Every single appearance above is of a costume of the named character and therefore ineligible.

The costumes and actual characters underneath are, in order:

Mii Gunner (Sans, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)

Mii Brawler (Heihachi Mishima, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate)

Lau Chan (Heihachi Mishima, Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown)

Akira Yuki (Kazuma Kiryu, Virtua Fighter 5 Ultimate Showdown)

Ren Amamiya (Kazuma Kiryu, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight)

Morgana (Sonic the Hedgehog, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight)

Amigo (Sonic the Hedgehog and AiAi, Samba de Amigo: Party Central)

The Avatar (AiAi and Ren Amamiya, Sonic Forces)

Ringo (Ren Amamiya, Soul Hackers 2)

Saizo (Walter, Soul Hackers 2)

Touma Akagi (Walter, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore)

Itsuki Aoi (Marth, Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore)

The Monster Hunter (Marth, Monster Hunter Generations)

Your Felyne (Fox McCloud, Monster Hunter Generations)

Bayonetta (Fox McCloud and Samus Aran, Bayonetta 2)

Zafina (Samus Aran, Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition)

Ganryu (Ryu, Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition)

[ryunumber]

eminem?

Eminem has a Limited Ryu Number of 1.

[ryunumber]

russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky?

Fyodor Dostoevsky has a Ryu Number of 2.

[ryunumber]

I searched but that doesn't mean much - have you found Ronald Reagan's Ryu number? As a potential starting point, he was in COD:BOps Cold War

Ronald Reagan has a Ryu Number of 2.

[ryunumber]

Ceres Fauna from Hololive-EN?

Ceres Fauna has a Ryu Number of 4.