Every type of Fall Guy, classified

It's funny now to remember that, before Fall Guys (BFG), we all naively thought we had identities; that we'd built personalities around professions and family roles and musical subcultures. Then the noble game of bumble royale was invented and these fragile fabrications slipped away, leaving behind an innate, primal way of being—defined for each of us long before adulthood, before birth even, baked into our DNA like gelatin into a sugar-coated bean.

Scientists and anthropologists may still be working out the implications for our brains and societies, but journalists are unbound by red tape, peer reviews or evidence-based research. So there's nothing to prevent me from just straight-up listing every kind of Fall Guy there is. As a human bean, you fall under one of these headers; the only question left is whether you can accept it.

Fruit Amnesiac

Here follows a rough transcript of a Fruit Amnesiac's final thoughts, translated from pure panic into English:

"Banana, grapes, orange, watermelon. Banana, grapes, orange, watermelon. Banana, grapes, banana, grapes, banana, nope, it's gone. It's happening again. Who even put a brain game in here? This was supposed to be the jumping game. I can't jump out of this one. Hello, pink abyss."

Physics Truther

We are each of us created with an instinctive understanding of balance, and an inner ear designed to detect and correct any stumbles before they happen. We inherit centuries of writing on classical mechanics from mathematicians like Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

And yet there remain a bold few who refuse to accept established wisdom. Who, when faced with a see-saw weighed down on one side by five or six Guys, remain optimistic enough to hop on board just to see what happens.

Godspeed to those questioning minds, I say. Just so long as I'm on a different see-saw.

Grabber

Do they hand out crowns for mucking about at the finish line? Didn't think so. Sort yourself out.

A finish line grabber recently told me there's actually a strategy to their cruelty: if they can whittle down the top players in the early stages, they stand a better chance of winning in the long run. Don't let them have that win. Jump and dive over that line, friends. Jump and dive.

Cuddler

When someone grabs, they grab back. It's reminiscent of the nicest bit of boxing, when the men who've turned their arms into weapons stop hurting each other and have a little hug, right there in front of the paying audience. That's known in the sport as 'clinching', and serves a tactical purpose in breaking your opponent's rhythm. I suppose that can be true in Fall Guys, too—a hug can cause an opponent to break their stride, or pop an egg from their grasp.

I don't think that's why Cuddlers do it, though. I think Cuddlers are just those people who used to stand outside student unions with a sign that read 'free hugs'. They can't do that now, 'cos there's a pandemic on, so they do this instead.

Jelly Bean

In 1920s America, a 'jelly bean' was a layabout who dressed fancy but offered nothing to the world. F. Scott Fitzgerald dedicated a whole short story to calling them out, and he should know—that lad literally wrote the book on being fancy in 1920s America.

In Fall Guys, the jelly bean spends more time on the cosmetics screen than in matches, matching cucumber green underpants with ninja garb. Maybe if they participated in more games, they wouldn't have to watch their avatar tip wolf-head first into the slime so often.

Quitter

Five seconds, apparently. That's how long it takes for some to know that a Door Dash run has gone so disastrously wrong that it can't be saved. Nostradamus in a cactus costume.

Super Fucking Mario

Yeah, okay, you're good at jumping. We get it. You can leap from each vanishing honeycomb platform to the next as if it's no big deal, sometimes deploying an expert dive for an extra inch of reach. You can simultaneously play Mario with your fingers and Snake in your head, as if that's a reasonable expectation. But do you have to stream it? They should deduct crowns for that sort of thing.

Gladiator

Some beans aren't looking for anything logical, like victory. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some beans just want to wrestle you to the ground and hurl you into the goo.

Sisyphus

There's one stage, Rock 'n' Roll, in which three teams compete to push an enormous bouncy ball through an obstacle course (the rock) and then down a hill (the roll). Only, some players don't do that. Some leave their team behind and take up defensive positions on the slope - ready to push opponent balls back up once they appear.

It's an effectively devious tactic. However: if nobody remembers to stick with the ball on the course, there's no way to get back up to fetch it—dooming these Sisyphean players to hold up an enemy victory they can't prevent. Who said you can't teach Greek myths to the Fortnite generation?

ROFLer

You remember the good citizens of Los Santos in GTA V? The way that, with a single punch, they'd collapse into ragdoll, limbs flopping as they flumped across the sidewalk? They're back, and now they're beans.

Lemming

Once you've qualified you're assigned a random player in spectator cam, and that's when you see the Lemming—dropping down that blind gap before the big wheel on Dizzy Heights. The first time it's fair enough, but then they do it again, and again, not even hitting the jump key, just keeling straight over the edge. What's the explanation? Are they a child? Is everyone else who plays this game a child? Am I that one adult weirdo at Laser Quest headshotting 12 year olds every Saturday?

If you're even thinking of heading to the comments to point out that Laser Quest doesn't register headshots, only chest and back hits, just don't—you're telling on yourself.

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