Among Us fans are calling everything ‘pretty sus,’ and it keeps working

In the game Among Us, on a long enough timeline, absolutely everything and everyone will be declared as “pretty sus” at some point. “Sus” is a convenient shorthand for suspicious; it’s easy to type, even on a mobile device, and it gets your point across quickly. You may not have seen a little bean kill someone in the reactor core, but you’re pretty sure they were up there at some point, or they ran at you in a funny way. That’s all pretty sus.

“Sus” is a gut feeling without evidence, and there’s a reason why Among Us fans have started using it in their everyday vocabularies — sometimes those gut feelings pay off. As a player, it feels amazing to pull some detective work based off in-game body language or someone idling in the wrong place.

But sometimes a player convincingly lays out a steel cage of logic that proves that someone else in the imposter. “I saw Red kill Green in the Reactor from the security cameras, then he hit a sabotage alert on the Oxygen so everyone would rush to fix it!” or “Blue set up a sabotage, vented to kill Pink, and then reported the body to hide her involvement!”

All of the cards are on the table, and it feels very much like you’ve identified that it was Professor Plum, in the library, with the candlestick, and you’re about to get the victory you rightfully deserve.

And then the imposter types in chat: “idk youre pretty sus.” Someone else then chimes in with “they’re sus?” and someone else is like “I was in reactor and I didn’t see anything who are we voting for.” It’s such a lazy, underhanded tactic, like if you witnessed a murderer take the stand for a crime you witnessed. The murderer just shrugs and goes “Nah, wasn’t me. Pretty sure it was the witness.”

The flurry of confusion and clarifications that come from an accusation of “sus” snowballs until everyone’s pointing the finger at you. Next thing you know, the judge and prosecutor are demanding to know why you were in the boiler room and not resetting the seismic systems.

“I finished my tasks super early one round, so I was checking every room, and I saw White kill Pink in storage,” Elise, an Among Us player, tells Polygon over Discord. “No ambiguity. I report them and I’m typing up a whole paragraph and they go ‘self-report is pretty sus’ and everyone votes for me?! He immediately controlled the narrative, which was impressive, but I was also so, so salty.”

That’s the imposter’s dream: the ability to just throw an innocent crewmate right out into the void of space, based off nothing but a vague hunch and a gullible audience. That’s why “pretty sus” has become a sort of reflex among this game’s players: They’re ready for absolutely everything to come out of a vent or accuse them of a murder, even if it means pointing the finger at you as a result.