History Main / GameChanger

* The Game Changer in ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'' is the unexpected dubbing of Po as The Dragon Warrior, a clumsy giant panda who turns out be a preternaturally talented martial artist of considerable power with the right instruction who also enables his colleagues to find a happiness they did not know they needed.

** The [=BattleMech=] itself was an example of this. Before the [=BattleMech=], the logistics issues of FTL travel in ''Battletech'' meant most offensive wars in the setting inevitably devolved into a MutuallyEnsuredDestruction situation where an attacking force would be dumped on the planet and then backed up by megatons worth of OrbitalBombardment via [=WarShip=], while the defender would nuke their own planet in the process of dislodging them. Following [[FictionalGenevaConventions the Ares Conventions]] this method of warfare was essentially banned and battles took on a small-scale, skirmish aspect to them where raiding and surgical strikes became the order of the day: Enter the [=BattleMech=], a sealed, all-terrain vehicle capable of setting down ''anywhere'' on a planet, operate behind enemy lines for weeks at a time and strike anywhere, anytime, with overwhelming firepower for its tonnage. Being followed by drastic advances in vehicle armour and weaponry allowed by the weight tolerance of [[MechaEnablingPhlebotinum myomer]], the [=BattleMech=] drastically changed warfare in the Inner Sphere and turned it into feudal-era-style battles between noblemen riding their 'mechs as heavy cavalry and challenging each other to duels, out of reach of the tanks, artillery and infantry. Ultimately, [=BattleMech=] technology would disseminate from the Terran Hegemony to every Inner Sphere power within a decade and never changed power dynamics as long as both sides possessed them.

* ''TabletopGames/{{Battletech}}'', being a RealRobot series, has several examples of military developments that rapidly and temporarily upended the balance of power before equilibrium inevitably set in.

** The knightmares were this in the backstory, being the weapon that allowed Britannia to conquer Japan and break the long stalemate between the three major power blocks. The Lancelot, which is created in the beginning of season one, and later the Gawain, introduced late in the first season, are other examples and the ones that truly sets off the LensmanArmsRace of the series: The Lancelot is a OneManArmy that allows its wearer to dominate normal knightmares as though they {{mook}}s, and the Gawain is the first knightmare frame capable of flight and also has a giant WaveMotionGun capable of devastating an entire battlefield in one go.
* ''Anime/{{Obsolete}}'': The Exoframes are MiniMecha provided to humanity by a race of anonymous merchant-aliens, who will sell them to anyone, no questions asked, for the price of a thousand kilos of limestone each. While the Exoframes are unarmed, the ubiquity of limestone means practically ''anyone'' can get their own mech for cheap (less than 100 USD in 2015 prices) if they have access to a limestone quarry, which ends up collapsing large portions of the heavy industries market (producers of tractors, forklifts, etc) and opens up a new world for guerilla fighters and non-established militaries, who suddenly have access to a highly mobile, easily hideable weapons platform capable of carrying an infantry support weapon or a small vehicle weapon like a machine gun, mortar or reasonably sized bomb. Exoframes end up changing the ''Obsolete'' world in a way similar to how drone warfare changed the real world, with the caveat that the rich, established powers were the ''last'' ones to begin implementing them due to pressure from their own manufacturing industries.

** Later on in 8th Edition, The entire setting was bisected by "The Great Rift", basically an enormous realspace warpstorm that cut the entire galaxy almost down the middle. This had massive changes to the status quo, such as countless millions of Imperium-based armies either losing major recruiting worlds or strongholds (Cadia being chief among them) and making the job of defending man's hold in the galaxy ''considerably'' harder than it already was. Almost every Eldar craftworld suffered significant losses not only from the devastation of Chaos suddenly having a ''much'' stronger foothold in reality, but also due to the sudden emergence of the Ynnari, who's god effectively demolished one of the larger craftworlds in it's entirety. Whole Tyranid hive fleets got cut off from one another and began creating splinter fleet after splinter fleet in a desperate attempt to continue to harvest biomass. All of this was so momentous that not a few millenia later, it spurred the Necron's Silent King, a character who was made explicitly to not show up and not have a model, to make his way back to the Milky Way to try and unify his broken, roboticized kingdoms. The only factions who ''didn't'' see any meaningful changes to their fortunes were Chaos, who outside of having a much larger staging ground for realspace conquering they've been carrying on as per usual, and the Orks, who are just happy that the fighting they've been doing suddenly got a lot more fun.

** The knightmares were this in the backstory, being the weapon that allowed Britannia to conquer Japan and break the long stalemate between the three major power blocks. The Lancelot, which is created in the beginning of season one, and later the Gawain, introduced late in the first season, are other examples and the ones that truly sets off the LensmanArmsRace of the series: The Lancelot is a OneManArmy that allows its wearer to dominate normal knightmares as though they {{mook}}s, and the Gawain is the first knightmare frame capable of flight and also has a giant WaveMotionCannon capable of devastating an entire battlefield in one go.
* ''{{Obsolete}}'': The Exoframes are MiniMecha provided to humanity by a race of anonymous merchant-aliens, who will sell them to anyone, no questions asked, for the price of a thousand kilos of limestone each. While the Exoframes are unarmed, the ubiquity of limestone means practically ''anyone'' can get their own mech for cheap (less than 100 USD in 2015 prices) if they have access to a limestone quarry, which ends up collapsing large portions of the heavy industries market (producers of tractors, forklifts, etc) and opens up a new world for guerilla fighters and non-established militaries, who suddenly have access to a highly mobile, easily hideable weapons platform capable of carrying an infantry support weapon or a small vehicle weapon like a machine gun, mortar or reasonably sized bomb. Exoframes end up changing the ''Obsolete'' world in a way similar to how drone warfare changed the real world, with the caveat that the rich, established powers were the ''last'' ones to begin implementing them due to pressure from their own manufacturing industries.

* In ''Anime/CodeGeass'', Lelouch dreams of liberating Area 11 and overthrowing his father, the Emperor of Britannia. Alas, he is just one man. All that changed when C.C. gave him the power of Geass. Lelouch uses his newfound powers to mind control people and make his revolution a reality.

* The Game Changer in ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'' is Hiccup discovering that dragons and humans are ''not'' mutual adversaries. The "kill on sight" directive in the Viking Handbook is fanaticism, and the dragons are raiding the Viking village under orders from an EvilBoss. The dragon revolution against the Red Death cements this change into NothingIsTheSameAnymore.

The Game Changer is an element that significantly alters the current direction of the story or event. There is some sort of stalemate involved, or a seeming ForegoneConclusion. The game changer gives the heroes a dramatic new angle to attack the problem; if dealing with TheEmpire it often leads to the downfall of the BigBad.

The long-term goals of the characters do not change, but the situation itself is altered. NothingIsTheSameAnymore is related, but tends to be about a change in the actual situation, not just the options available to the characters. No one has won the "war" by the game changer, they usually just win a decisive battle and that's it. Somehow, someone has just gained a major advantage.

This is often used as a StockPhrase or at least implied through the dialogue. Compare WhamEpisode and MidSeasonTwist. Not to be confused with GameBreaker, though there can certainly be an overlap in an active metagame. Often on a smaller scale, the SpannerInTheWorks functions similarly to this. See also GenreTurningPoint when a work itself is a game changer for its genre or even its entire medium.

The game changer is an element that significantly alters the current direction of the story or event. There is some sort of stalemate involved, or a seeming ForegoneConclusion. The game changer gives the heroes a dramatic new angle to attack the problem; if dealing with TheEmpire it often leads to the downfall of the BigBad.

** The show starts as a zany Sitcom about Elenore, a selfish, amoral person, accidentally getting sent to [[{{Heaven}} the Good Place]] and her attempts to get out of getting sent to [[{{Hell}} the Bad Place]]. Durring the Season 1 finale however, [[spoiler: she figures out that she's actually in the Bad Place and being subjected to a subtle form of torture along with a handful of others]]. After this event, Michael tries to hit the ResetButton in order to preserve the status quo, but early into season 2 [[spoiler: he's hit the reset hundreds of times, and Elenore still eventually manages to figure it out. Thus, wanting to get out of whatever punishment is in store for him for his failure, he teams up with the humans (and Janet) in order to figure out how to get them all into the real Good Place]].

* When conman Dmitri brings orphan Anya before Duchess Sophie, he thought he'd drilled Anya on every fact about the lost Princess WesternAnimation/{{Anastasia}}. But when Sophie asks how she'd escaped the palace during the uprising, Anya replies with something only the actual Princess Anastasia could know. It is then that Dmitri realizes that Anya really is the missing Romanov princess.