What are some fun "fidget" mechanics?

So I love throw away things in games that serve no purpose other than to be a fun fidget.

In Luigi's Mansion there is a button completely dedicated to making Luigi call out "Mario?"

It changes from area to area, and does absolutely nothing for the actual core mechanics.

Another example is a jump button in games that have jump mechanics, like Smite. Smite is a 3d game with 2d colliders, so it is absolutely impossible to ever actually move up and down. The jump button just plays an animation of your character jumping, your collider doesn't do squat. But people love spamming jump.

Last example I can think of is Dungeon Defenders has a dedicated button to go "Ah-yo!" Granted it can be used to draw attention to something, but more often it's spammed for poops and giggles.

Can you think of any other fidget mechanic that is fun?

Do you like these features or do they make you groan?

 

In anything where you play an anmimal, you should have a key to make that animals typical sound. Bonus points if it actually is part of a game mechanic like in untitled goose game.

 

I'm involved now in a fighting game with a "taunt" mechanic that makes you do a variety of obnoxious gestures. These have minor gameplay implications — mostly just that you're vulnerable while taunting, so you only do it when you're so much better than the other player that you just don't care. It's very popular with our testers.

 

In Mario Party there was a button that yelled a character phrase during enemy turns. No purpose at all other than annoying the living soul out of my siblings.

Loved every minute of it.

 

Taunts, voice lines and sprays are all pretty fun to play around with. Overwatch had a few sprays that could be put together e.g. Zarya and Reinhardt arm-wrestling.

Overwatch has a few examples actually - a lot of destructible items around the place, little robot npcs you can shoot at, and the basketball/hoop!

 

a sub-type of these might be the "flourish" mechanic.

LOZ Twilight Princess would play a flourish animation if you put away your sword after dispatching an enemy- it made you feel like a hero after a duel with a darknut.

I seem to remember in Sid Meier's Pirates, timing your button presses perfectly in the dancing minigame would give your character a flourish to his dance moves that would especially impress your dance partner. It made you feel like you were quite the dashing debonair man of the sea.

Transistor had a flourish that was more of a fidget- Red would spin the sword up in the air and catch it. That was more of an expression of the character I think.

In fact, now that I'm thinking of it, all 3 of those involved silent protagonists. A fidget or flourish can breath some expression of personality into what might be be considered a flat character.

 

Inspecting my weapon in Counter-Strike (by spamming F if I recall correctly) or slashing my knife in the air at nothing.

 

for some reason the game ' Hatred ' strikes me as one that has needless features, where you run around and execute people, there's a button for ' needless violence ', however the game was very controvertial, it was made in Poland by a team called ' Destructive Creations ', think they wanted to make expose over violence culture . . .

you're ' effectively ' a serial - killer that decides to go on a spree, more, or less insane mass shooter, that's the ' theme ' of the game, being that guy, and there's these really weird executions where weird stuff happens . . .

it's perhaps the same as the ' fatality ' from Mortal Kombat, serves no purpose, however the series is known for the stuff, think also Skyrim had that stuff, all the guards said they'd retired because they took ' an arrow to the knee ', not sure that was intended, however it almost turned into this thing where people said that for years, even though it had nothing to do with finishing the game, or really RPG - systems, it's one of those daft // weird things that turned into popular culture . . . .