Swen Vincke had to tell Baldur's Gate 3 writers to tone it down with the poop-based insults, which is saying a lot, since I still count at least 17 scat-based Vicious Mockery voicelines

Vicious Mockery is one of the most iconic D&D 5e spells—in case you're completely unfamiliar with the system, or just haven't played a bard yet, it's a cantrip that deals 1d4 psychic damage (scaling a bit with your level) and gives enemies disadvantage on their next attack roll. It also lets you insult someone so hard that they just die, which is also the case in Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian went real overboard on the depth and breadth of insults with this singular cantrip—even giving one NPC bespoke, trauma-invoking dunks just to twist the knife even more. But there was a time when these insults were just plain dookie. No, literally.

As spotted by our friends over at GamesRadar+, a recent stream with junior writer Martin Docherty revealed that poor beleaguered studio head Swen Vincke had to tell the BG3 team to tone it down with the scat-based dunking.

He recounts a time when he'd collected a bunch of Vicious Mockery insults into a big sheet: "Swen had a look at them, and he was like: 'Ah. Hm. Why are so many of them about poo?'" That's one hell of a note to receive. Which, to Docherty and his fellow writers' credit, they took on the chin: "Interesting. That's an interesting point. We've all gone very scatological."

The chaser to Vincke's shot, however, comes in the note Docherty shares afterwards: "Less poo, more Shakespeare." I've never been given such devastatingly constructive critique by my editors here at PC Gamer, but I'm not entirely sure I'd recover if I did.

I decided to refresh my memory to see how many kaka croons made it into the full game (thank you, BG3 wiki), and it turns out? Quite a few:

• "Tape your bottom-mouth shut."
• "Thou goblin-goo-gobbler!" This one's debatable, based on what we think goblin goo is.
• "Thou latrine-loving leper!"
• "You gorbellied, purulent horse-ass!"
• "You're dung-pretty and scented to wit!"
• "Back to the anus that spat you out."
• "Hark! A dung golem!"
• "Clag-bottomed coward!"
• "Majesty of manure, sovereign of shit!"
• "Mouthier than an arse, twice as full o' shite."
• "Regard this spontaneous flatulater!"
• "There - a miserable pile of secretion."
• "Shall I compare thee to a sow's fart?"
• "Gnoll eat your face and shit it out?"
• "Feculent beast!" Feculent means to contain dirt or waste matter, so I think this one counts.
• "Fudge-fondling fustilarian!"
• "Thou bandy-legged brindle-hole!"

We've got at least 17 rump-oriented heckles that made the cut—that last one might be an edge-case, but "brindle" means a brown the colour of animal fur, and I think we can reliably say what a brown-covered hairy hole might be. Just not on this website.

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