History Main / StoryBreadCrumbs

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'': Most of Link's forgotten memories are retrieved through an [[RecollectionSidequest optional sidequest]] where you find the locations corresponding to saved pictures on the Sheikah Slate. These memories involve Link's past interactions with Zelda as they looked for ways to find out how to defeat Calamity Ganon.
* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom'': This emerges when Link investigates the [[CropCircles geoglyphs]] that now dot the land, as, from them, he is given visions of the missing Princess Zelda. [[spoiler:This time, these memories are Zelda's own, showing what happened to her after she was sent back in time to Hyrule's founding.]]

* From the StylishAction ''{{VideoGame/Bayonetta}}'' there are various pages from "Antonio's Notebook", which provide backstory on the city of Virgid as well as the lore of the Umbra Witches and Lumen Sages among other things. They were written by the late Antonio Redgrave, famed journalist and Luka's deceased father.
* In ''{{VideoGame/Bayonetta 2}}'' there are "The Journal's Echoes", which play the same role as Antonio's Notebook in the first game, giving backstory regarding the town of Noatun, the sacred mountain Fimbulventr, and the God of Chaos, Aesir. These pages were written by Luka himself, taking after his father. [[JustifiedTrope It's said that Luka left these fragments of his notebook on purpose so that Bayonetta could find them to help her in her mission]].

* ''VideoGame/LilasSkyArk'': Not for the present story, but for the backstory--and hinting at what's really going on. In various places Lila may find letters, most written by herself, describing her life as [[spoiler: a military child, and the work of her stern, one-eyed, military-scientist father]]...
* In ''VideoGame/ShadowComplex'' guards that don't immediately see you will often talk to one another, dropping hints on what's going on with the plot.

* In ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'', the Ansem Reports and the Secret Ansem Reports detail the creation of the BigBad and the game's enemies. They can be found in various places in the first game and various plot milestones in the second.

** ''[[VideoGame/PokemonRubyAndSapphire Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire]]'' add a new backstory to the Abandoned Ship (now called Sea Mauville) in a similar fashion. You can find various letters and other reports lying around the ship; details include why it was shut down and some rather depressing info on some of its former workers.

* ''VideoGame/MetroExodus:'' The plot is explicitly about travelling through post-apocalyptic Russia, looking for a new place to live, but you learn the back stories of the areas that you visit by overhearing [=NPC=] conversations, and by finding random documents and audio logs.

* ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar2'' has little trinkets you can find that tell the stories of dead soldiers.

* While every ''{{Franchise/Kirby}}'' game can be played as a simple quest to defeat the EldritchAbomination [[MonsterOfTheWeek of the Week]], many of the later entries use the bosses' pause menu FlavorText to provide elaboration on several plot-critical characters, including their origins, motivations, and sometimes even hints of connections with other forces of evil Kirby's previously dealt with.

* Most of Link's forgotten memories in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' are retrieved through an [[RecollectionSidequest optional sidequest]] where you find the locations corresponding to saved pictures on the Sheikah Slate. These memories involve Link's past interactions with Zelda as they looked for ways to find out how to defeat Calamity Ganon.
** In the direct sequel ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTearsOfTheKingdom'', this trope emerges again when Link investigates the [[CropCircles geoglyphs]] that now dot the land, as, from them, he is given visions of the missing Princess Zelda. [[spoiler:This time, these memories are Zelda's own, showing what happened to her after she was sent back in time to Hyrule's founding.]]

* ''VideoGame/SINoALICE'''s narrative is mostly delivered through vague and small nuggets of info spread apart in the story mode and the job/weapon descriptions, only offering hints at whats going on most of the time.

* Most of Link's forgotten memories in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' are retrieved through an optional sidequest where you find the locations corresponding to saved pictures on the Sheikah Slate. These memories involve Link's past interactions with Zelda as they looked for ways to find out how to defeat Calamity Ganon.

* Plentiful in the ''Videogame/BatmanArkhamSeries''. [[Videogame/BatmanArkhamAsylum The first game]] has it to give backstory on all the characters through profiles, interviews, and a series of cyphered chronicles. [[Videogame/BatmanArkhamCity The sequel]] is a more straightforward case, as the CollectionSidequest uncovers tidbits on how things got to this point between games.

* The important backstory of ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'' is hidden in obscure dialogue options, which may or may not show up depending on your gender, Force alignment, influence with each particular companion and even the number of previous walkthroughs. It takes at least two of them to get even a vague idea of what's going on and even more of those, combined with lurking through the dialogue files, to get all subtleties.

* ''VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddys'' takes this to the max, with only a portion of the clues actually being WORDS. More specifically:
** In the first game, your only clues to the backstory might not even show up in your playthrough- one of the random events that might happen is the list of rules might change into one of several newspaper articles, which reveal that the animatronics are probably haunted by a group of children murdered at the pizzeria, and that the place is set to close by the end of the year.
** In the second, you get some info from the Phone Guy's messages, but for the most part you get lore from minigames that have a chance to play once you get killed. The minigames have simplistic graphics and gameplay, but they also show lore events. There are four minigames. 'Bring Cake to the Children', where you play as Freddy and must move between children whenever they get unhappy to bring them cake, [[spoiler: while one child is left outside. Eventually, a car will pull up and a man will kill the child. A Marionette jumpscare follows]]. 'Go! Go! Go! Foxy', where you play as Foxy and run from one room to another to entertain children, [[spoiler: and after a few rounds of this, the same guy who killed the first child will be in the starting room, and all the kids will be dead, ending with a Foxy jumpscare]]. 'Give Gifts/Give Life', where you play as the Puppet and give gift boxes to [[spoiler: the dead children, followed by putting masks of the animatronics on them (strongly implied to be a metaphor for helping them haunt the animatronics), capping off with a Golden Freddy jumpscare]], and a game where you play as Freddy and follow the Puppet [[spoiler: to try and prevent the murders. You can also encounter the Murderer]].
** The third game has the Phone Guy's recordings, plus between-the-night games/cutscenes (you can move around freely, but can't change how it ends) which tell how the animatronics were broken and how [[BigBad Springtrap]] came to be. [[spoiler: And if you can follow the obscure hints in them, you can unlock the secret minigames, where you find and comfort the ghost children, allowing them to move on.]]
** The fourth game has between-the-night minigames plus a few random alterations to the room. [[spoiler: An IV or a bottle of pills will appear next to the bed, hinting that the player is actually in the hospital after having their head crunched in by Fredbear.]]
** The fifth game has the requisite death minigames, plus blueprints for the animatronics and, for the first time, full voiced lines from the animatronics [[spoiler: and protagonist]]. After Custom Night, completing each preset will grant you more cutscenes of the aftermath of the game.
** ''Pizzeria Simulator'' has more voiced animatronics, plus Cassette Guy.

** ''Help Wanted'' has Tape Girl's tapes and [[spoiler:the strange rabbit mask you can find in the DLC ''Curse of Dreadbear'']], both of which tie into the existence of [[VirtualGhost Glitchtrap]] and [[GrandTheftMe his motives]]. [[spoiler:Said rabbit mask is a SequelHook for [[VideoGame/FiveNightsAtFreddysSecurityBreach the next game]], and hints that ''Help Wanted'''s protagonist didn't escape "digital consciousness transference" after all.]]
* FNAF fangame ''VideoGame/FredbearAndFriends'' goes for a more typical approach, as you can find a number of audio tapes throughout the story's first section. While most of them are recordings of customers being interviewed about what the pizzeria meant for them, some are more sinister, such as the warning of a suspicious man stalking the premises, or a mention of the guards going missing at night.

* ''VideoGame/TheBridge'' has only scattered scraps of text and images to help you make sense of what's happening. Practically nothing is ever fully explained.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}''
** ''VideoGame/{{Doom 3}}'' can be treated as a classic level-based shooter as long as you treat PDA's as parts of a LockAndKeyPuzzle. However, if you delve further into them than just for finding door codes, there's a plethora of information on how Mars City was faring before your arrival, including the increasingly bizarre and frightening incidents (people hearing voices, pieces of heavy equipment that activate on their own and cannot be shut down at all, behavioral changes in personnel, and so on) caused by the latent demonic activity invited in by the teleportation experiments. The audio logs and e-mails detail those incidents from the perspective of ordinary workers, oblivious to the satanic nature of the bad things happening around and sometimes to them.
** The [[VideoGame/{{Doom 2016}} 2016 game]] continues the trend with logs about the various enemies you face, the areas you visit, and the characters you meet. The last one in particular answers questions never brought up in the base game, such as why Samuel Hayden has a cybernetic body and why Olivia Pierce is so eager to study and assist the demons.
* While the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' series has always had cutscenes that give you a general idea of what's going at the present time of the story, beginning with ''VideoGame/Halo3'' they have also included terminals, data pads, or audio logs scattered throughout the levels that divulge additional information on the backstory and expanded universe of the series.

There are multiple ways for a video game to tell a story, but they generally fall into two major categories. The first is more direct, with player control (or at least a good amount of it) being briefly removed to deliver [[{{Cutscene}} a short movie or cinematic]] that will convey the game's narrative. The other is more indirect, and comes in the form of epistolary [[InfoDrop scraps of information]] lying around the game world for the player to find or ignore at one's leisure. This includes [[FlavorText item and enemy descriptions]], NPC dialogue, and even details in the environment itself such as worn architecture. These are called Story Breadcrumbs, as rather than deliver a information in a large loaf of bread, information is given in much smaller bite-sized morsels. In academic game design they may also be called "embedded narrative"[[note]]though this term frequently refers to ''all'' story elements embedded in the game, including the aforementioned control-removing cutscenes, and is used to distinguish it from EmergentNarrative[[/note]] and "environmental storytelling."

** ''VideoGame/Splatoon3'': As well as the sunken scrolls, this game's campaign has the [[ApocalypticLog Alterna Log]], which details [[spoiler: how remnants of humanity survived the apocalypse, ended up wiping themselves out, and how the aftermath gave rise to the Inklings and Octarians]].

* ''VideoGame/DragaliaLost'' has this in each of the Wyrmprints, whether they're just silly little fluff pieces or setting up [[{{Foreshadowing}} future events]]. It's also how the backstories of the [[BonusBoss Agito]] are told going in order: Sword->Blade->Dagger->Axe->Lance->Bow->Wand->Staff->Manacaster.